Meg Moran sat on a red-eye flight from London to Toronto, her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and a baseball cap pulled low over her face. The last thing she wanted right now was to be recognized.
As the jet flew towards the west, she did not sleep. Instead she focused on bottling up the betrayal and the pain, using it as fuel for the simmering anger that was building within her.
Meg was not running away. No, she had every intention of returning once Harry had come to his senses.
She knew he would miss her while she was gone, probably more than he realized. He would remember how he had fallen in love with her, how much he wanted to marry her.
Well, that was Plan A. Plan B would take some more strategizing—which was one of the reasons she was headed to Toronto. Her best friend, Jennifer Mahoney, would help her formulate Plan B.
Meg knew that she had some serious power behind her. The Queen liked her, and the Queen hated scandal. Breaking off their engagement would be a huge scandal—even bigger if there was another woman. The Queen would want to avoid all that publicity. The Queen would pressure Harry to marry her quickly to hush all that up.
And Meg had Prince Charles pretty well wrapped around her little finger. He'd always wanted a daughter, and she was working hard at being the daughter he never had. A few sob stories about how bad her childhood had been, and Prince Charles was firmly in her corner.
Most importantly, the public adored her. She loved all those Princess Grace comparisons—now she was the beautiful American actress who was marrying into royalty. Wasn't it her picture on the front of all those magazines, not Harry's? She was the one they were talking about. It was her hair and clothes and jewelry and gestures that were dissected on Twitter and all over the internet. The Royal Family needed her.
And she needed them. But she had to play that one very carefully. She needed Harry. And she would remind him of just how much he needed her.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder...
Yes. It would make Harry's heart grow fonder.
It had to.