A Princess for Christmas

by Jenny Holiday

  “I see,” Marie said serenely. But she turned away as she spoke, seemingly to pour herself more tea, though her cup was already full. She seemed like she was trying to hide a smile.

  The real dimples were back, and wasn’t that interesting?

  Chapter Seven

  The problem with the princess was that Leo was starting to view the actual job part of his interactions with her as something to get through before he could get to the hanging out with her part.

  As he drove Marie to appointments Sunday afternoon, he had to remind himself that this was it. There would be no more hanging out. No more skating, no more tea parties, no more pizza slices and maxi pad shopping. No more driving around talking about dead parents. She was going home tomorrow. And he was going back to his regular life.

  She got back into the car—he’d been waiting for her outside Deutsche Bank—and held out an envelope full of cash.

  He was going to back to his regular life fifteen grand richer.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. A check, maybe? A small chest full of golden coins?

  His instinct was to refuse the money. He had hardly done anything. She’d only had two appointments today. She’d given Gabby the time of her life. And despite Marie’s odd formality and her occasional lapses into prissiness, Leo had had a pretty fantastic time with her, too. The run-up to the holidays was hard for the Ricci siblings, and Marie had lifted their spirits. It felt wrong to take fifteen grand for that.

  But no. If he refused the money, that meant . . . all kinds of things he’d rather not think about. She had hired him to do a job, and now she was paying him for services rendered.

  And things were getting awkward, with her holding the envelope out and him not taking it.

  “Thanks,” he said gruffly, sliding the envelope into his back pocket. He started the car and pulled into heavy traffic made worse by the fact that it had been snowing steadily all day. He’d have a lot of shoveling to do when he got home.

  Marie sighed, and Leo glanced over. She was looking out the window, and she didn’t look happy. Which was a little odd, because he’d found that snow delighted her, generally. She’d been exclaiming the past couple days about how picturesque a New York City Christmas was.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Oh, nothing.” She turned to him and fake-smiled so that the empty dimples appeared.

  “Bullshit.”

  That got a real smile, albeit a small, wistful one. “Well, if you must know, I don’t want to go home. Despite the fact that I’m not bringing the best news home economically speaking, this trip has been a . . . surprisingly refreshing break from reality.”

  A surprisingly refreshing break from reality. That was it. That was what had him so weirded out. He’d been fantasizing lately about taking a vacation. Vacations weren’t part of his life right now, but these last few days had kind of felt like one. Maybe he would spend some of his windfall to take Gabby to Florida next week.

  Cheered at having figured out the cause of his ennui, he said, “At least it’s Christmas when you get back. Do princesses get a Christmas break? Gabby’s practically levitating with excitement over being off school.”

  “My mother loved Christmas.”

  That didn’t answer his question, and someone who didn’t know the princess might think she was trying to change the subject. But Leo heard what she wasn’t saying. This was a hard time of year to be missing people, especially if those people had died close to Christmastime.

  He had no idea what to say, though. So, fuck it, he reached over and took her hand. Squeezed it.

  She turned to him, and he could feel how startled she was. He wanted to keep holding her hand, to feel her relax, to have his touch be the thing that made her relax. But this was just supposed to be a quick, reassuring squeeze. A solidarity squeeze. So he made himself let go.

  It was hard.

  “I have to work a few days next week,” she said, going back to his question, “then I’m formally on break.”

  What did that mean? The concept of “work” didn’t really jibe with his concept of “princess.” But what had she been doing all week if not working? Pretty hard, too. And it was work that seemed to weigh heavily on her, given the consequences for the economy of her country.

  She must have heard his unarticulated confusion, because she elaborated. “Eldovia is a constitutional monarchy. It has a Westminster parliamentary system.”

  He had no idea what that meant.

  She continued with the whole reading-his-mind thing. “Which means that the crown’s power is mostly symbolic. As it should be. But my father has always had a strong advisory role. He has a cabinet of sorts made up of people who help him shape his legislative agenda.”

  “And you’re on it.”

  “Not formally.”

  “But you want to be?”

  “If I’m going to do my father’s job, it would be nice to have formal recognition of that fact.” She sucked in a sharp little inhalation, as if she’d spoken too fast or too openly. As if she’d surprised herself.

  If I’m doing my father’s job. Leo had so many questions. He opened his mouth, intending to voice the foremost one—What does that mean?—but Marie kept talking. “I’ve also been trying to work with parliament informally to steer the country’s reaction to the refugee crisis in Europe. But that’s something of a side project.”

  “That’s what the UN speech was about.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, damn, here I thought the job description of princess would be more like getting your nails done and ordering room service.”

  “I suppose it could be, if I wanted it to.”

  She didn’t though. She wasn’t the kind of person who expected to get a free ride. Which was a weird thing to say about a princess, but it was true.

  “What are you up to this evening?” she asked.

  She was changing the subject, and not very subtly.

  Which . . . fine. What did he care about royal politics or Westminster whatever in Eldovia?

  “Shoveling.” He snorted. “So much shoveling. Followed by that most gourmet of meals: grilled cheese sandwiches and Campbell’s tomato soup.”

  She sighed again, one of those wistful ones. “Sounds lovely.”

  “Are you kidding me? Manual labor and grilled cheese? It’s not exactly high tea at the Plaza.”

  She performed a little shrug as she turned to look out the window again, one he didn’t think he was supposed to see.

  Well. Wasn’t that something? The princess of freaking Eldovia thought grilled cheese in his shitty apartment sounded like a better time than whatever she would order up in her giant luxury suite at the Plaza.

  That suite was a lot of space for one person.

  A person alone. A person who would eat scrumptious food but probably do it by herself.

  Or maybe with that asshole butler—Leo refused to call him anything else, even in his mind—who treated her like a child.

  Yeah, Leo might be eating cheese on Wonder Bread this evening, but he wasn’t doing it alone. He’d be doing it with the world’s greatest eleven-year-old. And possibly the world’s greatest thirty-one-year-old, if Dani was around. Which she almost certainly would be on account of her stubborn refusal to move on after Vince.

  Well, shit. Before he could overthink it, he just asked her. “You wanna come over for dinner?” After tonight, he would never see her again anyway.

  Marie gasped audibly in what he was pretty sure was delight, and shit, that . . . did something to him. So, to keep himself in check, he added, “There’s one condition.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You have to help me shovel. I bet you’ve never done that.”

  “Untrue. I did it . . . once.”

  “Once?”

  “It’s a long story.” She frowned. “It’s . . . not a happy memory.”

  What he wanted to say to that was, Tell me. It was an urgent want, to hear about her unha
ppy memories and store them away in his mind next to his own. What he actually said, was, “Fair enough.” He turned on his blinker and changed lanes so they could head uptown. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  When they parked back at home—one of the perks of being the on-site super was a dedicated space behind the building—he started thinking about how shabby and messy his place was. Shabby he couldn’t do anything about, but . . . He craned his neck so he could see up to Dani’s apartment. The light was on.

  Marie was about to get out of the car. “Sit tight for a minute, if you don’t mind. I just need to . . . deal with something.” He got out his phone. Can you do me a huge favor and go over to my place and clean up the living room? Get Gabby to help you. Just shove everything into my bedroom.

  Marie would never see his bedroom.

  Dani: Why?

  Leo: We’re having a guest for dinner.

  Dani: Are we now? And who might this guest be?

  She followed that up with a string of crown emojis. Leo didn’t bother replying, knowing that as much as Dani enjoyed watching him squirm, she would do what he’d asked in this case.

  So, okay, onto manual labor with the princess.

  “Oh, how unfortunate that there’s only one shovel,” Marie teased when Leo opened a shedlike structure nestled against the back of the building to reveal a variety of garden tools but only one shovel.

  Again, she was struck by how unusual it was for her to be teasing someone. She didn’t tease people—except maybe Max and even then, not that much. But Leo was just so . . . easy to tease. Plus, he was good at it himself. She’d probably learned it from him.

  “Hold your royal horses.” He shoved aside a big bag of salt to reveal a second, smaller shovel. “I usually make Gabby help me. Lucky for her, today I’ve conscripted a princess.”

  She waited for him to make some remark about how the child-size shovel was a perfect fit for her, but he didn’t. Leo’s teasing, she realized, was never truly mean. It wasn’t about attributes she had no control over, like her stature.

  They walked around to the front of the building. “You start here,” he said, pointing to the edge of the property. “I’ll start on the far side, and we’ll meet in the middle.”

  She did as she was told. It was a beautiful evening, the snow still drifting down in big, fat flakes. It was only five thirty, but it was already dark, the yellow glow of the streetlights filling in for the absent moon, painting everything in a golden glow.

  Soon, she was out of breath. Her muscles were protesting, but it was a good kind of protesting. A good kind of breathlessness. The aches and shortness of breath meant she was using her body to do something useful. Something concrete. She felt a satisfied pride in looking back at the cleared section of sidewalk behind her—although it was already dusted over with a layer of new snow.

  “Hey,” Leo said, and then he was there, right in her space. “Don’t hurt yourself. There’s a lot accumulated. Take it off in two layers.” He demonstrated, digging his shovel in and scooping but not going all the way down to the pavement. Then he made a second pass to clear the bottom layer. He worked quickly and efficiently, with a grace she wouldn’t have expected.

  “You’re not doing it that way,” she pointed out. “You’re scooping it up all at once.” She’d been aiming for more of that earlier playfulness, but she feared the accusation came out sounding more petulant than anything.

  But somehow, he knew what she meant. He lifted an arm in a biceps-flexing gesture and said, with a joking flourish, “That is because I am a big manly man.”

  “And I’m a weak little princess?” she filled in.

  But she must have gotten it wrong, because he blinked rapidly, surprised. He had snowflakes on his eyelashes. “No,” he said quietly. “No. You’re just not used to doing this.”

  She was such an idiot. Hadn’t she just been thinking about how Leo never made fun of people for traits they couldn’t control?

  But it was too late. The damage was done. She’d made things awkward.

  Leo turned to go back to his spot. The sight of his retreating back did something to her chest. He was leaving without understanding. He was leaving with things all wrong.

  He was leaving.

  She was leaving. After tonight, she would never see him again.

  Her body took over, bending her knees so she was crouching near the ground. Her hands gathered snow, formed it into a tight, icy ball. Her knees carried her back to standing. Her mouth turned up at the corners.

  And, finally, her arm retracted—and she let it rip.

  “Oooff.”

  Was that . . . ?

  Leo whirled—and was promptly hit in the face by a second snowball.

  Holy shit. The sight of Marie, she of the fancy pink coat, huddled near a snowbank outside his shitty apartment building, was so incongruous that it froze him in place for a moment, made his mind slow down. Was the princess of Eldovia really throwing snowballs at him?

  A third one thwacked his solar plexus, summoning an involuntary gasp.

  Yes, yes she was.

  And her aim was perfect. And she was laughing like a hyena.

  Well, princess or no, that could not be allowed to stand.

  That laugh again, a cackle really, and it was like it somehow traveled across the thirty feet of shoveled sidewalk between them, reached inside his chest and pulled out one from him.

  A matching set.

  But he swallowed that laugh as soon as he could, unfroze his clumsy body, and ducked to avoid the next incoming missile. “You are going to regret that, Your Magical Regalness.”

  “I doubt that!” she called back. “I told you I’m very good at winter pursuits.”

  Which she demonstrated by evading his first several snowballs. It was that same lightness on her feet she’d had at Rockefeller Center.

  “I’m also quite talented at archery,” Marie taunted, and she landed another hit while he was temporarily disabled, stunned really, by the image of her with a bow and arrow, poised to vanquish her enemies with merely a finely honed arrow and her perfect aim.

  But, okay, get a grip, Ricci. He lifted his hands into the air and started walking toward her, pretending to surrender. He hit her with a grin—not that he had to fake it. “Clearly, you win, Your Right Honorable Heiressness.”

  When she threw her head back to laugh in victory, he moved like lightning and gathered an armful of snow. He didn’t shape it into a ball, just unceremoniously dumped it on her head.

  “Ahhh!” she shrieked. “Not fair!”

  “Oh,” he said, stooping to gather some more snow. “Are we observing the Geneva Conventions here? My mistake.” He got her again, but she got him just as good. “Is this not how you do snowball fights in Eldovia?”

  He’d made a more traditional, formed snowball while he was baiting her, and he retracted his arm to let it fly—gently because she was right in front of him and he wasn’t a jerk, or at least not that kind of jerk. But she did this strange leaping thing, and suddenly she was hanging off his arm, trying to block his throw.

  He cracked up as he tried to shake her off. He had to hand it to her—she was giving it her all. She was like a small dog, like Max, trying to play tug-of-war with a great big mutt.

  Or maybe . . . not like Max.

  She stepped back, panting and smiling. Her cheeks were pink, and her hair was a total mess.

  Oh, shit. He was in trouble.

  He knew it. Which was why he didn’t make a move, not exactly. It wasn’t like he thought I’m going to kiss her now. He would never have done that. He didn’t think she would have, either. But he saw the moment she figured it out, what was going to happen if neither of them stopped it.

  Neither of them did.

  And then the smiles were gone, all their joking replaced by a kind of focused seriousness that had them grabbing each other as their mouths crashed together.

  If Leo had thought about what kissing a princess would be like—wh
ich he most decidedly had not—he would have thought of proper, restrained kisses. Of pecks on cheeks or maybe even on the backs of hands.

  There certainly wouldn’t be tongue.

  Or moaning.

  Jesus Fucking Christ, his tongue was in her mouth. He wasn’t really sure how that had happened, but she was into it, judging by the low, breathy noises she was making as she grabbed onto the front of his parka, like she wanted to make sure he couldn’t escape.

  He did not want to escape. So he surrendered to this madness, this beautiful madness. This wanting. Let himself melt, as heat shot through his body despite the cold. It had been so long since he’d kissed anyone, and having that heart-shaped mouth under his was so improbable and, frankly, it was making him crazy. So was the no-holds-barred enthusiasm with which she was returning his kiss.

  So he was just going to stand here and kiss her forever. He brought his hands up—he’d gotten overheated while shoveling and had pulled his gloves off and hadn’t had time to put them back on before she declared snow-war on him—and clamped them down on her cheeks as he continued to work her mouth.

  His aim had been, in a mirror-image gesture of her grabbing his coat—she was still holding onto it as if for dear life—to make sure she stayed. To do what he could to make sure this kiss never ended.

  But his hands were too cold. Or too rough. Or too something.

  Because they hadn’t been settled against her cheeks for an instant before she gasped—not a good gasp this time—and let go of him. Marie stepped back, shock written on her face: her eyes were wide, and her mouth, red from his ministrations, rounded into an O.

  Leo held up a palm, because she was going to start talking, and no good would come of that.

  But it didn’t work. “I can’t kiss you!” she exclaimed.

  “Okay.” She was right, of course. He’d thought maybe for one second there that they could enjoy a fleeting moment of pleasure, but he’d been wrong.

  “The thing is . . . I’ll have to . . .”

  “It’s okay, really.” He took a step back. “Let’s forget this happened. I’ll finish up the shoveling. Why don’t you go upstairs? Or if you’d rather, I can take you back—”