Forgotten Hearts: Dunblair Ridge Series Book One

by Sloan Archer

  As Cash closed his eyes and let sleep take him, he tried not to fixate on how sick he was of being on his own. He also didn’t want to think about the meaningless one-night stand he’d had to fill the lonely void in his life. He ached for something steady, something real.

  He wasn’t even greedy. He only needed one.

  Just one woman to give his heart to and share this wonderful life.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Vanessa awakened with the mother of all headaches. She clutched her skull as she sat up, shivering and disoriented by her surroundings, her butt aching from the firm surface beneath. She pulled the blanket up across her chest, cold but at the same time clammy.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  “Oh, sorry, did I wake you?” Margo asked from the kitchen, not sounding very sorry at all. She used her index finger to clean the remaining grounds from the espresso attachment she’d been whacking against the metal garbage can. “I figured you’d want to be up, anyway, so that you could recommence your job search.”

  Recommence your job search. Yah, because everyone talks like that, Vanessa thought resentfully. She offered her friend only a serene smile. “Right. Thanks.”

  Margo, on the other hand, was not doing a very good job masking her own resentment. She was already dressed to the nines for her job at Olsen Public Relations, and she did not seem onboard with the idea that anyone in her home should get to sleep in while she had to work the daily grind. No, not on her watch.

  Outside her job planning publicity events for mostly celebrity clients, Margo was, at best, unpleasant to those around her. She sighed copiously with impatience, often cutting others off mid-sentence with a demand to get to the point. The path from her brain to her mouth lacked filtration of any kind, and she regularly offended unsuspecting individuals with opinions that had not been sought—If you’re trying to look like a corpse, you’re doing an excellent job with that lipstick. Unpleasantness was a personality quirk Vanessa suspected was a byproduct of Margo’s professional requirement to be upbeat at all times, a personal yin to her professional yang.

  Working with celebrities, Margo had to contend with countless prima donnas, who she could not backtalk even when they tested her patience with their ridiculous demands. Margo had executed the most difficult tasks with zeal, like the time she’d organized a pop star’s release party for an album that made howling dogs sound like Mozart by comparison. Then there was the week she’d spent doing spin control after an overpaid pro athlete had drunkenly called the shoe line he was endorsing “garbage” in an off-the-cuff interview. Many at Olsen PR had thought that Margo’s latest gig would be particularly taxing, as she and her client were related; celebrity chef Christian Seel and Margo were cousins. To Margo, the kinship didn’t matter, and she’d provided Christian the same stern professional treatment that she exhibited to all her other clientele.

  As grouchy as she was off the clock, it was only natural that Margo had few friends. This seemed to suit her just fine. The ones she did have, like Vanessa, were casual acquaintances who Margo tended to regard as necessities to getting ahead in the professional world. Case in point: It was only because of Vanessa’s connections that Margo had gotten her job at Olsen PR.

  Vanessa and Margo had been classmates in both high school and college. In high school, neither girl had considered the other a friend, but they’d both welcomed the sight of a familiar face when they’d later bumped in to each other on the quad as freshman at Dartmouth University. They’d lost touch for a couple years after graduation until they once again reunited at a farmer’s market in New York City. Margo, fairly new to the area, had mentioned to Vanessa that she’d been struggling to get her foot in the door of public relations. Vanessa, who’d been in the Big Apple for some time, had been amassing professional contacts the way tourists do sea glass at the beach—upon collecting them, she hadn’t a clue as to what she’d ever use them for, but she’d figured they might later come in handy. As a result, it had taken her only a New York Minute to produce a few individuals she could contact on Margo’s behalf—a higher-up at Olsen Public Relations being one of them. To Vanessa, the few minutes she’d spent on the phone had been no big deal; to Margo, it had been lifechanging.

  Despite her flaws, Margo was not an ungracious individual. Inherently tit-for-tat, she felt that she had an unspoken obligation to repay the woman who’d helped her score the job of a lifetime. So, when Vanessa called her out of the blue one day and said that she’d needed a place to crash while she looked for a new apartment and job, Margo was more than eager to oblige. She hated being in anyone’s debt.

  Still, debt or no debt, Margo had her limits.

  “How’s it going, by the way?” she called from the kitchen in tone that was phonily off-handed. Margo had been asking that same question every day, as if it might have slipped Vanessa’s mind to inform her that she’d found a killer apartment and a sweet new finance gig, corner office and all. As if Vanessa actually preferred the cramped conditions of Margo’s one-bedroom apartment to the comfort of her own space, especially while she was in the throes of a personal crisis.

  No, Vanessa was clearly not happy with her current situation. Each day she awakened to her friend’s noisy preparation for work, her awareness of being a mooch intensified. Handouts had never been Vanessa’s thing, and it killed her to have to accept one from Margo now, who she could sometimes hardly stand being in the same room with. She was having a hard enough time staying positive as it was, and Margo’s downer view of the world was not doing too much to brighten her already dim outlook.

  If anything, Margo made it dimmer.

  But, as the saying went, beggars can’t be choosers. The hard reality was that Vanessa didn’t have too many other places to go, a conclusion she’d come to shortly after parting ways with Greg. When she reminded herself of this fact, Margo’s accommodations suddenly didn’t seem so poor.

  Still, it didn’t help her feel any less broken.

  Never in a million years would Vanessa have imagined that she’d become the sort of woman who’d neglect her female friendships once she settled down with a nice (or so she’d thought) guy. Now that she was being forced to face single life once again, a state of being that she’d thought was long behind her, she understood fully the mistake she’d made with Greg: Once she’d ticked the box marked “long-term relationship” on her list of life goals, she’d stopped making an effort. She’d stopped getting dressed up and going out for fun dinners with female friends, stopped wearing stilettos that pinched a little but made her feel oh-so-sexy, stopped accepting happy hour invitations with the girls until they ultimately stopped inviting her. She’d become comfortable, complacent, which, for a woman as driven as Vanessa, was inexcusable.

  How, she wondered, had she let this happen?

  But, Vanessa couldn’t place all the blame on her relationship with Greg—or, if she were to be completely honest with herself, even a significant portion of it. When it came down to it, it was her ambition that had kept her from keeping in regular contact with her friends. What troubled her was just how easy it had been for her to let them go—how little she felt the sting of their void. Until she’d needed their help, that was. That she could forget them so easily—what did that say about the so-called bond they’d shared?

  Looking back at the time she’d spent with her female companions, Vanessa had a hard time recalling any conversations they’d engaged in that had contained real depth. Typically, they’d kept it superficial, discussing work, dating, and the stylish events they’d been invited to (extra points for a VIP pass) around town. They’d showed off their sparkling engagement rings, talked about their upcoming weddings. Sometimes, they chatted about the designer labels they wore—such a thing could hardly be avoided in one of the most prominent fashion capitals of the world—the accidentally-on-purpose revealing of price tags inevitable. They didn’t listen to one another, not really, Vanessa now recognized, but instead only waited for their own opportunities to speak.
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  Vanessa supposed that, if she really needed to get out of Margo’s hair, she could call a few of them up now and ask if she could stay at their place. They, of course, would say yes to one or two nights, but they’d do it begrudgingly and in a fashion that would reinforce the notion that they were winning in life while she was a sad trainwreck. No matter what Vanessa did to improve her situation in the future, they’d always remember that one time when she was a humongous loser with no job, no significant other, and nowhere to live . . . Which she could never allow. She may not have much going for herself currently, but she did still have her pride.

  “It’s going,” Vanessa answered Margo’s question weakly, doing her best to keep her voice neutral. Going nowhere was more like it. Vanessa was no closer to finding a job or an apartment now than the day she’d arrived on Margo’s doorstep. She held up her hands for Margo to see, her fingers crossed hopefully. “Any day now.”

  Margo furnished Vanessa a curt nod. “Good.”

  Vanessa’s raging hangover had moved south now that it had finished overtaking her head. It brewed unpleasantly in her stomach, her midsection aching as if it had been hallowed out with a melon baller. She swallowed down a wave of nausea, let out a long breath. And here she’d been thinking that she couldn’t feel any worse.

  Pinot noir and depression are never a good combination, and last night she’d seemed to possess an endless supply of both. Though Vanessa had never been much of a drinker, she and Greg had accrued a nice wine collection while living together. She’d taken more than her fair share of bottles on the day she’d moved out, mainly out of spite. When Greg confronted her about it, which she’d known he would, she informed him that it was his “adultery tax.” That had silenced him quick. The wine hoard now sat crammed in the corner of Margo’s living room alongside the mound of boxes and garbage bags that contained Vanessa’s scant belongings.

  Vanessa hoped that Margo wouldn’t pester her further for details about her hunt for an apartment and job, since she really didn’t have too many to give. Any, truth be told. Margo, she imagined, would not be too thrilled with this news.

  Jersaw & Morris had wasted no time sullying Vanessa’s good name around town. Many of the firms she’d called during her desperate job search had seemed interested in hiring her after she briefly listed her qualifications but turned steely fast after learning her identity. The person she’d spoken to at the last firm—a tacky, bottom-of-the-barrel corporation she would have turned her nose up at during her more successful days—had actually laughed and asked “Seriously?” after she provided her name.

  Vanessa had all but stopped looking for work around town. She couldn’t see the point in continuing. The best course of action she could think of was to ride out the scandal until it eventually blew over.

  This, however, would only be possible if she were not in her current state of having nowhere to live. Which left her in quite a pickle. The not-so-funny thing about landlords in New York (and pretty much everywhere else in the world) was that they tended to avoid renting apartments to unemployed individuals on account of them having no money to pay rent.

  Vanessa’s back cracked as she stood to go use the bathroom. She kneaded her lower spine, tender from the sofa’s support bar that had been pressing across her back all night long. “Ouf! My back’s killing from the pull-out,” she remarked offhandedly. She’d only made the comment to fill up the tense silence and had in no way intended any offence with it.

  Margo took plenty. “Sorry I can’t provide you with better free accommodations,” she snapped. “And that mattress wasn’t really designed for long-term sleeping.” She turned her back on Vanessa and began rooting around in the cupboards, slamming doors as she went.

  Mortified, Vanessa clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, no! Margo! I didn’t mean . . . I wasn’t trying to—”

  Slam! Slam! Slam!

  Biting the hand that feeds you. Good job.

  Margo remained mute in the kitchen, stomping around and clattering dishes, which communicated more than any “Get the hell out of my home!” ever could. Figuring that it was best to quit while Margo was still fuming, Vanessa tiptoed from the room, trying to make herself as silent and invisible as humanly possible.

  In the bathroom, she could hear Margo’s movements over the buzzing of her electric toothbrush, although it wasn’t a difficult feat in Margo’s tiny apartment that came in at just under four hundred square feet. The cost for such spaciousness? A little over three thousand dollars monthly, which many renters in the area considered a bargain. Vanessa figured that she and her mound of belongings had racked up about a grand’s worth of space rent during her stay, which she had absolutely no intention of pointing out to Margo in her current prickly state.

  After she rinsed, Vanessa gazed into the spotless mirror above the sink. She shook her head at herself, cheeks burning hot with shame, and once again questioned how it was that her life was in such dire straits when only a short time ago she’d been swell. Not perfect, but she’d been doing alright—certainly a lot better than this.

  She thought about a saying she’d heard not too long ago that compared houseguests to fish—something about how both began to stink after three days. Vanessa had certainly been at Margo’s a lot longer than that, so she could hardly blame her friend for wanting her out. And Vanessa would have wasted no time leaving, if she had any other place to go long-term. The very idea of shuffling from apartment to apartment every other night, wine bottles, boxes, and garbage bags in tow, nearly made her break out in hives.

  The most pressing issue Vanessa faced was immediately smoothing things over with Margo, her reluctant landlady who’d been so graciously letting her squat for free. She could think of only two words as a solution. Move out.

  Which provided her no help whatsoever.

  Vanessa found Margo waiting for her when she returned to the living room. She’d already put away the pull-out and had folded all the blankets into perfectly neat squares, a task she’d always left to Vanessa. She sat quietly, her hands clasped across her lap, while she waited for Vanessa to take a seat. It was odd behavior, even for Margo, as she was due at work soon.

  Vanessa jumped right in. “Before you head off, I just want to say how sorry I am for that stupid comment. I honestly wasn’t complaining—”

  “Look, Vanessa,” Margo interrupted. She took a gulp of her coffee and cleared her throat. She quietly stared straight ahead, as if organizing her thoughts, and then . . . More silence.

  “Margo?”

  “Right. Best get on with it.” Margo slapped her hands down on her thighs. She let out a long breath. “I know things have been rough for you lately, with you being canned at work and then finding out that Greg is some barista’s baby daddy.”

  Margo was speaking with uncharacteristic compassion, which frightened Vanessa. Because Margo being overly nice—well, nice for Margo—meant that she was about to do something mean. Very mean.

  “Okay . . .”

  Margo took a gulp of her coffee. “It’s just that, the whole sleeping on my couch thing—”

  “I wasn’t trying to—”

  Margo put a hand up to silence Vanessa. “I know you didn’t mean offence with the comment about your back, and I promise you that none was taken. This pull-out does suck.”

  Vanessa pretended to wipe sweat from her forehead. “Shew. Good.” She’d hoped to lighten the mood with the gesture, yet Margo remained unsmiling. This is bad. Very bad.

  “The thing is, though, it got me thinking.”

  Oh no.

  “You have been here for a really long time—like a month.”

  Vanessa frowned. “It hasn’t been that long.” Had it?

  “Well, you moved into my place at the beginning of last month, and I paid this month’s rent about a week ago. So, yah, it’s actually been over a month.”

  “I . . . had no idea, Margo. I’m sorry.”

  Where had the time gone? A whole month and she was still unemployed
. So much for waiting for the job situation to blow over—obviously, it hadn’t, with her name still being synonymous with leprosery in the finance world. More distressing was that she was worse off now than when she’d first moved in with Margo. She’d been living off her savings, which had dwindled fast. She was poorer than ever before.

  If she didn’t find something soon . . . What then?

  Margo said, “I appreciate all that you’ve done for me—hooking me up with a job and everything. But, see, the thing is that you said this would be temporary, and it’s starting to feel like that’s not the case.”

  “If it’s the money, I can pitch in for rent and help with bills,” Vanessa offered, though Margo was already shaking her head before she’d finished.

  “It’s not the money, Vanessa. It’s that I’m a grown woman with a good job but I’m sharing a cramped one-bedroom apartment like I’m living in a college dorm. It’s that you’re here all the time—when I go to work, when I come home, on the weekends. It’s your stuff taking up most of my living room. And, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but you’ve been hitting the bottle pretty hard lately. Wine is supposed to be more sophisticated or whatever, but wine drunk is still drunk.” Margo took a second to catch her breath. “There’s just not enough space here for two people. I’m sorry.”

  Vanessa was mortified by the diatribe, mainly because her actions had made Margo feel the need to deliver one. More embarrassing was that nothing she had said was out of line. If the roles were reversed, she probably would have cracked within a week of Margo’s loafing. And Vanessa supposed she had been drinking too much as of late, though she’d been doing so mostly out of boredom and despair, and because the bottles were in plain sight. She imagined if boxes of cookies had been sitting in place of the wine, she might have taken up binge-eating instead. Not that this excused her actions.

  Vanessa felt awful for putting her friend in such a position. She was thirty-four-years-old, and it wasn’t anyone else’s responsibly to take care of her. “I’m so sorry about all this, Margo. It’s pretty clear that this has been on your mind for a while. I guess I’ve been so wrapped up in my own wallowing that I didn’t stop to consider how hard this has been on you.”