FALLING FOR MR DOMINIC IN 30 DAYS

Chapter 5

Callum Reid showed up Friday at eleven. Three days late. No call ahead. Marisol learned that much from Patricia during handover, along with the detail that a very well-dressed man had walked straight past the front desk and headed for Room 14 like he already owned the hallway.

Technically, Marisol had no business watching any of this. Coming off nights, running on fumes, and Room 14 wasn't hers again until nine that evening.

She stopped by anyway. Professional curiosity. Nothing unusual about that.

Through the glass: Dominic sitting up straighter than he had in days, something more alive in his face than she'd seen yet. Across from him, a man in a gray suit leaning forward in the visitor's chair, forearms on his knees, talking fast, one hand cutting through the air like he was closing an argument he'd already won.

Callum Reid. She recognized the face from the company website, which she had absolutely not been looking at for any particular reason. COO of Crane Industries. Forty-one. The kind of face that gave away nothing unless it wanted to, and even then, only exactly as much as it meant to.

She watched a minute longer than she should have. There was an ease between the two men that hadn't existed yet with anyone else in that room, not the doctors, not Genevieve. Something older. Something that didn't need explaining first.

He turned his head. Caught her looking.

Not quick enough to look away.

He said something to Dominic, stood, came to the door. Stepped into the hall to study her with the slow, deliberate attention of a man running some kind of assessment, the kind that didn't care whether she noticed it happening.

"You're his night nurse."

"One of the nurses on this floor, yes."

"Patricia's days. You're nights." Said like he already knew the answer and was testing hers. "How long have you been assigned to him?"

"Since admission."

"Four days."

"Yes."

He held her gaze a beat longer than the question needed. "He called you by her name. The first night."

Not a question. The floor of the conversation shifted, just slightly, underneath her, the way a hallway tilts when you've stood up too fast.

"He was confused from the anesthesia. Happens a lot."

"I know what happens a lot. I'm asking what actually happened." A pause, unhurried, like he had all day and knew it. "He told me about it this morning. Said he called out for Genevieve and someone was there, and he felt, his word, *anchored*. Said it settled something in him." He studied her closely, the way you'd study a signature on a contract you didn't quite trust. "He has no memory of Genevieve as his fiancée at all. But that first night? He remembers it with a clarity that's apparently unusual, given his condition."

Marisol said nothing.

"I've known Genevieve Ashworth eleven months. I know her face, her voice, the way she carries herself, the way she walks into a room like she's already decided how it's going to go." He looked at Marisol dead on. "You're not her."

Quiet, suddenly, in the hallway. Very quiet. Somewhere behind them a cart wheel squeaked on the tile and nobody moved to fix it.

"I'm his nurse," Marisol said. "I was checking on my patient."

"And when he called you by her name?"

"He was barely conscious. Correcting him right then would've been distressing. Medically unwise."

"That's the answer you give the hospital board." Callum's voice didn't rise, didn't need to. "I'm not the hospital board."

She didn't answer that one at all.

Callum held her eyes a long moment. Whatever sat in his expression wasn't hostile, exactly. Wasn't warm either. The look of someone gathering pieces and not yet sure what they added up to, the way you'd hold a puzzle piece up to the light before deciding where it went.

He reached into his jacket, pulled out a card, held it out. Plain, heavy stock, nothing but a number on it.

She took it.

"Whenever you're ready to tell me what's actually going on," he said, "call that number." A beat. "Then we can talk about Genevieve."

He went back into the room without waiting to see if she'd say anything else, and through the glass she watched him settle back into the chair like the conversation in the hallway had never happened at all.

Marisol stood there holding the card. Didn't move for a second.

Eventually she pocketed it, took the elevator down, went home, stood in her own kitchen in her coat, still, staring at the card on the counter for way longer than made sense.

She made tea. Didn't drink it. Let it go cold the way she always did, the mug sitting untouched on the counter until she poured it out an hour later and made another she also wouldn't finish.

Thought about calling him.

Ran the conversation in her head a few different ways, none of them ending anywhere good. Hello, this is the nurse who let your friend believe a lie for four days. Hello, I took ten thousand dollars from his fiancée in a bathroom. None of it came out sounding like anything but a confession, and she wasn't ready to make one of those yet, not to a stranger with a business card and a face that gave nothing away.

Didn't. Not yet.

But the card went in the drawer. The one where she kept things she was going to need eventually, batteries and spare keys and the phone number for the one plumber who'd actually shown up when he said he would.

She stood at the counter a while longer, coat still on, keys still in her hand, listening to the radiator tick through its slow climb toward warm. Four days. That was all it had been since Room 14, since the restroom floor and the two lines and the ten thousand dollars sitting in an account she still hadn't touched. Four days, and already there was a man with a business card who could see straight through her, and a patient who looked at her like she'd handed him something worth keeping.

She thought about Rosa's next PT appointment, already scheduled, already paid for. She thought about the drawer, and the card sitting in it now next to everything else she was saving for later. Later kept getting closer than she expected it to.

That, at least, was something.