Cheating Heart, A Lost Souls Novel: A Lost Souls Novel

Cheating Heart, A Lost Souls Novel

by

Michelle Matkins

by Michelle Matkins

A Lost Souls Novel
(In Order)

Awakened Within

Beautiful Beginnings

Cheating Heart

Ghostly Gig,
A Lost Souls Short Story

Written under the name Michelle Ann Hollstein

Ms. Aggie Underhill Mysteries

Deadly Withdrawal

Something’s Fishy in Palm Springs

Maid
in Heaven

A Hardboiled Murder

One Hell of a Cruise

A Prickly Situation

Vegas or Bust

Dead Ringer

The
Niberia Chronicles

Niberia

Ashes to Diamonds

Hidden Identity

Nonfiction

Who Says You Can’t Paint?

Night Crashes

Joshua Tree

Cheating Heart
, A Lost Souls Novel

Copyright (c) 2013
by Michelle Matkins

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Th
ursday, February 13
th

Chapter 1

Giving up, Vienna tossed the remote onto the seat next to her.  She didn’t even know why she bothered putting new batteries in it.  For some reason, the darn thing was sucking the life out of them.  She changed the batteries at least three times over the last week and a half.

M
uttering to herself about the stupid remote, Vienna wandered over to the TV and turned it on.  She pushed numerous buttons on the silver satellite box, trying to get it to work.  She didn’t know why she found the process so complicated.  The
up
arrow was to scroll up the channels, and the
down
arrow scrolled down.  It should be simple, right?  How was it she kept managing to push the wrong buttons?  She’d thought she’d have the hang of it by now.  After settling on a channel, Vienna plopped back down on the couch when she realized the volume was too low. 

“Urrr!” she growled. 
Was it too much to ask for a working remote so she could just sit down and relax for a bit? This was the last thing she wanted to deal with after a hectic day at work. 

“Hey,
I made pizza!” Kim chimed, entering the living room.  “You hungry? I bought a frozen pizza crust and put the toppings on myself.  It’s a pizza-a-la-Kim creation!” 

“
Um, yeah, sure,” Vienna said as her stomach growled.  Kim wasn’t known for her incredible cooking skills.  Not that they were horrible, just not good either.  But she doubted Kim could mess up pizza, especially when using a frozen crust.  And Vienna was actually quite hungry.   

“Awesome
!” Kim said excitedly.  “I can’t wait for you to try it!  I piled on tons of artichoke hearts and pineapple.”

Vienna scrunched up her nose.  “Really?  Together?”

“Trust me,” Kim said, smiling brightly.  “You’ll love it!”  She glanced over at the practically muted TV. “Can you actually hear that?”

Vienna held up the remote
and sighed.

“Oh.”
Kim frowned, looking puzzled.  “Again?”

“Yup.  Remind me to go online and order us a new
remote.  This one is obviously faulty.”

“
You know, my mom might have a few around the house,” Kim said.  “I’ll ask.” 

Kim and her mother were notorious shopaholics. 
But Kim wasn’t nearly as bad as her mother.  Vienna had never met anyone who could shop as much as Kim’s mom.  She literally shopped all of the time, around the clock.  And her house was crammed full of unopened items that she just had to have because they were on a sale.  Kim was also known to do this.  After all she learned from the best. The only difference was that Kim decided to use her shopping talents to go into business for herself.  So when she and Vienna weren’t teaching art lessons part time, she took the items she purchased on sale, and worked from home reselling them on eBay and other auction websites for a profit.  She actually had a nice little business going.  In fact, she was raking in a lot more money than Vienna was making working in an office.  The only downside to Kim’s business was that her sales could never be counted on.  They fluctuated quite a bit.

“
Okay.  I hope she has one,” Vienna said.  She was still feeling pretty aggravated about the whole remote thing and needed to vent.  “Because right about now, I’m ready to throw this stupid remote out the window.”  To get her point across she tossed the remote onto the coffee table with a loud clatter.  The back came off and the batteries flew out.  She knew it wasn’t the remote that was really bothering her, but it just pushed her over the edge.  Her annoyance was due to a combination of things.  Lately, she’d been feeling really worn out and depressed.  Two days a week she worked eight hour days in a healthcare office doing boring yet tedious paperwork and three days a week she taught art lessons to children.  She knew she shouldn’t be feeling so stressed out, but she was regardless.  On the days she taught art lessons, she was only there for a couple of hours, plus she had her weekends off.  All that extra time was hers to work on her own artwork or to do whatever she wanted.  She was lucky to have such a flexible schedule that allowed her to have a life.  But maybe that’s what was bothering her.  She felt like she had no life.  No boyfriend, lots of stupid bills, and she hated paperwork.  Life after graduating from college wasn’t anything like she’d expected.  She wanted so much more.  What exactly she wanted, she wasn’t sure.  And the not knowing bothered her, too.  But whatever it was, this wasn’t it.

“You know,” Kim said loudly as she walked back into the kitchen, “they say when a ghost
or spirit tries to manifest they tend to suck all the energy out of batteries.”

Vienna
scowled at the remote and wondered if that was true.  Kim was addicted to watching paranormal shows on reality television and was up to date on strange things like that.  So maybe it was true.  Maybe a ghost was trying to contact her.  It wouldn’t be the first time something weird like that has happened.  She had a way of attracting creepiness into her life. 

“I guess it could happen,” Vienna muttered, looking around the room for signs of the paranormal.  She hadn’t felt like there was a ghost or spirit trying to communicate with her.  She didn’t feel any weirder than normal.  Her skin didn’t tingle and she didn’t feel like she was being watched or anythi
ng.  But maybe, just maybe, Kim was right.  Ever since Vienna discovered her psychic abilities strange things kept happening.  The strangest thing was her handsome spirit guide, Jack. 

Maybe that’s why I’m depressed,
she thought. 

Maybe it wasn’t because her life was so
utterly boring.  Maybe it was because it was so abnormal.  And the one man she really wanted to be with, she couldn’t.  She didn’t even want to think about it.  Vienna pushed the gorgeously dreamy Jack and his sparkling blue eyes that she could daze into forever, from her thoughts.  She told herself that she wasn’t going to think about him.  It only caused more confusion.  But the more she told herself not to, the more she did.  It was killing her! 

A few months back
, Jack had pulled another one of his famous Houdini acts and disappeared from her life.  Popping in and out of her life was something she felt he excelled at.  The last time she’d had any contact with him was just before Thanksgiving.  He was helping her crossover a lost soul.  It seemed he was only around when something paranormal and weird was going on. 

She questioned
him once before about his disappearing acts and why he leaves her for months at a time. His answer was that he was always with her.  She was never alone.  And then he gave her some lame excuse about not wanting to interfere with her everyday life, but he was always there to help guide her. 

Yeah, right!
Vienna huffed.  Where was he today at work when she looked everywhere for some stupid report she’d misplaced?  Why didn’t he help guide her to the drawer she’d accidentally filed it in?  She had a hard time believing that he was always with her. 

Sometimes the stories
Jack told her about life and the other side were so outrageous, and so against what she was brought up believing, that it was hard for her to accept.  And she was still having a hard time sorting everything out.  Being psychic wasn’t anything like she thought it would be.  And honestly, she felt more lost than ever. 

It was interesting, a
ccording to Jack, she had made a pact with him before she was born.   That was really hard for Vienna to wrap her head around. Supposedly, she and pretty much everyone else here on earth, had a detailed chart with certain lessons to be learned in this lifetime. And Jack had been appointed to help keep her on track with what she wanted to experience.  He says that every person was assigned one or more spirit guides to help them through their lessons.  Supposedly, Jack’s the little voice in Vienna’s head that teaches her right from wrong.  He’s that little nagging voice known as a conscience.  Needless to say, Vienna was having a hard time digesting all of this information.  She found it all very strange and confusing.  And the more she learned about spirit guides and spirituality, the more questions she came up with.  It frustrated her to no end.

“Here you go,” Kim said.  She
set two plates down on the coffee table.  Each one had three slices of pizza teaming with artichoke hearts and pineapple.   

“Thanks,”
Vienna replied, still not sure if pineapple and artichoke hearts were a good combination.

“Do
you want something to drink?” Kim asked while scurrying back into the kitchen.

“A diet soda!
” Vienna called.  She could hear Kim shuffling around and the refrigerator door slam shut. 

Kim came back with two cans of soda, a canister of parmesan cheese
, and a bottle of ranch dressing.  She unloaded her burden onto the coffee table and plopped down on the reclining chair to Vienna’s left.  “So,” she said, flipping open the tab on her soda.  “What’s going on?”

“W
hat do you mean?” Vienna raised her voice, sprinkling cheese on her pizza.  She then poured some ranch dressing on the side of her plate to dip her pizza in.  She hoped the dressing would drown out the flavor of the toppings if they didn’t agree with her.  She was a boring pepperoni and sausage type of girl, not nearly as adventurous as Kim.

“Don’t get mad at me,” Kim said, “b
ut you’ve been moping around. I’m worried about you.”

“I’m
not
moping around!” Vienna said, defensively.  “I’m just tired.  That’s all.”

“Okay.”  Kim pulled on the wooden lever
, reclining the chair, making herself comfortable.  “I just thought that maybe it’s because tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day.”

“Oh my God.”  Vienna’s shoulders slumped.  “I totally forgot about Valentine’s Day.” 

“I’m kinda bummed out because Cha
d’s so far away.” 

“
I’m sorry,” Vienna said.  Kim had been seeing a guy named Chad who lived in Palm Springs in the Southern California desert.  It was a good eight hour drive, or an hour and a half flight, from where they lived in Sacramento.  Vienna’s father had a vacation home in the desert.   That’s where Kim and Chad met. For the last six months, the two of them had been casually dating long distance.  They talked a lot on the phone and Chad had flown out for Thanksgiving and had stayed with them for the four day weekend.  But since then, Chad had been too busy with his work schedule to visit.  He’d been trying to urge Kim to move to Palm Springs and she’d been trying to urge Chad to move to Sacramento.

“I’m not sure the relationship is going to work,” Kim sighed.  “Chad wants to stay in the desert near his family and I want to stay here near my mother.  I’d hate to move out there and then find out I’m unhappy.
  I think he’s going to call it off.  It’s just not happening.”

“I’m sorry,” Vienna said, again.
 

“Enough complaining.”  Kim
forced a weak smile, and then took a bite of her pizza.  “You know, we should go out tomorrow night.  Since you and I are both single, right?”

“What?”  Vienna shook her head.  “
No.  I don’t think so.”

“Come on,” Kim urged.  “You haven’t gone on a date since the Marine Corps ball.”  Kim had set Vienna up with her dates’ friend, James.  Vienna and James hit it off, but
decided to just keep things on a friendship level due to the long distance.  James was stationed down south in Oceanside, California. 

“I don’t think so…”

“Please…” Kim begged.  “Is it because of…never mind.”  She was about to say something regarding Jack, Vienna’s spirit guide, but decided to stay clear of the subject.  She knew how touchy Vienna got when he was mentioned.  And she was pretty sure that Jack was the source of her friend’s moodiness.  If only she could steer Vienna’s mind away from him and over to someone else.  If only she could find the right man for her.  She just wished Vienna wasn’t so stubborn. 

Vienna shook her head again. 
“I’m just really tired, Kim.”  She was thankful Kim didn’t bring up Jack.  She knew that’s what she was thinking, but she didn’t want to discuss it.  Vienna pulled the pineapple off of her pizza and ate them separately.  “I just want to stay home and watch TV.”

“Oh, come on,” Kim whined.  “You’re twenty two years old.  You can’t be that tired.  And I really don’t want to go out by myself.  Please…”

“Oh, I see.” Vienna smiled.  “It’s not to get
me
out of the house.  It’s to get
you
out of the house.  I’m surprised you don’t already have some sort of blind double date set up for us.”

“Well, now that you mention it…” Kim smirked. 

“You don’t!” Vienna’s eyes practically popped out of her head.
  “Tell me that you haven’t arranged for me to go on another one of your disastrous blind dates!”

“They’re not
always
disastrous!”  Kim started laughing hysterically.

Vienna picked up a blue fuzzy throw pillow off the couch and thr
ew it at Kim.  Quickly Kim leaned to the side and the pillow just missed her head. 

“Hey, now!”
Kim screeched, still laughing.  “I didn’t plan anything.  I swear!  I was only kidding!”