Page 80 of Once Upon A Royal Christmas
“I hope it’s Alana. I miss Gumdrop. We’re so getting a puppy when we get back to Denver,” Clara whispered.
Gracie laughed. “Come in!”
The door creaked open, and Ingrid popped her head inside, meeting Gracie’s gaze in the mirror. “So sorry to bother you, girls. I know you must be busy getting ready for the show. But Gracie, you have a visitor downstairs.”
A visitor?
Gracie spun away from the mirror, heart thundering in her chest. Calm down. It’s probably just Jaron, dropping by to talk about travel logistics. She swallowed, but her thoughts still ran wild. “Great. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll be right down.”
“Good.” Ingrid gave her an appreciative once-over. “You look lovely, by the way. Like a real Christmas princess.”
“Thank you, Ingrid,” Gracie said, and her smile went wobbly. It was a sweet thing to say, but she wished Ingrid had chosen another way to put it. Nothing made her feel more like an imposter than the words real and princess strung together in the same sentence.
Her heartbeat slowed closer to normal. Of course Nick wasn’t waiting for her downstairs. If it had been him, Ingrid would have simply said so, wouldn’t she?
“Who do you think it is?” Clara said, eyes sparkling.
“Don’t look at me like that. It’s not him.” Gracie gathered the puff of her gown in her hands and made her way to the door.
Clara dropped the pair of jeans she’d been folding. “Well, I’m following you anyway. I can’t stand not knowing.”
Gracie didn’t protest. She liked knowing that Clara had her back, no matter what happened. That’s what best friends did. They supported you, even when you did something monumentally stupid like running away after a prince kissed you under the mistletoe.
Butterflies swarmed in her belly as she descended the stairs. It’s not him, she kept telling herself. It’s definitely not. But no matter how many times she repeated it in her head, she still hoped. She couldn’t help it, because that’s what love did. It gave you hope, even when things seemed impossible.
So she kept her gaze fixed on the floor, careful not to trip over her yards and yards of snowy white tulle until she finally reached the bottom of the stairs. Then, with her heart in her throat, she lifted her head and scanned the lobby.
Just as Gracie thought, it wasn’t him. But it was the next best thing. She wasn’t home for Christmas, but to her complete and utter astonishment, home had come to San Glacera.
The knot in the pit of her stomach that had been there all night slowly unspooled, like a ribbon on a Christmas gift—the most perfect present imaginable.
“Mom and Dad. What are you doing here?”
Half an hour later, Gracie still couldn’t believe her eyes. Her parents were here in San Glacera. As Ingrid fussed over her mom and dad, offering them hot cocoa and insisting they try the pistachio Bundt cake she’d just taken out of the oven—a Christmas dream of a dessert with delicate green sponge in the center and topped with a dusting of snowy powdered sugar—Gracie tried to make sense of how this had happened.
She was almost tempted to believe that the cinnamon rolls had magically summoned them, but she knew that couldn’t be true. There were limits to what even party princesses could make themselves accept as fact.
Besides, this Christmas Eve surprise had Nick’s fingerprints all over it. He knew how much her family meant to her, which was why he’d suggested making the traditional cinnamon roll recipe. He’d wanted her to have a little piece of home while she was here, far away from the only place where she’d ever celebrated Christmas. And then, just twenty-four hours ago, when Ingrid’s kitchen had smelled so much like her grandmother’s house did when she was a little girl, Gracie had told him she was thinking about her family. She’d stopped short of saying she wished they could come to San Glacera, but he’d known. He’d always been interested in what she was thinking and feeling—even back when they’d had their royally embarrassing misunderstanding about their true identities.
And now here her parents were, sitting in the wingback chairs that faced the Kriegs’s big stone fireplace.
“I’m so excited to see both of you.” Clara’s eyes danced. She hadn’t budged from the hearth since Mom and Dad sat down. “Now does it feel like Christmas Eve, Gracie?”
She nodded, not quite trusting herself to speak. Every time she tried to utter a word, she felt like she might burst into tears. “It really does.”
“When did you make plans to come?” Clara asked, gaze flitting between Gracie’s mom and dad.
Dad laughed and set down his empty dessert plate. “It’s the funniest thing. We wanted to come, obviously. We looked into it, back when Gracie first found out she’d won the contest.”
“But the flights were so expensive.” Mom’s eyes widened. “We just didn’t know how we’d swing it.”
“And then yesterday, someone from the palace called. What was his name again, dear?” Gracie’s dad rested a hand on her mom’s knee.
“Jacob.” Mom frowned. “Or was it Jaden?”
“Jaron. He’s the palace press officer,” Gracie said as she tried to ignore a ridiculous stab of disappointment. Even if Nick was behind this surprise, he would’ve left the logistics to Jaron. It wasn’t like princes went around making their own flight reservations.
Not even princes who kneaded dough by hand and spent eight hours on their feet in a soup kitchen?
