Unforgotten by Kristen Heitzmann Read Free Book Online Page A

starting to sound like them. It was the most positive she’d seemed in a long time.
    Rese leaned back. From what she’d seen out the window, they were a long way from Lincoln Center, but if the agent liked their new sound … Star had loved to play Rock Star as a kid, but Rese hadn’t realized she really could sing until that time in the attic when she took Lance’s mic. “That’s great.” She smiled.
    Why could Star float so easily from one thing to the next? Because she wasn’t a rock. She didn’t have to be strong and solid for someone else to cling to. Rese got up and walked to the front window that looked out over the urban street. Lance had seemed so cosmopolitan with the diamond in his ear and European chef credentials.
    Star came over and stroked her arm. “‘How like a winter hath my absence been from thee.’ ”
    Right. Next thing, Star would be on Broadway. Why not? This was New York. Star could do anything.
    “It’s only been a few weeks,” she said. Though right now it seemed like a lifetime since Star had left the villa with Chaz and Rico for the Bronx in the maroon van that held their sound equipment. And it had been only hours since Rese boarded the plane with Lance, but already she wished for the villa, the garden between it and the carriage house, the fragrant herb beds and flowering pots, almond and olive trees where Baxter loved to sniff or toss himself down in the shade and loll on his side, tail wagging. She missed the bright open rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows and warm, gleaming woodwork, her own carvings adorning it.
    The inn was her business, her project, but also her home. Strangers slept and ate and left. They didn’t kiss her cheeks and pepper her with questions. Besides, it was Lance’s job to answer their questions— if she could ever get him back to work.
    Rese frowned. Lance had said he wanted to discuss the inn with his grandmother, to show the old woman what he’d found and tell her what they planned. But it was obvious he had other intentions as well. He wanted his family to accept her.
    He didn’t know what he was asking. He hadn’t lived with a woman whose behavior was unpredictable and destructive, whose disease genetically predisposed future generations. Lance thought he wanted a future with her. He didn’t realize she might have no future. As bad as Star’s past was, she could make what she liked of the rest of her life. Rese had been lied to and almost killed, but what happened next might be worse than that.
    Lance wanted his family to accept what they didn’t know. Of course, she didn’t know it, either, wouldn’t know until she started having psychotic episodes. Why did she automatically assume she would? That her unemotional self-control, her lack of social skills were symptomatic?
    Lance and Rico came in, pearled with sweat and laughing. Lance caught her looking. “All settled in?”
    “I guess so.” She had unpacked her things into the dresser that was mostly empty since Star didn’t bother using it. Several of the drawers held the clothes Lance had left behind when he went to Sonoma on his Harley with only his backpack. Would he bring the rest back with him? Or had Rico convinced him to stay?
    He said, “I’ll just shower. Then we’ll have an hour or so to walk around before the vultures descend.”
    Rese imagined the scene all too vividly. Ever since her mother made them the focal point of the neighborhood, taking her up to the roof to dance, igniting the neighbor’s rosebush, and other things Rese didn’t want to remember, she’d controlled the sort of attention she received. “Wouldn’t you rather hop a plane back to Sonoma?”
    He smiled. “I’ll be just a minute.”
    When Lance came out smelling fresh and a little musky from his aftershave, she badly wished them at the inn, where she could wield a chisel, or better yet a saw and sander. She needed to get physical with a piece of hardwood.
    Lance slipped his keys into his jeans