by Cara Colter
She was silent.
He tipped her chin. “Did it remind you of your baby’s father?” he asked softly. “Is that the way you felt about him?”
He remembered the sizzling sensuality between the on-screen couple, and he felt a little pang of, good grief, envy. But this wasn’t about him. He could actually feel her trembling, trying to hold herself together.
“Talk to me, Meredith.”
“It had a happy ending,” she whispered. “I deplore happy endings! If it weren’t for the dance sequences, I would have never asked you to watch such drivel!”
But he was stuck at the I deplore happy endings part. How could anyone so young and so vibrant have stopped believing in a happy ending for herself?
“My baby’s father was older than me, twenty-two. He was new to the neighborhood, and all the girls were swooning over his curly hair and his suave way. I was thrilled that he singled me out for his attention. Thrilled.”
Kiernan felt something like rage building in him at the man he had never met, the man who had used her so terribly, manipulated and fooled a young girl. But he said nothing, fearing that if he spoke, she would clam up.
And he sensed she needed to talk, she needed to say these things she had been holding inside. And he needed to be man enough to listen, without being distracted by her lips and the memory of their taste, without wanting more for himself. Without putting his needs ahead of her own.
“If I had married Michael, my baby’s father, it would have been a disaster,” she said. “I can see that now. As hard as it was for me and my mom to make ends meet, it would have only been harder with him. You want to know how bad my taste is in men? Do you want to know?”
He saw the regret in her eyes and the pain, and he wanted to know everything about her. Everything.
“He didn’t even come to the funeral.”
She began to sob.
And he did what he should have done yesterday in the car, what he had wanted to do.
He pulled her into his chest, and ran his hand up and down her back, soothing her, encouraging her. Let it out.
“I loved him, madly. I guess maybe I held on to this fantasy he was going to come to his senses, do the right thing, come back and rescue me. Prove to my mother she was wrong. Love us.”
If he could have, he would have banished the shame from her face.
“Kiernan,” she said softly, “he didn’t care one fig about me. Not one. And I fooled myself into thinking he did. How can a person ever trust themselves after something like that? How?”
He loved that she had called him his name, no formal address. Wasn’t that what was happening between them? And what he was fighting against?
Deepening trust. Friendship. Boundaries blurring. But as he let her cry against him, he knew it was more. Mere friendship was not something that would put his guard up so high. And mere friendship would never have him feeling a nameless fury at the man who had cruelly used her, walked away from his responsibilities, broken her heart as if it was nothing.
His fury at a man he had never met abated as he became aware of Meredith pressed against him, felt the sacredness of her trust, and this moment.
He was not sure that he had ever felt as much a man as he did right now.
“You deserved so much better,” he finally said.
“Did I?” She sounded skeptical.
He put her away from him, looked deep into the lovely green of her eyes. “Yes,” he said furiously, “you did. As for trusting yourself? My God, cut yourself some slack. You were a child. Sixteen. Is that what you said?”
“Seventeen when Carly was born.”
“A child,” he repeated firmly. “Taken advantage of by an adult man. His behavior was despicable. To be honest? I’d like to track him down and give him a good thrashing!”
She actually giggled a little at that. “Maybe the dungeon?”
He felt relieved that she was coming around, that he saw a spark of light in her eyes. “Exactly! Extra rats!”
“Thank you,” she said, quietly.
“I’m not finished. As for not trusting yourself? Meredith, you have taken these life experiences and made it your mission to change things for others. Do you remember what I said to you when you thanked me for not allowing you to fall off the horse?”
“Yes,” she whispered, “You said it’s not how you fall that matters. You said everyone falls. You said it was how you got up that counted.”
He was intensely flattered that she had heard him so completely. He spoke quietly and firmly. “And how you are getting up counts, Meredith. Helping those Wentworth girls honors your baby. And your mother. And you.”
She gave him a watery smile, pulled away from him, not quite convinced. “Oh, God, look at me. A blithering idiot. In front of a prince, no less.”
And she turned, he could tell she was going to flee, and so he caught her arm. “I’m not letting you go, not just yet. Let’s have tea first.”
Just in case he was beginning to think he was irresistible, she said, “Will it have the little cream puff swans?”
“Yes,” he said. “It will.”
He guided her out of the theater and to the elevator at the end of the hallway and took her to his private apartment.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, standing in the doorway, as if afraid to come in. And maybe he should have thought this out better.
Once she had been in here, would he ever be completely free of her? Or would he see her walking around, pausing in front of each painting like this, always?
“Is it you who loves Monet?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Me, too. I have several reproductions of his work.”
“I understand,” Kiernan said, “that he was nearsighted. That wonderful dreamy, hazy quality in his landscapes was not artistic license but how he actually saw the world. You know what I like about that?”
She looked at him.
“His handicap was his greatest gift. Your hardships, Meredith?”
She was looking at him as if he had a lifeline to throw her. And he hoped he did.
“Your hardships are what make you what you are. Amazingly strong, and yet good. Your goodness shines out of you like a light.”
He turned away to look after tea. But not before he saw that maybe he had said exactly the right thing after all, but maybe not enough of it. She did not look entirely convinced.
He had tea set up on the balcony that overlooked the palace grounds and the stunning views of Chatam.
“Instead of allowing your falls to break you,” he insisted quietly, sitting her down, “you have found your strength.”
“No, really I haven’t.”
Now he felt honor-bound not to let her go until she was convinced. Of her own goodness. Of her innate strength. Of the fact that she had to let go of all that shame. Of the fact she was earning her way, by the way she chose to live her life, to a new future.
“I want to know every single thing there is to know about you. I want to know how you’ve become the remarkable woman you are today.” And he meant that.
She looked wildly toward the exit, but then she met his eyes. But just to keep him from feeling too powerful, then she looked at the tray of goodies a servant was bringing in.
“Oh,” she said. “The cream puffs.”
“I know how to get your secrets out of you, Meredith.”
“There’s nothing remarkable about me.”
“Ah, well, let me decide.”
She mulled that over, and then sighed. Almost surrender. He passed her the tray. She took a cream puff, and sighed again. When she bit into it and closed her eyes he knew her surrender was complete.
They talked for a long, long time. It was deep and it was true and it was real. He felt as if they could sit there and talk forever.
It was late in the afternoon before Meredith looked at her watch, gasped, and made her excuses. Within seconds she was gone. Kiernan was not sure he had ever felt he had connected with s
omeone so deeply, had ever inspired trust such as he had just experienced from her.
Kiernan sat for a long time in a suite that felt suddenly cold and empty for all the priceless art and furniture that surrounded him. It felt as if the life had gone out of it when Meredith had.
Without her the room just seemed stuffy. And stodgy.
He’d liked having her here in his very private space. He’d liked watching the movie with her and how she had not tried to hide the fact she was awed that a president had sat in her chair. He liked how she had acknowledged Bernard who had brought their popcorn and drinks, not treated him as if he was invisible, the way Tiffany always had.
And damn it, he’d liked that movie.
Silly piece of fluff that it was, it was somehow about people finding the courage to be what they were meant to be, to bring themselves to the world, to overcome the strictures of their assigned roles and embrace what was real for them.
And, finally, he had loved how she had come into his space, and how between cream puffs and his genuine interest and concern for her she had become so open. And liked what the afternoon told him about her.
Above all things, Meredith was courageous.
A hardscrabble upbringing, too many losses for one so young, and yet he saw no self-pity in her. She was taking the challenges life had given her and turning them into her greatest assets. She had a quiet bravery to get on with her life.
That’s what she was asking of him. To bring his courage to the dance floor. To dance without barriers, without a mask, and without a safety net.
She was asking him to be who he had been, ever so briefly, when they had chased each other through the mud.
Wholly alive. Completely, unselfconsciously himself.
No guards. No barriers.
And she was asking him to be who he had been just now: deep and compassionate.
Really, what she was asking of him would require more courage than just about anything he had ever done. At the hot springs he had shown that unguarded self to her. And again today there had been something so open and unprotected about their interaction after the movie.
Prince Kiernan felt as if he stood on the very edge of a cliff. Did he take a leap of faith, trusting if he jumped something—or someone—would catch him? Or did he turn away?
“For her sake,” he said to himself, “You turn away.”
But he didn’t know if he was powerful enough to do that. He knew he wanted these last days with her before it was over.
So he could have moments and memories, a secret, something sacredly private in his life, to savor when she was gone.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“FROM THE TOP,” Meredith said. Today’s dancing session, she knew, was going no better than yesterday’s. The movie had changed nothing.
No, that was not true.
It had changed everything.
It had changed her. Maybe not the movie, exactly, but what had happened after.
When Kiernan had held her in her arms, it had felt as if everything she had been fighting for since the death of her mother and baby—independence, strength, self-reliance—it had felt as if those things were melting.
As if some terrible truth had unfolded.
All those qualities that she had striven toward were just distractions from the real truth. And the truth was she was so terribly alone in this world.
And for a moment, for an exquisite, tender moment in the arms of her country’s most powerful man, she had not felt that. Sitting beside him on the balcony of his exquisite apartment, surveying all his kingdom, pouring out her heart, telling her secrets, she had not felt that.
For the first time in forever, Meredith had not felt alone.
And it was the most addictive sensation she had ever felt. She wanted to feel it again. She wanted to never let go of it.
Worse, she had a tormented sense that, though Kiernan walked with kings and presidents, she had seen what was most real about him. It was the laughter at the hot springs, it was his confidence in his horse, it was the tenderness in his eyes as he had listened to her yesterday.
And she had to guard against the feeling that he caused in her.
Because just like the wealthy heiress and the dance instructor in the movie, their worlds were so far apart. But unlike the movie, which was pure escapist fantasy after all, they could never be joined. And the sooner she accepted the absoluteness of that the better.
This morning she felt only embarrassed that she had revealed herself so totally to him. Talked, not just about Michael and Carly, which was bad enough, but about her childhood, growing up with a single mom in Wentworth, and then repeating her family’s history by becoming one herself.
She’d told him about ballet, and her mother’s hope and losing the scholarship when she became pregnant. She’d told him about those desperate days after Carly was born, her mother being there for her, despite her disappointments, Millie loving the baby, but never quite forgiving her daughter.
She told him about the insurance settlement after the tragedy that allowed her to own her own dance studio and form No Princes, and how guilty she felt that her dreams were coming true because the people she had loved the most had died.
Oh, yes, she had said way, way too much. And today, it was affecting her dancing.
She was the one with the guard up. She was the one who could not open herself completely. She was the one who could not be vulnerable on the dance floor. She was trying desperately to take back the ground she had lost yesterday.
And she was failing him. Because she could not let him in anymore. She could not be open.
She was as rigid and closed as the prince had been on that first day. It was the worst of ironies that now he seemed as open as she was closed!
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
The tender concern in his eyes was what was wrong! The fact she was foolishly, unrealistically falling in love with him was what was wrong!
“You know what?” he said, snapping his fingers. “I know I have the power to fix whatever is wrong!”
Yes, he did. He could get down on one knee and say that though the time had been short he realized he was crazy about her. That he couldn’t live without her.
All this work. All this time with No Princes and Meredith’s weaknesses were unabated! She despised that about herself.
“One call,” he said, and smiled at her and left the room.
When he returned he had a paper bag with him, and with the flourish of a magician about to produce a rabbit, he opened it and handed her a crumpled white piece of fabric.
“Ta-da,” he said as she shook out the white smock.
“What is this?”
“I think I’ve figured it out,” he said, pulling another smock from the bag and tugging it over his own shirt.
It had Andy embossed across the breast.
She stared down at the smock in her hand. Sure enough, he had unearthed Molly’s smock.
“Remember when you told me this kind of dancing is like acting?”
Meredith nodded.
“Well, I’m going to be Andy for the rest of the rehearsals. And you’re going to be Molly.”
She stared at him stunned. She wanted to refuse. She wanted to get out of this with her heart in one piece.
But she could not resist the temptation of the absolute brilliance of it. If she could pretend to be someone else, if she could pretend he was someone else, there was a slim chance she could save this thing from catastrophe. And maybe, at the same time, she could save herself from the catastrophe of an unattainable love.
But it seemed the responsibility for saving things had been wrested from her. Kiernan took charge. He went and put on the music, turned and gazed at her, then held out his hands to her.
“Shall we dance, Molly?”
She could only nod. She went and took his hands, felt the way they fit together. Her resolve, which she could have sworn was made of stone, melted at his touch.
“Remember Andy?”
he said, smiling down at her as they began the opening waltz.
She gave herself over to this chance to save the dance. “Isn’t he that devilish boy who won’t do his homework?”
“Except he did watch Dancing with Heaven.”
“Used class time, though.”
“That’s true.”
Kiernan had those opening steps down perfect. A little awkwardness, a faint stiffness, a resolve to keep his distance in his posture.
The transition was coming.
“Andy,” she reminded him, getting into the spirit of this, embracing it, “winks at the teacher and makes her blush.”
And Kiernan became that young fellow—on the verge of manhood, able to tie his teacher in knots with a blink of sapphire-colored eyes.
“I think he makes her drop things, too,” Meredith conceded, and her blush was real. “And forget what she’s teaching at all.”
Kiernan smiled at her with Andy’s wicked devil-may-care-delight. Through dance he became the young man who rode motorcycles, and wore black leather. He was the guy who drove too fast and broke rules.
Something about playing the role of the bad boy unleashed Kiernan. He was playful. He was commanding. He was mischievous. He was bad.
His hips moved!
They moved to the next transition, and Kiernan released her hand. He claimed the dance floor as his own.
He claimed it. Then he owned it.
Meredith’s mouth dropped open as he tore off the smock that said Andy on it, and tossed it to the floor.
Before her eyes, Kiernan became the man who liked loud music and smoky bars, and girls in too-short skirts and low-cut tops who wiggle their hips when they dance. He became the guy who cooled off in the town fountain, claimed Landers Rock as his own, kept his hat on during the anthem.
He became a man so comfortable with himself that he would delight in swimming in the sea naked under the moonlight.
And then came the final transition.
And he was no longer an immature young man, chasing skirts and adrenaline rushes, breaking rules just for the thrill of having said he had done it.
Now he was a man, claiming the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.