To Dance with a Prince by Cara Colter

were doing at all.
    It was about the kind of person she was going to choose to be.
    And yes, it was going to take all her courage to choose it.
    She moved past the prince to the coat check, plucked the jackets off the wall, and then turned back and took a deep breath.
    Yesterday, spontaneity had brought them so much closer to the place they needed to be than all her carefully rehearsed plans and carefully choreographed dance steps.
    Today, she hoped for magic.

CHAPTER FIVE
    T HE PRINCE BADLY WANTED his life back. He wanted An Evening to Remember to be over. He wanted the temptation of Meredith over; watching her demonstrate hip moves, taking her hand in his, touching her, looking at her and pretending to love her.
    It was easily the most exhausting and challenging work he had ever done, and the performance couldn’t come quickly enough in his opinion.
    Though, somewhere in his mind, he acknowledged over would be over. No more rehearsals. No more bossy Meredith Whitmore. Who didn’t respect his station, and was impertinent. Who was digging at him, trying to find the place in him he least wanted her to see, refusing to take no for an answer.
    Who could make eating pastries look like an exercise in eroticism one minute, and look at a horse with the wide-eyed wonder of a child the next. Whose lips had felt like butterfly wings against his cheek.
    Stop, Kiernan ordered himself.
    She was aggravating. She was annoying. She was damnably sexy. But she was also refreshing in a way that was brand new to him. She was not afraid to tell him exactly what she thought, she was not afraid tomake demands, she was not afraid of him, not awed by his station, not intimidated by his power.
    And that, he reluctantly admitted, was what he was going to miss when it was all over. In so much of his life he was the master. What he said went. No questions. No arguments. No suggestions. No discussion.
    How was it that in a dance instructor from Wentworth, he felt he had met his equal?
    There was no doubt going to be a huge space in his life once she was gone. It seemed impossible she could have that kind of impact after only a few days. But he didn’t plan to dwell on it.
    Prince Kiernan was good at filling spaces in his life. He had more obligations than he had time, anyway, and many of those were stacking up as he frittered away hours and hours learning the dance routine he was coming to hate.
    â€œWe’re going to go somewhere else today,” Meredith announced, marching back over from the coat room with something stuffed under her arm. “I think the ballroom itself may be lending to the, er, stuffiness, we’re experiencing. It’s too big, too formal.”
    But he knew it wasn’t the room she found stuffy. It was him.
    â€œFirst stodgy, now stuffy,” he muttered.
    â€œDon’t act insulted. You said yourself the role you play has made you that way.”
    â€œNo, you suggested it was the role I played. I said I was born this way. And I never used the word stuffy. I think I said reserved.”
    â€œOkay, whatever,” she said cheerfully. “We’re going to do a little experiment today. With your reserve.”
    Oh-oh, this did not bode well for him. He was already hanging onto his control by the merest thread.
    â€œHere,” she said pleasantly, “put this on.”
    She handed him one of the white jackets she had stuffed under her arm. The one she handed him had the name Andy embroidered over one pocket in blue thread. He hesitated. What was the little minx up to?
    Mischief. He could see it in the twinkle in her eye.
    He should stop her before she got started, and he knew that. But despite the fact he had told himself he wasn’t going to dwell on it, soon their time together would be over. Why not see what mischief she had planned? That spark in her eye was irresistible anyway, always reminding him that there was a shadow in her.
    Like the unexpected delight of taking her for tea