by Cara Colter
“I bet she loved that one.”
“It’s true!”
“She isn’t the kind who would take kindly to you micromanaging her world.”
“She’s not. She doesn’t trust me. I showed her everything I was, and she rejected it. She believed the worst of me, just like everyone else is so quick to do.”
“Kiernan, you are making excuses.”
“Why would I do that?”
“You are terrified of what that woman would require of you.”
“I’m not.”
“Don’t you get it? This is your chance. You might only get one. Take it. Be happy. Do something for yourself for once. Go sweep old Dragon-heart right off her feet.”
“Don’t call her that.”
“I can’t believe I missed it!” His cousin became uncharacteristically serious. “She’s worthy of you, Kiernan. She’s strong. And spunky. She’s probably the best thing that ever happened to you. Don’t let it slip away.”
And suddenly Kiernan thought of how awful she had looked when she had left the yacht. She was afraid. He’d taken that personally, as if it was about him. But of course she was afraid! She had lost everything to love once before. She was terrified to believe in him, to trust.
And Adrian was right. He was not doing the right thing. Sulking because she didn’t trust him, not seeing what lay beneath that lack of trust. Why should she trust the world? Or him? Had the world brought her good things? No, it had taken them. Had love brought her good things? No, it had shattered her.
Instead of seeing that, he had insisted on making it about him.
He was going to have to be a better man than that to be worthy of her. He was going to have to go get her from that lonely world she had fled to in her fear and distrust.
Kiernan of Chatam was going to have to learn what it really meant to be a woman’s prince.
Something sighed within him.
He was ready for the challenge. He was about to go rescue the maiden from the dragon of fear and loneliness she had allowed to take up residence in her heart.
“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted.
Adrian smiled. “Sure, you do. You have to woo the girl. Just the same as any old Joe out there on the street. She isn’t going to just fall at your feet because you’re a prince, you know. For God’s sake, she runs an organization called No Princes. Playing hard to get is going to be a point of pride with her.
“And don’t look so solemn. For once in your life, Kiernan, have some fun.”
The show must go on, Meredith thought as she found herself, in a white smock in a crowded dressing room, waiting, her heart nearly pounding out of her chest. She had never been this nervous about a performance.
“Miss Whit,” one of the girls said excitedly. “He’s here. He’s come. Ohmygod, he’s the most glorious man I ever laid me eyes on.”
“My eyes,” Meredith corrected woodenly.
“The music’s starting,” Erin whispered. “Oh, I can’t believe this is happening to me. My production is becoming a reality. I just looked out the curtain. Miss Whit, it’s standing room only out there.”
For them. She had to pull this off for them, her girls, all that she had left in her world.
“I’m on,” Erin said. “I’m so scared.”
Meredith shook herself out of her own fear, and went and gave her protégée a hard hug.
“Dazzle them!” she said firmly.
And then she stood in the wings. And despite her gloom, her heart began to swell with pride as she saw Erin’s vision come to life. The girls in the opening number carried the buckets of cleaning ladies, or wore waitresses’ uniforms. Some of them carried school bags. All had on too much makeup. They were hanging around a street lamp, targets for trouble.
And here came trouble. Boys in carpenter’s aprons, and baker’s hats, leather jackets with cigarettes dangling from their lips.
The girls and the guys were dancing together, shy, flirtatious, bold, by turns.
And then Erin, who had been given the starring role, was front and center in her white smock that said Molly over the pocket, and she was staring worshipfully at a boy in a white jacket that said Andy on the pocket.
The lights went off them, and the empty spot on the stage filled with mist.
It was time for the dream sequence.
The three-step bridal waltz began to play, and feeling as if she was made of wood, Meredith came on stage.
Kiernan was coming toward her.
How unfair that while she suffered, he looked better than ever! No doubt to make his costume more realistic, he had a few days growth of unshaven beard.
Meredith went to him, felt her hand settle into his, his hand on her waist.
Her eyes closed against the pain of it.
Last time.
Even as she thought it, she could hear a whisper ripple through the crowd. It became a rumble as the spotlight fell on them, and recognition of Kiernan grew.
“You look awful,” he said in her ear.
“I’ve been working very hard with the girls,” she whispered back haughtily. She stumbled slightly. He covered for her.
“Liar. Pining for me.”
She tried to hide her shock. “Why would a girl like me pine for you?” she snapped at him. “We both know it’s impossible.”
He was looking at her way too hard.
“You’re afraid,” he said in an undertone. “It was never really horses you were afraid of. It was this.”
The crowd was going crazy. Not only had they recognized their prince, but he was doing something completely unexpected. Kiernan and Meredith picked up the pace, and he found his feet. She tried not to look at the expression on his face.
“Don’t be silly,” she told him in an undertone. “I told you nothing about your world frightens me.”
“You’re afraid of loving me. You have been from the moment we met.”
“Arrogant ass,” she hissed.
“Stubborn lass,” he shot back.
She could feel the fire between them coming out in the way they were dancing. It was unrehearsed, but the audience was reacting to the pure sizzling chemistry.
She couldn’t look away from him. His look had become so fierce. So tender. So protective. So filled with longing.
He knew the truth, anyway, why try to hide it? Why not let it come out in this dance?
It occurred to her that even if he couldn’t have her, even if she would never be suitable for his world, that he wanted her, and that he wished things were not the way they were.
One last time, she would give herself this gift.
She would be Molly and he would be Andy, just two crazy ordinary kids in love. Everything changed the moment she made that decision. She would say to him with this dance what she intended to never admit to him in person.
She found her feet. She found his rhythm.
And they danced. She let go of all her armor. She let go of all her past hurt. She let go of all her fear. She let go of that little worm of self-doubt that she was not good enough.
Meredith danced as she had never danced, every single secret thing she had ever felt right out there in the open for all the world to see.
At some point, she was not Molly. Not at all. She was completely herself, Meredith Whitmore.
For this one priceless moment, she didn’t care who saw her truth. Though thousands watched, they were alone, dancing for each other.
And then he let her go, and the crowd became frenzied as he moved into his solo piece.
He tore off the white smock.
And suddenly she saw his truth. It was not dancing as Andy that allowed him to dance like this.
It was dancing as Kiernan.
Everything he truly was came out now: sensual, strong, commanding, tender. Everything.
By the time he came across the floor to her that one last time, the tears were streaming down her face for the gift he had given her.
He had given her his everything.
He had put every single thing he was into that dance. Not for the audience who was going wild with delight.
Not for the girls who cheered and screamed from the wings.
For her. He stared down at her.
It was not in any way a scripted part of the performance. He took her lips with exquisite tenderness.
She tasted him, savored, tried to memorize it.
With the cheering in the building so loud it sounded as if the rafters would collapse on them, she pulled away from the heaven of his lips, touched his cheek. Though the whole world watched it felt, still, as if they were alone.
Goodbye.
“Thank you,” she whispered through her tears. “Thank you, Kiernan.” And then she turned and fled.
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS THE DAY AFTER An Evening to Remember. Meredith’s phone had been ringing off the hook, but she wouldn’t answer.
Still, people left messages. They wanted lessons from her dance school. They wanted to donate money to No Princes.
Erin Fisher’s excited voice told her she had been offered a full scholarship to Chatam University.
The press wanted to know what it felt like to dance with a prince. They wanted to know if she had been the one to teach the prince with two left feet to dance like that. They especially wanted to know if there was something going on, or if it had all been a performance.
After several hours of the phone ringing she went and pulled the connection out of the wall.
She didn’t want to talk to anybody.
Maybe not for a long, long time.
Just as she had suspected, the video had been posted online within seconds of the performance finishing.
The website had collapsed this morning, for the first time in its history, from too many hits on that video.
“Most of those hits from me,” Meredith admitted ruefully. She had watched their dance together at least a dozen times before the site had crashed.
Seeing something in it, basking in it.
Was love too strong a word?
Probably. She used it anyway.
There was a knock on her door. She hoped the press had not discovered where she lived. She tried to ignore it, but it came again, more insistent than the last time. She pulled a pillow over her head. More rapping.
“Meredith, open the damn door before I kick it down!”
She pulled the pillow away from her face, sat up, stunned, hugging it to her.
“I mean it. I’m counting to three.”
She went and peered out her security peephole.
“One.”
Prince Kiernan of Chatam was out on her stoop, in an Andy jacket and dark glasses.
“Two.”
She threw open the door, and then didn’t know what to do. Throw herself at him? Play it cool? Weep? Laugh?
“Lo, Molly,” he said casually.
Don’t melt.
“Just wondered if you might like to come down to the pub with me. We’ll have a pint and throw some darts.”
“Once you lose the sunglasses everyone will know who you are.” Plus, they’d probably all seen the Andy getup on the video. He’d be swamped.
“Let’s live dangerously. I’ll leave the glasses on. You can tell people I have a black eye from fighting for your honor.”
“Kiernan—”
“Andy,” he told her sternly.
“Okay, Andy.” She folded her arms protectively over her chest. “Why are you doing this?”
He hesitated a heartbeat, lifted the glasses so she could look into his eyes. “I want us to get to know each other. Like this. As Andy and Molly. Without the pressure of the press following us and speculating. I want us to build a solid foundation before I introduce you to the world. I want you to know I have your back when they start coming at you.”
“You’re going to introduce me to the world?” she whispered. “You’re going to have my back?”
“Meredith, I miss you. Not seeing you was like living in a world without the sun. It was dark and it was cold.”
She could feel the utter truth of it to her toenails.
“I miss the freedom I felt with you,” he went on quietly. “I miss the sense of being myself in a way I never was before. I miss being spontaneous. I miss having fun. Will you come out and play with me? Please?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
“Come on, then. Your chariot awaits.”
She could not resist him. She had never been able to resist him.
“I’m in my pajamas.”
“So you are. Ghastly things, too. I picture you in white lace.”
She gulped from the heat in his eyes.
“Go change,” he said, and there was no missing the fact she had just been issued a royal order.
“Royal pain in the butt,” she muttered, but she stood back from the door, and let him in.
Surely once he saw how ordinary people lived—tiny quarters, hotplate, faded furniture—he would realize he was in the wrong world and turn tail and run.
But he didn’t. True to Andy he went and flung himself on her worse-for-wear couch, picked up a book she hadn’t looked at for weeks and raised wicked eyebrows at her.
“Did you dream of me when you read this?” he asked.
“No!” She went and slammed her bedroom door, made herself put on the outfit—faded jeans, a prim blouse—that was the least like the one she had worn the other night on the yacht. It was the casual outfit of an ordinary girl.
But when she reemerged from the bedroom, the look in his eyes made her feel like a queen.
Feeling as if she was in a dream, Meredith followed him down the steep stairs that led from her apartment to the alley. Leaning at the bottom of the stairs was the most horrible-looking bike she had ever seen.
Kiernan straddled it, lowered his sunglasses, patted the handlebars. “Get on.”
“Are you kidding? You’ll kill us both.”
“Ah, but what a way to go.”
“There is that,” she said, with a sigh. She settled herself on the handlebars.
His bike riding was terrible. She suspected he could barely ride a bike solo, let alone riding double. He got off to a shaky start, nearly crashing three times before they got out of her laneway.
Once he got into the main street he was even more hazardous, weaving in and out of traffic, wobbling in front of a double-decker bus.
“Give ’em the bird, love,” he called when someone honked angrily when he wobbled out in front of them.
She giggled and did just that.
At the pub, true to his word, he left the glasses on. She thought people might recognize him, but perhaps because of the plain lucridness of the whole thought that a prince would be in the neighborhood pub, no one did.
They ordered fish and chips, had a pint of tap beer, they threw darts. Then they got back on the bike and he took the long way home, pedaling along the river. She wasn’t sure if her heart was beating that fast because of all the times he nearly dumped them both in the inky water of the Chatam Channel, or because she was so exhilarated by this experience.
“Where is this going?” Meredith asked sternly when he dropped her at her doorstep with a light kiss on the nose.
“My whole life,” he said solemnly, “I’ve known where everything was going. I’ve always had an agenda, a protocol, a map, a plan. The very first time I saw you dance, I knew you had something I needed.
“I didn’t know what it was, but whatever it was, it was what made me say yes to learning the number for An Evening to Remember.”
“And do you know what it was now?” she asked, curious, intrigued despite herself.
“Passion,” he said. “My whole life has been about order and control. And when I saw you dance that day I caught a glimpse of what I had missed. The thing is, I felt bereft that I had missed it.
“Meredith, you take me to places I have never been before. And I don’t mean a hot spring or a pub. Places inside myself that I have n
ever been before. Now that I’ve been there, I can’t live with the thought of not going there anymore.”
He kissed her on the nose again. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Look,” she said, trying to gain some control back, “I just can’t put my whole life on hold because you want me to take you places!”
He laughed, and leaned close to her. “But I’ve been saving my money so I can get us a Triple Widgie Hot Fudge Sundae from Lawrence’s. To share.”
“That’s incredibly hard to resist,” she admitted.
“The sundae or me?”
“The sharing.”
“Ah.” He looked at her long and hard. “Embrace it, Molly. Just embrace it.”
“All right.” She surrendered.
And that’s what she did. She put her whole life on hold.
But not really.
She just embraced a different life.
Carefree and full of adventure.
Over the next few weeks, as Andy and Molly, they biked every inch of that island. They discovered hidden beaches. They ate ice cream at roadside stands. They laughed until their sides hurt. They went to movies. They roller-skated.
And just when she was getting used to it all, that familiar knock came on the door, but it was not Andy who stood there. Not this time.
This time it was Prince Kiernan of Chatam, in dark suit trousers and a jacket, a crisp white shirt, a dark silk tie.
He bowed low over her hand, kissed it.
“Aren’t we going bike riding?” she asked.
“I love your world, Meredith, but now it’s time for you to come into mine.”
“I—I— I’ll have to change,” she said, casting a disparaging look down at her faded T-shirt, her pedal pushers, and old sneakers.
“Only your clothes,” he said quietly. “Nothing else. Don’t change one other thing about you. Promise me.”
“I promise,” she said, and scooted back into her bedroom to find something suitable to wear for an outing with a prince. A few minutes later, in a pencil skirt of white linen and a blue silk top, she joined him.
“Are you ready for this?” he asked, holding out his hand to her.
“Ready for what, exactly?” She took his hand, gazed up at him, still unable to quite grasp that a prince was wooing an ordinary girl like her.