RANE: A Rockstar Stepbrother Romance Read Online Free Page A

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