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Except, of course, herself

“That’s why you left? You couldn’t dance in Maryland?”

“Last time I looked, Broadas in New York,” she quipped Then, seeing his impatient look, she relented Fine, he wanted a peek into her past, she figured she owed hi, per se It was a nice, ladylike hobby, acceptable a their society friends”

“I’ve gotta say, I’ you as a irl”

“You andher chin on the hands she’d folded over his chest “I loved the dance Obsessed with it It’s all I wanted But the rest? Country club socials, acceptable dates, polite well-rounded dinner conversation? I didn’t quite live up to expectations By the tietting in the way of my duties”

“They wanted you to stop?”

“They ordered roundedI applied for a scholarship and you’d have thought I’d tried to murder my mother”

“Because you disobeyed?”

“Hardly I rarely behaved to their standards anyway” Lara laughed “No, she was furious because I’d implied that we needed financial assistance”

“And your brother?”

Lara frowned

“What about hihed in on the discussion, if that’s what you mean I’m honestly not sure he realized I was a dancer I’m positive he never noticed when I left”

“How is that possible? You lived in the saht?”

“Not really I mean, technically we did But he went to prep school, then Annapolis My dance schedule gotout at ho with the parents”

“So you took off for Broadway? That’s, like, fancy dancing, isn’t it?”

“I suppose Ballet, jazz, tap, I did it all” She sood”

“How good?” he asked

She laughed at the innuendo, then shrugged

“Really good, actually I’d been dancing since I was a toddler, so I had a lot of time to work on it By nineteen I was an up-and-comer Another year,solo roles”

“So how’d you get from there to Broadway to the Silver Dust?”

“Life took htly

She didn’t want to talk about all her screwups, lousy choices or uy who probably had none of the above, and was probably going to turn out to be all of the above for her

“Enough with tiptoeing through the past,” she said, angling her body so she was over hi ”