Billionaire's Touch(54)

“Bastard,” Liam muttered angrily.

Micah chuckled as he walked out of the steakhouse and back into the cold.




Randi parked her car on the side of the road in the cemetery, doubtful anybody would care. She was the only living soul in the place.

Pulling a shovel out of the car, she watched as Lily slipped out and scampered through the snow and over to exactly the place where Randi was headed: her foster parents’ tombstones.

It had become a ritual for her to come clear a path to the stones since Joan had passed away. For some reason she always felt better once the stones weren’t buried in snow like they’d been forgotten.

She locked the SUV even though it probably wasn’t necessary and started her trek toward the area where Dennis and Joan had been laid to rest side by side.

The reverent silence was broken by Lily’s excited bark.

The moment she stepped off the sidewalk to trudge through the snow to the markers, Randi knew something was off. Amazed, she walked over the dead grass on a path that had been cleared directly toward Dennis’s and Joan’s stones.

Somebody was here.

Randi realized it wasn’t the family of another loved one who had done it. The cleared area led directly to where Lily was standing, excitedly sniffing the ground. Not a speck of snow marred the writing on the marble remembrance markers, her foster parents’ names and dates of birth and death completely revealed.

“What the hell?” Randi mumbled to herself, resting a gloved hand on top of Lily’s head. “You recognize a scent, girl?” she asked her curiously. The dog’s nose was off the ground and she was now sitting and looking up at Randi with her head cocked to one side.

Why would anyone clear a path to her foster parents’ gravestones, and then proceed to carefully remove any snow from their markers? Nobody came here except her, and occasionally Beatrice and Elsie. The elderly women went to graves to leave flowers for deceased loved ones and friends on some of the major holidays.

But it wasn’t a holiday.

And Randi knew it wasn’t Beatrice and Elsie who had shoveled the heavy snow.

A flash of color caught her eye, and she bent over to retrieve an object that was situated between the two stones.

She rose with a perfect single calla lily between her fingers. Randi’s mouth opened and closed with surprise as she read the small handwritten tag attached to the flower. There were only two words: Thank You!

Clutching the flower, Randi sat down hard on the snowbank beside the path that had been created by some massive shoveling. Her ass was cold, but she didn’t notice. She was too busy trying to understand what was happening.

Lily cuddled up to her side, quiet as she laid her furry head against Randi’s shoulder.

“Who would do this? And why?” Randi whispered, turning the perfect bloom around with her fingers. It was a smaller calla lily, and it had splotches of a color that reminded her of a ripe plum on the inside of the white flower. In the middle was the signature tiny gold bud that matched Lily’s golden fur coat.

It was still beautiful, which told her it hadn’t been out in the cold for very long.

“Impossible,” Randi marveled, still confused. There was no way somebody had just happened to find this flower in town. The local florist didn’t carry calla lilies. They were rarely seen in her area, and definitely not in the winter.

Fingering the small tag around the flower, she wondered who was thanking Dennis and Joan . . . and why? If anybody should be thanking them, it was her. They’d rescued her from a hopeless life and made her feel like a real person for the first time in her life.

Her eyes misted and tears began to trickle slowly down her face. Even though it could be a little creepy that an unknown someone else had visited their graves, it wasn’t. Whoever had dropped this off and cleared the site had once been touched by Dennis and Joan’s kindness . . . just like her.

Maybe it was an old student of her foster mother’s, or a student at Dennis’s school. The couple had done so many kind things in their lives; they deserved to be remembered.

Randi wrapped her arms around her dog as Lily started licking at her face, lapping at her tears. “I miss them, Lily. I miss them so damn much.” Giving up the fight, Randi lowered her head and sobbed against Lily’s silky fur, keeping the calla lily clutched in her fist.

She cried for the loss of a mother and father, even though they hadn’t shared the same blood.

She cried for the sacrifices they’d made just to keep her with them.

She cried because she’d never completely mourned their loss because it was so hard to let them go.

Finally, she stopped, and memories of the two people she’d loved the most in life drifted through her mind.