The meeting happened anyway, because backing out would look worse than walking in.
Nathaniel wore a suit that Claire had not seen before, charcoal grey with a white shirt, no tie, the visual language of a man who was being deliberately, strategically humble. He looked devastatingly composed and Claire hated how much she noticed.
She straightened his collar in the elevator of James’s building, a gesture so automatic that neither of them remarked on it until afterward.
“You look like a CEO,” she told him.
“I am one,” he said quietly. “Temporarily inconvenienced.”
She almost laughed.
The meeting room was neutral ground, a private conference room at a law firm neither side used permanently. Vanessa arrived four minutes late, which Claire knew was deliberate, dressed in pale ivory that wa
