A Princess for Christmas

by Jenny Holiday

  “Where to next?”

  “That’s it for today. My next engagement is tea with new friends but not for two hours. So why don’t you take me back to the hotel and I’ll see you all later.”

  “You’re paying me too much.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’ve taken you to two appointments today. It took all of ninety minutes. You can’t pay me five grand for that.”

  “Well, you also had to commute down and back—and you’ll have to do so again if you’re picking up Gabriella and Daniela for tea.”

  He shot her a look. “Come on.”

  “We had an agreement. If you suddenly find the terms too favorable, that’s your concern, not mine.”

  Leo rolled his eyes and started the car, but soon Marie realized they’d gone farther south than the hotel—she was becoming familiar with the local geography. “Where are we going?”

  “Skating.”

  She had her mouth preopened to protest—Leonardo Ricci seemed to inspire reflexive protest. But then she closed it. Because she really wanted to go skating. “At Rockefeller Center?” That was one of those New York things she’d wished she could do while she was here.

  “Yep.”

  A frisson of excitement ran through her. She tried to dial back her smile by several notches, but she did not succeed.

  He flashed one of his own, a very self-satisfied one.

  As they waited in line, Leo said, “What are we getting into here? Are people going to recognize you? Are there going to be paparazzi?”

  “Oh my goodness, no. Thankfully, we don’t have the public profile the Brits do.”

  “What about all those people taking pictures at Gab’s school?”

  “Don’t you think that was merely because word had gotten out about me rather than because someone actually recognized me of his or her own volition?”

  He shrugged. “You do have a way of drawing attention.”

  “I do?” Marie looked down at herself. She’d tried to look more American today, and under her coat, she was wearing a simple black day dress, though she supposed the very concept of a day dress wasn’t American. The coat itself, though, was bright pink, belted, swingy, and decorated with black wool piping. Princesses didn’t really do parkas. And she was wearing Grand-mére’s emerald brooch. “It’s the clothes, isn’t it? The clothes are all wrong.”

  He looked at her for a long time without saying anything. The line was outside in the cold, but his gaze heated her from the inside. Embarrassed her. He did that so easily. “No,” he finally said. “The clothes are just fine.” He drew out the vowels in the last two words: juuust fiiiine. She did not know what that meant, but it caused more of that heated embarrassment.

  Soon enough, they were easing themselves onto the ice. Marie felt her shoulders relax, and the vestiges of her discomfiture faded as they took their first few strokes.

  “You’re very good!” she said, and indeed, Leo had an easy grace as he matched his pace to hers.

  “I played organized hockey as a kid and was in and out of rec leagues after I graduated from high school.” He sped up and rapidly spun around so he was skating backward in front of her, grinning from ear to ear. The move was so well executed that she laughed in delight. “I haven’t been on the ice in years, though. Not since before—”

  She knew what he’d been about to say. “I imagine you gave up a lot more than hockey after your parents died.” She had seen firsthand the way he took care of his sister. That kind of guardianship didn’t come without a cost.

  He shrugged as he fell in beside her again. “It’s worth it.”

  “I’m sure it is. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t sacrifices.”

  His face shuttered. She had said too much. Poked at a topic he clearly didn’t want to discuss. She should have known better—the private life of Leonardo Ricci was none of her business.

  She was trying to decide if apologizing would only exacerbate matters, but he cleared his throat and said, “You’re not too bad on the ice yourself, Your Royal Mostness. I suppose everyone in Eldovia has to learn to skate, like a citizenship requirement?”

  She smiled, thankful for the new topic. She picked up speed, and he matched her. “Something like that, but I did have lessons as a girl.” Somehow, they’d taken in a way the dancing lessons hadn’t. It made no sense that she should be lighter on her feet on ice than inside in a ballroom. Perhaps the difference was that no one ever watched her skate. No one was judging her skating. “I’m actually fairly accomplished at most winter sports.”

  It was her turn for a trick. She skated away and built up speed for a single axel, which was as far as her lessons had taken her. She wasn’t sure she would land it—it had been years since she’d attempted one, and she was just as likely to land on her . . . booty, to use the American term she’d learned this week. But she was successful. She enjoyed a sharp prick of satisfaction, entering her like a needle and diffusing like a drug, as her blade sliced against the ice as she stuck the landing.

  Leo whistled and clapped as he caught up with her. They grabbed hands. She wasn’t sure if he grabbed hers or she grabbed his, but something like a shiver ran up her arm when they made contact, even though she was wearing gloves. It was a warm shiver, though, which should have been a contradiction but somehow wasn’t. He spun them around once before letting go and saying, “You’re really good.”

  “My mother loved skating.” Marie took off on a lap around the rink, a slower one this time, and Leo fell in beside her. “We had this pond in the woods near . . . our house.”

  “You were going to say ‘the palace’ or something, weren’t you?”

  “I was not!” she lied, but her laughter was giving her away.

  “No?” he teased, his brown eyes twinkling. “The castle then?”

  Now she couldn’t stop laughing. There was something about the crisp, cold air, the familiar, comforting zing of metal blades on ice, and Leo’s good-natured teasing that made her . . . laugh.

  “The estate?” he continued, physically poking her this time, lightly against her side. She batted his hand away and tried to skate away from him, but he was too fast, too light on his blades. He caught up with her so they were both racing around the rink. “The grounds? The . . . I don’t know. I fold. I’m not a thesaurus.”

  She stopped suddenly, and he hadn’t been anticipating it, because he crashed into her.

  “Shit!” He grabbed her before she fell. She was still laughing, though, and he must have realized she wasn’t hurt. And after some to-ing and fro-ing where she wasn’t sure if they would tumble to the ice, he stabilized them and joined in her laughter, his knowing chuckle a bass line that snaked through her, alchemizing her amusement into . . . something else.

  They stopped near the center of the rink, staring at each other, both of them breathing hard.

  Gradually, she realized other people were staring, too. At them.

  At her?

  She stood by what she had said before. She was almost certain no one was looking at her thinking, There’s the princess of Eldovia. But they were staring at her. She stood out. She was visually identifiable as someone who did not belong. She hated that.

  The last vestiges of laughter left her body like helium out of a balloon with a pinprick in it. She looked down at herself. This silly coat. New Yorkers wore big, puffy parkas that said “Canada Goose” on them. She needed to get one of those.

  “Hey.”

  Leo’s fingers came to rest under her chin. They were warm, even though he wasn’t wearing gloves. He tilted her chin up and forced her to make eye contact with him.

  “It’s not the clothes.”

  It wasn’t the clothes. It was the dimples.

  Leo had been thinking about them all afternoon, on the drive back home to get Dani and Gabby as well as on the train ride back into Manhattan—without a princess for a passenger, they’d done the sensible thing and taken the subway in.

  That smile, the w
ay it lit up her entire face to such an extent that you couldn’t not look at her. He wasn’t the only one. That was why, as they’d twirled on the ice, people had watched. Yes, she wore kind of fussy clothing. That bright pink coat drew the eye. But still, that wasn’t why people stared. It was her face in its delighted state.

  It was those dimples.

  And here they were again as she greeted them at the door to her suite.

  But they weren’t the real ones at the moment. She was smiling, but only with her mouth. The dimples were there, but they were only physical indentations in her cheeks. The mechanical result of her moving the corners of her mouth upward.

  She was nervous. His interpretation was verified by the way she opened the door to her suite only a foot, stood there stiffly, and mouthed, I’m sorry.

  The door swung fully open to reveal the equerry—Leo had in fact looked up the word and learned it referred to a kind of fancy personal attendant. He didn’t get how that was different from a butler, but whatever. “Good afternoon, Mr. Ricci. Miss Ricci. Ms. Martinez.”

  “Actually, it’s Dr. Martinez,” Leo said, just to be contrary, as he gestured at Dani.

  “My apologies. Dr. Martinez,” Mr. Benz corrected as Dani waved away the formality. “I’m sure you will all understand the need for a minor security screening before your visit commences.”

  “Isn’t it a little late for that?” Leo asked. “I could have kidnapped your precious princess at any point over the past couple days. Did you know we went ice skating today?”

  He didn’t react, and the other man, the bodyguard, stepped forward. “Mr. Ricci, we’ve already run background checks on all of you.” He didn’t even have the nerve to look sheepish. Leo was irritated, but he didn’t do anything beyond raising his eyebrows, because Marie looked mortified. “If I could ask all of you to remove your coats and temporarily surrender your bags for inspection.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Marie said as they complied. “They know I’m safe with you, but they get nervous about people coming into my space.”

  “While you are in America, this suite is an extension of the palace,” Mr. Benz said. The exaggerated patience in his tone as he spoke to Marie annoyed Leo more than being searched did. “I won’t have anyone who doesn’t have your best interests at heart intruding.”

  Once again, it was Marie’s obvious chagrin that kept Leo from saying something snarky. And the truth was, this guy was right to be suspicious. Marie was charming, lovely, rich, and royal—a combination that was bound to attract grifters or worse. So he emptied his pockets—he didn’t have a bag like Dani and Gabby did.

  “I’m sorry,” Marie said again.

  “Don’t worry about it. Your butler is only doing his job.” And, yeah, he used the wrong word on purpose.

  “I’ll have you know that I am in fact equerry to the king of Eldovia,” the man said.

  Leo just smirked. The bodyguard had finished his examination of everyone’s bags and nodded at Mr. Benz, who performed the tiniest of eye rolls.

  Leo was back to being annoyed.

  “Ma’am, we will be in the adjoining room if you have need of us,” said Mr. Benz.

  The bodyguard handed her a small box with a button. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, a panic button?

  The men retreated, and there was a beat of awkward silence, but Dani, bless her, covered it by saying, “What a beautiful suite. May I have a look at the view?”

  “Please do.” Marie waved them deeper into the suite. “I took the liberty of ordering tea to be served here. I thought it might be more comfortable than in the Palm Room.”

  She was looking at Gabby as she spoke, and Gabby’s reaction to the suite suggested she’d made the right call.

  Leo had to agree. It was insane. Enormous, to begin with. Easily bigger than their entire apartment and Dani’s put together. Full of fabrics and light fixtures and wall treatments that telegraphed restrained, old-world luxury. Fit for a princess, one might say.

  Once they’d finished admiring the view of Central Park and beyond, they gathered around a coffee table in a sumptuous living area. Leo had had the vague idea that when a princess proposed “tea,” it didn’t mean just tea. He had expected finger sandwiches, maybe. And to be fair, there were finger sandwiches—several dozen of them on a tower of plates. But there were also cakes and cookies. Deviled eggs, olives, and nuts. A cluster of teapots sat to one side, each flanked by a card identifying its contents: Earl Grey tea, peppermint tea, coffee, and hot chocolate. On ice was a bottle of champagne, a decanter of lemonade, and—God bless the princess—several bottles of some kind of fancy craft beer.

  “Oh. My. God,” Gabby said.

  Dani, who was standing behind Marie, who had moved to sit, mouthed the same thing at Leo, making an exaggerated face of astonishment.

  After they were settled in with their tiny, perfect foods and their beverages of choice—Leo was double-fisting it with coffee and beer—Marie turned to Dani and said, “So it’s Dr. Martinez. Are you a physician?”

  “No, no. Not that kind of doctor. I have a PhD. I’m an English professor at Fordham.”

  “I minored in English literature myself.”

  Wow. And that was in addition to the engineering major.

  “What is your particular area of expertise?” Marie asked Dani. She seemed pleased to have found this thing in common, but she was being weirdly stiff. He would have thought she’d have become more comfortable once her handlers disappeared.

  “Early-twentieth-century American literature by women,” Dani said.

  “I’m afraid I’m not very well read in that area, but I did very much enjoy The Age of Innocence.”

  “I did my PhD dissertation on Wharton! Particularly on representations of women and work in her novels. And I’m working on a book now on Kate Chopin.”

  Well. This party was going to be a total snooze, then, was it? Leo sighed and took a long pull on his beer—he’d declined a glass and was drinking straight from the bottle, not caring that that probably wasn’t “done” at high tea. For some absurd reason, being confronted with so much visual evidence of the economic gulf between Marie and him compelled him to double down on expressing his working-class roots. He looked around the room, only half listening as Dani and Marie talked and Gabby inhaled so many miniature cupcakes she would be up half the night.

  Until Marie dropped a little bomb: “How long have you two been together?”

  Together? What? Who was she talking about?

  Then Dani started laughing, and he figured it out.

  “We’re not . . .” Leo couldn’t even finish the sentence, so he waved his hand back and forth between himself and Dani and shook his head.

  Dani joined in the nonverbal denial, shaking her head, too, but she was still laughing as she did so.

  The princess looked between them, confused.

  “First of all,” Dani said when she’d finally recovered, “I’m married to his cousin.”

  Marie’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Second cousin,” Leo corrected, because he didn’t want to take any more credit for Vince than he had to. He ordered himself to stop staring at Marie’s eyelashes. It was just that they were so long, and the way her eyebrows had reacted to Dani’s statement had called attention to them.

  “But they’re getting divorced because Cousin Vince is a jerkface,” Gabby piped up, and Leo congratulated himself that she’d internalized the “jerkface” designation, which meant that he and Dani had successfully kept their more colorful descriptors for Vince confined to conversations at which Gabby had not been present.

  “Leo and Gabby come from a big Italian family, and I had only met them a couple of times when their parents died. But I always liked them. When I heard they were . . . looking for a place—”

  “When she heard we’d lost the family house,” Leo corrected, because his pride did not hold with euphemisms, “she hooked us up with a unit in her building.”

  “My soon-to-be ex and I were a
lready separated at that point.”

  “And then she started taking care of us and stuff, and now she’s our best friend,” Gabby said with the innocent forthrightness she still possessed despite the efforts of Dorothy and Glinda the bad Good Witch to stomp all over it.

  Leo chuckled. He wouldn’t have said it like that, but . . . “That’s exactly right.”

  “We probably should get married when the divorce is final,” Dani said. “It would make everything a lot easier. You could get my health insurance, and we could knock down the walls between the apartments and actually have some space to spread out.”

  She was clearly joking, but Marie must not have understood that. “I thought Americans didn’t get married for anything less than true, all-consuming love?”

  Her wistful tone—as if she admired Americans for their commitment to true, all-consuming love—made Leo want to ask why Eldovians got married, but for all he knew she was going to be married off to some evil prince who would keep her in a tower until her hair grew long enough for someone to climb up it and rescue her.

  “Well, then I’m never getting married again, because I’m done with love,” Dani said. “Anyway, love aside, Leo’s like my brother, so . . .” She wrinkled her nose. “Gross.”

  “Well, thank you very much,” Leo teased, though he agreed with the sentiment. If Dani ever got over her aversion to men, she would make some guy a fantastic girlfriend or wife, but it was never going to be him.

  “And do you have a girlfriend, Mr. Ricci?” Marie asked.

  “Nope,” he said. He didn’t have to look at Dani to know she was probably giving him a subtle eye roll. But it was true. He didn’t have a girlfriend. He had an ex-girlfriend—way, way, ex; they had dated briefly in high school—he sometimes hooked up with, but that was all he had going on in that department. Dani thought he should be “putting himself out there,” whatever that meant. It was a weird blind spot she had. He already walked around feeling like he was failing Gabby half the time, and Dani wanted him to add a girlfriend to the mix? Someone else he could fail? No, thanks. “No girlfriend,” he said again, probably a little too vehemently.