Chapter Two
Grace
“Emilia, you got that arrangement almost done?”
“The one with the lilies and the orchids? Yep. Almost done.”
“Good. Because I’m going to have to take them over soon,” I said.
“I thought they were being picked up? Aren’t they always picked up?”
“Not today,” I said. “Today, I’m supposed to deliver them to a house.”
“I guess that’s good news. Maybe?”
“You never know. The arrangement could be for a funeral.”
“You really have a morbid sense of humor, Grace.”
“It’s amazing what florists tolerate and what people will spew in their moments of emotional weakness,” I said.
For the past three weeks, a maid had been coming into our shop to pick up a flower arrangement every single day. And the order was always the same. Lilies and orchids with a splash of greenery. Always arranged the same, always large, and always picked up at eleven in the morning.
But this time, a phone call told me they needed to be hand-delivered by that same time to a specific address.
“Do you even know who’s supposed to receive them?” Emilia asked.
“I’m assuming the woman who’s been picking them up will be at the house,” I said.
“But you don’t know.”
“Nope.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?” she asked.
“Emilia, I’ve delivered flowers before. I’m sure I’ll be okay.”
“But you always know who’s receiving those flowers. You don’t today. It might be a trap.”
“What are we, in some kind of spy movie? Emilia, are you some super-secret spy using your florist shop as a cover-up?” I asked.
“It would be more exciting than the life I lead now.”
“Girl, your significant other is a billionaire.”
“True,” she laughed. “Speaking of, how’s your love life?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“You need to get out more, you never know when you’ll meet Prince Charming,” she said.
“Maybe a handsome man will be receiving these flowers. He’ll open the door with his shirt off and sweat dripping down his body after working out. He’ll wipe the sweat off his forehead and grin at me, then reach out for my waist instead of the flowers.”
“Bought a new romance novel, I see.”
“And it’s great.”
“What’s the plot line this time?”
“Smut with a timeline,” I said with a grin.
“I swear, behind those glasses of yours lies a nasty little freak waiting to be set free.”
“Now I could’ve told you that.”
“All right, got the flower arrangement done. What time is it?” she asked.
“Fifteen ‘til. I gotta get out of here if I’m going to make the delivery on time. Which means you’ll have to take over the front counter. You good with that?”
“Believe it or not, I know how to take an order and press buttons, reminder I do own the place,” she said.
“Just making sure. Sometimes I don’t know if your fingers work properly anymore, you know since you took some time off.” Her billionaire boy toy had taken her around Europe for two months right after she hired me. I had gotten used to working on my own in the shop. Between that trip and all the weddings she handled, I was usually on my own.
“It was one bad input.”
“That made it look as if we’d made seven thousand dollars worth of profit in one day!”
“I said I was sorry!”
“Yeah, with a flower arrangement you made me make.”
“It’s the thought that counts?”
“I’ll be back in a little bit, Emilia.”
Grabbing the flowers and the address, I started for my car. I made sure to set the arrangement in the stabilization canister in back, then I plugged the address into my phone. I was twelve minutes away, which meant I didn’t have a lot of time to account for red lights.
I would have to be quick on the road if I wanted to make it on time.
As I drove through the streets of the city, my mind began to wander. I had graduated from nursing school a month ago, but I was finding it hard to leave the flower shop. Emilia had given me a part-time job to give me some sanity through my schooling, and there were days during my rotations where the flower shop was my only reprieve. I could throw my creative energies that weren't being nurtured in school into growing our flowers and the arrangements and the decorating for wedding ceremonies. And even though I was now licensed to be a nurse, I wasn’t sure if it was what I wanted to do any longer.
I still had a passion for helping people, but I was burned out on the hospital scene.
My parents supported me in anything I wanted to do, but my mother was worried about my ability to take care of myself on the measly pay from the florist. And it wasn’t necessarily measly. I had a roof over my head and food to eat. But health insurance was hard to come by and my car wasn’t in the best of shape. My parents knew I’d make better money as a nurse, so they were slowly pushing me towards applying for those kinds of positions.
But I didn’t want to leave the shop. Or Emilia, for that matter.
My eyes came into focus with the thick fog of the city broke. Instead of passing homeless men urinating on the sidewalk and people running after their children down the street, I was rolling down a road with lush greenery on either side. Cars were floating by as if they weren’t quite touching the pavement and there was blocks of yard in between houses.
Massive, humongous houses.
Where in the world was I delivering these flowers?
I looked at my GPS and realized my last turn was coming up on the right. I watched the thick foliage on the side of the road break into a rolling hill. I saw the turn in for a concrete driveway, but I didn't see a house.
It wasn’t until I began to drive back across the hill that a house emerged.
Rising from the beauty of the land it sat on, a beautiful brick house sat on top of the careful incline. The winding driveway was lined with blooming apple trees and I rolled down my windows to take in the smell. There was a six-car garage I pulled up in front of and a beautiful backyard landscaped with all sorts of flowers. Tulips and rose bushes and anemones and freesias. Hydrangeas and carnations and massive cherry blossom trees. There was a weeping willow way out on the edge of the property with what looked like a gazebo underneath it.
And there was steam rising from beyond a wall of daffodils.
Was there a hot tub back there?
It would make sense.
Daffodils loved a consistent mist.
I forced myself out of the car and wrapped around to get the flower arrangement. It was perfectly intact, and I smiled as I pulled it out of the trunk. I walked up the concrete walkway and ascended the steps onto the porch of the most gorgeous house I’d ever seen in my life.
No, not house.
Mansion.
Estate, really.
“For the last time, Hayden. You have to stay in that wheelchair.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t plan on moving.”
“Just let me take you outside. You love that backyard.”
“I spent money on that backyard. Doesn’t mean I love it.”
“Of course you do. Why else would you have purchased it?”
“Other people tend to it. I don’t tend to things I don’t love.”
I furrowed my brow as I listened to the argument behind the door. I lifted my hand to knock on it, then stepped back and waited for someone to open. A gust of wind almost knocked me off balance as someone pulled the door open, and in the doorway emerged a very exasperated woman. There were bags underneath her eyes and they were red. Bloodshot. Like she had been crying or constantly waking up from nightmares.
“I was wondering when you were going to get here,” she said breathlessly. “Come in.”
“Where should I place these?” I asked as I stepped inside
“On the table in the kitchen. Down the left hallway. There’s a dining table you can place them on. And don’t mind the canker sore in the wheelchair.”
I nodded my head, but I had no idea what she was talking about.
The door closed behind me with a thud and it caused me to jump. The woman rushed up the stairs, rounding around and disappearing beyond the wall. I looked all around me, taking in the decadence of the home.
And how eerily silent it was.
The onyx floor was a strict contrast to the white staircase that followed the wall on either side of the foyer. There were two hallways that jutted off in either direction. The right hallway looked like it dumped into a sitting room of some sort. I could see the corner of a fireplace and what looked like a bookshelf, along with a very comfortable-looking couch. The walls were a very pale blue, which lended a brightness to the entire house.
But I was supposed to go left, so that was where I headed.
I walked down the short hallway and was quickly dumped into a luxurious kitchen. Stainless steel appliances that didn’t look as if they’d ever been touched. A double-oven embedded into the wall and a hibachi grill where the stove would’ve naturally been. There was a kitchen island and the countertops were this beautiful gray-and-cream marbled color. The backsplash was almost mirrored, echoing the beauty of its kitchen in the blurry outlines of the reflection.
“On the table.”
I jumped at the sound of the harsh voice.
I peered through the open doorway and saw a man in a wheelchair sitting in front of some windows. No, not windows. Large patio double doors. His leg was in a cast from his knee down and his arm was casted and slinged against his body. He was favoring his right side, bending over so his arm was resting against the arm of the chair. The left side of his face was bruised. Swollen with blues and yellows and blacks. He had a contusion on his head that still had stitches in it, and the nurse in me was clawing at the forefront of my mind.
And my gosh, he was ridiculously attractive.
Beyond the bruises and the swelling, there was a set of pale blue eyes. His jaw was strong and his shoulders were broad. He had long legs that were stretched out beyond the foot props of the wheelchair, and even in his shirt and sweatpants I could tell how strong he was. His chest was pushing against the fabric of the white shirt, exposing the slanted lines of his muscles. His casted arm was still throbbing with veins. His nose was prominent and his skin was tanned.
It was hard to not look at him.
“Are you going to put them down?”
I shook myself from my trance and walked through the arched doorway. There was a dining table behind the man. Ready to seat ten or twelve different people. I walked behind him and set the flowers on the table, taking in their scent one last time.
Then my curiosity turned back to the man staring out the window.
From this angle, I could see more of his beautiful backyard. At least, I thought it was his backyard. There was a stone walkway that matched the stonework on the front of the house. It led into an arch of drooping purple flowers before dumping out into a beautiful white swing made for two. The florist in me wanted to get out there. To survey it all and tend to the garden and water the flowers and even plant more.
But my eyes gravitated back to the man in the wheelchair.
His shoulders were chiseled with strength and there was a hint of a tattoo poking out from beyond the sleeve of his right arm. His forearms were thick and his back was straight, even as he sat against the sloping back of the wheelchair. Confidence oozed from him, and his booming voice lended to the power behind his pale blue eyes.
Behind his thick black hair.
Behind his strong, powerful features.
“You can go now.”
Damn it. I was staring again.
“You should get that cut on your forehead looked at,” I said.
I watched his reflection in the window as his empty stare hooked onto mine.
“It’s on the verge of becoming infected,” I said.
“I’ll take it into consideration,” the man said.
“Are you adjusting your cast every week?”
What in the world was I doing?
“No.”
“Well you should. In order to ensure your arm doesn’t lose its circumference of mobility.”
“I’ll take it under advisement.”
Yep. This was definitely his home. He looked like a businessman, stared off into space like a businessman, and talked like a businessman.
He was even cold and distant like a businessman.
“That code for ‘no’?” I asked.
His eyes flickered back to mine in the window and I could see the heat flowing through them. The want to cast me out physically without having the means to do so. I nodded curtly and walked past the man, my legs carrying me as swiftly as they could.
I knew when I wasn’t wanted.
“No,” the man said.
I stopped in the middle of the kitchen and turned back towards him.
And I found his gaze peering right into mine.
“Not necessarily,” he said.
I nodded my head before heading back out to my car. I pulled the door open and shut it behind me, letting out the breath I had been holding. My hands were shaking and my knees felt weak. I had to lean onto the railing of the steps just to get down them.
I was ready to get out of this place and get back to work.
But I would be lying if I said a part of me didn’t want to be in there helping that man.
Helping him to reclaim whatever life he was already convinced had been taken away from him.