Hearts of Glass (The Glass Trilogy Book 3) (17 page)

Still, no excuse for my behavior.

The door opened. My fiancée tiptoed in but then caught sight of me sitting on the edge of the bed, naked, looking like that Rodin statue, “The Thinker.” She rushed over and kneeled, burying her head in my lap. The last thing in the world I wanted was for my dick to stand to attention, but of course it did, having her head so close to my groin. As usual, it was out of fucking control.

“Just ignore that son of a bitch,” I said. “He’s incorrigible. And getting between us.”

“Getting between me,” she joked.

“I hadn’t meant that to be funny.” I smiled weakly. I didn’t want to screw things up. I had to get things right with Janie, just had to. I wanted to grow old with this woman. Wanted to sit on a park bench and feed pigeons with her, one day. Or squirrels. Or whatever pensioners did. I was in this for the long term. Till death do us part.

I stroked her hair, threading my fingers through her soft locks, cupping the delicate shape of her scalp in my hands. She was so little, so vulnerable. And I was such a brute.
Beauty and the Beast.
“Please forgive me,” I whispered, bowing my head to hers. “I don’t know what came over me last night. Did I hurt you?”

“A bit.”

“Sorry, baby.”

“
I’m
sorry,” she replied.

This was the moment, was it? When she’d weep and tell me she couldn’t go through with it? “What are you sorry for?” I asked softly. “You’re about to bear me bad news? Tell me you don’t want to marry me?”

“No, don’t be silly.” Her sweet words made my solar plexus take a leap. “I was keeping secrets from you,” she told me.

The next couple of hours we sat out on our terrace above the water, and did nothing but talk. I stayed calm throughout, even though some of the things Janie revealed made me feel as if my heart were burning coal-fire. The whole Natasha memory was dredged up because of what Kristin had done. They were so very alike, not just physically but in the way they used people. I had forgotten just how much Natasha had wounded me. Not so much because I was in love with her, but the betrayal factor. The trust. Believing someone cared for me when the only thing she wanted was my money, and what she could extract. She had sucked me dry. Devoured my blood like one of those tropical leeches. And now I was hearing nasty details about Kristin, it was doubly painful. As if Natasha had risen from the dead and was taking everything dear to me and trying to destroy it. Destroy Janie.

Janie told me about how she had been locked up in some basement, next to Kristin’s goddamn laboratory. The anger I felt inside was beyond any emotion I had ever experienced. Poor Janie, terrified, not knowing if she’d live or die, while that stupid wannabe actor probably did a good job of scaring her shitless. I listened on to Janie’s tale, willing myself not to explode. Each second got worse. She explained how Alexandre’s sister Sophie, and her daughter Elodie had intervened, and how they’d discovered that Kristin had wangled her way into getting power of attorney from my mother (thanks, Mom, for letting me know), obviously in preparation for my planned death. At one point, Kristin was even pretending to Janie we were married. Fucking lunatic. I’d fire that little weasel of a concierge who worked at my hotel, for starters. Throw him out on the fucking street and make sure the only work he got was scrubbing toilets. Janie’s story got even worse; by the time she’d told me about her own hospitalization, I couldn’t take anymore. She’d been through hell and back, and I’d been oblivious all this time. Worse, I’d handcuffed her last night, after she’d been
abducted,
only a couple of weeks before! I felt just horrible.

“Say something,” Janie said. “You’ve suddenly gone all silent.”

“I just can’t believe someone can be so malevolent, so malicious.”
And how I could have been so insensitive.

“She’s obviously crazy, actually deranged. There are people like that in the world. Who function perfectly on one level—you know, her success as a doctor and things—but are actually mentally unstable in other areas of their lives. She’s a wacko and should probably be locked up.”

A dark thought flashed across my unforgiving brain. I didn’t want the woman locked up, I wanted her dead. Out of the picture for good. She was a danger to Janie—I couldn’t risk having her lurking in the shadows, even if Elodie was tracking her whereabouts via the Internet and her cell phone. That was no guarantee. Elodie would get bored, sloppy, forget about Kristin because she’d have better things to do with her life. What if Kristin reemerged one day, seeking revenge? Her torture of animals compounded it all. Vivisection had been something I had avoided thinking about all these years—the subject too polemical—but Janie’s descriptions of what had been done to those poor creatures made my insides roil. At least that part of the story—the knowledge that they’d been taken to a sanctuary—had a happy ending. But the woman was a cold-hearted monster.

“So she was using me—my brain—as fodder for her medical findings?”

“That’s what it looked like except she denied it, of course, said she was measuring your dreams. And worst of all, her colleagues seemed to support anything she said or did. Her reputation flawless. She’d even won some award for best doctor of the year.”

“Fucking sicko.”

“Daniel, I know this is horrendous, but can we try and put this all aside for today and concentrate on our wedding? Maybe you understand why I wanted to keep it from you until you were better. Please don’t be angry with me, I was desperate, didn’t know what to do. So scared you’d lapse back into your coma if you became upset. Please understand.”

“I can’t understand. I can’t understand how that woman can be so rotten inside.”

“Please.”

I held Janie’s hands in mine. “You have my word. No more talk today—nor while we’re here—about that bitch and how she tried to ruin our lives. We’re stronger than that. But I want a promise from you?”

“What?”

“Promise me first.”

Her reply was tentative. “Okay.”

“That I will deal with this when we get back, in my own way, and I want no questions and no objections as to how I choose to do it.”

“Don’t ask me about my business,” Janie said, quoting Al Pacino in
The Godfather
.

I feigned a small smile. “Exactly.”

27

Janie.

D
ANIEL KEPT HIS promise and didn’t say another word about Kristin.

Our ceremony was perfect. He loved that I was dressed so simply and admitted that he’d been worried that I’d “do” myself up too much. He preferred me with little or no makeup, loved my long white linen dress that was devoid of any designer label. “After all,” he told me, “I’m marrying a woman, not a dress.” I think, after Natasha, glamour turned him off.

All I had to do was show up at our bungalow in the late afternoon. A pair of local Tahitians wearing garlands of Tiare Tahiti flowers arrived at our little dock, one paddling the traditional canoe, the other strumming a ukulele. While the canoe waited for me, two Tahitian girls and two boys knocked at my door. They laid a white garland of this national flower—a sort of Gardenia—around my neck, its heady aroma, mixed with anticipation, made me almost dizzy with excitement. They settled me into the canoe, helping me balance myself, and I was paddled off toward the shore, where Daniel, Dad, and our guests were waiting.

Dad helped me out of the canoe, his proud face holding back tears. “You look like your mother on our wedding day,” he told me. “But even more exquisite.”

It was twilight. There were lit fire torches flickering along the beach, the white sand now golden, and white flower petals had been sprinkled in a pathway, serving as our wedding aisle. Dad and I linked arms and slowly walked toward my groom. Daniel was also dressed in white linen, barefoot. His wayward dark hair and golden tan made his eyes glimmer the brightest blue—I had never seen a person look so happy. So relieved. One of the boys who had come to our bungalow blew into a conch shell, a rumbling low baritone that sent sound waves across the beach.

I surveyed our little crowd, their happy smiles a blur. Will, Pearl, Alexandre, Daisy, Star, Jake, Jesse, and the bevvy of children chitchatting and excited by the spectacle.

Dad led me to Daniel and we joined hands.

“You’re the most beautiful woman in the world. And that’s a fact,” Daniel said in his no-nonsense director’s voice.

“And you the most handsome man I’ve ever laid eyes on,” I gushed.

The priest, also donning a garland of flowers, began the ceremony. There was music, more ukulele and some soft drums. The priest tied palm fronds on Daniel’s right wrist and my left wrist, and we held hands tightly as he poured ocean water from a conch shell over our joined hands. This symbolized new life. Then one of the girls handed us each a leis and floral crown, which symbolized responsibility.

“My queen,” Daniel said with a wink, placing the wreath atop my head.

“My king,” I replied, making the same gesture.

We exchanged vows and our little crowd applauded. I felt as if I were slightly suspended in the air, a few feet off the ground, but then the words, “I now pronounce you husband and wife” brought me back down, and I sensed the silky sand between my toes, the dappled light of the late evening sun on my shoulders, slightly shaded from the coconut trees above us.

The evening whirled past as if it were a dream. Dancing, music, excited, squealing children running along the shore, splashing on the edge of the water, and then dinner under the French Polynesian stars, which were more luminescent than ever. I felt stronger inside, knowing that whatever troubles lay ahead of me, I had a husband by my side. My husband. Daniel. Daniel Glass. I was aware that it wouldn’t be easy, but it would be an interesting journey, never boring, always a little edgy. But there was one clear thing: this man loved me for everything I was, my weakness, my strength, my foolishness, my pridefulness. And he saw something in me that I did not: perfection.

I was perfect for
him
.

He made love to me that night, worshipping my body, tears of happiness in his eyes as he trailed kisses across my shoulders, my neck, my nose. In fact, I think he covered every inch of me, all the while telling me how happy I made him, how we were in this for life, how I must never feel alone again, that he would catch me if I fell.

Before going to bed I slipped quietly into the bathroom and did a home pregnancy test—I bought one at one of the airport pharmacies
en route.
I’d had a suspicious feeling something was up, because of my breasts feeling swollen lately. Besides, I realized I was late for my period.

Positive. I was pregnant!

Does it sound corny to say this was the happiest day of my life? Because it truly was, especially when what was to come next shattered us into thousands of little pieces.

Perhaps having Glass as my last name was some kind of omen.

28

Daniel.

I
HAD GONE through hell with Natasha, I deduced, to be able to truly appreciate heaven with Janie. There is no Yin without the Yang. Sad, but true. Without the shit you don’t get to really
feel
happiness the same way.

Our wedding was fucking perfect.

This waif of a girl had conquered my heart. Something deep in my subconscious had known that she was one in a million the day she walked into my rehearsal room that time.

My Janie Juilliard was all mine.

But I never imagined she’d break my soul in two. Never courted the possibility that anything or anyone could come between us. Thought our strength of love was unbreakable. But when you have Glass for a name, I guess a happy ever after was asking too much.

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