Renée Laurent had excellent taste in hotels.
The Waldorf Astoria Chicago was exactly the kind of place she stayed not because she needed to announce wealth but because she had learned long ago that comfort was not a luxury but a baseline requirement for thinking clearly. And right now she needs to think clearly.
She had been in Chicago for ten days.
She was still not entirely sure what she had expected to find here. Darian had been clear on the phone three weeks ago. I am involved with someone and she had heard it and understood it and had still somehow found herself on a flight to Chicago four days later because understanding something and accepting it were apparently not the same thing.
She had seen him once. Briefly. He had been kind and firm and entirely certain in the way he was
