“Come on, troops, get a move on. This train leaves in five minutes. I’ll get it, Annie,” she called out when the doorbell rang. “Could you check on Bongo before you leave? He’s under my bed and—”

She broke off as she pulled the door open and found Michael standing on the other side.

“Michael! You’re home.”

“It looks that way.”

If she had leapt into his arms, right there in her own home, there in front of her children, he doubted he could have stuck with the decision he’d made. But she didn’t. She only smiled at him, held out a hand.

It was Kayla who leapt. “Did you bring Max back?” With the simplicity of childhood, she hugged his waist and lifted her mouth for a kiss. “Did he come home too?”

“Sure. Max and I travel together. Where’d you get the red shoes, kid? Pretty snappy.”

“Mama bought them. They’re my favorites.”

“You came.”

Michael halted his admiring study of Kayla’s red shoes and lifted his gaze to Ali’s face. She looked, he thought, so much like her mother just then, with that stunned wonder on her face and the emotion swimming in her eyes.

“I told you I would.”

“I thought you’d forgotten. I thought you were too busy.”

“Forget an invitation from a beautiful ballerina to watch her dance?” He shook his head as he straightened. “Boy, that wouldn’t say much about my memory.” Head cocked, he held out the bouquet of pink baby roses. “We do have a date, right? You didn’t go call some other guy to take my place?”

“No. Are these for me?” Mouth open in a litle O of confused delight, she stared at the roses. “For me?”

“Who else?”

“For me.” She breathed it, taking the flowers in her hands. “Thank you. Mama, Michael brought me flowers.”

“I see.” And her eyes stung a bit. “They’re lovely.”

“We’ll use the Waterford.” Annie stood a few steps back in the hall, her hands folded, her eyes on Michael’s face. “When a girl receives her first flowers from a man, they should be treated as something very special.”

“I want to put them in the vase myself.”

“And so you should. It will only take a moment, Miss Laura.”

“Yes, all right. Thank you, Annie.”

“I’ll help.” Kayla raced down the hall. “Let me smell them, Ali.”

“Her first flowers,” Laura murmured.

“Man, why do females always get wet-eyed over a bunch of posies?”

Which reminded him that he’d never given Laura flowers. Never real ones, just something plucked carelessly out of the ground. He’d never thought of it. Had never, he realized, given her anything but good, hot sex.

“Flowers are symbolic.” And she remembered the pretty little wildflowers he’d given her. So sweet, so simple. So right.

“Everything is to women.”