A Hart To Call Home

Chapter Thirty

"It's beautiful!"

"A few more days, maybe, and it'll open," Kit said as Leonardo wheeled himself closer to the rose bushes. The one plant with a little bud was a tad bigger that day; she couldn't wait to trim and vase his first rose for him.

"I can see a tiny bit of the flower," he remarked as he peered closer, "is it pink?"

"Shouldn't be," Kit stepped closer to look at it herself; he was right. It was slight, but the small amount of flower shown was pink. "Odd, all the tags said they were red rose bushes. Maybe one pink one got mixed in there."

"Pink was Elizabeth's favorite color," he mused as a dreamy look crossed his face.

"Well, then, it was a good mistake," she noted. Still, that seemed very odd to her. Maybe one of the plants was spliced? She was intrigued to see if any other pink roses popped up.

The roar of an engine coming up the driveway broke up the serene moment, and Kit started to walk towards the noise, "if that's one of the nurses driving in like that. We are not hiring them!"

She stopped when she saw a sleek red sports car pulling up and parking right in front of the house, and a tall older man with slick back dark hair in a crisp suit emerged.

"It's Richard," Leonardo commented as he wheeled up beside her.

"Leo!" the man offered a big toothpaste-style grin and a wave when he noticed them.

"What are you doing here, Richard? We didn't have a meeting scheduled."

"I know, but we need to discuss a few matters," he glanced at Kit and then back at Leonardo. "Can we go inside?"

"Leo is just about to go in and rest; if you want to talk business, you need to schedule a meeting through Luca or Andre," Kit took hold of Leonardo's wheelchair and began to wheel him inside. Richard brazenly followed them in.

"I'll do that next time, but since I'm here," his voice alerted both Andre and Luca, who looked up sharply at the intrusion. The nurse they were interviewing was rising to leave.

"Why are you here?" Luca's eyes bored past Kit and Leonardo to Richard behind them as Andre got up to quickly the show interviewee out.

"Leo hasn't returned my calls about the will revision, so I got a little nervous," Richard explained, "we can't waste time on this."

"It's done," Leonardo wheeled himself to the table to join Luca; Richard followed, and Kit did as well.

"Done?" Richard sounded stunned. "You haven't sent it to me to finalize it."

"I helped him with it," Andre said as he walked back in. Richard arched an eyebrow towards the youngest Donato as he came to join them.

"... and I'm sure you did a good job, Andre, but you're not an attorney yet. I will need to look it over and finalize everything."

"He knows how to revise a will, Richard. Regarding filing it, my sons and I have decided to have Ms. Renstrom do that, and she agreed."

"Diane Renstrom? What? She's green! We know nothing about her," Richard's eyes bored down on Leonardo. "Why would you have someone else file the paperwork unless... Leo, you can't be firing me as your attorney?"

"Finally, he gets it!" Luca spat out sarcastically.

"... we started this thing together!" Richard's voice began to rise, and Kit noted that Luca was getting tenser by the moment as he stood up.

"And now it's over, so get out, Dick," Luca shot back.

"Leo, clearly you're not thinking straight here," Richard ignored Luca to plead to Leonardo.