All Chapters of His Rejected Billionaire Wife : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Lena's POVHe was already seated when I arrived.Not early the way I had been on Monday — he was simply there at the same corner table, watching the door. He stood when I came in, which I hadn't expected, and sat again when I did."You're on time," I said."I said I would be."The waiter came. We ordered. When he left Adrian set his phone face-down on the table."Mount Sinai called this morning," I said.He looked up. "You applied?""I sent an inquiry yesterday. They called within four hours." I set my bag on the empty chair beside me. "The department head role has been open because the two candidates they offered it to both declined. The cardiac unit is well-funded and badly led, which is exactly the situation I'm most useful in.""When do they want an answer?""End of the week. I told them I needed until Friday. They said Wednesday.""Take Friday," he said. "Anyone who rushes a hire like that doesn't understand what they're hiring.""I told them something similar. They backed down."

Lena's POVI took him to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.Not because it was romantic. Because I had gone there alone on my third day back in New York when I needed somewhere quiet that wasn't a hospital, and I had thought about it since. It was March and most things weren't flowering yet but the structure of the place was still there — the paths, the bare trees, the particular stillness of a garden that knew spring was coming and wasn't rushing toward it.He didn't ask why I'd chosen it. He just fell into step beside me."Mount Sinai," he said, after the first five minutes."I accepted this morning.""Good.""They're announcing internally on Monday. I start in three weeks." I kept walking. "Ademi wants to meet before the official start date. He suggested lunch next week.""Take it. Set the tone early.""That was already my plan." I glanced at him. "You look better than you did Tuesday.""I feel better than I did Tuesday." He said it simply, without making it into more. "The outpatient ap

Lena's POVHe lived in a building in Tribeca that was exactly what I expected — clean lines, understated lobby, the kind of address that didn't need to announce itself. I took the elevator to the fourteenth floor with a bag of groceries I had bought that morning without overthinking it.He opened the door before I knocked."You were watching the elevator," I said."The floor indicator is visible from the kitchen." He stepped back to let me in. "You brought food.""You said you had a kitchen. I wanted to see if that was true."It was true. Large, well-equipped, and almost entirely unused judging by the state of it — everything in its place, nothing worn in. I set the bag on the counter and looked around without commenting.The apartment was the same. Ordered, expensive, impersonal in the specific way of spaces where someone slept but hadn't yet lived. One photograph on the shelf near the window — Diana, Adrian, somewhere coastal. No art that meant anything. Books on the desk that had b

Lena's POVI chose a Korean restaurant in the East Village that Sophie had sent me three months ago with the message go here when you're back in New York and a string of food emojis. I had not told Sophie I was going with Adrian. She would find out eventually and have opinions and I wasn't ready for them yet.He was on time. He looked at the restaurant and then at me."Sophie?" he said."How did you know?""Ethan mentioned she had strong feelings about Korean food."I made a note to talk to Ethan about the volume of information moving through his conversations with Adrian.We sat at a table near the back. The restaurant was louder than the places we'd been before — smaller, closer tables, the kind of room where other people's conversations were audible if you weren't having your own. Adrian adjusted to it without comment.We ordered more than we needed. It arrived in stages and we ate from the shared plates in the natural way of people who had stopped performing consideration toward e

Lena's POVDiana chose a French restaurant in the Upper East Side that was quiet and small and had clearly been her regular place for years judging by the way the host greeted her.We sat by the window. She ordered without looking at the menu and I did the same and for the first ten minutes we talked about the food, the neighborhood, a gallery she'd been to the week before. The kind of conversation that wasn't the conversation yet but was how you got there.Then she set her glass down and said, "How is it actually going? The job, the city. All of it.""Well," I said. "Better than I expected it to.""The Mount Sinai position suits you.""It does. Ademi is good to work alongside and the surgical team is stronger than their recent output suggested. They needed direction more than talent.""And outside of work?"I looked at her. "I think you're asking about Adrian.""I'm asking about you." She met my eyes. "Adrian is my son and I love him and I'm separately asking about you."I accepted t