So, not friends, then, but they were on a first-name basis. How did that work? What was going on? Why would Mr. Madison have come to Baz’s penthouse?
“If you answered your damn phone I would not have had to track you down,” Mr. Madison said, sounding both annoyed and aggrieved. “That bitch is going to do that interview in two weeks. The station is already doing internet promotion for the spot, alluding to a brand-new revelation of document-supported facts. What are you doing about it?”
“Hell, Carlos. Eres un idiota!” Baz lunged away from Randi toward the man he’d just called Carlos. Not Carl. He grabbed Mr. Madison by the lapels of his jacket and jerked him forward. “No usarás un lenguaje como ese sobre o alrededor de Miranda.”
Baz’s explosion into motion had shocked her, but the fury in his tone as he demanded the other man not use that kind of language about or around her made her feel a little better in a situation she did not understand.
“Speak English.” Mr. Madison was trying to break Baz’s hold on his jacket to no avail. “You’re in America, little brother.”
“Little brother?” Randi asked, absolutely not wanting to believe the implication of what she was hearing, but unable to ignore the evidence of her eyes and ears.
Mr. Madison jerked at the sound of her voice, looking past his brother to meet Randi’s bewildered gaze. Surprise and consternation crossed his face before it settled into lines of straight-out annoyance.
“Oh, hell. Why did you bring her here?” Mr. Madison demanded as Baz moved to block the older man’s line of sight to her. “I guess it’s out of the bag now. Not that you were making progress.” Oh, the disgust just dripped from Carl Madison’s voice.
But progress? What exactly was out of the bag? Randi gave herself a mental shake, reminding herself she was no doe-eyed optimist. If it walked like a duck, it was going to quack.
Basilio Perez was Carl...no, Carlos Madison’s brother. All the clues had been there. The siblings whose mother had taken them to raise in another country, even giving them the last name of her second husband. Carl Madison had been born Carlos Perez.
And he was a member of the family Baz had been so clear he owed all his loyalty to, one of the people Baz had made it clear he was willing to be downright merciless on behalf of.
Never had Randi been so tempted to use a certain four-letter expletive. Not even when the toe-rag trying to peer around his brother to glare at her had hit and threatened her.
“All of this was about you convincing me not to do the interview,” she accused Baz’s back.
His big body stiffened. Then his brother dropped against the wall, stumbling to his knees, as Baz spun to face Randi. “I told you why I do not want you to do the interview.”
She almost bought his distress, but she couldn’t afford to spend that kind of emotional currency.
“You lied to me.” She couldn’t have hidden the pain that knowledge caused her, so she didn’t try.
“I told you I was no white knight.”
“You think that makes it okay?” she cried. This could not be real.
The first man in years she’d shared her body with had been using her just like the last one. Her heart felt like it was exploding in her chest, detonating from the pain expanding inside her.
“Nothing has changed from five minutes ago. Yes, I regret to say that sorry excuse for humanity is my older brother, but he was not in our bed with us.”
“You had sex with her to get her to call off the interview? You do have a ruthless streak, don’t you?” Mr. Madison sounded like he was impressed.
Randi just wanted to throw up.
Baz spun back to the older man and got right into his face, in a move more emotional than orchestrated. “Shut up. This has nothing to do with you.”
“Like hell,” Mr. Madison barked.
“Of course it does,” Randi said painfully at the same time.
She understood why Baz was so upset. His brother’s impatience had undone all of Basilio Perez’s efforts in, and out of, the bedroom. He’d had her, too. She’d been on the verge of doing exactly what the brothers wanted.
Baz turned back, stepping toward her. “No, it really does not. Carlos has treated you shamefully. I still want to fix that.”
“How is deceiving and using me going to fix anything?” For her anyway.
She could see what his agenda had been on behalf of his family easily enough, but no way did that translate into making things better for her.
He opened his mouth to speak, but seemed unsure what to say. Randi doubted very much that the great Basilio Perez often found himself lost for words.
She put her hand up, forestalling whatever his facile brain was coming up with. “I can’t believe anything you say.” He’d been dishonest with her from the start. “You orchestrated our meeting, didn’t you?”
His jaw clenched, but he nodded. “I did.”
“You lied about everything!”
“Actually, I lied about very little.” He stepped closer to her and she moved back, maintaining their distance. He frowned, but stopped. “The only thing I withheld from you was the name of my family here.”
“You knew I would never suspect you of being related to the people who had destroyed my life. The times we talked about the accident, you deliberately pretended not to know anything about it.” How was pretense not a lie?
“We destroyed your life?” Mr. Madison was apparently done being ignored. “You put our son in a coma for two weeks!”
“I never denied driving the car, but I wasn’t speeding. I wasn’t driving negligently. Jamie ran out from between parked cars, right in front of my bumper. I did my best to avoid him. If I hadn’t, things would have been so much worse. I know the doctors told you that.” Because they’d told her when she’d inquired about the little boy’s state of health.
The entire situation had been beyond devastating. One of the reasons she hadn’t fought back against all the criticism, despite the proof she had access to that showed so much of what was said about her was a total fabrication, was because she’d felt a horrific guilt. Deserved or not, Randi had never completely gotten over the moment of impact between her car and that tiny body. She probably never would.
Mr. Madison dismissed Randi’s words with some ugly language, but no actual argument to the contrary.
Baz pointed at his brother, his expression bordering on fury. “The accident was unavoidable once your wife let your four-year-old son wander off toward a busy street.”
“Is that what that bitch told you?”
Baz moved so fast, Randi gasped. But he had his brother up by his collar again and spoke right into his face. “I told you not to call her that!”
Mr. Madison’s face turned red, his nasty expression in no way diminished. “Remember who your family is here, Baz!”
“Right now I’m ashamed of the connection.”
“How dare you say that?”
“How dare you hit a defenseless woman?”
Randi wasn’t exactly defenseless, but she agreed the jerk should never have gotten physical with her. She wished he’d just forget she existed.
“That bitch is not defenseless!”
“I warned you!” Baz cocked his arm and then punched his brother, right in the face, before throwing him toward the wall. “How does that feel?”
Mr. Madison swiped at his now-bleeding nose. “I can’t believe you hit me!”
“We are of a size.” He indicated Randi with his hand. “She, however, is nowhere near your weight class. And. You. Hit. Her.”
“I told you things got out of hand. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“That is not good enough.” Baz seemed to pull his cool in around him, his voice turning more frigid than a Midwest winter. “You will keep a civil tongue in your head or I will knock out every one of your capped teeth.”
Cautiously eyeing his younger brother, Mr. Madison pushed himself up the wall. “Okay, I get it. You’re protective, though Heaven only knows why.”
Protective? Right. Not so much from where Randi was standing.
Betrayal was flaying her with the sting of twenty lashes. “Sex between us...it was all about you seducing me into doing what you wanted.”
And man, but she did not want to discuss this in front of Carl Madison.
Baz held himself rigidly, but took several seconds to come back around to face her. He reached toward her again.
But she stepped back farther, hitting the wall, unable to bear the idea of even the most casual touch. “Just admit it. Don’t keep lying.”
“I told you. I didn’t actually lie to you.”
“You deceived me and that isn’t going away on a technicality. Do you honestly think I would have spent five minutes, let alone five days, in your company if I knew who you were related to?” One thing was for sure—she wasn’t compounding that mistake. “No wonder you stood up for people I thought were strangers to you. They were part of the family you are so willing to protect at all costs!”