Forty Shades of Pearl (Part One of The Pearl Trilogy) Read online

  Forty Shades

  of Pearl

  Arianne Richmonde

  All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any form without prior written permission of the publisher, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution, circulation or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible maybe liable in law accordingly.

  Arianne Richmonde 2012

  Copyright © Arianne Richmonde, 2012. 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 © by: Arianne Richmonde

  ‘I recommend this book for those who enjoy a wonderfully written first person narrative, romantic erotica, with lots of dialogue and plenty of well-done descriptive scenes.’

  ---Swept Away By Romance

  For more information on the author visit her website:

  www.ariannerichmonde.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  About the Author

  Arianne Richmonde is an American writer and artist who was raised in both the US and Europe. She lives in France with her husband.

  Forty Shades of Pearl is her first novel. She is currently working on the sequel, the second book in The Pearl Trilogy.

  Dedication

  For any woman who has ever believed she is less than fabulous.

  Chapter One

  Park Avenue is broken into a patchwork of glimmering colors, the streets a slick, shining wet as rain makes mirrors of the red and green of the traffic lights. I am mesmerized by the windscreen wipers of the taxi cab washing away the deluge of a sudden summer downpour that has taken the city by surprise.

  I love New York City in the summer rain, a relief from the muggy air. But today it threatens to make me late for my appointment. I always aim to arrive early because, by nature I’m disorganized, so I need time on my side. I ask the driver if he can go any faster, if he can pull a miraculous short-cut out of the bag, but no, he and I are both aware that that’s impossible. The traffic is lugging, straining; all we can do is be patient, all I can do is calm myself, take a breath and remember that work is not the be-all and end-all of my existence. So what if I’m late? Does it really matter in the big scheme of things, in the giant picture of life?

  Life – that’s something to mull over. I wish work wasn’t so important to me, but I cling on to it like a piece of driftwood in a stormy ocean. Work is all I seem to have right now. I’ve just turned forty, I’m divorced, single – I live alone and don’t have a child. Work is my lifeboat.

  I sit back into the scuffed seat of the cab and look through the notes on my iPad.

  The conference will be packed, my boss has assured me. Replete with an international crowd from all corners of the globe. It’s the biggest I.T convention of the year and I know I won’t fit in. Nerdsville here I come. I know very little about this world, and the only reason I have been summoned to go is to see if I can connect with two of the people who will be speaking today. They are a brother and sister from France who have made a small fortune, seemingly overnight, not unlike Facebook computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur, Mark Zuckerberg. This duo is young, too. She’s the business and he’s the brains, apparently. They started a social network company, HookedUp, a sort of Twitter cum social dating interaction which, although not so popular in France, went pandemic here in the U.S. Everyone has joined, even married couples, even me – which is really saying something as dating is a game I play badly; I’ve had no luck and I’ve all but given up.

  My company, Haslit Films, wants to do a documentary about this pair of siblings. Not so easy. They are very private and rarely do interviews. They don’t go to openings or parties. They don’t do Red Carpet. There was a big piece about them in the New York Times, but other than that they are a bit of a mystery. He, Alexandre Chevalier, is twenty-four and she, Sophie Dumas, is ten years older, his half sister from a previous marriage. They share the same father. This much I know. But I can find only one photo of him on the internet and he’s wearing a hoodie, his face practically masked – he looks like a typical college student. His sister stands beside him, her hair in a neat chignon – looking formidable, poised. HookedUp is going from strength to strength. Rumor has it they are looking to sell or go public but nobody can be sure. All this, I need to find out.

  I stare out the cab window and sigh with relief as the traffic speeds up. I think about all the millions out there trying to find a mate, trying to get ‘hooked up’ – and smile to myself. When was the last time? Two years ago? It was a rebound disaster waiting to happen, or rather, I was the rebound waiting…hoping to find love again. I hadn’t expected my divorce to knock me sideways the way it did. I didn’t even love him anymore. It was mutual. There was nobody else involved, we just drifted apart. We had got to the point where we couldn’t even watch each other eat. Yet when those papers came through, the ink hardly dry, I cried myself to sleep for weeks. If Saul and I had had a child, at least that would have given me some sort of purpose, a perspective – but there I was, a two-time miscarriage vessel, empty, null and void – my sell-by date looming.

  It’s funny how others see you, though. So many of my friends were envious of my life. They still are. ‘So glamorous,’ they purr. ‘So free’. No homework to deal with, no snotty nose to wipe, no husband’s dirty socks to pick off the floor. Instead, a fabulous, well paid job with a fabulous, successful film company making top-notch documentaries, meeting fascinating people…and yet. Yet what? What excuse did I have, do I have to feel unfulfilled?

  Perhaps everyone feels this way, no matter what cards they hold. Always looking for something richer – something or someone more satisfying to fill an empty hole. Turning forty didn’t scare me until after it happened. ‘But you look amazing,’ said friends after I’d blown out forty candles on my birthday cake. The ‘but’ spoke volumes. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

  That last date I went on, just after my divorce – what a fiasco. I thought it might give me confidence – make me feel stronger but I found myself tumbling into bed with a man I hardly knew, after he’d taken me out to an oh-so-expensive dinner. I think he felt I was dessert, and I can only blame myself as I offered myself up as such, accepting a ‘night cap’ at his apartment. Just thinking about it now makes my mouth pucker, as if I had a lemon in my mouth. Bad sex. Grappling, groping, sweaty hands on my breasts, the poking and panting. Ugh, just the thought of it. He sent me flowers the next day, saying what a wonderful evening he’d had. He was so keen. So well-mean
ing. So clueless.

  Not that I’m any expert. No. Sex has rarely been good for me. My ex-husband was very attractive but his idea of foreplay was rubbing my groin as if I were a horse needing a good rub-down. Rhythmic efficiency.

  It seems that men have read about the clitoris (the Big C) , the nerve-rich locus of women’s sexual pleasure, and think it’s a target to be zoomed in on immediately. All those women’s magazines don’t help, either. Nor ‘erotic’ novels that have women having multiple orgasms at the drop of a hat. One after another, even on demand. Like a wind-up doll. How simple that would be if it were real.

  It reminds me of my old Al-Anon meetings – a place for family members of alcoholics to find solace and talk to one another. That was before my eldest brother died, when my family was struggling to understand his alcoholism – his personal demons which were ripping us apart. I was searching for help, for answers. The meetings, for some odd reason, were ninety-eight percent women. Once we’d all gained each other’s trust, we started to explore other problems and to really open up with one another – problems not related to our families, but our own deep secrets, which turned out to be collective insecurities. Sex came up. Of course, doesn’t it always? We had all sworn honesty, not to judge each other, not to share our experiences with anyone outside the room. It turned out that many of the women there – in fact, most of the women there – had unsatisfactory sex lives, if any at all. Several bowed their heads in shame when they admitted they’d never reached orgasm through penetrative sex. Others, that they couldn’t bear to have their clitoris touched (manhandled), or they felt too self-conscious to have their partner go down on them. We all laughed about that scene in When Harry Met Sally. So true. Women faking orgasms so they can get to sleep, take the kids to school, or just get it over and done with. But you still soldier on, still hoping for that magical person who can wave a wand and make it all happen – hoping that same person will be your soul mate, or at least, that you’ll have a good deal in common. Or that your present partner, or husband, will wake up one day and find you gloriously sexy, and that his top priority in the world is to give you carnal pleasure and become a veritable god in bed.

  As for me? Right now my confidence is wobbling and wavering with desperate insecurity like a child learning to ride a bicycle way too big for her. Sex, or any kind of a relationship, is the last thing I feel equipped to navigate my way around. On paper, I look good. Had a great education, a degree from Brown in Comparative Literature. I worked my way up from research and I am now a producer with Haslit Films, a job I love. I own my own apartment, a one bedroom co-op on the Upper East Side. I travel to a different place in the U.S every year for a ten day vacation, usually in September when the crowds have died down. My life is wonderful.

  But I’m single.

  And, just to add salt to the wound, I haven’t reached that exclusive O during sex with a partner of any kind, for nearly eighteen years.

  * * *

  The conference center is all a-buzz. There are placards filled with names and seminars. Deep Dive: Best Practices for Wireless and Mobile Management, Operations and Security.

  Selecting the Right Platform Solution.

  Cloud-based Convergence of Desktop, Communications & Social Apps: Microsoft Office 365 vs. Google Gmail/Docs.

  Social Media as the Top Malware Delivery Vehicle- How to Protect Your Network.

  I scan the list to find out what I am looking for, but cannot see the French sibling duo anywhere. I make my way to the ladies’ room and check myself in the mirror. I see a blonde woman staring back at me with her flecked blue-gray eyes, wearing a tight gray pencil skirt and fitted white T-shirt, her bra making her breasts seem larger than they are in reality. Cheating. That’s what we females do whenever we can. The woman is familiar yet, every time I see her, it shocks me that she is me, a person who only yesterday was climbing trees and asking her mother for more ice-cream. It sounds like a cliché, but where did all that time go? Who is this woman looking back at me? This seemingly self-assured lady with marshmallow insides who hides her insecurity with designer clothes and a bright smile – who is she? I open my old, oversized, leather bag and take out some high, nude platform pumps, slip off my sneakers and put on the shoes, one foot at a time, leaning against the wall to balance myself, swapping comfort for extra height. My five foot seven frame is now several inches taller.

  I wish I had a sweater now; the air conditioning is up high, my hair is soaked from the rain – no wonder we get summer colds in New York City. I inspect my face in the mirror and wish I could magic away these crow’s feet that have nestled themselves so comfortably on my face. I put on another layer of mascara which brightens me and makes me feel younger. I never wear foundation; the beauty of getting older is the absence of pimples. Reading novels on my co-op’s shared roof terrace has given me a golden, sun-kissed glow – no need for blusher at this time of year. I dab on a touch of pinky-red lip gloss, let down my damp, wavy blond hair from its pony tail, and consider myself ready to enter the world of I.T.

  I move back to the lobby and stand in line, waiting to collect my name tag. “Ms. Pearl Robinson,” I say to the man behind the desk.

  He hands me my badge and I pin it on my T-shirt. I read a banner which says: ‘THE #1 meeting place for the global business technology community,’ and for some odd reason, I feel nervous.

  I clear my throat. “Um, excuse me but I’ve never been to one of these business technology conferences. I’m trying to find one of the speakers today. Two of the speakers, actually.”

  “Yes, ma’am, how can I help?”

  “Can you direct me to Alexandre Chevalier and Sophie Dumas?” I’m aware of my voice. I feel ridiculous trying to make the Alexandre come out with a French accent. My French is limited, to say the least. Restaurant French. Directions French. It occurs to me that if I take the Alexandre and the Dumas and put them together I have Alexandre Dumas, the French author who wrote the swash-buckling adventure, The Three Musketeers. But this Alexandre is a recently graduated college kid – a geek who wears a hoodie and probably keeps pet rats in his bedroom.

  “One moment,” the man replies, “let me see…the HookedUp guys? I believe that—-”

  All I can hear is a booming voice behind me, chatting excitedly. “Everybody was talking about data center last year. This year, did you notice that hardly a word was spoken? Did you not notice that? I mean, dude, the buzz instead is about software-defined networks, decoupling the network control plane from the data plane and using the OpenFlow protocol to give servers, which inherit network control, access to devices such as switches and routers.”

  I turn around and glare at the bearded guy behind me speaking double-dutch. Then I say to the man at the desk, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you, what were you saying?”

  “That the seminar is over ma’am. The HookedUp guys? It finished, like, twenty minutes ago.”

  “But my schedule said 11am.”

  “It was brought forward by an hour. You should have been informed if you’d booked ahead.”

  Booked ahead? What is this, Broadway? “Are they speaking again? At a different time?” I ask, knowing I’ve blown my chance of ever seeing this elusive duo.

  “No, ma’am. That’s it. It was quite a coup getting them here. The audience was the biggest we’ve ever had. Sorry you missed out.”

  “Me too,” I mutter.

  I think how disappointed my boss will be whose idea it was to do this documentary. I feel so unprofessional. I should have double-checked the hour. The duo wouldn’t submit themselves to an interview just, ‘Come and see us speak at the InterWorld show on the 12th – we’ll talk then.’ I secretly wonder if I subconsciously willed this to happen – messing it all up. Surely my own project can now take preference? I’ve been hatching and researching an idea for a year now, a venture that really interests me, something that deserves worldwide attention. The Aftermath of World Aid is its working title. What happens to the billions of dollars tha
t never reach the victims after a natural disaster? Everyone digging into their pockets to unwittingly fund corrupt governments – siphoned-off aid – money in the wrong hands. It’s a political hotbed. Nobody wants to tread on toes. .

  My other ambition is to run a special on arms dealing. People talk about world peace but how will that ever happen as long as dealing in arms is legal? As long as its trade is used as world currency by governments? If the profit were taken out of war, if war was no longer business, surely then wars would end? At least, on such a terrifying scale.

  My reverie is broken as I hear my cell phone vibrate in my bag. I fumble about for it, my hand wading through my sneakers, hairbrush, iPad and a thousand other things which make my handbag feel like a training tool for women’s welterweight boxing.

  I look at my cell, holding it out at arm’s length. Another annoying thing about getting older – my eyesight is not what it was – yet it’s not bad enough (yet) for me to have to wear glasses. Uh oh, my boss calling via Skype. Her picture comes up on my iPhone screen, her smooth caramel-colored face poised with questions, her large hazel-brown eyes expectant.

  “Hi Natalie,” I say with a hint of a sigh that I can’t manage to keep to myself.

  “So it’s been cancelled,” she says in more of a statement than a question.

  As usual she’s one step ahead of me.

  “No, not cancelled, it was moved forward. I’ve just missed them.”

  “Darn.”

  “I’m so sorry, Natalie. It’s all my fault, I should have checked. Look, I’ll track them down somehow. I’ll get onto it. I promise.”