Authors: Arianne Richmonde
Shards of Glass
(The Glass Trilogy #1)
by
ARIANNE RICHMONDE
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Arianne Richmonde 2015
Kindle Edition
Copyright © Arianne Richmonde, 2015. The right of Arianne Richmonde to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) 2000
This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design and photography © by: Arianne Richmonde
Formatting by:
BB eBooks
Arianne Richmonde is an American writer and artist who was raised in Europe. She lives in France with her husband and coterie of animals.
Shards of Glass
is based on much of her personal experience—she used to be an actress.
As well as
The Pearl Series,
she has written
The Star Trilogy
, and the
USA TODAY
bestselling suspense story,
Stolen Grace
.
The Pearl series:
The Pearl Trilogy bundle (the first three books in one e-box set)
To be advised of upcoming releases and giveaways, sign up:
ariannerichmonde.com/email-signup
For more information on the author visit her website:
Shards of Glass
started out as a very short story I wrote in 2012, with an unexpected twist at the end. I received hundreds of emails and Facebook messages begging me to continue the story and make this into a series. Finally, here it is. Thank you so much for waiting.
Extra thanks to my special friends and team. In no particular order: Sam, Letty, Nelle, Cindy, Dee, Cheryl, Paula, Gloria, Kim, Lisa, Angie, Rachel, Sharon, Tracey, Tracy, Lauren, Marci, Noemi, Patty, Fanci, Siv, Bella, Lilah, Nade, Kathleen, Amanda, Wanda, Jackie, my special Angels, my fabulous Pearlettes, and all the readers and bloggers who have spread the word about my books and added me to your bookshelf.
And last but not least, the two invaluable men in my life: my formatter, Paul Salvette, who has been with me from the beginning and has never let me down, and my husband for his amazing covers.
I’M ALONE IN THE DARK, locked up, with nobody to hear my cries. They’ve taken him from me. Nobody believes me. She is a liar, a thief, and a fraudster, and probably a murderess. She’ll kill him for sure.
Not only does she want me out of the picture . . .
She wants me dead.
T
HE MINUTE I LAID eyes on him I knew he was dangerous. Why, I wasn’t sure, but I also sensed I needed him in some unfathomable way. I, just like everyone else in the company, was in awe of him.
It’s a great thing when you know you’re going to see the person you’re crazy about, every single day of the week. Except Sundays – the day we had off. During rehearsals, that is. Once a show is up and running, though, you perform Sundays.
Then there are the “dark” days: Mondays. Dark, because the theater is empty – no performances. Dark for me because I knew I wouldn’t see him.
We were well into week three. Every day I was a bundle of nerves because I knew how lucky I was to have the job. It had been drummed into us at drama school that acting was a thankless career, that only a few lucky percent “make it” and to expect to be either unemployed or learn to love the second string to your bow, because that second string would become your lifeline – your bread and butter. And forget about being a movie or TV star, or even less likely, a Broadway success story – you’d be lucky to get a commercial, lucky to do regional theater. Lucky to get any job at all.
I’m not sure why Daniel Glass picked me for the role. A friend of mine, who also went up for the part—way more beautiful than I consider myself—lost out to me. Her agent told her they said she was “too sophisticated” that they were looking for “somebody with simplicity yet with integral strength.” What the hell that meant, I wasn’t sure. Trying to get inside the minds of directors and producers is an enigma to me. All you can do is be yourself at the audition and hope for the best, hope your lucky number comes up. That you win the lottery.
Because that is what being an actor is all about. Playing the lottery.
In my mother’s day things were even tougher. There was no YouTube, no Internet. They had to send out their 8 x 10s in large manila envelopes via snail mail. Knowing that nine times out of ten, their expensive black and white photo with a résumé stapled to the back, would be thrown into some casting director’s waste paper basket. It cost her a fortune. Once, she told me, she got chased around the “casting couch”. Literally. A big time British director, famous for vigilante movies, called her in one day. She was over the moon with excitement. She finally had gotten her break, she thought. She was dating my dad at the time, a penniless guitarist back then. The director asked her to come to his “office” at his house. But he didn’t ask her to read a script, that day; he made her an offer, instead.
“You can spend ninety-five percent of your time with your penniless guitarist, but the rest of the time I want you to accompany me to premieres, to play my girlfriend—be on my arm,” he told her.
She laughed and asked him if he was kidding. Then she found herself running circles around the casting couch while he chased her. When he realized she was serious and it was a definite “no”, Mom told me that he turned aggressive and shoved her out of the front door, his gold medallion swinging on his hairy chest. As if the medallion had a life of its own. Shunned. Pride hurt.
I wish my mother were here now to guide me, to give me a hug when I break down from the pressure of wanting to be perfect. Nobody understands that actors are the most insecure human beings alive. Even the stars, even those who are constantly working—even
they
suffer from the fear of being less than wonderful. Actors want to shine, we want to please people and, above all, we want to be loved.
I wanted to please Daniel Glass.
I would have done anything for him.
And I did.
“You’re late,” he says, as I try to slip surreptitiously through the swing doors of the theater, unnoticed.
I pretend I don’t hear, and shuffle quietly into a seat at the back. All heads turn, though. All eyes are on me. I lay my satchel gently on the floor.
“I said you’re late, Janie,” he shouts, his voice booming across the room.
“I’m sorry, I got—”
“Please leave.” His voice is still now, cold and deathly, but without anger.
I titter awkwardly.
“Out! I mean it. Out. If you have more urgent things to attend to than rehearsal, I think you’d better attend to them, don’t you?”
“I just—”
“I mean it, Janie.”
I pick up my satchel and slither out of the room, feeling like a scolded puppy. Daniel hates lateness. He also hates noises that interrupt his train of thought. Or interruption itself. He can’t abide that, people chit-chatting in whispers when he’s talking. Even if they are discussing what he has just said. No, Daniel wants everyone’s undivided attention. Nobody dares avert their eyes. There are certain things he cannot tolerate. However, if you do play by all his rules he is charming. Sweet, even. But if you break a rule . . .
Well, this is the first time it has happened. I’m the first person in the cast to have tested him.
I linger patiently outside. I am the child in the corner. I can hear him talking to the others as I listen to my measured breathing. They are discussing scene two. He wants the character of Jack to wait two more beats before he says his line. Two more beats? Nobody is as precise as Daniel. Would the audience even notice two more beats? Now they’re discussing how long a beat actually is. Three seconds? Five? Daniel is telling Jim (who’s playing Jack) that he’ll feel it instinctively. But I wonder.
Jim, like me, wants to please his director. Even through the thickness of the walls, through the door, I can feel the urgency in Jim’s body. He told me the other day that he has never respected a director so much in his life as Daniel, yet he has never worked with a director as young as Daniel, either. Daniel is only thirty. A rising star—the one with the Midas touch. All his productions, so far, have gone to Broadway and toured the major cities of the world. His actors win Tony awards. The pressure is on. We all want to be perfect.
And I was late.
They all begin to file out. Notes are over. Everybody will now spend tonight tossing and turning, questioning Daniel’s notes over in their minds.
“Later, Janie,” Suzy says, skipping past me.
“Later, Suze.”
“Hey Janie, don’t take it personally,” Frank whispers, as he sidles around me with a grin on his face. Daniel praised him. Told him his kiss with Angela in scene one “spoke volumes”. Frank is beaming like the Cheshire Cat.
“See you tomorrow, sweetheart,” Angela says, and she strokes me on the cheek. And then she adds in a soft voice, “Don’t worry, he’ll forgive you.”
“See you,” I reply dejectedly.
Daniel is still inside the theater. I can hear him shuffling papers. No iPad or tablet, he hates gadgets and only uses his cell in emergencies.
He calls out to me. “Janie? Are you still there?”
I slip through the door quietly.
He isn’t looking at me but says, “Stop twiddling your hair, it shows how nervous you are.”
How does he know I was twiddling my hair?
I was, but how did he
know
? “I’m so sorry I was late.”
“You need to get those habits under control,” he murmurs, “not good for you, as an actor, to have little traits like that, which can manifest themselves when you’re working, when you’re supposed to be in character. As an actor, you need to be aware of all your body movements, even the ones you think nobody notices.”
He is still looking down at his notes. But then his gaze turns to me, and I feel my insides churn and fold; my heart misses a beat—I sense my shortness of breath. I steady myself against the still half-open door. I feel faint. His eyes are searing into me. Blue. What sort of blue? Prussian blue? They are intense, piercing, rimmed with dark lashes that make perfect sense with his almost black, ruffled hair. But his eyes tell a tale of infinitesimal sadness that gives him a trace of vulnerability. A lie, I think. Daniel is not vulnerable. He’s a pillar of strength. My heart is now pounding through my thin pink dress.
“Come here, Janie, I want to talk to you.” He motions for me to sit in the chair opposite him, at the small round table, where he has just been giving notes to the others.
I sit down, smoothing my silky dress over my bare knees. Why I chose this dress to wear today, I’m not sure. It’s a summer dress, not a Fall dress, but the clear blue sky outside had me fooled this morning. The lyrics to the song, “Autumn in New York” skitter through my mind. There is no place like New York in autumn. There is no place like New York, anywhere. I love this city.
“You must be freezing in that skimpy outfit,” he scolds.
“Not really,” I lie.
“It’s showing through your bra, just how cold you are,” he says, his eyes roving to my pebbled nipples. “Sorry to sound personal, but you really should put on proper clothing. The last thing I need is you getting sick on us all.”
My face flushes red, and I realize that I chose this thin little dress to look attractive for Daniel. He
has
noticed me. But in the wrong way.