The True Love Quilting Club Read Online Free Page A

he caught your Munchkin role in Oz at the Half-Moon. Claimed you blew him out of the water. He raved about you. Wanted to know why someone else hadn’t plucked you from obscurity years ago.”
    “Seriously?” Hope was back, dancing the hora inside her.
    “Miller’s got a thing for natural redheads, capitalize on it.”
    “Scott Miller? The Scott Miller?” Emma squeaked as all the air fled her lungs. She was so excited that she ignored the tiny little voice whispering at the back of her mind that Miller had a reputation as an aggressivehound dog. She wasn’t much for gossip. Who knew if it was true or not?
    “You know any other big-time Broadway producers named Scott Miller?”
    Nausea beat out the glee surging through her. Oh God, what if she screwed this up? She couldn’t screw this up. She’d been working twelve long years for this moment.
    “Don’t screw this up,” Myron said. “If you haven’t made it in this business by thirty, you might as well hang it up.”
    “What about Morgan Freeman? He didn’t have a Broadway debut until he was in his thirties.”
    “Well, you aren’t Morgan Freeman, are you?”
    “No, but there’s no reason I couldn’t be.”
    “It’s different for women and you know it.”
    Emma had just turned thirty. He was right, and she just didn’t want to admit it. This was her last chance to become a star. “Thanks for the pep talk, Myron.”
    “Don’t mention it. Go knock ’im into next week, kid.”
     
    It took Emma an hour to decide what to wear to the audition. Finally she settled on the artsy look, donning a short black skirt with turquoise tights and a matching turquoise blouse that hung off one shoulder. She layered the look with a black leather belt, black ankle boots, and bright pink bracelets.
    She was still having trouble believing this was really happening. Oh, she’d fantasized about it plenty. Most nights she lulled herself to sleep with visions of seeing her name in lights on a Broadway marquee. Whenever she got the blues and feared she was just another cliché, she’d head down Forty-fourth to Sardi’s andsit at the bar. She’d order an old-fashioned, because, hey, it was old-fashioned, and she would stare at the framed caricatures on the wall—Katharine Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable. Yes, these days Sardi’s was little more than a tourist hangout, but you could still feel the energy, and if you listened closely enough you could hear the ghosts from the past.
    If she closed her eyes she could see the special watering hole the way it had been in its heyday. There sat Walter Winchell and his Cheese Club cronies at their table—joking, laughing, and telling newspaper stories. In that corner were Bette Davis and her friends, drinking highballs and trying to pretend they weren’t anxious about the impending reviews. Across the room, Eddie Fisher canoodled with Elizabeth Taylor.
    A trip to Sardi’s never failed to snap Emma from her doldrums. After her audition she’d go there again, either to celebrate or to drown her sorrows, depending on how it went.
    She arrived at the theater fifteen minutes early and was surprised to find no one else was there for the casting call. Surely she wasn’t the first to arrive. Had the audition been canceled? Had she gotten the time wrong? A bored-looking assistant, years younger than Emma, sat at the front desk. She was enrapt in an e-book reader and barely glanced up.
    “I’m here to see Scott Miller,” Emma said, forcing a note of authority into her voice. “I’m auditioning for him at three.”
    Without looking up, the assistant waved toward the door at the back of the theater. “Go on, he’s in his office.”
    “We’re not auditioning in the theater?”
    “You’re the only one who’s auditioning.”
    Her heart lurched, and a ripple of apprehension ran through her, but she tamped it down. This was good, right? She’d never been the only one at an audition before. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but