by Cara Colter
“My mother wants to meet you.”
“She does?” Meredith gulped. “Why?”
“Because I told her I’ve met the woman I intend to spend the rest of my life with.”
Meredith took a step back from him, not sure she had heard him correctly, her heart beating an ecstatic tattoo within her chest. “But you haven’t told me that yet!”
He cocked his head at her, and grinned. “I guess I just did.”
She flew into his arms, and it felt like going home. It felt exactly the way she had wanted to feel her whole life.
“You know how I feel right now?” she whispered into his chest. “I feel safe. And protected. I feel cared about. I feel cherished.”
“You make me feel those things, too,” he whispered back.
“And I feel absolutely terrified. Your mother? That makes everything seem rather official.”
“You see, that’s the thing. After you’ve met my mother, it’s going to be official. You’re going to be my girl. And then my fiancée. And then my wife.”
“Huh. Is that your excuse for a proposal?”
He laughed. “No. Just forewarning you of what’s to come.” And then he frowned. “If you can handle the pressure. You won’t believe the pressure, Meredith. I’m afraid your life will never be the same. Be sure you know what you want before you walk out that door with me.”
But she had been sure a long time ago. She knew exactly what she wanted. She placed her hand back in his, and felt her whole world was complete.
Someone with a camera had already discovered the limousine parked at her curb, because this time the royal emblem shone gold on the door. The camera was raised and their picture was taken getting into the car together.
He sighed.
But she squeezed his hand and laughed.
“I may be terrified of your mother,” she said, as he settled in the deep leather of the seat beside her, “but I’m not afraid of anything else about being with you. Nothing.” She laid her head on his shoulder and soaked in the strength and solidness of him, soaked in how very right it felt to be at his side.
For a moment there was the most comfortable of silences between them.
“Did you hear that?” he asked, as the car pulled away.
“I’m sorry, did I hear what?”
He looked out the window, twisted over his shoulder to look behind them, settled back with a puzzled look on his face.
“Meredith, I could have sworn I heard a baby laugh.”
She smiled, and the feeling of everything in the world being absolutely right deepened around her.
“No,” she said softly, “I didn’t hear it. But I felt it. I felt it all the way to my soul.”
Kiernan raised his hand to knock on the door of his mother’s quarters. He’d been annoyed that upon delivering Meredith his mother had dismissed him with an instruction to come back in an hour. She had drawn Meredith in and closed the door firmly behind them.
He knew his mother! The inquisition had probably started. Especially after Tiffany, whom his mother had not liked from the beginning, Queen Aleda would feel justified in asking aggressive questions, making quick judgments. Meredith was probably backed into a corner, quivering and in tears.
But as he stood at the door, he was astounded to hear laughter coming through the closed door. He knocked and opened it.
Both women looked up. Meredith was seated, his mother looking over her shoulder. He saw he had underestimated Meredith again. He was going to have to stop doing that.
He noticed his mother had one hand resting companionably on Meredith’s shoulder. His mother did not touch people!
Both women were focused on something on the table, and he recognized what it was.
“Photo albums?” he sputtered. “You’ve just met!”
“Never too soon to look at pictures of you as a baby,” Meredith said. “That one of you in the tub? Adorable.”
“The tub picture?” He glared at his mother, outraged.
“What could I do?” Queen Aleda said with a smile. “Meredith asked me what my greatest treasure was.”
And then the two women exchanged a glance, and he was silent, in awe of the fact their mutual love of him could make such a strong and instant bond between these two amazing women.
In the days and weeks that followed, Kiernan’s amazement at Meredith grew and grew and grew.
The day after their first official public outing, when he had taken her to watch a royal horse run in the Chatam Cup, speculation began to run high. Some version of the picture of Meredith leaning over the royal box to kiss the nose of the horse had made every front page of every major paper around the world.
His press corps was instantly swamped with enquiries. When had he begun dating his dance instructor? Who was she? And especially, what was her background?
“This is the beginning,” he’d told her. “How do you want to handle it?” Meredith called her own press conference.
Yes, she was dating the prince. Yes, they had met while she taught him the dance number for An Evening to Remember. No, she was not worried about his history, because she had a history of her own.
And in a strong, steady voice, without any apology Meredith had laid herself bare. All of it. Wentworth. The too-young pregnancy. Her abandonment by the father of her child. The baby. The lost dance dreams. The grinding poverty. The tragedy that took her mother and her child. The insurance money that had allowed her to start No Princes.
She had left the press without a single thing to dig for. And instead of devouring her, the press had adored her honesty, and the fact she was just one of the people. Unlike so many celebrities that the press waited breathlessly to turn on, their love affair with Meredith was like his own.
And like that of all the people of Chatam.
The more they knew her, the more they loved her.
And she loved them right back. She became the star of every event they attended, the new and quickly beloved celebrity. From film festivals at Cannes to her first ski trip to catch the last spring snow in Colorado, she bewitched everyone who met her.
She was astonishingly at home, no matter where he took her.
But the part he loved the most was that none of it went to her head. She was still the girl he had first met. Maybe even more that girl as she came into herself, as love gave her a confidence and a glow that never turned off.
Meredith could be on the red carpet at a film premiere one day, and the next day she was just as at home on her bicycle, visiting a Chatam farmer’s market. She delighted in surprising brides and grooms in Chatam on their wedding days by dropping by the reception to offer her good wishes.
When he begged her to allow him to offer her security, she just laughed at him. “I’ve already been through the worst life can give out, Kiernan. I’m not afraid.”
And she really wasn’t. Meredith was born to love. It seemed her capacity to give and receive love was endless.
And since he was the major benefactor of all that love, who was he to stop her?
Besides, he knew something he had not known a few months ago, and probably would not have believed if someone had tried to tell him.
There were angels. And Meredith had two who protected and guided her. What other explanation for the series of coincidences that had brought them together? How had she landed right on his doorstep? How had Adrian come to be injured so that the right prince could meet her? How was it that Kiernan had gone against his own nature, and agreed to learn to dance? How was it he had seen something in her from the very beginning, that he could not resist?
From that first moment, watching her dance, Kiernan had known she held a secret that could change his life. Known it with his heart and not his head.
And only angels could have made him listen to his heart instead of his head.
But angels aside, there was no ignoring the very human side of what was happening to them.
He wanted her. He wanted her in every way that a man could want a
woman. Their kisses were becoming more fevered. The times when they were alone were becoming a kind of torture of wanting.
The thing was, he would never take her without honor.
Never. What that other man had done to her was unconscionable. He would never be like him, never, ever remind Meredith of him. He would not use her obvious passion for him, or her willingness to have his way with her. He always backed away at the last possible moment.
There were honorable steps a man had to take to be with his woman. He had to earn his way there. It did not matter that it was his intention to marry her, and it was, even though he knew they had only known each other a short while, only months.
But he knew his own heart, too.
And he knew it was time.
CHAPTER TEN
MEREDITH WOKE UP to a sound at her window. Something was hitting against it. She groaned and pulled the pillow over her head.
Kiernan was probably right. She was going to have to move to a building with security. That was probably some fledging reporter out there hoping to get the shot that would make his career.
Despite her attempts to ignore it, the sound came again, louder. A scattering of pebbles across her pane.
And then louder yet!
She got up, annoyed. They were going to break the window! But when she shoved it up, and leaned out, ready to give someone a piece of her mind, it was Kiernan who stood below her.
“What are you doing?” Her annoyance now was completely faked. Sometimes she could still not believe this man, a prince outside, and a prince inside, too, was looking at her like that. With such open adoration in his eyes.
Of course the feeling was completely mutual!
“I have a surprise for you.”
“What time is it?” she asked with completely faked grumpiness.
“Going on midnight.”
“Kiernan, go home and go to bed.”
“Quit pretending you can resist me. Get dressed and come down here.”
She stuck out her tongue at him and slammed the window shut, but she quickly changed out of her pajamas, yanking on an old dance sweatsuit.
“I see you are working hard at impressing me,” he said, kissing her on the nose as she reached the bottom of her stairs.
“As you are me,” she teased back. “Waking me at midnight. I have work tomorrow. We don’t all have lives of leisure.”
This was said completely jokingly. She seemed, more than anyone else, to respect how hard he worked, and how many different directions he was pulled in a day. He was still savoring the newness of having someone at his side who was willing to back him up, to do whatever she needed to do to ease his burdens, to make his life simpler.
He held open the door of an unmarked car for her. Tonight as no other he did not want the press trailing them.
She snuggled under his arm. “What are you up to?”
But he wouldn’t tell her.
They sailed through the roadblock he’d had put up to close the popular road, just for this one night. Meredith peeked out the car window with curiosity, and then recognition. “Are we going where I think we are going?”
The car stopped at the pull-out for Chatam Hot Springs. He held out his hand to her and drew her out of the car, led her up the path, lit by torches tonight, that led the way to the springs.
When they got there, he savored the look on her face. No detail had been overlooked.
There were torches flaming around the pool, but the bubbling waters of the springs were mostly illuminated by thousands upon thousands of candles that glowed from every rock and every surface.
“I didn’t bring a suit,” she whispered, looking around with that look he had come to live for.
A kind of pinch me I must be dreaming look.
“There’s a change tent for you over there,” he said. “You’ll find a number of bathing suits to choose from.”
She emerged from the tent a few minutes later, and he, already changed, was waiting on the edge of a rock with his feet dangling in the water. He smiled at her choice. Though there was staff here, they were invisible at the moment.
“The black one,” he said with a shake of his head. “I was hoping for something skimpier. The red one, with the polka dots.”
“How did you know about the red one with the polka dots?” she demanded.
“Because I picked each one myself, Meredith.”
“That must have been very embarrassing for you,” she said. “Careful, the press will dub you the pervert prince.”
He leered at her playfully. “And let’s hope it’s deserved.”
This is how it was with them. Endlessly playful. Teasing. Comfortable. Fun. And yet the respect between them also grew.
As did the heat.
As she crossed the slippery rock to him he could easily see that the black tank-style suit was so much more sexy than the polka dot bikini! Instead of sitting demurely beside him, Meredith pretended to touch his shoulders lovingly and then shoved with all her might.
And then turned and ran.
He caught up with her at the mud pool.
And they played in the mud, and swam and played some more until they were both exhausted with joy.
And then he sent her back to the change tent.
Where he knew all the rejected bathing suits had been whisked away, and in their place were designer gowns like the ones she had refused to let him buy for her for all the public outings they had attended.
While she changed, a table was set up for them and waiters appeared, along with a chef fussing about the primitive conditions he’d had to prepare his food in.
When she’d emerged from the change tent this time, Kiernan’s mouth fell open. Meredith had stunned him with her beauty even in the off-the-rack dresses she insisted on wearing.
But now she had chosen the most racy of the gowns that he had picked out for her. It was red and low-cut.
She had even put on some of the jewelry he had put out for her, and a diamond necklace blazed at her neck and diamond droplets fell from her ears.
“I am looking at a princess,” he said, bowing low over her hand and kissing it.
“I’ve told you no to this extravagance, Kiernan.”
And yet, despite her protest, he could not help but notice that she was glowing with a certain feminine delight. She knew she looked incredible.
He led her to the table, laid out with fine linen and the best of china, and the waiters served a sumptuous feast.
She knew most of the palace staff by name, and addressed each of them.
When they had finished eating, she smiled at him. “Okay. I give it to you, you can’t ever top this.”
“But I will.”
“You can’t.”
He called one of the waiters and a cooler was brought to their table. Inside it was one Triple Widgie Hot Fudge Sundae and two spoons.
In that perfect environment, their worlds combined effortlessly.
“I love it all,” she said. “But you shouldn’t have bought all the dresses, Kiernan. I can’t accept them, and you probably can’t return them.”
“I’m afraid as my wife you’ll be expected to keep a certain standard,” he said. “And as your husband I will be proud to provide it for you.”
He dropped down on his knee in front of her, slid a box from his pocket and opened it.
Inside was a diamond of elegant simplicity. He knew her. He knew she would never want the flashy ring, the large karat, the showpiece.
And he knew her answer.
He saw it in her eyes, in the tears that streamed down her face, in the smile that would not stop, despite the tears.
“Will you marry me?” he asked. “Will you make my world complete, Meredith?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Of course yes, a thousand times yes.”
He rose to his feet, gathered her in his arms and held her. And his world finally was complete.
Meredith stared at herself in the mirror. She was in her slip at the dre
ssing table, the bridal gown hung behind her. For a moment her eyes caught on it, and she felt a delicious quiver of disbelief.
Could this really be her life? A wedding gown out of a dream, yards and yards of ivory silk and seed pearls. Could this really be her life? Crowds had begun to form early this morning, lining the streets of Chatam from downtown all the way to Chatam Cathedral.
“You look so beautiful,” Erin murmured.
Meredith gazed at the girl behind her.
Despite the pressure to have a huge wedding party, Meredith had chosen to have one attendant, Erin Fisher.
“So do you,” she said.
“It’s your day,” Erin said, nonetheless pleased, “just focus on yourself for once, Miss Whit.”
“All right.”
“Now don’t you look beautiful?”
She did look beautiful. More beautiful than she could have ever imagined she was going to look.
And it wasn’t just the wedding gown, the hair, the makeup.
No, a radiance was pouring out of her, too big to contain within her skin.
“Are you crying?” Erin asked in horror. “Don’t! We just did the makeup.”
Meredith had been offered a room at the palace to get ready, and ladies in waiting to help her. She had said no to both. She wanted to be in this little apartment over her studio one last time. She wanted her girls to be around her.
Erin handed her a tissue and scolded. “I hope those are happy tears.”
Meredith thought about it for a moment. “Not really, no.”
“You are about to marry the most glorious man who ever walked and those aren’t happy tears? Honestly, Miss Whit, I’m going to pinch you!”
“Don’t pinch me. I might wake up.”
“Tell me why they aren’t happy tears.”
“I was crying for the girl I used to be, the one who expected so little of life, who had such small dreams for herself. I was thinking of the girl who stood on those city hall steps, in a cheap dress, holding a tiny posy of flowers. I was thinking of the girl who felt so broken, as if it was her fault, some defect in her that caused him not to come, not to want to share the dream with her.