“Don’t say anything for a minute. Just listen. A lot of people in the business chuckled behind my back when I first got started. Spoiled heiress out for a fling, that sort of thing. And maybe it was close to the truth at first. I never did anything worthwhile in my life before the troupe.”

“That’s not true.”

“That’s absolutely true.” She had no problem accepting the truth, or using it to push herself further. “I skimmed my way through school doing the least amount of work possible. I lounged around during the summer doing nothing at all. I watched Dad wheel and deal, I watched you take your education and turn it into success with your gallery, and I picked up another magazine. With the theater I started to find a goal, without realizing I’d needed one. Chris, when I stood on the stage for the first time, it was like a light going on in my head. Maybe my place was behind it, not on it, but I found the goal. It took a couple years after the troupe was formed for people to stop laughing. Now I have a chance to do something extraordinary. I can’t give it up.”

“I never knew you felt this way.” Chris ran her hand over the back of Eve’s. “I do understand, and I’m proud of you. I always have been, but I’m prouder than ever. I believe you can do something extraordinary, but the timing’s off. Six months from now, a year from now, when things have settled down—”

“I can’t leave, Chris. Even if they tore the theater down, if every one of my troupe went back, I couldn’t leave.” She had to draw a breath to say it, to say it out loud and calmly. “I’m in love with Alexander.”

“Oh.” Because the wind had just been knocked out of her, Chris said nothing else.

“I have to be with him now, especially now. Once I thought the troupe was everything, but as important as it is, it doesn’t come close to how I feel about him.” She paused a moment, realizing what she was saying had been there all along—she just hadn’t known it. “You don’t have to tell me that nothing can come of it—I’ve already figured that out for myself. But I have to be with him as long as I can.”

“Once I’d thought that maybe you and Bennett … I’d even gotten a kick out of imagining the two of you. But Alexander.”

“I know.” Eve rose again. “The heir. I’ve loved him for years. I managed to do a pretty good job of muddling that fact, even to myself, but there it is.”

“I’d wondered a couple of times if you might have been a bit infatuated.”

“I’m old enough to know the difference,” Eve said with a smile.