by Cara Colter
And yet looking at her now those ever-present shadows, the clouds, were completely gone from her eyes. It made her lovely in a way he could not have guessed. He turned away, focused on the path in front of him. Her radiance almost hurt.
“Oh,” she said. “Kiernan! He’s doing something!”
Kiernan turned to see the horse flicking his tail. He laughed at the expression on her face.
“Now, that’s a swish,” he said. “A bothersome fly, nothing more.”
But some tension had come into her, and he was driven to get rid of it.
“On this whole matter of swishing,” he said solemnly. “A hundred years ago I could have had you hauled off to the dungeon to straighten you out about who was the boss. Ten days of bread and water would have mended your ways.”
He was rewarded with her laughter.
“And if it didn’t, I could have added rats.”
“Really, Kiernan,” she laughed, “you’ve proven you can have your way for a pastry. Hold the rats.”
Have his way? Having his way with her suddenly took on dangerous new meaning. He could practically feel her hair tangled in his hands, imagine what it would be to take the lushness of her lips with his own.
He risked a glance at her, and saw, guiltily, that her meaning had been innocent. He was entranced by her sunlit face, dancing with laughter.
Her laughter was a delicious sound, pure mountain water, gurgling over rock, everything he had hoped for when he had given in to a desire to chase the shadows from her eyes. More.
The laughter changed her. It was the sun coming out from behind clouds. Meredith went from being stern to playful, she went from being somewhat remote to eminently approachable, she went from being beautiful to being extraordinary.
He laughed, too, a reluctant chuckle at first, and then a real laugh. Their combined laughter rang off the ancient walls and suffused the day with a light it had not had before.
Kiernan knew it was the first time in a long, long time that he had laughed like this. It was as if his relationship with Tiffany had brought out something grim in him that he never quite put away.
But then the moment of exquisite lightness was over, and as he gazed up into the enjoyment on her face he realized that he was not fully prepared for what he saw there. Even though he had encouraged this moment, he did not feel ready for the bond of it. There was an utter openness between them that was astounding.
He felt like a man who had been set adrift on ice, who was nearly frozen, and who had suddenly glimpsed the promise of the warm golden light of a fire in the distance.
But his very longing made him feel weak. What had he been thinking? He needed to guard against moments like this, not encourage them.
Kiernan was not sure he had ever felt quite that vulnerable. Not riding a headstrong horse over slippery ground, not even when the press had decided to crucify him, first over Francine, ten times worse over the Tiffany affair.
He turned abruptly back toward the courtyard, but when they arrived, he stood gazing up at her, not wanting to help her off the horse.
To touch her now, with something in him so open, felt as if it guaranteed surrender. He was Adam leaning toward the apple; he was Sampson ignoring the scissors in Delilah’s hand.
Hadn’t Tiffany just taught him the treacherous unpredictability of human emotion?
Still, Meredith wasn’t going to be able to get off that horse without his help.
“Bring that one leg over,” he said gruffly, and then realized he hadn’t been specific enough, because she brought her leg over but didn’t twist and swing down into the stirrup, but sat on his horse, prettily side-saddle.
And then, without warning, she began to slide off.
And he had no choice but to reach out and catch her around her waist, and pull her to him to take the impact from her.
She stood there in the circle of his arms, her chin tilted back, looking into his face.
“Kiernan,” she said softly, “I don’t know how to thank you. That was a wonderful morning.”
But that was the problem. The wonder of the morning had encouraged this new form of familiarity. Barriers were down. She hadn’t used his proper form of address.
She didn’t even know she hadn’t, she was so caught in the moment. And she never had to know how he had liked how his name had sounded coming off her lips.
But it was just one more barrier down, one more line of protection compromised. He should correct her. But he couldn’t. He hated it that the moment seemed to be robbing him of his strength and his resolve, his sense of duty, his knowing what was right.
Aside from Adrian, who was this comfortable with him, there were few people in his world this able to be themselves around him, this able to bring out his sense of laughter.
Francine had. Tiffany never.
She did not back out of the circle of his arms, and he did not release her. The laughter was gone from her face. Completely. She swallowed hard.
The guard he had just put up felt as if it was going to crumple. Completely. And if it did, he would never, ever be able to build it back up as strong as it had been before, like a wall that had been weakened by a cannonball hit. “Your Highness?”
Now, she remembered the correct form of address. Too late. Because now he longed to hear his name off her lips.
That’s what he had to steel himself against.
“Yes?”
“Thank you for not letting me fall,” she said.
But the truth? It felt as if they were falling, as if they were entering a land where neither of them had ever been, without knowing the language, without having a map.
“It’s not if you fall that matters,” he said quietly. “Everyone falls. It’s how you get up that counts.”
A part of him leaned toward her, wanting, almost desperately to explore what was happening between them. As if, in that new land he had glimpsed so briefly in her eyes, he would find not that he was lost.
But that he was found.
And that he was not alone on his journey.
Kiernan gave himself a mental shake. He couldn’t allow himself to bask in that feeling that he had been seen, this morning, not as a prince, but for the man he really was. And he certainly couldn’t allow her to see that her praise meant something to him.
Music suddenly spilled out an open window above them. She cocked her head toward it. “What on earth?’ she asked. “What kind of magic is this?”
The whole morning had had that quality, of magic. Now, it seemed imperative that he deny the existence of such a thing.
“It’s not magic!” he said, his tone suddenly curt. “The palace chamber quartet is practicing, that’s all. It happens every Tuesday at precisely eleven o’clock.”
He liked precise worlds. Predictable ones.
“Your Highness?”
He looked askance at her.
“Shall we?”
Of course he wasn’t going to dance with her! He was too open to her, too aware of how the sun shone off her hair, of the light in her eyes, of the glossy puffiness of her lips. He had a horse that needed looking after. Her laughter and his had already made him feel quite vulnerable enough.
And yet this surprise invitation had that quality of delicious spontaneity to it that he found irresistible. Plus, to refuse might deepen her puzzlement, and if she studied the mystery long enough, would she figure it out?
That there was something about her he liked, and at the same time, he disliked liking it. Intensely.
But there was one other thing.
He had seen a light come on in her today. It still shone there, gently below the surface, chasing away a shadow he had realized had been ever-present until this morning.
He might want to protect himself.
But not enough to push her back into darkness.
And so he dropped the reins, uncharacteristically not caring if the horse bolted back to the stable. He felt like a warrior at war, not with her, but with himself. Wanting to see
her light, but not at the expense of losing his power.
He felt as if he was walking straight toward his biggest foe. Because, of course, his biggest foe was the loss of control that she threatened in him.
Here was his chance to wrest it back, to take the challenge of her to the next level. He gazed down at her, and then took her hand, placed his other one on her waist.
There was something about the spontaneity of it, about the casualness of it, about the drift of the music over the spring garden, that did exactly what she had wanted all along.
Something in him breathed. He didn’t feel rigid. Or stiff. He felt on fire. A man who would prove he was in charge of himself.
A man who could flirt with temptation and then just shrug it off and walk away.
A man who could see her light, and be pulled to it, and want it for her, but at the same time, not be a moth that would be pulled helplessly into the flame.
He danced her around the courtyard until she was breathless. Until she was his whole world. All he could see was the light in her. All he could feel was the sensuous touch of her fingertips resting ever so lightly on the place where his back met his hip. All that he could smell was her scent.
The last note of music spilled out the window, held, and then died. He became aware again of a world that was not Meredith. The horse stood, his head nodding, birds singing, sun shining, the scent of lilacs thick in the air.
Now, part two of the equation. He had danced with the temptation.
Walk away.
But she was finally looking at him with the approval a prince deserved. He steeled himself not to let it go straight to his head.
“That was fantastic,” Meredith said softly.
“Thank you.” With a certain chilly note, as if he didn’t give a fig about her approval.
“I think you’re ready to learn a few modern dance step moves tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. He’d been so busy getting through the challenge of the moment that he’d managed to completely forget that.
There were more moments to this challenge. Many more.
Kiernan had known she would be that kind of girl.
The if you give an inch, she’ll take a mile kind.
The kind where if you squeezed through one challenge she threw at you, by the skin of your teeth, only, another would be waiting. Harder.
And just to prove she had much harder challenges in store for him, she stood on her tiptoes and brushed his cheek with her lips.
Then she stepped back from him, stunned.
But not as stunned as he was. That innocent touch of her lips on his cheek stirred a yearning in him that was devastating. Suddenly his whole life seemed to yawn ahead of him, filled to the brim with activities and obligations, but empty of the one thing that truly mattered.
It doesn’t exist, he berated himself. He’d learned that, hadn’t he?
For a moment, she looked so surprised at herself that he thought she might apologize. But then, she didn’t. No, she crossed her arms over her chest, and met his gaze with challenge, daring him to say something, daring him to tell her how inappropriate it was to kiss a prince.
But he couldn’t. And therein was the problem. She was challenging his ability to be in perfect control at all times, and he hated that.
Resisting an impulse to touch the place on his cheek that still tingled from the caress of her soft lips, Kiernan turned from her, and went to his horse. He put his leg in the stirrup and vaulted up onto Ben’s back. Without looking back, he pressed the horse into a gallop, took a low stone wall, and raced away.
But even without looking, he knew she had watched him. And knew that he had wanted her to watch him and be impressed with his prowess.
Some kind of dance had begun between them. And it had nothing at all to do with the performance they would give at An Evening to Remember.
On the drive home from the palace, Meredith replayed her audacity. She’d kissed the prince!
“It wasn’t really a kiss,” she told herself firmly. “More like a buss. Yes, a buss.”
Somehow she had needed to thank him for all the experiences he had given her that day.
“So,” she asked herself, “what’s wrong with thank you?”
Still, if she had it to do again? She would do the same thing. She could not regret touching her lips to the skin of his cheek, feeling the hint of rough stubble beneath the tenderness of her lips, standing back to see something flash through his eyes before it had been quickly veiled.
She parked her tiny car in the laneway behind her apartment, a walk-up located above her dance studio in Chatam. She owned the building as a result of an insurance settlement. The building, and No Princes, had been her only uses for the money.
Both things had given her a little bit of motivation to keep going on those dark days when it felt like she could live no more.
Tonight, when she opened the door to the apartment that had given her both solace and sanctuary, she was taken aback by how fresh her wounds suddenly felt.
It had been six years since it had happened.
A grandmother who had just picked up her granddaughter from day care walking a stroller across a street. Who could know why Meredith’s mother, Millicent, had not heard the sirens? Tired from working so hard? Mulling over the dreams that had been shattered? A stolen vehicle the police were chasing went through the crosswalk. Meredith’s mother, Millicent, had died at the scene, after valiantly throwing her body in front of the stroller. Carly had succumbed to her injuries a few days later, God deaf to the pleas and prayers of Meredith.
Now, the apartment seemed extra empty and quiet tonight, no doubt because today, for the first time in so long, Meredith had allowed herself to feel connected to another human being.
Meredith set her bag inside the door, and went straight to the bookshelf, where there were so many pictures of her baby, Carly. She chose her favorite, took it to the couch, and traced the lines of her daughter’s chubby cheeks with her fingertips.
With tears sliding down her cheeks, she fell asleep.
When she awoke she was clutching the photo to her breast. But instead of feeling the sadness she always felt when she awoke with a photo of her daughter, she remembered the laughter, and the happiness she had felt today.
And felt oddly guilty. How could she? She was not ready to be happy again. Nor could she trust it. Happiness came, and then when it went, as it inevitably did, the emptiness was nearly unbearable.
Meredith considered herself strong. But not strong enough to hope. Certainly not strong enough to sustain more loss. She was not going to embrace the happiness she had felt today. No, not at all. In fact, she was going to steel herself against it.
But the next morning she was aware she was not the only one who had steeled herself against what had happened yesterday.
If Meredith thought they had made a breakthrough yesterday when she had ridden the horse and Kiernan had danced in the courtyard with her, she now saw she was sadly mistaken.
He had arrived this morning in armor. And he danced like it, too! Was the kiss what had done it? Or the whole day they had experienced together? No matter, he was as stiffly formal as though he had never placed his hand on her rump to sling her into the saddle of his horse, as if he had never walked in front of her, chatting about his childhood on the palace grounds.
Meredith tried to shrug her sense of loss at his aloofness away and focus on the job at hand.
She had put together a modified version of the newlyweds’ dance from the internet and Prince Kiernan had reluctantly approved the routine for An Evening to Remember. She had hoped to have some startling, almost gymnastic, moves in it, which would show off the prince’s amazing athletic ability.
But the prince, though quite capable of the moves, was resistant.
“Does the word sexy mean anything to you?”
Something burned through his eyes, a fire, but it was quickly snuffed. “I’m doing my best,” he told her with cool reserve, not rattl
ed in the least.
But he wasn’t. Because she had glimpsed his best. This did not even seem like the same man she had danced with yesterday in the courtyard, so take-charge, so breathtakingly masculine, so sure.
The stern line of his lip was taking on a faintly rebellious downward curve. Pretty soon, he would announce enough and another day of practice would be lost.
Not that yesterday had been lost.
She sighed. “You know the steps. You know the rudiments of each move. But you’re like a schoolboy reciting math tables by rote. Something in you holds back.”
“That’s my nature,” he said. “I’m reserved. Something in me always holds back.” His eyes fastened on her lips, just for a split second, and she felt her stomach do a loop-the-loop worthy of an acrobatic airplane.
If he didn’t hold back, would he kiss her? What would his lips taste like? Feel like? Given her resolve to back away from all those delicious things she had felt yesterday, Meredith was shocked by how badly she wanted to know. She was shocked by the sudden temptation to throw herself at him and take those lips, to shock the sensuality out of him.
But she also needed for both of them to hold back if she was going to keep her professional distance. And she needed just as desperately for him to let go if she was going to feel professional pride in teaching him!
It was a quandary.
“Is it your nature to be reserved,” she questioned him, “or your role in life?”
“In my case, those are inextricably intertwined.”
He said that without apology.
“I understand that, but in dancing there is no holding back. You have to put everything into it, all that you were, all that you have been, all that you hope to be someday.”
The question was, if he gave her all that, how was she going to walk away undamaged?
“This is a ten-minute performance at a fund-raiser,” he reminded her, “not the final exam for getting into heaven.”
But that’s what she wanted him to experience, exactly. She realized for her it had become about more than their performance.
There was a place when you danced well, where you became part of something larger. It was an incredible feeling. It was a place where you rose above problems. And tragedies. A place where you were free of your past and your heartaches. Yes, just like touching heaven.