For a few seconds neither of us managed a word.

“Elliot,” she said at last, quietly.

“It’s been a long time.”

I stared at the uniform like an idiot.

“I thought you were still a senior accountant.”

She gave me a tired little smile.

“Life changes, Elliot.

And no honest work should ever shame anyone.”

Heat climbed up my face.

I had not meant it as an insult and it had landed as one anyway, which told me something about the man I still was.

Bianca’s hand closed around my arm, tighter than it needed to be.

“Can we go now?”

Samantha looked at her.

And it was not the look a woman gives her ex-husband’s new fiancée — not the quick, appraising up-and-down I’d have expected.