For eight days, Leo Reyes did not call.
Maya noticed because she had expected him to.
Not constantly. Not desperately. Leo did not seem like a man who begged for attention when charm failed to secure it. But after the photograph, after the call through the hospital operator, after his public statement about privacy and the terrible cafeteria coffee they were both pretending had not mattered, some part of Maya had expected another interruption.
A message, perhaps. A joke. A carefully phrased apology. Another reminder to eat something that would make her want to dislike him more than she did.
Nothing came.
The media outside St. Raphael thinned by the fourth day. By the sixth, only one photographer remained near the side entrance, and even he looked bored enough to switch careers. The ho
