“I have to marry strategically.”
“What?” What the fuck did that have to do with anything?
“I have to marry someone with whom an alliance will advance Eldovia’s interests.”
Leo’s brain was back to moving slowly. What Marie was saying wasn’t computing. “What the fuck does that have to do with anything?” She blinked in confusion, and he was pretty sure he did the same thing back. Unless . . . “Hang on.” Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. He didn’t know whether to be flattered or offended. Probably offended was the right call here. “Princess, I assure you there is no universe—no universe—in which I want to marry you.”
“I know that,” she said, taking a step toward him.
He threw both hands in the air. It was, on the surface of things, the same gesture he’d made as he’d walked toward her pretending to surrender but secretly planning his snow-attack. But this time it was protective. Self-protective. What did she think? That he was some kind of gold digger on a long con? “It was just a kiss.” Leo let some derision seep into his tone, even though part of him knew that was a dick move.
“Right,” Marie said quickly, too quickly, as her face shuttered and she took a step back. “Of course.”
Sighing, he let his head fall back. Despite his Catholic upbringing, he wasn’t at all sure about the whole God thing, but he could use some divine intervention right about now. Ideally, a celestial rewind button.
The window of his place opened, and Gabby stuck her head out. “Leo!”
He had to laugh. If God existed, it appeared he—She? Probably she—had a sense of humor.
“The sandwiches are ready!” Gabby shouted. “What’s taking you so long?”
What is taking me so long is that I’m having snowball fights and making out with a goddamn princess instead of doing my actual job.
“I should go,” Marie whispered. “I’ll get a cab, and you can—”
“Your Majesty!” Gabby laughingly called. “Is that what I’m supposed to call you? I googled, and I think it’s actually Your Royal Highness because your dad is the Your Majesty? Anyway! I’m soooo excited you’re coming for dinner. I made you a special sandwich! Wait till you see it!”
Leo turned to Marie with his eyebrows raised. He’d like to see her get out of this one. She stared back at him, and he could see the princess returning and her bearing grow stiff. He recognized that posture as defensive. She was in survival mode.
Well, so was he. He actually wanted her to leave. Kind of. But he wanted her to leave less than he wanted to go upstairs and tell Gabby that Marie had changed her mind. “What do you say, Princess? You’re not going to let a meaningless little kiss scare you off grilled cheese on the wrong side of the tracks, are you?”
“Hi! Hi! Come in! Come in!”
Marie could see what Leo meant about Gabby being happy about her school break. She was vibrating. Bouncing up and down on her toes as she took Marie’s coat and herded her toward a sofa where Daniela was already seated. “I’m so happy you’re here! I want to show you—”
“Ahem.” Leo, still standing in the entryway, drew their attention. “What am I? Chopped liver?” He tilted his head, leveled a mock-annoyed stare at Gabby, and pointed to his cheek.
Grinning, she skipped over to him and made a show of kissing his cheek. He must have thought that was going to be the end of it, because he took off his hat and started to pull away, but Gabby threw her arms around him. Leo was clearly startled, but he hugged her back, picking her up off the floor in the process. “Merry Christmas, kiddo.” His voice was raspy, and Marie’s throat thickened. It was seeing them together—the easy love between them. But also seeing how little it took to make Gabby, who had lost so much, so happy.
“Should we eat in front of the tree?” Daniela suggested when the siblings separated.
“We stuck apple slices in the sandwiches!” Gabby exclaimed. “Dani said that would class them up.”
Leo made a face, and Gabby wrinkled her nose at him. It was like they had a secret, nonverbal language. Marie didn’t have that with anyone. Not anymore. She and her mother used to do that. Maman would hold up DVDs when they were trying to decide what to watch and Marie would opine on them with merely her facial expressions. She’d forgotten about that. The memory made her smile.
“I don’t understand why a thing can’t just be what it is,” Leo said as he helped Dani set the coffee table. “Why do you have to put apples in a perfectly good grilled cheese sandwich? Why do you have to put candy in ice cream? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Gabby rolled her eyes at Marie as she set a plate in front of her. It was a small, private display, meant just for Marie—like Marie was in on the joke. It was more thrilling than it should have been. “My brother has such simple tastes,” Gabby said. “Do you know that his favorite kind of ice cream is vanilla? Plain vanilla!”
“Maybe it’s not simple taste so much as classic taste,” Marie said. “A well-made vanilla is subtle, but if you’re paying attention, hard to beat.”
“Thank you.” Leo plopped down next to her on the sofa, and oh, she was in trouble, because he was looking at her with an almost violent sort of intensity. Like she was the world’s tastiest vanilla ice cream that he alone appreciated.
It only lasted a moment, and he was on to making sure everyone was situated around the coffee table.
But the effect of that look lingered. Leo had moved on, but Marie had not. She wanted to kiss him again, and wasn’t that interesting?
He scooted closer to her to make room for Gabby. He was almost but not quite touching her, which was somehow worse—better?—than actual contact would have been. There was perhaps an inch of space between the edge of her skirt and his jeans-clad thigh. He’d taken off the ubiquitous flannel shirt and wore only a short-sleeve T-shirt, which meant his arm was bare all the way up to the middle of his upper arm. That was . . . a lot of arm. She let her eyes slide over the familiar forearm with its veins and muscles. He’d worn his flannel shirt rolled up while he’d driven her around, so she’d spent a lot of time looking at his forearms. But because it was winter, upper arms were uncharted territory. His were, unsurprisingly, as nice as his forearms. They were . . .
And, oh. Oh no. She didn’t just want to kiss Leo again, she wanted that arm. To have it draped casually over her shoulders, like it belonged there. Or, worse, to pick it up and arrange herself beneath it, to burrow under it and hide from the world, like she had the right to do that.
Her ears were on fire. Her whole face was on fire. She was hyperaware of every inch of her skin. Of the boundary between her body and the world. The hole in her tights that her big toe was making worse. The spot where the tag of her dress rubbed against the back of her neck. It didn’t hurt or itch. It was just . . . there. A small sensation suddenly magnified a thousandfold.
The spot on her arm where her sleeve—her dress was three-quarters sleeve—stopped and her bare arm was exposed to the air. If she concentrated very hard, she could feel the heat from his arm radiating across the inch of space between them. Energy from his body making contact with her skin.
What if she moved her arm so it touched his? It would only take a slight shift. An accident.
And it probably would have gone unnoticed if she hadn’t hissed a sharp, involuntary inhalation the moment she made contact with him.
He turned toward her and in so doing ended the contact between them.
“You okay?”
“Yes,” Marie squeaked, aware that she probably did not look okay, but rather like a red-faced lunatic.
An arm. It was merely an arm. Goodness. She was like a nineteenth-century gentleman tied into knots over the sight of an unexpectedly exposed ankle. “It’s . . . been a long few days,” she said lamely.
She ordered herself to pay attention to what was happening, which was that Dani was carrying over plates from the kitchen. Soon they were enjoying the fancy sandwiches, which were delicious—Marie made sure to tell Ga
bby as much—and steaming cups of soup. She looked around as she ate. The apartment was modest but homey. It was furnished with what she suspected had been the furniture from the house Leo grew up in—big, solid, wooden pieces and worn sofas and chairs with quilts over them. It was comfortable and warm and lovingly decorated for Christmas right down to a homemade, cardboard fireplace and hearth trimmed with garlands. Two stockings lay on the floor next to it, waiting to be hung.
“Your tree is lovely,” Marie said. Every square inch of it was covered in ornaments, lights, and tinsel.
“It’s probably not as fancy as an Eldovian tree,” Gabby said. “But, look! There are a bunch of princesses on it!” She pointed out the Disney version of Snow White and Cinderella and a couple more figurines in the same style that Marie didn’t recognize. “My mom loved fairy tales, right, Leo?”
“She did. She used to read them to you at night before you went to bed.”
“And I used to tell her I wanted to be a princess when I grew up. But then . . .” She trailed off, clearly wanting Leo to continue the familiar story. Perhaps this was their way of remembering their parents.
“She would say, ‘Princess of our hearts is about the best you can hope for—unless you marry extremely well.’”
“You must miss her,” Marie said, feeling a little awkward stating the obvious but also like she needed to acknowledge the loss.
“Yes,” Gabby said. “Every day. Do you miss your mother?”
“Every day,” Marie echoed.
And there was Leo’s hand again. A quick squeeze, and then it was gone, as in the car earlier. It didn’t mean anything. It was merely a gesture of empathy.
“Tell us about Christmas in Eldovia,” Daniela said from her armchair on the other side of the coffee table, but not before her eyes flickered down to where Marie’s and Leo’s hands had been joined.
“Christmas is big business in Eldovia. We have an annual Cocoa Fest on Christmas Eve day. Restaurants and pubs participate, and so does the palace. We make big cauldrons of different kinds of cocoa and serve them outside on the grounds.”
“Are you kidding me?” Gabby demanded.
Marie laughed. “I am entirely in earnest. And there’s a Cocoa Ball in the evening—though that’s not for children.” She wasn’t sure why she added that qualifier. It wasn’t as if Gabby, whose eyes had grown comically wide, would be around to be told she couldn’t attend the ball.
“Oh my god, you are from a fake Hallmark country,” Leo deadpanned.
Gabby reached around Marie, who was sitting in the middle spot on the sofa, and punched her brother in the arm. “Don’t be rude, Leo.” She turned to Marie. “That is the best thing I have ever heard.”
Marie smiled—that kind of unbridled enthusiasm was hard to resist. “It is rather wonderful.” Not the dancing—never that—but Christmas Eves at home were something special. Or at least they used to be. Before her mother fell ill, there had always been an uncommodifiable spirit about the holidays. A sense of shelter and peace and safety underneath all the hustle and bustle.
Much like here.
Exactly like here. “I like the fireplace.” She pointed at the homemade hearth. “There must be a story there.”
“We have a family tradition of making wishes every year when we hang our stockings,” Gabby said. “Last year was our first year in this apartment. There was nowhere to hang the stockings, so Leo made that.”
Of course he did.
“Do you have stockings in Eldovia?” Gabby asked.
“Yes. When I was younger, we always put stockings up for my parents and me in our private quarters. There’s a public section of the palace, with a big tree and elaborate decorations, but we always used to have a tree in our apartment, too—the real tree, as I used to call it, because that’s where Santa left my presents. And we’d put stockings up over our fireplace there.” She paused, thinking back to the Christmas her mother died. They hadn’t gotten the stockings out that year, because they’d practically been living in the hospital. But when they came home a few days before Christmas, shell-shocked, Marie had hung them—well, she’d hung hers and her father’s and wept as she’d put her mother’s away. She’d planned on filling them the way her mother always had, but when she crept out of bed early Christmas morning to do it, she found that he’d taken them down. She swallowed a lump in her throat, forcing the memory down. “We don’t do that anymore, but there are some lovely stockings hanging on a grand fireplace in the main entryway of the palace, with the formal tree.” Although no one had ever filled those stockings. They were purely for show.
“I bet it’s beautiful.” Gabby sighed. “I bet it isn’t made out of cardboard.” Then she looked stricken. “No offense, Leo.”
He smiled. “None taken, kiddo.”
“It is . . . beautiful,” Marie said.
“Don’t sound so convincing,” Leo teased.
The fireplace she was thinking of was enormous and tiled in creamy white marble topped by a cherry mantel carved into an elaborate scene of cherubim playing. In the center hung a portrait of her mother, one Marie wasn’t partial to because it was formal and stuffy and captured little of her mother’s spirit. The whole thing was beautiful, in an imposing sort of way, and it was a centerpiece of the public space in the palace, but . . . “I like this one better.”
“Are you crazy?” Gabby exclaimed. “How can you like this one better?”
“I just do.”
It was the truth. And here was another truth: she didn’t want to leave.
It was hard to say good-bye.
Leo didn’t like to think of himself as a sentimental person. He had accepted the fact that he was when it came to Gabby, but that was because they were related. He was her de facto parent. She didn’t have to get under his skin because she was already there. She belonged there.
But damn, it seemed like the princess had somehow wormed her way in there, too.
She was prissy and uptight and entitled, he reminded himself as they all stood awkwardly near the door. She had insisted that her handler dudes pick her up, firmly rebuffing Leo’s offer to drive her back to the hotel.
He held her coat for her—the ridiculous pink one—then reached for his, intending to walk her downstairs, but then Mr. Benz appeared in the hallway.
“Your Royal Highness.” He inclined his head. “Are you ready?”
Right. It was a good reminder. Marie was a person people literally bowed down to. She was a person who had a fucking manservant.
Leo would admit that the last few days had been, to quote Marie, a surprisingly refreshing break from reality. By god, he’d had a snowball fight with a princess and kissed her. But a break was just that: a break. Reality still loomed on the other side of it.
Marie turned to Dani. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk more about literature, but I so enjoyed meeting you, and I wish you the best. I can’t wait to read your book.”
Dani smiled, and the women shook hands. Then it was Gabby’s turn to receive the royal blessing. “I so enjoyed meeting you, too, Gabriella, and attending your play. Thank you for your hospitality this evening. Your sandwiches were delicious.”
Gabby and her big heart responded by throwing her arms around Marie. Mr. Benz sniffed.
Well, fuck that. As soon as Marie parted from Gabby, Leo grabbed her and wrapped her in a big hug. He did it to annoy Mr. Benz. Or at least that’s what he told himself.
She was small and strong, and she made his chest hurt. He bent down to whisper in her ear. “Keep your chin up, Princess.”
“And you as well, Mr. Ricci.”
And then she was gone.
The break from reality was over.
He spared a moment, as he, Dani, and Gabby started clearing the dishes, to wonder if he could text Marie. Just once, late tomorrow, to check that she had gotten home okay.
But that was dumb. She had a snooty butler-manservant and a shredded bodyguard whose sole tasks were to make sure she got places okay.
She didn’t need him.
Back to reality.
Except . . . fuck it. The way the school calendar fell this year meant Gabby didn’t have to be back at school for more than two weeks, and he literally had fifteen grand in his back pocket. “What do you say we go to Florida?”
A dish clattered into the sink as Gabby swung to face him. “What? Like for Christmas?”
“Yeah. Why not?” He made eye contact with Dani, who looked as surprised as Gabby. “We can leave tomorrow. All of us.”
“Um, first of all because it’s expensive?” Gabby said. “And second of all there’s no snow there, and you have to have snow for Christmas.”
“Right.” She was right. He looked around for something to distract himself. “Hey, what do you say we hang our stockings?” He picked his up. In the old days, he used to wish for stupid shit like the Islanders to win the Stanley Cup. Last year he’d wished for Glinda the Good Witch to be attacked by flying monkeys. What about this year? The first thing that popped into his head was—
A sharp knock drew everyone’s attention.
Holy shit. Leo felt like his soul was floating above his body as he moved to answer the door, like there was a mismatch between his physical, embodied self and the runaway thoughts inside his head.
It was her, as he had known it would be. The sight of Marie had the effect of immediately reuniting body and mind. He felt righted, suddenly, like the edges matched up. She would only be here because she’d forgotten something—a purse, maybe—but it felt like a reprieve all the same.
He stepped back wordlessly to let her in even as he surveyed the apartment for whatever it was that had drawn her back, when she said, “Come to Eldovia for Christmas.”
He didn’t hear the next thing she said, because of Gabby’s shrieking. Or maybe it was the rush of blood in his ears.
“All of you,” she was saying when he managed to tune back in. She was gesturing toward Dani as if to include her in the extraordinary invitation.
A Princess for Christmas Page 11
