“So Clara told you.”
“She started to. Then you appeared like a guilty secret.”
Mark pulled the chair closer and sat down. The same chair. The one he had dragged to my bedside before my surgery. The sight of him in it made something inside me loosen.
“I was a patient,” he said. “Observation after a minor procedure. My security team wanted a private room. I refused.”
“Why?”
“Because private rooms are too quiet.”
The answer was simple. Honest. Lonely.
I looked at him more closely.
“Who are you, Mark?”
He folded his hands.
“My full name is Marcus Grant.”
The name meant nothing at first.
Then it did.
Grant.
Grant Medical Center.
The plaque in the lobby. The new surgical wing. The foundation commercials. The charity galas I had seen on local news while eating cereal at midnight, thinking people like that existed in a different universe.
“You’re that Grant?”
He looked mildly uncomfortable.
“My grandfather founded Grant Industries. I run the foundation now. Among other things.”
I blinked at him.
“You own the hospital?”
“No. That would be a conflict of several kinds. But my family funded a large part of the oncology wing.”
I let my head sink back into the pillow.
“Oh my God.”
“You didn’t know.”
“Obviously I didn’t know. Do you think I’d propose marriage as a joke to a hospital benefactor?”
His gaze held mine.
“You didn’t propose because of money.”
“I didn’t propose at all. I made a deathbed joke.”
“You weren’t on your deathbed.”
“You didn’t know that.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I didn’t.”
A silence settled between us.
Not awkward. Heavy.
I looked at the tulips.
“Why are you here?”
He answered without hesitation.
