To Dance with a Prince Read Free Page B

crisply.
    He regarded her thoughtfully. She thrust her chin up and folded her arms over her chest.
    â€œAgain, I’m sorry.”
    â€œIt’s quite all right,” she said, forcing her voice to be firm. “Things happen that are out of our control.”
    She would have snatched those words back without speaking them if she knew that they would swing the door of memory wide open on the event in her life that had been most out of her control.
    Meredith slammed the door shut again, blinking hard and swallowing.
    The prince was looking at her way too closely, again, as if he could see things she would not have him see. That she would not have anyone see.
    â€œGoodbye,” Meredith managed to squeak out. “Thank you for coming personally, Your Highness. I’ll let the girls know. We’ll figure something out. It’s not a big deal.”
    She was babbling, trying to outrun the quiver in her voice and failing. She kept talking.
    â€œThe girls will get over it. In fact, they’re used to it. They’re used to disappointment. As I said, we can rewrite the part Prince Adrian was going to play. Anybody can play a prince.”
    Though she might have believed that much more strongly before standing in the damnably charismatic presence of a real one!
    â€œGoodbye,” she said, more strongly, a hint for him to go. The quiver was out of her voice, but she had not slammed the door on her worst memory as completely as she had hoped. She could feel tears sparking behind her eyes.
    But Prince Kiernan wasn’t moving. It was probably somewhere in that stuffy royal protocol book she’d been given that she wasn’t supposed to turn her back on him first, that she wasn’t to dismiss him , but she had to. Shehad to escape him gazing at her so piercingly, as if her whole life story was playing in her eyes and he could see it. It would only be worse if she cried.
    She turned swiftly and began pack up the music equipment she had brought in preparation for her session with Adrian.
    She waited for the sound of footfalls, the whisper of the door opening and shutting.
    But it didn’t come.

CHAPTER TWO
    M EREDITH DREW TWO OR THREE steadying breaths. Only when she was sure no tears would fall did she turn back. Prince Kiernan still stood there.
    She almost yearned for a lecture about protocol, but there was no recrimination in his eyes.
    â€œIt meant a lot to them, didn’t it?” he asked quietly, his voice rich with sympathy, “And especially to you.”
    She had to steel herself against how accurately he had read her emotion, but at least he didn’t have a clue as to why she was really feeling so deeply.
    It felt like her survival depended on not letting on that it was a personal pain that had touched her off emotionally. So, again, she tried to hide behind words. Meredith launched into a speech she had given a thousand times to raise funds for No Princes.
    â€œYou have to understand how marginalized these girls feel. Invisible. Lacking in value. Most of them are from single-parent families, and that parent is a mother. It’s part of what makes them so vulnerable when the first boy winks at them and tells them they’re beautiful.
    â€œSo when a prince, when a real live prince, one of the biggest celebrities on our island recognized what they were doing as having worth, it was incredible. I think it made them have hope that their dreams really couldcome true. That’s a hard sell in Wentworth. Hope is a dangerous thing in that world.”
    Kiernan’s face registered Wentworth. He knew the name of the worst neighborhood on his island. She had successfully diverted him from her own moment of intense vulnerability.
    But before she could finish congratulating herself, Prince Kiernan took a deep breath, ran a hand through the crisp silk of his dark hair.
    â€œHope shouldn’t be a dangerous thing,” he said softly, finally looking back at her.