To Dance with a Prince Read Free Page A

prince for her. He had been new to the neighborhood, drifted in from somewhere with a sexy Australian accent. She was fatherless, craving male attention, susceptible.
    And thanks to him, she would never be that vulnerable again. Though the man who stood before her would certainly be a test of any woman’s resolve to not believe in fairy tales.
    â€œAnd where do you fit into that vision, my gypsy ballerina?”
    So, the prince had seen something. His gypsy ballerina? Some terrible awareness of him tingled along her spine, but she kept her tone entirely professional when she answered him. She, of all people, knew that tingle to be a warning sign.
    â€œI’m afraid all work and no play is a poor equation for anyone, never mind these girls. As well as lookingafter a lot of paperwork for No Princes, I get to do the fun part. I teach the girls how to dance.”
    â€œPrince Adrian didn’t seem to think it was fun,” he said dryly.
    â€œI may have pushed him a little hard,” she admitted.
    Prince Kiernan actually laughed, and it changed every thing. Did the papers deliberately capture him looking grim and humorless?
    Because in that spontaneous shout of laughter Meredith had an unfortunate glimpse of the kind of man every woman hoped would ride in on his white charger to rescue her from her life.
    Even a woman such as herself, soured on romance, could feel the pull of his smile. She steeled herself against that traitorous flutter in her breast and reminded herself a man did not get the name Prince Heartbreaker because he was in the market for a princess!
    In fact, before he’d been called Prince Heartbreaker, hadn’t he been called the Playboy Prince? And something else? Oh, yes, the Prince of Heartaches. He was a dangerous, dangerous man.
    â€œKudos to you if you could push him hard,” Prince Kiernan said wryly. “How did Adrian come to be a part of all this?”
    It was a relief to hide behind words! They provided the veneer of rational, civilized thought, when something rebellious in her was reacting to him in a very upsettingly primal way!
    â€œOne of our girls, Erin Fisher, wrote a dance number that really tells the whole story of what No Princes does. It’s quite a remarkable piece. It takes girls from hanging out on street corners flirting with boys, going nowhere, to a place of remarkable strength and admirableambition. The piece has a dream sequence in it that shows a girl dancing with a prince.
    â€œUnbeknownst to any of us, Erin sent it to the palace, along with a video of the girls dancing, as a performance suggestion for An Evening to Remember , the fund-raiser that will open Blossom Week. She very boldly suggested Prince Adrian for the part in the dream sequence. The girls have been delirious since he accepted.”
    Meredith was shocked by the sudden emotion that clawed at her throat. She shouldn’t have a favorite, but of all the girls, Erin was so much like her, so bright, so full of potential. And so sensitive. So easily hurt and discouraged.
    â€œI’m sorry for their disappointment,” Prince Kiernan said, making Meredith realize, uneasily, he was reading her own disappointment with way too much accuracy.
    Prince Kiernan was larger than life. He was better than the pictures. His voice was as sexy as a piece of raw silk scraped along the nape of a neck. He was a real prince.
    But still, she represented No Princes. She taught young women not to get swept away, not to believe in fairy tales. She rescued the vulnerable from throwing their lives away on fantasies, as she had, no matter how appealing the illusion.
    The abundance of tabloid pictures of actress Tiffany Wells’ tearstained face since her broken engagement with this man underscored Meredith’s determination not to be vulnerable in any way, to any man, ever again.
    Her days of vulnerability were over.
    â€œA little disappointment does nothing but build character,” she said