by Cara Colter
He crossed the floor to her, and they went seamlessly to the finale—dancing together as if nothing else in the world existed except each other, and the heat, the chemistry between them.
Meredith was not Meredith. She was Molly.
And something about being Molly unleashed her just as much as being Andy had unleashed him. She didn’t have a history. She was just a girl from the kitchen who wanted something more out of life: not drudgery, but a hint of excitement wherever she could find it.
By playing Molly, Meredith came to understand her younger self.
And forgive her.
Finally, with both of them breathless, the music stopped. But Kiernan did not let her go. He stared at her silently, his eyes saying what his mouth did not.
She pulled away from him. Her smile was tremulous.
“It was perfect,” she breathed.
“I know. I could feel it.”
She had to get hold of herself; despite this breakthrough she had to find the line between professional and personal. She had to get over the feeling of wanting to take his lips and taste them, of wanting more than she could have, of wanting more than he could offer her.
“You know what would be brilliant?” Meredith said crisply. “We can alter the real performance dream sequence slightly so that it is Andy and Molly, and Andy transforms into a prince.”
He was looking at her just as he had on the balcony of his private suite. With eyes that saw right through her professional blither-blather to the longing that was underneath.
She was only human.
And he was only human.
If she was going to keep this thing on the tracks until the performance at An Evening to Remember she had to make a drastic decision, and she had to make it right now.
“You know what this means, don’t you?”
He shook his head.
“We’re finished.”
“Finished?”
“We’re done, Prince Kiernan.” It was self-preservation. She could not dance like that with him every day until the performance and keep her heart on ice, keep him from seeing what was blossoming inside her.
Like a flower that would be cut.
“We’ve got two practices left,” he said, frowning at her.
“No,” she said firmly, with false brightness, “there’s nothing left to practice. Nothing. I don’t think we should do it again. I don’t want to lose the freshness of what we just did. We’re done, Prince Kiernan. The next time we do that dance, it will be at An Evening to Remember.”
Instead of looking relieved that dance class was finally over, Kiernan looked stunned.
She felt stunned, too. She was ending it. The suddenness of it made her head spin. And she felt bereft. It was over. They would have one final dance together, but it was already over. She was ending this craziness right here and right now.
“So,” she said with forced cheer, holding out her hand to shake his, “good work, Your Highness. I’ll see you opening night of Blossom Week, for An Evening to Remember. Gosh. Only a few nights away. How did that happen?”
But instead of shaking her hand, two business people who had done good work together, the prince took her hand, held it, looked with deep and stripping thoughtfulness into her eyes. Then he bowed over her hand, and placed his lips to it.
Meredith could feel that familiar devastating quiver begin in her toes.
“No,” he said, straightening and gazing at her.
“No? No what?”
“No, it won’t be opening night before we meet again.”
“It won’t?” It felt just like their first meeting, when he had told her she couldn’t be Meredith Whitmore. He said things with the certainty of one who had the power to change reality, who always had his own way.
“You’ve shown me your world, Meredith,” Kiernan said quietly. “You gave that to me freely, expecting nothing in return. You gave me a gift. But I would like to give you something in return, a gift of my own. Come experience an evening in my world.”
Her mouth opened to say no. It wasn’t possible. She was trying to protect herself. He was storming the walls.
“It’s the least I can do for you. I’ll send a car to pick you up tonight. We’ll have a farewell dinner on the yacht.”
Farewell. Did his voice have an odd catch in it when he said that?
Say no. Every single thing in her that wanted to survive screamed at her to say no.
But what woman, no matter how strong, no matter how independent, no matter how much or how desperately she wanted to protect her own heart could say no to an evening with a prince, a date out of a dream?
It wasn’t as if she could get her hopes up. He’d been very clear. A farewell dinner. One last time to be alone together. The next time they saw each other would be very public, for their performance.
On pure impulse, Meredith decided she would give herself this. She would not or could not walk away from the incredible gift he was offering her.
She would take it, greedily. One night. One last thing to remember him by, to hold to her when these days of dancing with him, laughing with him, baring her soul to him, were but a distant memory.
“Yes,” she whispered. “That would be lovely.”
It wasn’t a date, Meredith told herself as she obsessed about what to wear and how to do her hair and her makeup and her nails. It wasn’t a date. He had not called it that. A gift, he had said, and even though she knew she should have tried harder to resist the temptation, now that she hadn’t, she was giving herself over to the gift wholeheartedly.
She intended to not think about a future that did not include him. She was just going to take it moment by moment, and enjoy it without contemplating what that enjoyment might cost her later.
Hadn’t she done that before? Exchanged heated looks and stolen kisses with no thought of the consequences?
No, it was different this time. She was a different person than she had been back then. Wasn’t she?
And so, trying to keep her doubts on the back burner, with her makeup subtle and perfect, her nails varnished with clear lacquer, dressed in a simple black cocktail dress with a matching shawl, her hair upswept, the most expensive jewelry she could afford—tiny diamonds set in white gold—twinkling at her ears, she went down her stairs, escorted by a uniformed driver, to where the limousine awaited her. She thanked God that all the years of dancing made her able to handle the incredibly high heels—and the pre-performance jitters—with seeming aplomb.
Passersby and neighbors had stopped to gawk at the black limo, and the chauffeur holding it open for her.
It was not one of the official palace vehicles with the House of Chatam emblem on the door, but still she waved like a celebrity walking the red carpet, and slid inside the door.
The luxury of it was absolutely sumptuous. She was offered a glass of champagne, which she refused. The windows of the backseat were darkly tinted, so all the people staring at her as they passed could not see her staring back at them.
The car glided through the streets of Chatam into the harbor area, and finally arrived at a private dock. The yacht, called Royal Blue, bobbed gently on its moorings.
A carpet had been laid out to prevent her high heels from slipping through the wide-spaced wooden planks of the dock. Light spilled out every window of the yacht, danced down the dock and splashed out over inky dark waters.
The lights illuminated interior rooms. It wasn’t a boat. It was a floating palace.
And against the midnight darkness of the sky, she could see Prince Kiernan. He was outside on an upper deck, silhouetted by the lights behind him, leaning on a railing, waiting.
For her.
She wanted to run to him, as if he was not a prince at all, but her safe place in this unfamiliar world of incredible wealth.
Instead, she walked up the carpet, and up the slightly swaying gangway with all the pose and grace years of dancing had given her. She knew his eyes were only for her, and she breathed it in, inten
ding to enjoy every second of this gift.
The crew saluted her, and her prince waited at the top of the gangway.
Prince Kieran greeted her by meeting her eyes and holding her gaze for a long time, until her heart was beating crazily in her throat. Then he took her hand, much as he had in the ballroom, bowed low over it, and kissed it.
“Welcome,” he said, and his eyes swept her.
Every moment she had taken with her hair and her makeup, her jewelry and her dress was rewarded with the light in his eyes. Except that he seemed to be memorizing her. He had said welcome, but really, hadn’t he meant goodbye?
“You are so beautiful,” he said, the faintest hoarseness in that cultured voice.
“Thank you,” she stammered. She could have told him he looked beautiful, too, because he did, dressed in a dark suit with a crisp white shirt under it. At the moment, Kiernan was every girl’s fairy-tale prince.
“Come,” he said, and he slipped his hand in hers, and led her to a deeply padded white leather bench in the bow of the boat.
As the crew called muted orders to each other the yacht floated out of its slip and they headed out of the mouth of the harbor.
“I just have to let you know in advance, that as hard as I tried to completely clear my calendar for this evening, I’m expecting an overseas call from the Minister of Business. I’ll have to take it. I hope it will be brief, but possibly not. I hope you won’t be bored.”
Meredith was used to these kinds of interruptions from their dance classes.
“Bored? How could I be bored when I have this to experience?” She gestured over the view of dark sea, the island growing more distant. “It looks like a place out of a dream.”
The lights of Chatam, reflected in the dark water, grew further away.
“It will be breezy now that we’re underway. Do you want to go in?”
She shook her head, and he opened a storage unit under a leather bench, found a light blanket and settled it on her shoulders. Then Kiernan pressed against her to lend her his warmth.
As the boat cut quietly around the crags of the island, she found she and Kiernan talked easily of small things. The girls’ excitement for the upcoming performance, Erin Fisher’s remarkable talent and potential, Prince Adrian’s recovery from his injury, the overseas call Kiernan was expecting about a business deal that could mean good things for the future of Chatam.
After half an hour of following the rugged coastline of Chatam, the yacht pulled into a small cove, the engines were cut, and the quiet encircled them as she heard the chain for the anchor drop.
“It’s called Firefly Cove,” he said. “Can you see why?”
“Oh,” she breathed as thousands and thousands of small lights pricked the darkness, “it is so beautiful.”
The breeze picked up, and he took the blanket and offered her his hand. They went inside.
It was as beautiful as outside.
There was really nothing to indicate they were on a boat, except for the huge windows and the slight bobbing motion.
Other than that the décor was fabulous—modern furniture covered in rich linens, paintings, rugs, an incredible chandelier hung over a dining table set for two with the most exquisite china.
All of it could have made her feel totally out of place and uncomfortable. But Kiernan was with her, teasing, laughing, putting her at ease.
Dinner came out, course after course of the most incredible food, priceless wines that an ordinary girl like her would never have tasted under other circumstances.
But rather than being intimidated Meredith delighted in the new experiences, made easy because of how her prince guided her through them.
They went back out on the deck for after-dinner coffee, he draped the blanket around her shoulders again, and tucked her into him. They sat amongst the fireflies and talked. At first of light things: the exquisiteness of the food they had just eaten, the rareness of the wines, the extraordinary beauty of the fireflies; the stars that filled the night sky.
But Meredith found herself yearning for his trust, the same trust that she had shown him the day they had watched the movie.
With a certain boldness, she took his hand, and said, “Tell me how you came to earn all those horrible nicknames. Playboy Prince. Prince of Heartaches. Prince Heartbreaker. I feel as if I’ve come to know you, and those names seem untrue and unfair.”
But was it? Wasn’t he setting her up for heartbreak right now? Without even knowing it? He’d been clear. Tonight was not hello. It was goodbye.
But she wasn’t allowing herself to think of that.
No, she was staying in this moment: the gentle sway of the sea beneath her, his hand in hers, his shoulder touching hers.
She was staying in this moment, and moving it toward deeper intimacy even if that was crazy. She wanted him to know, even after they’d said goodbye, that she had known his heart.
“Thank you,” he said with such sincerity, as if she had seen him that she quivered from it, and could not resist moving a little more closely into his warmth. “Though, of those titles, the Playboy Prince was probably neither untrue nor unfair.”
He recounted his eighteenth summer. “I found myself free, in between getting out of private school and going into the military. Until I was eighteen, my mother had been very vigilant in restricting the press’s access to me. And women hadn’t been part of my all-male world, except as something desired from a distance, movie star posters on dorm room walls. So, I wasn’t quite used to the onslaught of interest on both fronts.
“And like many young men of that age, I embraced all the perks of that freedom and none of the responsibility. Unfortunately, my forum was so public. There was a frenzy, like a new rock star had been unveiled to the world. I didn’t see a dark side or a downside. I was flattered by the attention of the press and the young women. I dated every beautiful woman who showed the least interest in me.”
“And that was many,” Meredith said dryly.
Still, she could feel the openness of him, and something sighed within her. She had trusted him, and now he was trusting her.
“That’s what I mean about the Playboy Prince title having truth to it,” he said ruefully. “But after that summer of my whole life becoming so public, I became more discerning, and certainly more cynical. I started to understand that very few of those young women were really interested in me. It was all about the title, the lifestyle, and the fairy tale. I could be with the most beautiful woman in the world and feel so abjectly lonely.
“But for a short while, I searched, almost frantically for the one. I’m sure I broke hearts right and left because I could tell after the first or second date that it just wasn’t going to work, and I extricated myself quickly. Somehow, though, I was always the one seen as responsible for the fact others pinned their unrealistic hopes and dreams on me.”
Was that what she was doing? By sitting here, enjoying his world and his company, was she investing, again, in unrealistic hopes and dreams?
Just one night. She would give herself that. It wasn’t really pinning hopes and dreams on him. It was about knowing him as completely as she could before she let him go back to his world, and she went back to hers.
“I’d known Francine Lacourte since I was a child,” Kiernan continued. “We’d always been close, always the best of friends.”
“The duchess.” She felt the faintest pang of jealousy at the way he said that name. With a tender reverence.
“She was the funniest, smartest woman I ever met. She was also the deepest. She had a quality about her, a glow that was so attractive. She shunned publicity, which I loved.”
“You were engaged to her, weren’t you?”
“Ever so briefly.”
“And you broke it off, bringing us to nickname number two, the Prince of Heartaches. Because she never recovered, did she?”
Which, now that she thought about it, Meredith could see was a very real danger.
But Kiernan smiled absently
. “The truth that no one knows? I didn’t break it off. She did.”
He was telling her a truth that no one else knew? That amount of trust felt exquisite.
“But that’s not what the press said! In fact, they still say she is in mourning for you. She has become very reclusive. I don’t think I’ve seen one photograph of her in the paper since you broke with her. And that’s years ago. It really is like she has disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“Our friends at the press take a fact—like Francine being reclusive—and then they build a story around it that suits their purposes. It has nothing to do with the truth. For a while there was even a rumor started by one of the most bottom feeding of all the publications that I had murdered her. How ridiculous is that?”
“That’s terrible!”
“I am going to tell you a truth that very few people on this earth know. I know I don’t have to tell you how deeply private this conversation is.”
Again, Meredith relished this trust he had in her, even as she acknowledged it moved her dangerously closer to pinning unrealistic hopes and dreams on him!
“That depth and quality and glow in Francine that I found so attractive? She had a deep spiritual longing. Francine joined a convent. She had wanted to do so for a long, long time. She loved me, I think. But not the way she loved God.”
“She’s a nun?” Meredith breathed, thinking of pictures of her that had been republished after his broken engagement to Tiffany Wells. Francine Lacourte was gorgeous, the last person one would think of as a nun!
He nodded. “She chose a cloister. Can you imagine the nightmare her new life would have been if the paparazzi got hold of that? Because I have a network around me that can protect me from the worst of their viciousness, I chose to let them create the story that titillated the world.”
“You protected her,” Meredith whispered.
“I don’t really see it like that. She gave me incredible gifts in the times we spent together. I was able to return to her the privacy she so treasured.”
“By taking the heat.”
“Well, as I say, I have a well-oiled machine around me that protects me from the worst of it. The press can say whatever they want. I’m quite adept at dodging the arrows, not letting them affect me at all. So, if I could do that for Francine, why wouldn’t I?”
