Despite its mildness, the winter felt excruciatingly long to Lorena. She busied herself with going to the theater and the opera and the ballet, to reacquainting herself with the long list of people her mother had said were necessary to properly insinuate herself into San Francisco society after her long absence, but behind all of that was an aching need that she knew would only be satisfied by being back in Jeremiah’s arms.
There were even men who wished to flirt with her, who did not find her widowhood — nor her thirty years — to be a huge impediment. But of course neither of those qualities would be terribly off-putting to someone far more entranced by the size of her fortune. Because she was an expert at that game, she flirted in return, laughed and traded compliments, and then went ho
