Read Online Belle Pearl by Arianne Richmonde - Free Book Online Page A

front of my sister and Indira Kapoor.”
    Laura cackled into the line, her breath hitching in hysterics.
    “So when I next come to London, I’ll bring those books, get my car and sayonara, okay?”
    “No, Alex, it’s not okay. I’m still in love with you. Surely you must have guessed that by now?”
    “What you have for me, Laura, isn’t love; it’s some sort of sick obsession. If you loved me you’d want me to be happy. Please, I beg of you—leave me, and leave Pearl in peace to get on with our lives.”
    “But I can’t do that—I want your baby.”
    I knew it! That was what she was after when she laced my Bloody Mary with Viagra, and God knows what else was in that cocktail. I hung up on her, my stomach coiling with fury. She was beyond insane. When she had her accident and the doctors said she hadn’t suffered brain damage, I now knew they’d got the prognosis wrong. This woman was not right in the head. Okay, she had always been highly-strung, demanding and spoiled, but this? This behavior was psychotic.
    My cell rang again. I ignored it. Laura, wanting to wind me up some more. But then I glanced at the screen and saw that it was Elodie. I opened the fridge again to get out a drink.
    “Elodie,” I said with relief, cracking open a beer, “what’s up?”
    “I’m outside your door. I forgot my key.”
    “The door’s not locked, I’m in the kitchen.” I gulped down the whole bottle of beer almost in one go and the fizz prickled my nose—Laura had made me thirsty.
    Elodie giggled into the line. “Oh. Duh! Okay.”
    She came into the kitchen and I took a double take. She wasn’t dressed in her usual Goth attire and she looked quite beautiful without all that black make-up on her eyes. She was wearing skinny jeans tucked into elegant, black boots and a pink, scoop-necked sweater which accentuated her delicate neck. But the headphones she was wearing still gave her a street-cool look. She was slim, as always, but didn’t look like a scrawny sparrow anymore. I gave her a big bear-hug. I’d missed her. She hadn’t been coming into the HookedUp offices much lately, because she said she was getting her art portfolio together.
    “I was thinking about making an omelet or something. Are you hungry?” I asked.
    She sat down. “What?”
    “Take your headphones off and maybe you can hear me. What are you listening to, anyway?”
    She took them off and disconnected her iPod. “She’s a new singer from New Zealand, still in high school. This song, Royals, hasn’t even been released yet, but a friend of mine got her hands on it—knows the producer or something.”
    “Hungry?”
    “Sure.”
    I narrowed my eyes at her suspiciously. “Really, you’re eating now?”
    “A girl’s got to eat.”
    “Great. That’s great.” I got some ingredients out of the fridge, cracked open some eggs and whipped them in a bowl. Elodie watched me with curiosity. I doubted she did any cooking herself. Lucky about the massive choice of take-out in New York or she probably would have starved from laziness.
    “You’re pretty flashy, breaking eggs with one hand.”
    “I worked as a sous chef in a restaurant in Paris once upon a time.”
    “I didn’t know that,” she said.
    “There’s a lot of stuff you don’t know about me.”
    “I know that you and Maman left home very young and had to look after yourselves, but she never tells me details. What did she do as a job?”
    “She worked as a waitress,” I lied. “Hey, Elodie, I forgot to ask you; how’s the portfolio coming along? Still taking photos? Still making those angry angel collages?”
    “Going okay, I guess, but I need to get away for a while,” she said, not wanting to look me in the eye.
    I lit the gas. “What’s wrong? You’re not paranoid about being followed again, are you?”
    “I need a break but I don’t want to go back to Paris. I want to do some traveling or something. Backpack around Asia. I can go with my roommate, Claire.”
    “You