“You could be right.” She turned back, beaming at him. “It was so thoughtful of you to bring them. And to come. I didn’t realize she’d asked you. Had no idea she was counting on it.”

“She asked me a couple of weeks ago.” He dipped his hands in his pockets. Laura hadn’t asked him, he remembered. Hadn’t mentioned it. “I’ve managed to avoid ballet for thirty-four years. This ought to be an experience.”

“I think you’ll find it painless.” She started toward him now, and he took his hand out of his pocket to take hers before she could touch him.

“So how are you?” he asked.

“Fine.” Was he just tired, she wondered, or was this distance she felt? “Did things go well in L.A.?”

“Yeah, it went. They’ll start shooting in about three weeks. We’ll get a couple months’ work out of it. Maybe more.”

“You’ll stay in L.A. during the filming,” she said slowly as a weight sank in her stomach.

He shrugged. It wasn’t the time to get into all of this, and he was spared when Ali marched back down the hall, bearing her vase of baby roses like a trophy.

“Don’t they look beautiful, Mama? Annie’s going to put them in my room.”

“They’re perfect. We really need to go. Performers have to be there thirty minutes before curtain.”

“I’ll take those now, sweetheart.” Annie slipped the vase from Ali’s hand. “And I’ll be there to see you dance.” She inclined her head toward Michael in what, from anyone else, he would have taken as a friendly smile. “We all will.”

It wasn’t impossible to put everything out of his mind for a couple of hours. The kid was so cute. All of them were. But it was hard to sit beside Laura, in the middle of all those people—the families, the partners, the couples—and not be miserable.

But he’d had time, and he’d had the distance to allow himself to take a good hard look at what was going on. And what was happening to him. He’d fallen for her, all the way.

It would never work.

He’d seen himself in the dingy little bar in south L.A., drinking beer and swapping stories with wranglers. Going back to his hotel room after a long day, sweaty, dirty, smelling of horse. And he’d seen himself growing up in a house that had breathed neglect and violence and tension.

He’d seen himself for what he was. A man who had chased all the wrong things most of his life and had found plenty of them. A cliff rat, son of a waitress and a wastrel, who would in time and with effort be able to make a decent living.