Written by Nessa Monroe
Love Me Tender
PROLOGUE
It wasn't the darkness that scared her, or the strange silhouette gliding down that long hallway. The one that stopped at the spiraling staircase that led up to the attic she'd always been frightened of. It wasn't that the only thing she could see was this glowing, ethereal figure, that led her up that staircase, into the attic. Then it turned to her, and she knew it was a girl, with the biggest, saddest eyes she'd ever seen.
What scared her the most was this dream that she hadn't had since she was fourteen. And she knew she was dreaming, even while she was dreaming. It was one of those dreams that you couldn't seem to pull yourself out of. The scariest ones, because you're afraid you're going to be stuck there forever. It seems silly when you wake up and realize that, yes, it was only a dream...but in the midst of it, it seems so real, and so terrifying. And that's what frightened Sheridan the most.
But this time, she was twenty-three years old, and part of her really wanted to talk to that girl. So, she opened her mouth, she reached out her hand, and she tried....
*****
Fashion merchandising had been her major in college, but that was pretty much inevitable given where she had been living since she was twelve. Paris had to be the world capital of trendsetting, and Sheridan got swept up in it all the moment she started to care about how she looked. Mostly, she loved the designer labels, and she loved to feel good in what she was wearing. But above all, she loved to throw parties.
That's how she became a fashion event planner.
Her name wasn't up there with the best of them yet, but it would be soon enough; of that, she was certain. She had been feeling her way around the fashion industry for the last year and a half, and she was just getting confident enough to butt heads with the more well-known event planners. And she was beginning to acquire connections, slowly but surely. Her shows were not half-assed; neither were her parties. Anybody who knew Sheridan was well-aware of this.
Her work didn't feel like work; that's what she loved most about it. Sheridan wasn't built to work. She didn't want to work. Not when she didn't have to, being Alistair Crane's daughter. Daddy was never there when she needed him, but his money was. That was all she cared about, after all. Clothes and money.
Sheridan was not always snobby, and at one point in time, she had cared about more than clothes and money. There was a time she remembered crying when her limo driver had run over a cat. She had made him get out and put the poor bleeding animal into a bag, and later, she had buried it behind the cottage next to the mansion she used to live in. She had been sweet and shy, like all little girls are at one point in their lives. Then, her picture-perfect world had changed seemingly overnight.
She was twelve years old, and the nightmares had come one after another. She remembered screaming at night, telling her nanny that a little girl had come to visit her. And she was so scary. Sheridan became this whimpering, shivering thing. And when it had become too much to handle, off she was shipped to a boarding school in Paris, like some expendable thing. That's when she realized Daddy didn't care. The nightmares continued for another year-and-a-half, till she turned fourteen. And on her fourteenth birthday, they stopped abruptly, just like that.
Sheridan learned to deal with the rejection in her own way...by making herself the best she could be. Everybody else would want her, she decided, even if her own daddy didn't. She learned cosmetics from the best, and fashion from the best. She never looked less than perfect.
So, it came as quite a shock to Sheridan when she woke up from this particular nightmare. Yesterday had been her twenty-third birthday after all, so it was exactly nine years to the day that she had last had this nightmare. What brought it around again, Sheridan did not know. Her life was not upsetting. She was happy where she was. Her career was coming along beautifully. And besides all that, she was filthy rich and set for life.
What did she have to complain about?
Not a thing.
The only thing that made her angry was the fact that she was having this nightmare again. It had ended suddenly, right when she had been about to talk to the girl. She had wanted to say -- and Sheridan remembered this perfectly -- "I'm not twelve anymore. Stay the hell out of my life." Apparently, that wasn't what the little girl in her dreams wanted to hear.
That was the only change in her dream in all these years. Other than that, it was exactly how she remembered it. Same little girl, same mansion that she used to live in. Of course, the mansion had been vacant since she had been shipped to boarding school. Her father still routinely had someone go in and clean it, Sheridan knew, but nobody had lived there in nearly eleven years.
But Sheridan decided to put these thoughts out of her mind and focus on the task at hand: Putting together a fashion event. That was her next big step, and this would be a success, not one of the quieter ones she had put together in the past. This was her entrance into the big league. She would make a lasting impression.
So over the next week, Sheridan tried to focus on her fashion show. That was by day. And by night, she dreamt of a little girl in a big, lonely mansion trying unsuccessfully to get Sheridan's attention.
And when she'd had enough, Sheridan decided it was time to return to Harmony.
BACK