RANE: A Rockstar Stepbrother Romance (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Madeline

The hum of bees in my dream finally resolved itself into the buzz of my cell phone against my nightstand.

Confused, I checked the clock. It was six thirty in the morning. Looking at my phone, I glared at the strange series of numbers.

An international call. London.

All at once I was awake.

"Hello, this is Madeline Cole," I croaked.

"Madeline." Those clipped British tones went right to my belly, which immediately started twisting around itself. "I hope I haven't woken you."

I sprang from my bed. "No, no, Mr. Neil, everything is fine. What can I do for you?"

I could hear the creak of his chair as Jonathan Neil sat back. I imagined his office, all dark wood and leather. He probably had a cup of tea right by his elbow. Or brandy. "I wanted to congratulate you on your work in the Ruthless video," he said. "And though I know you read for the part of Imogene, I wanted to invite you back and have you read the part of Larissa for us."

My legs gave out. I bounced back onto my bed. "Larissa?"

"Do you remember which part I'm referring to?"

Of course I did. "The shopkeeper."

Jonathan murmured a noise of assent. "Honestly, I would have never considered you for an antagonist role. But after seeing your work in the video, I think you could be quite capable. It might throw the audience off, hide her true intentions until the last minute if we had somebody like you playing her. It would be quite unexpected."

All the moisture seemed to have fled my mouth. I stood up again. "I would be honored," I finally managed to croak.

"Excellent. I'll be in touch with Jen to schedule, of course, but I wanted to check with you personally. Really, great work, Madeline. I'm looking forward to seeing what you can do for us."

I made a few mechanical noises of agreement and managed to say goodbye without embarrassing myself. But when Jonathan hung up the phone, all the strength left my legs and I fell back into bed, flat on my back, and stared wordlessly at the ceiling.

Jonathan Neil had called me back to read for a different part in
Skyline Drive
. The part of Larissa wasn't the main character, not the ingénue. She was the villain, disguised as the best friend. It was a small but juicy role, the kind of thing I would have never considered.

Or been considered for.

But now?

I clapped my hands together and squealed in glee. Who could I call? Who could I tell? Who would understand how absolutely huge this was?

My whole body seemed to scream out in a single voice, "Rane!"

I grabbed my phone. Yesterday's kiss was still burned across my lips, and the wedding was only days away. But I had to thank him. It was his video, after all, that had opened this opportunity for me.

And fuck if I didn't want to thank him in person.

"
You awake?
" I texted. I expected he wouldn't be. Rock 'n roll guys were not known for their early mornings. But there was no way I could get back to sleep.

My phone buzzed in my hand. "
Guess I forgot to turn my notifications off last night. So yeah. Now I am,
" it read.

I laughed like a maniac.

"
Come over here. I have something I want to tell you.
" My hands shook so badly I had to delete and retype it four separate times.

"
You're joking, right?
" came the response.

"
That's your job,
" I typed back quickly.

"
I can't believe I'm doing this
," he wrote.

"
Hurry up
," I wrote.

"
Yes, Princess.
" This time, his nickname for me didn't make me angry. It made me gleeful. It was what
he
called me. And hell, he made me feel like a princess.

A half an hour later, my doorbell rang. My fingers lingered on my doorknob for half a second too long. What was I doing? First I'd kissed him, now I was inviting him over in the early morning? The rational side of me seemed to have completely fled, leaving only Mad Maddie in her place.

I'm living,
I told myself, hearing Rane's voice in my head as I said it.

"You had better have coffee," he grunted as I opened the door.

When I saw him on my doorstep, I nearly lost the strength in my legs once more. Seeing him this early in the morning felt
too
intimate. He hadn't shaved yet and the dark stubble in the shadow of his cheekbone made the swirling pattern of a whirlpool. I dropped my eyes down to his collarbone before it sucked me under.

He was waiting for me, and when I finally felt composed enough to look back up into his gray eyes, a ghost of a smile crinkled at the corners.

"Of course I do," I said. I made sure to keep my eyes focused on his earlobe as I talked. "Didn't we already establish my caffeine addiction yesterday? Come on in."

I knew it was an optical illusion, but it seemed like his head almost brushed the ceiling of my tidy little bungalow. He was too long and too broad for this small, feminine place. There was nowhere I could move that wasn't already filled with his presence. "Actually, strike that. Let's fill a Thermos and go somewhere."

"Where do you want to go?" he asked, opening my cupboards one by one until he found the one that had the mugs.

"I don't know. What do
you
like to do? You know, when you're not rocking out?"

He shot me a grin. "Are you insinuating I'm not rocking out right now?" he asked impishly.

"Right now, I thought you were doing an impression of a zombie," I told him, holding out my arms and shuffling.

"That's because you haven't shown me where you keep your sugar," he retorted.

I pulled the sugar bowl down from its place in the spice cabinet. When I handed it to him, his fingers brushed over mine, just lightly enough to be an accident, but just long enough for me to know that it wasn't.

"When I'm not rocking out, huh?" he asked, spooning a truly obscene amount of sugar into his coffee. "Well, let me ask you this? Do you like hiking?"

I looked down at the floaty maxi-dress I had agonized over this morning. Pretty but casual. Not trying too hard to impress, but impressive enough. But not really...rugged. No more than the little thong sandals I had chosen to go with it.

"Not a question I ever thought I'd be asked," I confessed.

"You've never hiked?"

"I've...walked."

"So, that's what we'll call this."

"Around rocks and trees and shit?"

He looked amused. "And shit."

"I wouldn't have pegged you as a hiker, Mr. Rock God Wilder."

He rolled his eyes and ignored the name. "My mom."

"She took you hiking?" I knew precious little about his mother and grasped at the little crumb of knowledge about the woman who birthed this man.

"Yeah. She was always taking us on these forced marches. Hippie shit. Keir hated it. But I learned to endure it. Then I liked it. When she left, well..."

"You started to love it?"

"Pretty much, yeah.”

"Okay. You're full of surprises, you know."

"Stick around. You haven't seen anything yet."

"Okay." I didn't tell him how badly I wanted to do just that. "I should change, though, right?"

He let his eyes drop down to my chest and the little hint of cleavage I had deemed demure enough for 'friendship.' "Nope," he growled.

"That was not a very 'friendly' looked you just gave me."

"What do you mean? It was extremely friendly."

"Eyes up here, Wilder."

He shook his head. "Cold as ice."

"You're one to talk. I call you and tell you I have news I want to share, and you're not even the least bit curious to find out what it is?"

He sipped his coffee, eyeing me over the rim. "Oh, I'm curious. Figured you’d tell me when you're ready."

I shook my head, marveling at him. "What's it like to go through life without worrying about anything?" I asked him. I was only partially joking.

"Nice." He screwed the lid onto the Thermos and came over to stand next to me. "You ready to go?"

"You're going to take me into the woods. Where there is dirt."

"I'm a dirty boy, I guess." He slung a heavy arm across my shoulder.

I inhaled in spite of myself, loving the smell of his soap still strong from the shower, the clean scent of his detergent, the underlying warmth that was undeniably him. "You smell pretty good to me," I told him. "Not dirty at all."

He looked down at me, and an odd little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. I stared at that tiny white scar, and before I could stop myself, I was reaching up to brush my thumb across it. "How did you get this?" I whispered.

He turned his head slightly, and as he did, my thumb dragged across his Cupid's bow before he parted his lips and took my thumb gently between his teeth. I inhaled sharply, a slow ache beginning deep inside of me.

"Fishhook," he murmured. I barely heard the words. The only thing in the world was the way his lips felt as they closed around my thumb. In a trance, I brought my other fingers up to his mouth. He closed his thumb and forefinger around my wrist and turned my palm up against his lips, kissing down to my wrist where the pulse beat as fast as a hummingbird's wings.

"I got an audition," I blurted. My words tumbled out as fast as my heart raced. "A callback for
Skyline Drive
. Because they saw the video. I wanted to thank you...I wanted to tell you in person...I wanted to say how grateful I...oh..." His hand had slid up my arm and down my shoulder to cup my breast as I spoke. His thumbnail lightly raking over the tip of my nipple made me shiver and sag against him.

"That's great," he murmured into my neck.

I could barely catch my breath. "It is… I just wanted to… Tell you that…"

He snaked his hand behind my head, lightly grasping my hair at the roots and tilting my face up to his.

"I told you. You're incredible," he growled, before slamming his lips into mine.

Chapter Thirty

Rane

I could have carried her right upstairs to her bedroom. I knew she wouldn't stop me. My entire body was taken over with the explosive need to be inside of her again. To feel the way she clamped down on me as she came, her whole body wracked with spasms of pleasure that she had no prayer of containing. I wanted to see her undone again.

But for the first time in my life, I didn't just go for it. I could make this better than just a quick fuck in the hallway, a rough tumble in her bed. There was a place I knew, an overhang, with an incredible view of the shore below, secluded and off the beaten path. I thought of her, splayed out in front of me, her freckled skin almost glowing in the sun, the feel of the open air against our naked skin, her cries echoing off the canyon, filling our ears with music. I thought of her hair, the color of sunset, below a sunset, and for the first time in my life, I wanted something badly enough to wait for it.

"Hold that thought, Princess," I told her.

She mewled a little in protest. "You…" She exhaled.

"Me," I smiled, taking her hand. "Come on, save your energy. We have some hiking to do."

"You do that to me, and then you want me to be able to walk?"

I shot her grin. "Pull yourself together," I intoned. She glared at me. "There you go," I teased her, moving in front of her and holding open the door to my Jeep. "If it helps to be pissed at me, I promise you I will make this worth your while."

She grumbled and sat back in the seat, but I could tell I had piqued her interest. "So," she said, brushing her hands down her dress. "Fishhook?"

I shook my head, laughing. "I was ten. Literally the only time I've ever fished. Keir got his hands on some gear somehow, and we went tromping off to this polluted stream that ran through the crappy park by our house. I don't know, I guess we thought we were explorers or cavemen or something, but we had no idea what the fuck we were doing. Keir cast and instead of hooking a fish, he fucking hooked me. Then he panicked and yanked it back out again." She clapped her hands over her mouth and made a little gagging sound. "Blood was everywhere," I continued, "and my dad was pissed that we called him out of work to take me in for stitches." I laughed again at the memory of our father just shaking his head over and over again, like a metronome. "My dad's disbelief at our stupidity was a recurring theme of my childhood."

Maddie was practically shaking with suppressed laughter. "Oh, go on," I told her. "Let it out."

"That...is...amazing..." she gasped.

"Glad my trauma amuses you."

Her eyes sparkled. "Tell me more stories like that."

I turned off the main road onto the dirt track up into the hills. "I could fill a book with shit like that. Keir and me, well, I'm honestly surprised one or both of us isn't dead."

"Boys being boys?"

"Yeah, our house was the kind where you could tell from the street no woman lived there. The porch was caved in with this beat up sofa we found on the side of the road when we were fourteen. Carried it home ourselves, grunting and cursing the whole while. Dad didn't even question when it showed up, just hollered at us to get it out of the way of the drainpipe. That thing smelled like a dog and felt like sandpaper, but we sat out there smoking our cigarettes, drinking Genny Light and generally raising hell."

"He didn't have a problem with that? Your dad?"

"By the time Keir and I were teenagers, my dad was working two shifts to pay the grocery bills, and the two of us had the run of the house."

"Your mom?"

I clenched my hand against the steering wheel, then quickly let go. "My mom split when I was nine. She should have never been a mother, wasn't cut out for it. When we got too wild and difficult to be her playthings, she lit out."

"But your dad stuck with you?"

"He spent the next ten years as a spectator in his own home. Keir and me, man it was like the Roman Coliseum. Fucking blood sports. Dad just kept his mouth shut and wrote checks to the repairman who went in and out of our house like we had a goddamn revolving door."

She giggled and I smiled, too, remembering the busted windows, caved-in walls and kicked in doors that came part and parcel with growing up Wilder. We hated each other as fiercely as we loved each other, fighting off bullies for each other and then knocking each other down for having the nerve to get bullied.

"He bought us our first guitars, our dad. I think he was really reaching, trying to head us off of the path we were going down. Figured having us in a band was better than having us in jail or something. He's a hell of a guy." I hit the gas, and the Jeep roared up the last few yards to the trailhead.

Maddie looked a little wistful. "My dad died when I was three. Went to bed with a headache and never woke up. He was thirty-two."

I sucked in sharply. "Fuck, Maddie. I'm sorry."

She shook her head. "I barely remember him. He's more a feeling than a man. My mom tried to keep his memory alive, but he just kind of...slipped away from me."

I threw the Jeep into park. "You were so little, you can't be angry at yourself for that."

"I'm not. Angry that is. Sad, though. Back then we were just a normal family. Mommy and Daddy and little me. But when he died, my mom was so heartbroken. She sort of...lost herself for a while. When she withdrew, I withdrew. Stopped playing, stopped eating, stopped talking, even."

She looked down at her fingers. "That's what snapped her out of it. Seeing me decline like that. She woke up and swore to me that she'd never go away like that again."

Maddie swallowed and smiled. "She kept her promise. From that moment on, she was there. She thought maybe performing would be something that would bring us together, get me out of my shell. And it worked... for a bit. I loved hamming it up in front of the camera, all of those people telling me how special I was, how cute I was. It helped a part of me that was still hurting over my daddy. And my mother was nearly bursting with pride over the success I had. She quit her job and lost herself in the world of stage moms, though she somehow managed not to turn completely awful."

I walked around the Jeep and opened the door for her. She took my hand stepping out...and then didn't let go. "How old were you when you landed Princess Parker?" I knew, but I wanted to hear her keep talking.

She inhaled. "Ten. I was ten years old. Just turned, actually. I beat out older girls, more experienced girls. I was so proud, Rane. And my mom, she nearly lost her mind. You would have thought I cured cancer and landed on the moon, all at once."

We skirted around the boulders that marked off the parking area and started up the dirt path, Maddie immediately falling behind. That pretty little dress of hers seemed like it shortened her stride. I tried to slow my natural fast pace to match her slower one.

The smell of the ocean hung in the air, and the noise of it swished in the distance, but we couldn't see anything yet.

I nodded. "My dad was proud, too. I picked up guitar like it was an extension of me, and Keir had a surprisingly good voice. I think it was from screaming bloody murder every time I pinned him in wrestling. We liked music that sounded like our lives, fast and loud as hell. Dad would sit in the garage with toilet paper stuffed in his ears, listening to us rehearse."

"It's starting to grow on me," Maddie said, picking her way carefully along a rocky stretch of trail. I held out my hand, and she slipped hers into mine with a grateful look on her face. I slowed my stride further, keeping next to her, and I noticed again that she didn't drop my hand. "So, you just started a band and that was that?"

I nodded. "Pretty much." Striding along the trail, the sun baking down on my shoulders with this gorgeous girl at my side was making me downright fucking chatty. "We recruited Balzac and Twitch from school and Twitch brought along his twin sister..."

"They're twins?"

"I know, right? Couldn't be more different. Anyway, he told us, 'Mom said I couldn't come unless I brought her,' so that's how we added keyboards. Somehow, I had the best grades out of all of us, which was sad, so I was nominated for songwriting. We played across New York State for a few years, crashing on couches and getting in fights, until we got to New York City and played a three-night appearance at a club there. Keith? Our manager?" She nodded. "He was in the audience that night. From there, I have no idea what the fuck happened. I signed a few papers, drank a few bottles and ended up in fucking LA."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

She twisted her lips and dropped back a step. "You walk too fast," she complained.

"Here, look over there. Sit on that log right there, catch your breath."

"I'm out of shape."

"Yeah, I don't know why you'd be out of breath. I'm the one doing all of the talking."

She shot me a look and smoothed her hand over the fallen tree. "Ow, fuck me."

"I'm not assuming that's an invitation."

"My finger, dipshit."

"You've got a splinter?"

"Yeah, and no tweezers. Damn, that hurts."

"Hang on, we'll just back that out again. Breathe out."

"Is there anything you're not good at?" She pouted grumpily.

"Singing," I said immediately.

"No shit?"

"Yes, shit. You know my laugh? The one you so eloquently described as a donkey fucking a bullfrog?"

"Hey, it's accurate."

"Well, imagine their offspring."

She snorted.

"I couldn't carry a tune if it had a handle."

"But you're so good at guitar."

"Different instrument."

"I'm going to get you to sing for me one of these days."

"Never going to happen. You'd lose all respect for me."

"I never had any to begin with."

"Nice thing to say to a guy who's sucking the splinter out of your finger." I lifted her hand and she caught her breath, staring at me all the while.

"There."

"Thank you." She exhaled, still staring at me. I felt like someone had trained a spotlight on me. On us both. Like we were standing in a sunbeam meant just for us. She looked at me like I was her focal point. If she had any idea how that made me feel, would she stop? How much would I frighten her if I just blurted out that I wanted to be just that? I wanted to fold her in on myself and shelter her and be the strength she needed.

But she already had that, inside of herself, and just didn't know it yet.

And that's why I was falling in love with her.

Oh.

Goddammit.

Oh.