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making even that gorgeous body of his seem subtly off-kilter. Plus, a few minutes later, his shoulders were tense again anyway.
    “Let’s take a quick break,” she suggested. “There’s water over there, and you can also go find out who’s been calling you.”
    While he did that, she went into the storage area at the back of the studio to grab her all-purpose cure-all to help correct shoulders that were out of alignment—the mop they used to clean the floors. By the time she came back, he had put both his phone and the water bottle down.
    “This should help you to remember what the right posture feels like,” Paige explained as she put it across his shoulders and showed him how she wanted him to hold on to it. “Now, again, from the beginning.”
    When he started over, she was both relieved and impressed to find that he could remember dance steps as easily as he could learn his lines. Now, they just had to work on polishing them. Unfortunately, once he put down the mop, after a few minutes his shoulders started to go their own sweet way once more. Even when she reminded him, his correct posture lasted only until the distraction of another missed phone call.
    Wondering why he wouldn’t just turn it off, she pressed on, switching up the exercises, working on the details for hours. Hours filled with mistakes and a huge amount of effort on both their parts, along with continual interruptions from his phone in the corner. Still, though he was having trouble nailing precisely what she was asking him to do, he didn’t whine, nor did he complain when she asked him to repeat things over and over again. He obviously had excellent stamina and kept going until his T-shirt was plastered to the muscles of his torso in a way that was impossible for the woman inside of her to ignore.
    “You need to rise from the balls of your feet,” she said, but even though he tried to follow her directions and needed to be floating over the floor with grace and elegance, he seemed to sink farther down into it with every step, rooting himself in place. It was movement more suitable for martial arts training than for dancing. Maybe, it occurred to her, that was where he’d picked up the habit. Paige could easily imagine Christian doing fight training for some movie or other. Probably looking very good while he did it, too.
    Now, if only she could imagine him dancing. Somehow, he made everything else look easy, but this…
    Making sure to hold back any sound of frustration, she said, “Why don’t we take another break for ten minutes?”
    The truth was that she needed a break as much as he did. Not from the dancing. After all, she was used to being on her feet all day with students and showing them by example. Right now, it was more that she needed to rethink her strategy. What she was doing obviously wasn’t working. She simply wasn’t getting through to him.
    Fortunately, she knew exactly who she needed to talk to about it. Closing her office door, she rang her grandmother up at the house.
    “How are things going with Christian, honey?”
    Paige kept her voice low as she said, “That’s actually why I’m calling, Grams. I’ve got him doing basic exercises, and he’s trying really hard, but it’s just not coming together.”
    “Well, you knew there would be a lot of work when you agreed to take on someone who hasn’t danced before,” Grams pointed out in a gentle voice. “Tell me, how are things coming along when you’re actually dancing with him? A new partner changes things, and that might be part of it.”
    Paige swallowed hard. “I haven’t actually danced with him yet.”
    “You haven’t? Why ever not?”
    “I just…I wanted to concentrate on getting the exercises right.”
    Her grandmother made a small sound of disbelief. “That isn’t all of it, is it, Paige?”
    “No,” she admitted, “it isn’t. I’ve been putting that part of our lessons off.”
    “Sweetie, you’re his dance teacher. You know you need