RANE: A Rockstar Stepbrother Romance (3 page)

Chapter Four

Madeline

Rock guys were all swaggering, cock-swinging douche nozzles with bigger shoe sizes than vocabularies. I was as sure of this as I was sure I didn't want to be here right now.

But I flashed a smile to security anyway. "Hi, I should be on the list. Madeline Cole?"

He blinked once and his eyes flicked to my hair, but he didn't say anything. I gripped the steering wheel to keep from touching the shaggy, growing-in mop on top of my head. I usually filled it in with wigs and clip-ins, but today I was actually working, so I needed to let the makeup girl make these calls. I had studiously avoided my reflection in the rearview mirror the whole way here.

"Go ahead, Miss Cole." Once more his eyes flicked up to my hair...then down to my tits.

Ah, there it was.

Guys are all the same.

But instead of lashing out, instead of throwing my water bottle in his face or calling his supervisor and having him fucking fired, I kept still. I counted to ten. I let the anger pass through me, and drove away.

Only then did I look in the mirror to check my face.

I looked calm. In control. No sign of Mad Maddie anywhere.

I used to feel everything. It was too much, hitting me from every angle. Wild, manic exultation, then crushing, suicidal depression. And all alongside of it was rage. Anger at, well, everyone I met. Agents, managers, producers, studio heads, all the usual suspects, but it was more than that, too. There were the kids that wrote in to my fan club, telling me I was their role model without me ever asking for the pedestal they placed me on. And the parents who thanked me for being a role model, then straight up begged me never to fuck up.

I was America's princess. For ten years, I
was
Parker Paisley, the All-American girl next door who turned out to be secret royalty. It was a brilliant conceit, playing on every little girl's princess dreams. The longer I played the role, the more the role became me. People were unable to separate the wholesome Princess Parker from Madeline Cole, real-fucking-person. I grew up in the public eye, went through puberty, developed crushes, all the normal things normal girls do, but I couldn't party and rebel in a normal way because then the public would find out. Having to live up to my fan base was like answering to a million mothers far stricter than mine. Everyone was watching. And when things started to go sour, when normal teenager rebellion became something evil and self-destructive...they turned on me.

As far as I could tell, I hadn't changed. But the world had put me on such a high pedestal, there was nothing for me to do except fall.

Or throw myself off of it.

Now it was time to prove that I had landed on my feet. I snuck one more glance in the rearview mirror, ready to put it all behind me. If that meant being in a rock music video, well, then I was ready to do what it took.

Grey Haven Manor loomed above the hills, a moody, gothic pile glowering down at everything it surrounded.  The perfect set for a mental institution, which today it was being meticulously turned into. I walked to the imposingly tall oak doorway, holding myself fiercely in check.

A cute brunette wearing a low slung maxi skirt and thick, schoolgirl bangs was crouched against the marble, sneaking a cigarette. As I watched, she surreptitiously threw her cigarette butt into the bushes, then caught me staring at her. "Sssh," she whispered, fanning the air frantically. "Not allowed."

I grinned. "I won't tell so long as you tell me where I'm supposed to be. I'm Madeline Cole?"

Her eyes went wide. "Shit, you're here already? You're early."

I grinned blandly. "Sorry. I wanted to be on time."

The girl pulled a cell phone out of her purse and widened her eyes at the time. "Well, fuck me, looks like I'm the one running behind." She rolled her eyes. "You have to remember I'm used to dealing with musicians." She extended her hand. "Harlow Grant. Hair and makeup. You're with me, Madeline." She turned back to the ornately carved doorway and beckoned me to follow her into the vaulted front foyer.

"Holy shit," I murmured.

"Right?" Harlow agreed, looking around. "The set design people did a hell of a job. This place is giving me the creeps."

The wide foyer had been transformed into a dusty, cobwebbed nightmare, gray-shrouded and menacing. The bright sunlight pouring in through the two-story windows lit the manufactured gloom incongruously, but I knew once they hit this set piece with the blue-filtered lights, everything would be sufficiently moody.

Harlow led me around the corner to a hastily set up vanity table plopped in what must have been the kitchen at one time. "So, you're Madeline Cole?" she asked, checking her clipboard. Then she did a double take. "Oh wow...I didn't realize...when they said Madeline Cole..."

I kept my face neutral as she stammered, then finally composed herself. "Sorry. You must hate that. Hey, for what it's worth? Your hair is growing in really cute."

I folded my hands in my lap. "Thank you," I said, as warmly as I could manage. Ice was flowing in my veins. It was a wonder my teeth weren't chattering.

Harlow was either supremely oblivious or supremely stoned, because she didn't seem to notice my obvious discomfort. Or maybe I was just really getting good at hiding it. "Can I ask you something?"

I swallowed. "Of course."

She lifted her chin towards my shaggy head. "Why'd you do it?"

Some of the anger leaked into my voice. "Right to the point, huh?"

"Sorry, you must get this question a lot."

Ten, nine, eight...
I took a deep, calming breath. "Actually," I sighed as I leaned back in the chair, "no one has asked me, honestly. They
tell
each other why I shaved my head, assuming it was drugs or a bad breakup or maybe more drugs. But no one has actually come out and asked, 'Hey, Maddie, why did you take your father's old beard trimmer to your head?’"

Harlow pressed her hands together in a gesture of supplication. "Hey, Maddie, why did you take your father's old beard trimmer to your head?"

There was the question that had no answer. Or maybe there were too many answers. I didn't want to delve deep—this was not the time or the place. And it certainly wouldn't help put my past behind me if all the makeup girl could think about when she worked on me was how I had lost it one night.
How it didn't even feel like my hair when I shaved it. I was a doll, a bath gel, a Lego set, a Pez dispenser. The studio owned my likeness, and my long, wavy, copper-red hair wasn't mine anymore. It belonged to the studio and Parker fucking Paisley.

So it had to go. 

But all of those words were right there at the surface, begging to come out. I was talking before I could get my thoughts under control. And even as the words spilled out of my mouth, I longed to catch them and stuff them back in.... "On that night? Because I was trying to sleep and it kept getting in my mouth and going up my nose and wrapping around my neck. Because the week before, someone had patented a Parker Paisley sex doll and there was nothing I could do because the studio owned the rights to my likeness." Harlow winced sympathetically. "Because my hair was really fucking heavy and I was tired of dragging the weight around."

She nodded. "I get it."

"You do?"

"What about the naked part though?"

I pressed my lips together. "It was hot and my AC was busted, so I was sleeping naked. The fire alarm in my building went off and I was scared."

She froze for a second. "That's it?"

"That's it."

"Huh..." She blinked slowly, her brown eyes darting a little from side to side. She chewed the side of her cheek and seemed about to say something when she shook her head and dipped her sponge into a vat of foundation. "Lean back," she told me.

You revealed too much,
I chastised myself.
How the hell is she supposed to look at you and not think you're crazy now?

Fuck. Pull yourself together.

I closed my eyes and tried to find the calm again. Being back on set...it was too familiar. The nerves were all too close to the surface and I needed to push them back down again. Find the thick skin I had thought I developed.

The soothing feel of Harlow's practiced fingers against my skin helped. The feeling of being on set, the electric buzz of all these people working together to create something brilliant helped, too.
You love this. You want this.
Once my nerves loosened their stranglehold, I could feel the excitement starting to seep in. I was in my element again. I was on a set. It was not the set of Princess Parker, but that was okay. My abrupt firing for breach of contract was okay. My tabloid-worthy meltdown was okay.

Just hold it together. You're going to be okay
.

Chapter Five

Rane

Pepper was the first of us to walk through the doors of Grey Haven Manor.  Her head swiveled sharply for a second, then she stopped short and very deliberately resumed her trademark slouch.

"This place looks like a funeral home threw up on a whorehouse," she declared in her bored monotone.

Twitch didn't notice his twin had stopped, and nearly careened into the back of her. "Oh, wow, cool spider webs!" He bounced up and down like a kid at Christmas while I stepped neatly out of reach of his pointing, flailing arms.

Keir came in with Balzac and looked all around, expressionless. Then he leaned back on his heels and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Huh," was all he said, but there were layers of meaning in that one syllable.

I couldn't help but needle him. I knew exactly what he was thinking. "What?" I grinned.

Keir didn't want to do a video. Thought they were a dead medium. Thought we were wasting time and energy. The only way we could convince him was promising that I would be the one "starring" in the damn thing. I could tell he was feeling pretty fucking smug in his decision. "It's certainly...something." He smirked.

"We hired Warlox for his vision," Balzac rumbled, ever the diplomat.

"And that vision is, 'Tim Burton in drag,'" Pepper opined, staring at her nails.

Keir surveyed the rest of the set, his mouth open like he was going to add something profound. Then he snapped it shut. "I need a drink." He sighed and headed back out to the limo for his flask.

"It's not
that
bad," Balzac complained.

"I think it's cool!" Twitch enthused. "It's got this whole goth-y thing going on."

"You like it?" A twiggy looking guy—more hair than man—had sidled soundlessly up to us, making Twitch nearly jump out of his skin. "The set designers have been working since four in the morning." He had a sibilant little hiss to his voice, like how I imagined snakes would sound if they could speak.

"It's great," I told the apparition, extending my hand. "Rane Wilder."

He extended his slim hand limply into mine, and for half a second I wondered if he expected me to kiss it. "Warlox. But then you knew that, of course."

"Of course," Balzac intoned dryly. I hid my smirk behind a cough.

A stocky, short-haired woman in an ill-fitting T-shirt stomped up to us, as noisy as Warlox was soundless. "Okay, talent's here," she barked into a headset. Then she glared at us like we had tracked dog shit into her living room. "Dee. Stage manager. Mr. Wilder, need you in wardrobe, like yesterday."

Keir appeared at my elbow and shook his flask invitingly. "Better you than me, brother."

I grabbed the antique silver flask. Our dad had given me one very similar for my twenty-first birthday. I kept hoping it would turn up one of these days. Of all the things I had lost over the years....

"Mr. Wilder, in here now please," Dee barked.

"Duty calls." I grimaced at Keir. "You're in the next one."

"Fat fucking chance. Bye, asshole."

I flipped him off over my shoulder as I followed Dee into the one undecorated room in the place. An alternative looking chick I thought I vaguely recognized, until I placed her as my buddy Casper's girlfriend, Harlow, was hunched over a pair of legs. As she leaned back from her work, that pair of legs turned out to be attached to the hottest chick I'd ever seen.

My stomach gathered tightly into itself.
She looks like a sunse
t, I thought, completely nonsensically. But maybe it did make sense. She was all fiery colors, from the coppery red of her short hair, the rosy pink in her cheeks to the constellation of orangey freckles that were scattered across the tops of her truly spectacular breasts.

She was stretched back in the chair, her eyes lightly closed like a Buddha. I desperately wanted her to open her eyes. They had to be blue, I was sure of it. The color of the autumn sky back in upstate New York. Clear and impossibly blue. But they remained closed. Which was a good thing, probably, because then she couldn't see me staring at her. Even I could feel how creepy I was being.

The little flutter in my stomach suddenly grew into nausea as my hungover brain began to fit the pieces together. There was only one reason that hot chick would be sitting in the makeup chair. But I just had to confirm it.

"Who's that?" I asked Dee.

Dee was halfway submerged into a clothing rack, yanking and cursing on something, but when I asked her again, she emerged panting. "Her? That's your co-star. You mean you don't recognize America's princess over there?"

I swallowed thickly. "Mad Maddie?"

"In the flesh." Dee screwed her lips up sourly and stared at Madeline.

"She looks sane enough," I said.

"Yeah...well." Dee shook her head, letting her silence do the work. Then she held up a pair of ridiculous leather pants. "Put these on."

Really? I'm going to kill Keir.
"Those aren't going to leave much to the imagination."

She snorted and looked pointedly at my crotch. "I think that's the point."

I shrugged. "I'm here to please." I grinned at her. She rolled her eyes, but I could see the blush. Okay, so she
was
human after all. "What's she wearing?" I asked, looking over my shoulder at Maddie.

Dee rifled through the rack until she pulled out a beige colored slinky thing. "For the bed scene," she said. "Go lie down, they need to check the lighting."

The blood rushing to my cock left none for my brain. "Bed scene?" I repeated, feeling myself go slack-jawed.

"Mr. Wilder, we need to check the lighting, now please."

I turned like a robot and stalked stiff-legged over to the huge four-poster bed that was lit up like they expected to interrogate me. I flopped down, grateful that I wasn't expected to hold myself upright anymore.

Without meaning to, I looked back across the room at Maddie, imagining her in that little slip of nothing. A bed scene. With my father's girlfriend's daughter. Who happened to be fucking gorgeous. And fucking crazy to boot.

I really was going to kill Keir.

As if she could feel my gaze, her eyelids fluttered open. She said something to the makeup artist and leaned forward. And even from all the way across the room, I could see that her eyes were exactly the blue I'd hoped they'd be.