MidReal Story
Mountain Hearts
Scenario: Tiernan de Haas doesn't care about anything anymore. The only child of a film producer and his starlet wife, she's grown up with wealth and privilege but not love or guidance. And when her parents suddenly pass away, she knows she should be devastated. But she's always been alone, hasn't she?Jake Van der Berg, her father's stepbrother and her only living relative, assumes guardianship of Tiernan. Sent to live in the mountains of Colorado with Jake and his two sons, Noah and Kaleb, Tiernan quickly learns that these men now have a say in what she chooses to care and not care about anymore.As the men take Tiernan under their wing, she slowly finds her place among them.Because lines blur and rules become easy to break when no one else is watching.One of them has her. The other one wants her. But he's going to keep her.Genres: Romance novel, Erotic literature, New adult fiction, Coming-of-age story
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This has been my existence for the last sixteen years.
Loneliness permeates my soul.
I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t lonely.
Maybe because I’ve grown so used to it, I’ve learned to live with it.
There are people all around me, yet I was always alone.
Growing up in Beverly Hills is lonely.
The city is always bustling, and the lights never seem to go out.
But when you live on the top of a mountain away from everyone and everything, it’s desolate.
It’s not that I’ve ever wanted for anything.
I had everything a girl could ever want and more money than I’d know what to do with.
I’ve had the best education money could buy and a closet full of the latest fashions.
None of it makes up for the emptiness inside of me, though.
My parents are famous.
They’re both Hollywood royalty and have more money than they know what to do with, and yet they don’t see me.
I’m nothing but an afterthought to both of them.
An inconvenience they can’t be bothered with, so I’m left alone most of the time.
My mother is a former Hollywood starlet turned socialite.
She spends her days getting her hair and nails done or shopping with her friends.
She throws elaborate parties in hopes that she’ll be able to snag another rich man to take care of her.
It’s not that she needs someone to take care of her financially, but she needs someone to take care of her emotionally, and the only person she’s ever cared about is herself.
My father is a prominent film producer who spends his days on set making sure everything goes perfectly while he’s filming the next big blockbuster movie.
He’s always been too busy to talk to me or play with me or even read me a bedtime story.
He’s too busy to notice me at all unless he needs something from me, which isn’t very often at all.
I don’t have any brothers or sisters, so you’d think my parents would want to spend time with me, but they don’t.
I’m their daughter in name only.
Someone for them to trot out when they need me only to be ignored the rest of the time.
Sometimes it’s almost like I’m a prop in their lives instead of their child.
When I was little, I used to try and get their attention, but I quickly learned that it never worked, so I stopped trying and turned inward instead of looking for it from them.
The nannies and housekeepers I had when I was little were always told not to disturb my parents with anything that had to do with me so they didn’t have to bother with me at all either.
There was one bright spot in my life growing up; my father’s assistant was always very kind and caring towards me whenever he was around me, but that wasn’t very often at all.
It’s not like there was anything he could do about it anyway because my parents were his bosses and he had to do what they said even if he didn’t agree with it at all.
He was the only person who ever seemed to care about me, other than my Uncle Jake, but he wasn’t around very often either.
When I was little, I used to desperately wish my parents would pay attention to me and love me like other kids’ parents loved them, but as I got older, I learned that wasn’t going to happen so I stopped wishing for it altogether.
I stopped yearning for something I knew would never happen because there was no point in doing so anymore.
I guess you could say I’m lucky because I have everything a girl could ever want, but money can’t buy love or happiness and those are two things I’ve never known, not even for a second.
My father doesn’t pay attention to me very often, but when he does notice me, it’s sporadic at best.
He always remembers my birthday so I know I won’t be spending the day alone even though we’re not really together either.
Even though we live in the same house, we might as well be miles apart because we’re not together.
Not really, anyway.
I don’t think he even realizes I’m his daughter most of the time, so I’m just an afterthought to him as well.
When he does remember me, he sends me extravagant gifts he thinks a girl my age would want.
I think they’re more of a way to keep me quiet and happy than a demonstration of his love for me.
My mother, on the other hand, visits me from time to time, which is a nice change from being ignored all the time, but I learned early on that her visits are all about her and not me at all.
The first time she visited me after I went to live with her and my father, I was five years old.
She sat with me in the nursery and told me how happy she was to be able to see me and how much she had missed me before telling me how lucky I was to be living with her.
She said she had big plans for me and expected me to do great things once I got older.
She talked about herself the whole time and didn’t bother to ask me a single question or even listen to what I had to say.
After that, she started visiting me more and more, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that all she wanted was to show me off to her friends.
I went everywhere with her, and she made sure to tell everyone who would listen that I was her daughter so they’d know how important she thought she was.
She never bothered to ask me what I wanted or what I thought because she didn’t care.
As long as she got what she wanted, that’s all that mattered to her.
On one occasion, she had a group of women over for lunch, and they were talking about me.
She said she had big plans for me and that I’d do whatever she wanted me to do once I got older, which is when I learned what a courtesan is.
I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but hearing them talking about me like that made me feel bad even though I knew it was true.
Being the lonely child that I was, I’d snuck down the hall to listen to the women talk because it made me feel like I wasn’t alone.
I’d wanted to be near them and hear their voices as they talked even if I didn’t understand the words.
But when I heard them talking about me like that, it felt like a punch in the gut.
I knew then that my mother didn’t care about me at all.
After their lunch, Mr.
Wickham came to get me before my mother left, and she wasn’t happy with him at all.
I heard them arguing in the nursery while I played with my dolls, and he told her that he couldn’t let me live with her during the week like she wanted or force me to do anything against my will once I got older.
He said he could only take care of me and make sure everything was okay, which only made her more upset.
I went back into the playroom before he came to get me, but I did hear them yelling from down the hall when he took her to the front door to leave.
The two of them had never been alone before, and I knew instantly that he wasn’t happy with her at all.
I followed along behind him, but I stayed out of sight, so my parents didn’t know I was there.
When they got to the front door, he told her in no uncertain terms that I was his responsibility, and he wasn’t about to let her or anyone else take control of me because I wasn’t a thing to be bought or sold.
It didn’t matter who I was or who my parents were because I was still his niece, and he would watch out for me no matter what.
He told her if she wanted to make things difficult for him or my father in any way, then to take it up with their lawyers and to leave me out of it.
They both went back and forth for a few minutes before he finally closed the door on her, and I could hear her yelling as she left.
She never bothered to come to see me again after that, which was fine by me because I never liked her anyway.
She didn’t care about me at all.
To her, I was nothing.
Little did I know, that wouldn’t be the last time I ever saw her again.
Days turned into weeks, and everything went back to the way it always was.
I spent most of my days alone in the playroom, but it was fine by me because I liked being alone most of the time anyway.
It gave me time to think and read without anyone bothering me, but it also made me feel like no one cared about me at all either.
A few weeks later, I got a call from Mr.
Wickham saying that Jake Van der Berg wanted to talk to me on the phone.
He’s my father’s stepbrother whom I’ve only met a handful of times, but he’s nice to me whenever we’re together.
I haven’t seen him since I went to live with my parents, though, and I wasn’t sure why he wanted to talk to me now.
Mr.Wickham said it was important and put him through to me right away.
“Hello, Tiernan,” he said when I picked up the phone.
“How are you doing today?”
I’m fine,” I told him even though I wasn’t sure why he called.
