Page 52 of The Billionaire's Fortunate Accident
Stone rocked with me. “This will all be over soon. You’re going to be okay. Just try to breathe.”
I didn’t even feel myself moving, but when I finally pulled myself together enough to pull my head off Stone’s chest, we were in my mother’s old office. Dad hadn’t changed a thing about it.
As I stepped away from him, Stone held out a small package of tissues. “Someone shoved these into my hand as I took you away from there.”
I took them and pulled the package open. “God, I am a mess.”
“You look amazingly beautiful.” His smile, meant to lighten my heart, did the job — a little, at least.
I looked around the room at the things my mother used to use. “You’ve brought me into my mother’s office.”
“I did?” He looked around. “I just came in through the first door I could find to get you away from all that out there. This is the first room I found. Weird, huh?”
“I think it’s a sign, to be honest. And I don’t even believe in things like that.” I blew my nose. “Or, at least, I used to not believe in things like signs and fate. Now, I’m not so sure what to believe.”
Stone picked up a medical book off my mother’s desk. “She was into medicine too?”
“She was a nurse.” I strolled around the room my father had very rarely allowed me in. “Now, Dad didn’t know this, but I had a spare key to this room that he used to keep locked up. Whenever I’d ask if I could come in here, he’d say he didn’t like me messing with her things. So, after doing a lot of snooping around in his bedroom, I found a spare key in one of his drawers. I took that key and kept it locked away in my jewelry box. After that, I came in here often, sometimes two or three times a week. I would read the medical journals.” I pointed them out on the bookshelf. “I’ve read every book that’s in this room.”
“So that’s where your passion for medicine came from. See, you might not have gotten to know your mother in the flesh, but you definitely got to know her true spirit, and you even inherited it.”
“Lily seems to have told you quite a lot in the short time you two had together.” I felt a twinge of jealousy. “Seems I’ll have to make this time I have with you count. We have to do some talking, Stone Nash, so we can get to know more about each other. So others won’t have to keep filling us in.”
“I agree.” He pulled a book off the shelf. “To think that your mother’s fingers moved along these pages, her hands held this book, that’s amazing to me. And years later, you came to learn so much from her by reading these same books. Amazing how life works, isn’t it?”
Looking at him as he thumbed through a book I’d read more times than I could count, I knew he was something special. “You came to me even when I told you not to. It takes a pretty committed man to do such a brave thing.”
“I amcompletelycommitted to you,” he nodded in agreement. “But I didn’t screw off my dream to come to you, my love, so don’t go on about that again. I’ve signed the lease at the hospital and put my engineer sister-in-law in charge of getting the bistro set up and ready for business. Another sister-in-law, Ember, is going to manage the place for me. She’s already looking for suitable staff, and she’ll make sure they have spotless backgrounds, too. I’m calling in help from everywhere on this.”
“I could not be happier about that. I mean it.” I knew he would pull it off.
“You don’t even know the best part.”
“What’s the best part?” I asked as I sat in my mother’s old desk chair, the wheels squeaking under my weight.
“The best part is that I’ve obtained a grant from my brothers and cousins, which I’ll use to give one free meal a day to all the interns and residents at the hospital.”
“They went for that?” I was genuinely surprised. “That’s insane. But how long will that last?”
“For as long as it has to until the government grants can take its place. And I’ll start this in your hospital and keep on going until all of Austin’s hospitals are covered. Then I’ll keep moving on from there. There will be a Healthy Hut Bistros in every hospital across America that will let me open one.”
“Healthy Hut?” I had to laugh. “Really, Stone?”
“Yep.” Shrugging his shoulders, he added, “The name just sort of grew on me. And after hearing everyone at your job saying, ‘Welcome to Hamburger Hut, where the customers are number one and so are the burgers,’ I knew I had to have a catchy greeting phrase too. Wanna hear it?”
I could not believe the man. “Let me hear it.”
“Welcome to Healthy Hut, where your gut is number one and so is our food.” He couldn’t wipe the grin off his face.
“You’re not going to make everyone say that every time someone walks in, are you?”
“Nah,” he waved his hand as if waving away the silly notion. “But it will be written on a pin that everyone will have to wear on their shirts, right under their name tag. I’ve got another sister-in-law, Orla, coming up with uniforms. She and my brother Warner live in Ireland, but she can still do that from there. I’m learning just how small this world really is and how you can find help all over the place.”
I glanced at the small mirror that hung on the wall across from the desk and found my eyes so puffy that it defied imagination. “Oh, God!” I slapped my hands over my eyes. “I need to get some ice on these. They’re awful.”
“You look fine,” he said as he came to me, pulling me up into his arms then pressing his lips to mine. “You look like a woman who has just said her goodbyes to her father and mother. You look exactly the way you’re supposed to.”
“You’re too sweet.” I sucked in my breath as he moved his hand to rest against the valley of my lower back. “And too sexy.”
