His heart shrank within him at the sight of her. He was surprised to realize how sincerely he had missed her. He’d always been on tiptoe around Lorena, highly aware of her brimming reservoirs of feminine menace; but he’d forgotten how truly fond he was of her, how much she represented to him of the life he had abandoned. Dear old Lorena: wealthy, sophisticated, amoral, and refined—his kind of woman, really; a creature of the overclass, a classic high-maintenance girl, a woman who was really put together . Seeing Lorena like this—all abraded in her sorrow—gave him a pang. She was like a beautiful pair of scissors that had been used to shear through barbed wire.