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face. Now she had no idea what he was thinking or feeling. “Should I ask how you even know that?”
    “I saw it in the paper when you got married.”
    It wasn’t an implausible explanation, but something in the way he cut his gaze from hers told her it wasn’t quite the truth. Corinne frowned, not at his words but at the way her stupid heart had lifted at this casual admission that he’d somehow paid attention to her life. “Anyway, we’re divorced.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded vindicated. Corinne felt her frown threatening to become a scowl, and she deliberately smoothed her features.
    “Don’t be sorry. It’s for the best. He’s very happy with his new wife and I—”
    “And you’re very happy with your career , I’m sure,” Reese said in a low, angry voice.
    It was her turn to sit back and look him over. “Yes. I am, as a matter of fact. Why do you make that sound like some kind of sin?”
    Interrupted by the arrival of the waitress with the appetizer of Thai sweet chili spring rolls and Corinne’s iced coffee, they were quiet until the girl left. Then Reese leaned forward to speak across the table.
    “You told me once you didn’t believe in the idea of sin.”
    “It’s a turn of phrase,” Corinne told him. “And by the looks of things, you’re not exactly an unsuccessful slug yourself, so why are you being so judgmental about my career? Or about anything in my life, for that matter?”
    His mouth thinned. “Right. Of course, what you do isn’t any of my business.”
    Something occurred to her. She narrowed her eyes. “You knew. Didn’t you? That I worked for Stein and Sons. You knew I’m the CFO, and that you’d be meeting with me.”
    “I did,” he told her without so much as a blink or the faintest blush of shame.
    A vivid memory of the red imprint of her hand on his cheek reared up inside her head, so fierce and gut-punching that she recoiled. He noticed too. She knew he did. Again, she wanted to slap him, right there across the table in front of everyone, for that single tilting quirk of a smug fucking grin.
    Of course she didn’t slap him. Normal people didn’t go around slapping people in public. Or in private, she reminded herself, shoving away the memories again, harder this time. Put those motherfuckers in a box , she thought. And close that goddamned lid.
    “This meeting is over.” Corinne stood and shouldered her bag. She tossed her napkin on the table. “Thanks for the wine. I trust you’ll take care of the check.”
    Head high, back straight, she headed for the parking lot without looking from side to side. She couldn’t. If any tiny thing distracted her, she was going to burst into huge, ugly sobs.
    This was not how she’d imagined seeing him again. In her dreams they ran into each other at a party, both of them dressed in their best. He was with another woman, she another man, but that didn’t matter. The second they caught eyes across the room, he’d move through the crowd toward her. He’d take her hand. Kiss the knuckles. Ask her to dance. He’d pull her close and whisper in her ear that he’d been a fool to ever leave her.
    God, she was so stupid.
    At her car, Corinne dug for her keys in her overstuffed purse, but they eluded her beneath the drifting tide of receipts and permission slips and used tissues with pieces of gum inside. It was a mom purse, like her shoes and her hair and her entire freaking life, and then shit, she was crying. Silent, painful sobs tore at her throat. She closed her eyes and gripped the roof of her car, hating how something so ridiculous and simple could make her so fucking sad.
    He was surprised she’d ever spent a minute thinking about him in all these years? Of course he couldn’t know how sometimes all she felt like she did was pine away for the past, and her boy, and how it had felt to be young and kinky and in love.
    Love .
    She could admit it now, looking back, though for years