IMPACT: A Secret Baby Sports Romance (39 page)

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.

Chapter Six

Madeline

When the buzz gave way to silence, I let my eyes flutter open.  A tense excitement sizzled in the air. "Is this it?" I asked Harlow. "Are we getting started?"

She wasn't looking at me. Her gaze, like those of everyone else in the room, was focused on the prop bed in the center of the next room. I felt my own head turn like a magnet finding its pole.

The strange ripple that went through my body... It was far too close to the feeling I had the first time I took ecstasy. The liquid warmth, the need to touch.

I had learned to fear those feelings. The loss of control was the most terrifying part.

For some people, it was drugs that got them high. For me, it was my own brain. I knew enough about myself now to be suspicious of every urge, every desire.

And right now, my urges and desires were in overdrive. Except instead of a little pill doing this to me, it was a person.

A person sprawled across a bed, staring right at me. The crew was adjusting the spotlights all around him, sending shafts of light across his body so that he practically fucking glowed. I closed my eyes against it, but the afterimage of him was still burned into my retinas. Smooth, tanned, almost olive skin. Thick, dark hair sticking up in wild, unkempt tufts.  Rivers of black ink splashed across the hills and valleys of his torso.

And gray eyes the color of a winter storm over the ocean.

Calm. Calm. You are a professional. You are here to do a job. A favor to Mom and Mike. This is a job and you are finally working again. Don't lose your grip.

I blinked, trying to clear my head. The spotlights suddenly flicked off, leaving me momentarily blinded so that I didn't see him get up. Only heard the creak of the mattress. 

I clamped my lips tightly to keep from whimpering.

He rolled off the bed and walked over to me. Not walked. Loped. Like a tiger or some other caged up animal, all power under its skin. I swallowed, a brief flicker of animal instinct sending a shiver down my spine. The way he looked at me made me feel cornered.

Then he looked right past me. "Hey, 'Lo." He smiled at Harlow. "Casper on tour?"

"What's up, Drizzle?" Harlow planted her hand on her hip and adopted an aggressively bored stance. It wasn't fooling me in the slightest. "Yeah, Jax has them off for three weeks in Europe. He brought his new girl along."

"Jax has a new chick?"

"Apparently she's the one he wrote Cocky about." I was quietly thrilled that I actually recognized the name of a popular song. Rehab had felt like I was living under a rock.

Rane wrinkled his nose. "Pop's not my thing, but goddamn, do I wish I had written that song. Fucking genius-level catchy. He must really like her."

"Likes her enough to spring for accommodations all through Europe. Jax can afford that, but can't afford to fly me out to see my long-term boyfriend for a fucking conjugal visit. I'm stuck here alone."

"Aw, but you don't want to leave here. Then you'd have missed out on the pleasure of my company," Rane drawled.

Harlow brushed her bangs back from her eyes, the better to let us see how dramatically she rolled them. For some reason, it made me happy to see her giving him shit. No one had any right to be that gorgeous. "Fucking guitarists. You all think you're god's gift, don't you?"

"I don't just think it, 'Lo."

She stuck her tongue out at him. Rane chuckled and turned to me. "So, you must be Maddie," he said.

I had been chuckling and nodding along to their conversation like an idiot, but the second his gaze fell on me, I felt like he had shone a spotlight directly into my soul. I swear he took up the entire space. The size of him, both physical and, I don't know, metaphysical. I can't explain it. I don't know if words possibly could.

I summoned the calm, gathered myself together and looked him in the eye.
Acting.

"Madeline. Yes." My voice did not waver.

"Madeline." He nodded slowly. I swear I could smell the scent of him. I started breathing through my mouth.  "Your mom is Sylvia," he continued.

I wanted him to go away, let me collect myself, get used to his presence. "Good looking out, there," I said sharply.

A flicker of a smile ghosted across his lips. "My dad's girlfriend," he pressed.

I needed to move, but when I shifted in my chair, his grin only got wider.
Dammit
. "Yeah, so it would appear," I growled at him. He knew exactly what he was doing to me. And how wrong it was.

Asshole.

"Sylvia seems very nice." He let his sleepy eyes fall to my fingers, which were wrapped tightly around the arms of the makeup chair. "You sure you're her daughter?"

"Positive." I very deliberately unclenched my fingers and cracked my knuckles. "Mike seems like a pretty chill guy. You sure you're his son?"

He nodded, his amusement at my discomfort making my blood boil. "Positive," he echoed, his voice slightly higher. Mocking me.

Harlow darted between the two of us like a boxing referee. She dabbed a last bit of concealer under my eye, then stepped back and cleared her throat. "You're all set, Maddie."

I tore my eyes away from Rane's and looked into the mirror.

One thing I had always loved about acting was the thrill of being someone else for a while. I never knew who it was that would be looking back at me.

But Harlow had made me...myself. Heightened...but myself none the same. My skin glowed, my eyes sparkled and my lips looked somehow fuller, but I was still undeniably...me.

There was nothing to hide behind.

The stage manager appeared at that exact moment. "Miss Cole, we need you in wardrobe, now please."

"Okay," I chirped. I slid off my chair. Rane made no move to get out of my way. "Excuse me," I asked politely, icily.

He waited. I tapped my foot. Finally, I looked up at him.

And up.

And up.

When I finally found his eyes, he nodded a little. "Be my guest," he said, stepping a few inches to the side. It wasn't enough.

I pressed my lips together. I wasn't going to ask him again. It was pretty clear he was playing games with me.

Instead, I squeezed past him, ignoring how every patch of skin that touched him seem to ignite. 

The stage manager tapped her black-booted foot impatiently and checked her clipboard three separate times before I finally stood in front of her. Even with my back to him, I could
feel
Rane.

"All right, listen up, both of you. We're shooting the bed scene first. Warlox thinks it'll get you guys used to each other." She paused for a dramatic eye roll. Ice flowed in my veins. "Miss Cole, this is your costume."

She pulled out a beige slip of lingerie.  Somehow, I heard Rane's snort even over the loud pulse of blood in my ears. The
bed scene.
I would be almost
naked.

"You know, I don't think our parents really thought this through," Rane deadpanned over my shoulder.

I gasped, and suddenly I was laughing. Helpless, hysterical, gulping laughter. "No," I barked. "It doesn't seem like they did."

"I'll help you get dressed, Maddie," Harlow volunteered. She was looking at me like I was deranged. I felt like I was deranged. "Hey, Drizz, stop being creepy and give her some privacy?"

"Sure thing." I
felt
him again—I was too unhinged to risk looking at him but I sure felt him—as he moved past me and headed into the bedroom set. "See you in a minute, Maddie." He stopped, turned around. There was no avoiding those gray eyes again. "It's very nice to meet you," he said, letting his eyes fall from my face to rake down over my body.

Pull it together. Calm. Control.

My mantras were fucking useless. I always wanted the worst things. Craved them. Lying next to him in bed, prop-bed or not, would be the worst thing I could do. So, of course, I craved it with every cell in my body crying out to slide against his naked torso.

"Nice to meet you, too," I whispered, swallowing hard.