by Cara Colter
But somehow she could not tell him that. It was too ambitious. He was right. It was a ten-minute performance for the fund-raiser opening of Blossom Week. Meredith was here to teach him a few dance steps, nothing more.
When had it become her quest to unlock him? To show him something of himself that he had never seen before? To want him to experience that feeling. Of heaven.
And that she was dying to see?
It had all become too personal. And she knew that. She had to get her own agenda straight in her head.
Teach him to do the routine, perform it well, and be satisfied if the final result was passable if not spectacular. The prince putting in a surprising appearance, making a game effort at the steps would be enough. The people of Chatam would love his performance, a chance to see him let his hair down, even if he was somewhat wooden.
Though, for her, to only accomplish a passable result would feel like a failure of monumental proportions. Especially since she had glimpsed yesterday what he could be.
Her eyes suddenly fell on two jackets that hung on pegs inside the coat check at the far end of the ballroom. They were the white jackets of the palace housekeeping staff.
As soon as she saw them, she knew exactly what she had to do.
And as she contemplated the audacity of her plan, she could have sworn she heard a baby laugh, as if it was so right.
It was a memory of laughter, nothing more, but she could see the face of the beautiful child who had been taken from her as clearly as though she still had the photo on her chest.
She was aware again, of something changing in her. Sweetly. Subtly. It wasn’t that she wasn’t sad. It was that the sadness was mixed with something else.
A great sense of gratitude for having known love so deeply and so completely.
Meredith was suddenly aware that her experience with love had to make her a better person.
It had to.
Her daughter’s legacy to her had to be a beautiful one. That was all she had left to honor her with.
And if that meant taking a prince to a place where he was not so lonely and not so alone, even briefly, then that was what she had to do.
It wasn’t about the dance they were doing at all.
It was about the kind of person she was going to choose to be.
And yes, it was going to take all her courage to choose it.
She moved past the prince to the coat check, plucked the jackets off the wall, and then turned back and took a deep breath.
Yesterday, spontaneity had brought them so much closer to the place they needed to be than all her carefully rehearsed plans and carefully choreographed dance steps.
Today, she hoped for magic.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE PRINCE BADLY WANTED his life back. He wanted An Evening to Remember to be over. He wanted the temptation of Meredith over; watching her demonstrate hip moves, taking her hand in his, touching her, looking at her and pretending to love her.
It was easily the most exhausting and challenging work he had ever done, and the performance couldn’t come quickly enough in his opinion.
Though, somewhere in his mind, he acknowledged over would be over. No more rehearsals. No more bossy Meredith Whitmore. Who didn’t respect his station, and was impertinent. Who was digging at him, trying to find the place in him he least wanted her to see, refusing to take no for an answer.
Who could make eating pastries look like an exercise in eroticism one minute, and look at a horse with the wide-eyed wonder of a child the next. Whose lips had felt like butterfly wings against his cheek.
Stop, Kiernan ordered himself.
She was aggravating. She was annoying. She was damnably sexy. But she was also refreshing in a way that was brand new to him. She was not afraid to tell him exactly what she thought, she was not afraid to make demands, she was not afraid of him, not awed by his station, not intimidated by his power.
And that, he reluctantly admitted, was what he was going to miss when it was all over. In so much of his life he was the master. What he said went. No questions. No arguments. No suggestions. No discussion.
How was it that in a dance instructor from Wentworth, he felt he had met his equal?
There was no doubt going to be a huge space in his life once she was gone. It seemed impossible she could have that kind of impact after only a few days. But he didn’t plan to dwell on it.
Prince Kiernan was good at filling spaces in his life. He had more obligations than he had time, anyway, and many of those were stacking up as he frittered away hours and hours learning the dance routine he was coming to hate.
“We’re going to go somewhere else today,” Meredith announced, marching back over from the coat room with something stuffed under her arm. “I think the ballroom itself may be lending to the, er, stuffiness, we’re experiencing. It’s too big, too formal.”
But he knew it wasn’t the room she found stuffy. It was him.
“First stodgy, now stuffy,” he muttered.
“Don’t act insulted. You said yourself the role you play has made you that way.”
“No, you suggested it was the role I played. I said I was born this way. And I never used the word stuffy. I think I said reserved.”
“Okay, whatever,” she said cheerfully. “We’re going to do a little experiment today. With your reserve.”
Oh-oh, this did not bode well for him. He was already hanging onto his control by the merest thread.
“Here,” she said pleasantly, “put this on.”
She handed him one of the white jackets she had stuffed under her arm. The one she handed him had the name Andy embroidered over one pocket in blue thread. He hesitated. What was the little minx up to?
Mischief. He could see it in the twinkle in her eye.
He should stop her before she got started, and he knew that. But despite the fact he had told himself he wasn’t going to dwell on it, soon their time together would be over. Why not see what mischief she had planned? That spark in her eye was irresistible anyway, always reminding him that there was a shadow in her.
Like the unexpected delight of taking her for tea and then on that ride, this was part of the unexpected reprieve he’d been given from the stuffy stodginess of his life. He was aware he wanted to see what she had up her sleeve today.
So he slipped the white jacket over his shirt and did up the buttons. It was too tight across the chest, but she inspected him, and frowned. She went back to the coat check and reappeared with a white ball cap.
“There,” she said, handing it to him. “Pull it low over your eyes. Perfect. All ready to smuggle you out of the palace.” She shrugged into a white jacket of her own. It said Molly on the pocket.
“We can’t smuggle me out of the palace,” he said, but he was aware it was a token protest. Something in him was already taking wing, flying over the walls.
“Why not?”
“There are security concerns. I have responsibilities and obligations you can’t even dream of. I can’t just waltz out of here without letting anyone know where I’m going and why.”
“To improve your waltz, I think you should. See? There’s that reserve again. Your Highness—no, make that Andy—have you ever broken the rules?”
“I don’t have the luxury,” he told her tightly.
She smiled at him. “Prince Kiernan of Chatam doesn’t. Andy does. Let’s go. It’s just for a little while. Maybe an hour. In some ways, you’re a prisoner of your life. Let’s break out. Just this once.”
He stood there for a moment, frozen. Again, he had a sense of her saying what no one else said.
And seeing what no one else saw.
She didn’t see the prince. Not entirely. If she did, she would not have dared to touch his cheek with her lips yesterday. She saw a man first. The trappings of his status underwhelmed her. She saw straight through to the price he paid to be the prince.
And she wanted to rescue him. There was a kind of crazy courage in that that was as irresistible a
s the mischief in her eyes.
Of course he couldn’t just go. It would be the most irresponsible thing he had ever done.
On the other hand, why not? The Isle of Chatam was easily the safest place in the world. He was supposed to be at dance class. No one would even miss him for a few hours.
Suddenly what she was offering him seemed as impossible to resist as the mischief that made her eyes spark more green than brown.
Freedom. Complete freedom, the one thing he had never ever known.
“Coming, Andy?” she said.
He sighed. “Molly, I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Trust me,” she said.
And Kiernan realized he was starting to. The one thing he wanted to do least was trust a woman! And yet somehow she was wiggling her way past his defenses and entering that elite circle of people that he truly trusted.
He followed her outside to the staff parking lot. She led him to the tiniest car he had ever seen, a candy-apple-red Mini.
She got in, and he opened the passenger door and slid in beside her. His knees were in approximately the vicinity of his chin.
“They’ve gotten used to me at the service entrance,” she said. “I’ll just give them a wave and we’ll breeze on through.”
And that’s exactly what happened.
In moments they were chugging along a narrow country road, he holding on for dear life. Kiernan had never ridden in a vehicle that was so…insubstantial. He felt as if they were inches above the ground, and as if every stone and bump on the road was jarring his bones. He actually hit his head on the roof of the tiny vehicle.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Remember I asked you about squishing mud up through your toes?”
“Yes, I do.”
“That’s where we’re going.”
“I don’t want to squish mud up between my toes,” he said, though he recognized his protest, once again, as being token. The moment they had driven through that back service gate to the palace something in him had opened.
He had made a decision to embrace whatever the day held.
“It doesn’t matter if you want to or not. Andy does.”
“But why does he?” he asked.
“Because he likes having fun.”
“Oh, I see. There’s nothing stuffy or stodgy about our man, Andy.”
“Exactly,” she said, and beamed at him with the delight of a teacher who had just helped a child solve a difficult problem. “Andy, you and I are about to give new meaning to Dancing with Heaven.”
“I don’t know the old meaning, Molly.”
“You’ve never seen Dancing with Heaven? It’s a movie. A classic romantic finding-your-true-self movie that has dance at its heart. It starred Kevin McConnell.”
He didn’t care for the dreamy way she said that name.
“I’ll have to put watching Dancing with Heaven on your homework list.”
“Andy doesn’t like homework.”
“That’s true.”
“He likes playing hooky. But when he’s at school?”
“Yes?”
“He winks at the teacher and makes her blush.”
“Oh-oh,” she said.
“He likes motorcycles, and black leather, driving too fast, and breaking rules.”
“My, my.”
“He likes loud music and smoky bars, and girls in too-short skirts and low-cut tops who wiggle their hips when they dance.”
“Oh, dear.”
“He thumbs his nose at convention. He’s cooled off in the town fountain on the Summer Day celebrations, disobeyed the Keep Off signs at Landers Rock, kept his hat on while they sing the national anthem.”
“That’s Andy, all right.”
“He likes swimming in the sea. Naked. In the moonlight.”
Unless he was mistaken, Meredith gulped a little before she said, “I’ve created a monster.”
“You should be more careful who you run away with, Molly.”
“I know.”
“But they say every woman loves a bad boy.”
Something in her face closed. She frowned at the road. Kiernan realized how very little he knew about her, which was strange because he felt as if he knew her deeply.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” He hadn’t thought to ask her that before. There were no rings on her fingers, so he had assumed she was single. Now he wondered why he had assumed that, and wondered at why he was holding his breath waiting for her answer.
“I’m single.” Her hands tightened on the wheel.
“I’m surprised.” But ridiculously relieved. What was that about, since if ever there was a man sworn off love it was him? Why would he care about her marital status?
Only because, he assured himself, he didn’t even want to think about her with a bad boy.
She hesitated, looked straight ahead. “I became pregnant when I was sixteen. The father abandoned me. It has a way of souring a person on romance.” He heard the hollowness in her voice, but he could hear something more.
Unbearable pain. And suddenly his concern for protecting his own damaged heart evaporated.
“And the baby?” he asked quietly. Somehow he knew this woman could never have an abortion. Never.
And that adoption seemed unlikely, too. There was something about the fierce passion of that first dance he had witnessed her performing that let him know that. She would hold on to what she loved, no matter what the cost to her.
He glanced at her face. She was struggling for control. There was something she didn’t want to tell him, and suddenly, with an intuition that surprised him, he knew it was about the shadow that he so often saw marring the light in her eyes.
He held his breath, again, wanting, no, needing to know that somehow she had come to trust him as much as he had come to trust her, even if it was with the same reluctance.
“It was a little girl. I kept her,” she whispered. “Maybe a foolish thing to do. My mom and I had to work night and day cleaning houses to make ends meet. But I don’t regret one second of it. Not one. All I regret is that I couldn’t be with her more. With both of them more.”
He felt a shiver go up and down his spine.
“My mom picked her up from day care for me on a particularly hectic day. They were crossing a street when a stolen car being chased by the police hit them.”
Her voice was ragged with pain.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, aware of how words were just not enough. “You seem much too young to have survived such a tragedy.”
In a broken whisper she went on, “She wasn’t even a year old yet.”
Her shoulders were trembling. She refused to look at him, her eyes glued to the road.
He wanted to scream at her to pull over, because he needed to gather her in his arms and comfort her. But from the look on her face there were some things there was no comforting for.
“I’m so sorry,” he said again, feeling horrible and helpless. He reached out and patted her shoulder, but she shrugged out from under his hand, her shoulder stiff with pride.
“It’s a long time ago,” she said, with forced brightness. “Today, let’s just be Molly and Andy, okay?”
It couldn’t be that long ago. She wasn’t old enough for it to have been that long ago.
But she had trusted him with this piece of herself.
And her trust felt both fragile and precious. If he said the wrong thing it felt like this precious thing she had offered him would shatter.
Still, he could not quite let it go. He had to listen to the voice inside him that said, ask her.
“Could you tell me their names? Your baby’s and your mother’s?” he asked, softly, ever so softly. “Please?”
She was silent for so long that he thought she would refuse this request. When she answered, he felt deeply moved, as if she had handed him her heart.
“Carly,” she whispered. “My baby’s name was Carly. My mother’s was Millicent, but everyone called her Millie.”
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“Carly,” he said softly, feeling it on his tongue. “Millie.”
And then he nodded, knowing there was nothing else to say, but holding those names to him like the sacred trust that they were.
There was something about the way he said her daughter and mother’s names, with genuine sadness, and a simple reverence, that gave Meredith an unexpected sense of being comforted. Over the past days she had come to know Prince Kiernan in a way that made it easy to forget he was still the most powerful man in the land.
Something about the way he uttered those names made her understand his power in ways she had not before. His speaking Carly’s name was oddly like a blessing.
Meredith felt tears at his gentleness sting her eyes, but she did not let them flow. Kiernan reached out, and loosed her hand from the gearshift, and gave it a hard squeeze before letting it go.
Why had she told him about Carly? And her mother? She could have just as easily left it at she was single.
Was it because she was asking him to let his guard down? And that request required more of her, too? Was it because some part of her had trusted he would handle it in just the right way?
Whatever it was, she waited for a sense of vulnerability to come, a sense that she had revealed too much of herself.
But it did not. Instead, she felt an unexpected sense of a burden that she had carried alone being, not lifted, but shared.
A prince sharing your burden, she scoffed at herself, but her scorn did not change the way she felt, lighter, more open.
But for now, she reminded herself, a newfound sense of awe of Kiernan would not forward her goal. He needed to be taken off his pedestal if she ever hoped to get him to dance as if he meant it.
So for today, Kiernan was not a prince, not the most wealthy, most influential, most powerful man in Chatam. Today he would be just Andy. And she was not a woman with an unbearable sadness in her past, just Molly, two palace housekeeping workers playing hooky from work for the day.