I rose up out of my seat and pulled Emilia into a giant hug.
“I love you,” I said breathlessly.
“I love you too, Grace.”
Chapter Six
Hayden
“Yep, that goes too. Into storage. And be careful with it. That table cost me ten thousand dollars.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Move the couches against the wall. We’ll reposition the television as well,” I said. “And my room will have to be rearranged as well.”
“Yes, sir. Anything else?”
“Yeah. The kitchen chair at the end of the table can be put in a corner somewhere. I won’t be needing it for a little while. In fact, put the extra chair in the second room on the right down the hallway. My new nurse can use it for whatever she wants.”
“The room next to yours?”
“That’s the one,” I said.
“Will we need to do anything with the upstairs, sir?”
“Nope. Won’t be going up there for a while.”
There were movers waiting for my new nurse to show up and men rearranging the furniture in my home. My two-story penthouse apartment was hardly the best place to recuperate, which meant I had to hire people to do the fucking work for me. It was embarrassing, to say the least. Telling men to fucking push couches around. I should be able to do that shit. I should be able to stand up from this damn wheelchair and take control of my environment.
But I couldn’t.
So, I was having them rearrange and remove everything that could possible impede me from being able to live on my own. My new nurse— Grace, I think her name was— had agreed to move in and live with me on an around-the-clock basis. The original agreement was for her to commute. Here by six, out by eight. But my mother and sister weren’t having it. They insisted she move into one of my three guest bedrooms, and if she didn’t then she could move into my mother’s house and we’d stay there.
And that shit wasn’t going to happen.
Grace had been my ticket out of that damned place. Out from underneath the bickering of my sister and my mother. Fuck, I had gotten tired of hearing them bitch. And I was equally tired of my mother always having to help me out of my damn clothes and into the fucking shower. Having my sister do it was weird, but having my mother do it made me feel like I was a damn toddler.
In some ways, I felt like one.
So, I agreed to pay for her time from six in the morning until eight at night. If my sister and mother wanted her around-the-clock care, they could foot the rest of the damn bill. I figured that would shut them up about it, but instead they ended up doing just that. Which meant that with the money I was paying her and the money they were going to be shelling out for her, my nurse could live on her own after all this shit was done. For three fucking years.
Private nurses weren’t cheap, but the best were always worth it in the long run.
And Grace was going to be handsomely rewarded for her efforts.
There wasn’t an amount of money that could be put on getting me out of my mother’s house, though. I’d grown tired and exasperated with staring at that damn garden outback. It reminded me of my father. It reminded me of the walks we always used to take in the back garden. The talks we had about me taking over the company and the bitching I always did about college.
I missed that man.
A knock came at the door and one of the movers went to answer it. He swung the door open and there she stood, with her long curly hair and her yellow-speckled brown eyes. She was hauling a box in her hands and could hardly see over the damn thing, so I pointed at one of the movers and beckoned for him to take the box.
“Don’t just stand there. Help the poor woman,” I said.
“Thanks,” Grace said breathlessly.
She turned to leave, but one of the movers stopped her. She wasn’t going to be lifting a finger getting her stuff out of her car. Or moving van. Or whatever the hell she’d hauled her stuff in. They talked for a little bit before the man whistled, then disappeared out into the hallway.
“Do they need any help?” Grace asked.