RANE: A Rockstar Stepbrother Romance by Vivian Lux Page A

everything Jonathan Neil was saying to me right now.
    I wished I couldn't.
    "We looked again. And you were very good. Almost perfect, Madeline, if truth be told. But when we were watching, we just couldn't get past the idea that we were watching Madeline Cole ." He spat my name like it was something gross on the heel of his shoe. "I'm sorry, we're going with someone else."
    I was saying... something. I was walking... somewhere. But I had no connection to either of these motions until the phone slipped from my hand and fell to the floor.
    I would not cry.
    I knew I hadn't gotten it. I knew the second I walked out of there. I stared as hard as I could at the spattery picture, willing myself not to cry about it.
    Why was I crying?
    "We were watching.... Madeline Cole."
    Well, who the fuck else would I be?
    I could change my hair, my body, my posture. Fuck, give me contacts and false teeth and I could change my face. I could change my accent, my pitch, my mannerisms.
    But I couldn't change being Madeline.
    I was still...always... me.
    It wasn't fucking fair.
    "You okay?"
    Rane blocked my view of the spattery picture and I stepped back involuntarily, blinking hard.
    He extended a towel and I slung it around my shoulders, clutching it like a lifeline. "I'm fine."
    "Yeah?" He looked over his shoulder at where I was staring.  "Does that picture piss you off or something? You look like you want to smash it."
    "It...reminds me of something."
    Rane grinned. "It's a party, Maddie. This is rock and roll.  Smash my picture, I've got more."
    I gaped at him. What the hell was he talking about? "It's probably some priceless piece of art, you idiot."
    "Probably," he sighed. "I actually have no idea. Never really liked it. Go on." He leaped up on the couch, oddly graceful for such a big man. "Get it out."
    I was stuck somewhere between irritation and amusement. I just wanted to go and hide and console myself with a vodka gimlet, but Rane was perched like a mountain goat on the back of his pristine white sofa and I kind of wanted to see what he would do next.
    What he did next was wrench the moody red painting from the wall with a triumphant karate yell. "Hi-YAH!"
    An unplanned giggle escaped my lips. He heard me and grinned back, jumping down and trotting over like a proud dog retrieves a ball.
    "Here. You want to punch it, Mads?"
    I kind of did. "No, it's okay."
    He set it down on the floor in front of me. It really was godawful ugly up close. "Kick it then. Don't ruin your manicure."
    I held up my ragged nails and reddened cuticles. "And what manicure might that be?"
    "Weren't your nails painted yesterday?"
    "You...noticed my nails?"
    "I noticed a lot of things." The way he dipped his chin down after saying that made my stomach clench with an emotion I dared not let rise to the surface.
    "It was for the video," I explained. "Fake nails. They ripped the shit out of my nailbeds, too."
    "All the better reason to kick my painting instead."
    "Why are you doing this?"
    "Because it's a party and you look pissed off and sad." He touched my wet head. "And like a drowned rat, too, though I suppose that's my fault." I scowled at him. "I'm a legend-host. I can't have this kind of moody, broody shit in my house during a party."
    "Oh, so you're not just being nice?"
    "I'm never just being nice. I always have an ulterior motive." Acid dripped from his words.
    "Okay, well, I am only doing this to help you preserve your reputation."
    "Good." His lopsided grin said more than I could possibly understand right now.
    I stared down at the ugly painting. The red, angry swirls formed and reformed into the faces of the directors, the producers, the tabloid photographers and grasping ex-boyfriends. The shrinks, the group therapy leaders, the robotic meeting attendees with their judging faces and red, weepy eyes and willingness to let others define them. I saw the fans, the fickle fucking fans who loved me until the moment they cast me aside, and then hated me with a