Forgotten Hearts: Dunblair Ridge Series Book One

by Sloan Archer

  “No, you’re saying that you can’t. Or won’t.”

  Vanessa had no comeback. He was right. “I wish it could be different, Cash, I really do. The last thing I want is to upset you—”

  “I’m not upset.” Cash stuffed a couple forkfuls of eggs and potatoes into his mouth, washing the food down with a long glug of coffee. “It’s not like you’re the only woman I can get. There’s plenty of other fish in the sea.”

  Okay, so he was hurt and angry, childishly so. It wounded Vanessa to think about him with other women, which he was probably aware. “Cash . . .”

  “I’m fine,” he said with a flap of the hand. “Let’s just finish up breakfast, okay? I’ve got a busy day ahead.”

  They finished their meals in silence.

  Vanessa’s stomach was aching by the time she completed her journey back across the field, and it had nothing to do with Cash’s cooking. She stung from his harsh words and treatment, even though she couldn’t fault him for being disappointed. Had the shoe been on the other foot, and she’d been the one rejected the morning after a night of impassioned lovemaking, she would have felt pretty rotten. Probably more than a little defensive, too.

  Though Cash had claimed that he had no expectations about where things might go with them romantically—that there would be no strings attached—he’d clearly gotten his hopes up. And, silly her, she’d wasted no time crushing them. She might have picked a better time to have their “talk” than at breakfast the morning after, but she couldn’t see what good it would have done to delay. There never would be an ideal time to shatter the expectations of a man she cared for deeply.

  What added to Vanessa’s pain was knowing that she felt the same way as Cash. In her heart, she desired to be with him. Always. She could easily picture their lives playing out in Dunblair Ridge: their wholesome existence in the country; the two of them having children, then grandchildren; sitting hand-in-hand on a porch swing, old and wrinkly, watching the sun go down over the mountains as they discussed holiday plans with the family. It was a lighthearted existence of simple pleasures, wrapped up in a neat gingham bow.

  Still, she needed to think with her head. Romance was unpredictable and could vanish at the drop of a hat, with absolutely no guarantee of success. New York, on the other hand, would always be there for her, with its thrills and opportunity. Changing her life so that a potential romance with Cash could flourish would be one thing if their love came with a warranty. But it didn’t.

  Inside the house, Vanessa went into the bathroom so that she could wash off her makeup. With her face scrubbed clean, she felt a little better. She went into the bedroom to take a short nap, but she couldn’t seem to keep her eyes closed with all the troublesome thoughts running through her head. There was that, plus the laundry list of tasks she still had to complete around the house.

  Still, she was feeling lazy and wasn’t in the mood to get down and dirty with DIY. She ordered her eyes to stay closed and silenced the nagging voices in her mind. Relax your toes, she silently commanded her body, her focus traveling upward. Relax your ankles . . . Relax your shins, your knees, your thighs . . . Relax your hips, your pelvis, your belly . . .

  When she reached her shoulders, she fell asleep. Not soon after, visions of cattle charging the streets New York filled her head. When she awakened in the afternoon, she had a plan, inspired by her remarkable dreams.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Vanessa hadn’t spoken to Margo since she’d left New York.

  She didn’t expect her to pick up now, and so she let out a surprised gasp when her call was answered after just one ring. “Oh, hello!” She hadn’t planned what she was going to say, since she’d intended to only leave a voicemail asking to be called back. Vanessa assumed Margo would be slammed at work. She was always busy on the job. It was even worse during this time of year, when many new products were being launched onto the market.

  Margo, in an unusually calm voice, explained that she was having a rare day to herself. “My first real day off in nearly three months!” She would be answering, she said, ZERO emails or phone calls that pertained to work.

  Vanessa was struck by how different Margo’s demeanor was when she wasn’t bogged down with tasks, even if it was only for the day. Her voice lacked its characteristic razor-sharp edge of rushed annoyance. Most people Vanessa knew back in New York tended to speak that way. A greeting as innocuous as “Hello, how are you?” could contain a discourteous undertone—I don’t really care how you are, just be quick and tell me what you want so that I can get back to more important things. As if people believed that they’d seem less significant if they didn’t present themselves in high demand.

  As Vanessa thought about it further, she realized exactly how much she used to speak in the same manner—what was the point of small talk when she had deals to make and money to earn? With her current laid-back Montana lifestyle, it was difficult to imagine operating under such constant pressure. She found herself almost feeling sorry for Margo.

  And yet you’re so desperate to return to your old life? her internal voice demanded.

  After she and Margo got through the pleasantries of catching up—no, she still hadn’t found a job in New York, yes, Montana was treating her well—Vanessa revealed why she called. “So, I’m wondering if you’d be interested in trying some Montana beef?” she began as way of enticement. “I guarantee that it’ll be the best damn steak you’ve ever had.”

  Margo, a self-professed “voracious carnivore” couldn’t believe her ears. “What’s the catch? Do I need to fly to Montana to get it? Is this your sly way of telling me that you’ve forgotten something at my place and you want me to hand deliver it to you?”

  Vanessa could tell that Margo was only half-kidding. “No, no, nothing like that,” she quickly assured her friend. “My neighbor, Cash, is a cattle rancher. He’s given me some steaks, and, let me tell you, they blow the ones available in New York completely out of the water.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “I know you don’t want to talk about work today, but . . .” Vanessa paused. “This isn’t strictly about work.”

  “It better not be or I’m hanging up!” Margo said and then let out a laugh.

  Vanessa, once again bowled over by how lighthearted her uptight friend sounded, nearly dropped the phone. It was a little laugh, but a laugh just the same. Margo was joking around. Margo! If a single day away from a stressful job changed her attitude so dramatically, what would a month do?

  Actually, Vanessa had a fair idea what it would do. She’d been a lot like Margo before her stay in Dunblair Ridge—stressed about getting a plush corner office, stressed about outcompeting her coworkers, stressed about impressing the big bosses. It was an unnerving realization. “I’m thinking more along the lines of your cousin the chef.”

  “Christian?”

  “That’s the one. Christian Seel.”

  “What about him?”

  “Before I get into it, I just want to promise that, no matter what the outcome is, you’ll still get your, uh, cut of the meat.”

  “Punny,” Margo joked. “Tell me what you have in mind.”

  After Vanessa hung up with Margo, she crossed her fingers and chanted, “Please, please, please let this work.” She grabbed the frozen steaks Cash had given her from the freezer and then went into town to priority ship them to their Manhattan destination.

  Back at home, she tackled a couple light DIY jobs. She sanded the rough seams on the crown molding she and Cash had installed along the ceiling and changed out the wonky old pantry doorknob. By the time she finished a couple hours later, she was hungry again. She made herself a tuna fish sandwich, served with a pickle on the side and a tall glass of iced tea.

  She was about two bites into her lunch when her phone rang. Thinking it might be Cash, her heart started to race. She wanted to talk to him so that they could smooth things over . . . but she also didn’t want to talk to him so that they could avoid another awkward excha
nge.

  She frowned when she saw that it wasn’t Cash at all, but a caller from New York. Margo had promised that she’d make contact with her chef cousin soon, but even she, proficient as she was, couldn’t make things happen that quickly. Maybe, she thought with a tiny glimmer of hope, it was somebody calling about a job!

  “Vanessa?” the man asked in a bewildered tone, as if she was the one who’d called him.

  The voice sounded familiar, yet Vanessa couldn’t quite place it. “Who’s calling, please?”

  A clearing of the throat and then a long pause—so long that Vanessa was on the brink of asking the man if he was still on the line. “It’s Evan Morris.”

  Vanessa’s mouth dropped open. Good grief, what now—more false accusations? Would she now face legal charges for a crime she had not committed? Was that why he was calling?

  “Vanessa?”

  Well, she was not going to make it easy for them. If she was going down, she’d do it swinging. Vanessa’s voice was cold as ice as she said, “If you have more ridiculous allegations, then you can deliver them to my lawyer. Because I have nothing further to say to you. ”

  She, of course, did not have a lawyer, but this was not something Evan Morris needed to know. If he called her bluff and demanded the name of her legal representation, she’d simply hang up on him and begin a frantic search for one. Later, she would blame a bad phone connection.

  “Vanessa! Please don’t hang up!” Morris let out a long sigh before he continued. He sounded wiped out. “I’m not calling you about any lawsuit. On the contrary.”

  “Oh?” Vanessa snarled. “This ought to be good.” In the background, she heard a tap-tap-tapping. She realized that it was her foot.

  “Look, I can’t fault you for your anger. What happened to you was unfair.”

  “That’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one.”

  “Please.” Morris made a huffing sound. “Would you please allow me a moment to explain why I called? If you’re still not interested after I’ve finished, I promise you that I won’t bother you again.”

  Vanessa pursed her lips.

  He took her silence as consent. “The . . . unethical activities of one of my partners has recently come to light.”

  “One of your partners? There’s only you and Michael Jersaw. So, you’re talking about him.”

  “Perhaps I misspoke,” Morris said smoothly. “The situation is a complicated one, not easily defined in black and white terms. I’m afraid I can’t get into specifics . . .”

  Vanessa sighed right into the phone, so that Morris would grasp how quickly she was losing her patience. Now that she no longer worked for the man, she could be as rude as she wanted. “You want to stop beating around the bush and tell me why it is that you’re calling?”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. I suppose you do have a right to know. That day you were let go—”

  “Thrown out on the street by security like some kind of common criminal, you mean,” Vanessa corrected.

  “Right,” Morris said humbly. “Anyway, what you said that day in your office—about Antonio Melane being the one who was truly culpable for the missing funds—held a certain plausibility. You probably think we didn’t hear you out, but I know for a fact that at least one of us did—I did.”

  “Did you express this to Jersaw—that you thought Melane could be guilty?”

  “No, I didn’t, but only because I knew he’d never accept it. His ties to Melane go back to when they were children.”

  “And he was the one who recruited Melane at J&M,” Vanessa added. “So anything that Melane did would reflect poorly on him.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Morris agreed. “I hired an outside firm to do some private investigating, which I did without the knowledge of anyone else at J&M.”

  A wide, smug smile spread across Vanessa’s face. She liked the sound of where this was going.

  “The firm didn’t only examine financial transactions; they also looked at telephone records and computer activity. It didn’t take long for them to clear your name, Vanessa, and for that I am truly sorry. I would have called sooner to apologize, but I didn’t want to alert anyone else at J&M about the investigation.”

  “But you did find out who was responsible for the missing funds?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” Morris cleared his throat. “And, as much as it pains me to say it, you were one hundred percent right. With just one exception.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Not which. Who. You were right in thinking that it was Antonio Melane. However, it seems that he might have not acted alone. Though my lawyers are still trying to unearth the full extent of his involvement, it seems that Michael Jersaw was privy to at least some of Antonio’s activities. He may have even helped him cover up a few things.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Let me just make sure that I’m understanding you. Your partner hired Melane so that he could assist him in embezzling money from J&M, a crime they would later pin on me?”

  “Yes and no,” Morris said. “I don’t believe that Michael brought Antonio into our firm with the intent of aiding him in his thefts—”

  “Thefts? You mean there were more than one?”

  “That is correct. My investigators have found more than a substantial amount of proof to back this up.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Vanessa said, seething.

  “Anyway, I think he—Michael— knew what Antonio was up to, but he turned a blind eye because of their history.”

  “He also allowed Melane to pin the Brimare embezzlement on me as well. Surely Michael knew that I was innocent?”

  “Oh, I have no doubt that he did. But, by the time the Brimare discovery was made, Michael was in so deep with everything else he’d helped Antonio cover up that he had no other choice but to go along with the accusation.”

  “It was that or face doing time in federal prison.”

  “That’s exactly right. This is also why I believe Michael was so reluctant to press charges against you. We’ve always taken the misappropriating of funds very seriously at J&M, so it seemed very odd to me that a man who was outraged by your supposed embezzlement refused to contact the authorities. There was that, plus the fact that a lot of his claims didn’t add up. It would have been impossible for you to have done many of the things you’d been accused of. You simply didn’t have a high enough clearance to access the accounts.”

  “This is just too good.” Vanessa flopped down on the sofa, shaking her head. “How many thefts were there?”

  “At least a dozen that we know of so far. Maybe more.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “I couldn’t, either, when I found out. You build a company with a man you think you can trust . . . You think you can believe in the employees he brings on . . . I always felt that there was something off with Antonio, but I ignored my gut because of my blind faith in Michael.” Morris’s disgust was evident in his voice. So was his sadness. “Did you know that Michael is—was—godfather to my sons?”

  “No, I didn’t know that.” After a moment of silence on both their ends, Vanessa asked, “Where are they now?”

  “Here’s the kicker: Both Antonio and Michael skipped town.”

  “No!”

  “Antonio was caught at the airport trying to board a flight to United Arab Emirates.”

  “He has an apartment in Dubai,” Vanessa remembered.

  “That, and the UAE doesn’t have an extradition agreement with America.”

  “So, if he’d managed to leave—”

  “He would have stayed gone forever.”

  “Sneaky.”

  “That’s not even the half of it. He was apprehended alone. Apparently, he was planning on skipping out on his wife and their new baby.”

  “What a guy. And what about Jersaw?”

  “Still at large,” said Morris. “But I’m sure they’ll find him soon enough. If Antonio has
any idea where he’s heading, he’ll give him up in a heartbeat to save his own skin.”

  “With friends like that, who needs enemies?”

  “Indeed. Anyway, this is part of the reason why I’m calling.”

  “Oh?”

  “With Michael and Antonio now gone, I’m making some changes at the firm. I’m hoping the first change will involve you.”

  Vanessa remained perfectly still. She didn’t dare say a thing, or even breath, for fear that she might interrupt what she was hoping would come next.

  “You should have been promoted long ago, Vanessa,” Morris said. “In fact, your promotion was in the works before the Brimare mess happened.”

  “So, then why wasn’t I ever promoted?”

  “This is yet another example of why I should have listened to my gut. On several occasions, I attempted to enter into a discussion with Michael about moving you to a more senior position at the firm. He’d always said that it wasn’t the right time. Now I know it was because he was aware that Antonio needed to keep you in place as the scapegoat, in case he ever was caught.”

  “How can those two live with themselves?” Vanessa murmured angrily.

  “Again, I can’t express to you how sorry I am about everything that’s happened in the past. The only thing I can do now is try to make things right for you in the present and in the future.”

  Vanessa’s voice was practically shaking as she asked, “How are you going to do that?”

  “For starters, I want to offer you your job back, but in a different role—a senior role. Since you’ve been gone, it has come to my attention exactly how much of an asset you are. Frankly, we’ve taken a significant financial hit without your services. And, with Michael and Antonio both gone, I need someone I can trust to act as my unofficial second-in-command. Your new role will, of course, come with a salary increase.”

  Vanessa nearly passed out when Morris delved further into specific dollar amounts. It was nearly double her old salary, which was already sizeable. She had no intention of revealing such a thing to Morris, but she would have happily taken her old job back at her old pay and position just to be steadily employed again.