Page 23 of A Princess for Christmas

That set Mr.Benz off again.

All right. Enough. She shouldn’t have allowed herself to get drawn into arguing, as if she were a teenager begging for a curfew extension. She raised a hand to halt Mr. Benz’s monologue and notched her chin a little higher. “Gentlemen. Given that myschedule is clear for the rest of the day, I will be having lunch with Mr. Ricci. He will escort me back to the hotel, and I will see you there later. Good afternoon.”

She turned and hitched her head slightly to Leo to signal that they should start walking. He was trying—though not very hard—to suppress a grin.

He waited until they were a little ways down the block to say, “I didn’t want to mess up your dramatic exit, but the car is actually in the other direction.”

She laughed. Because that was funny, but also because she wasfree. For just a little bit, but that wasn’t nothing. It was a sunny winter day in New York City, and she was going to have lunch with a grumpy-nice man. How normal. How unremarkable. Howwonderful.

“Are we going in the right direction for the sandwich place?” she asked. “Do we have time to walk there? I’m sure they’re standing there watching me, and I’d really rather preserve my triumphant exit.”

Leo chuckled. “We’re going the right way, but you’re not dressed warmly enough. It’s a good four blocks.”

“I’ll be fine.”

He took off his hat, which was a black, knit toque withIslandersembroidered on it in white.

“No, no, I can’t take your hat. I assure you—”

He jammed it on her head.

“I’m from the Alps!” She tried one more protest. “I’m hearty.”

“I’m from the Bronx,” he countered. “I’m heartier.”

She had no argument for that. He was definitely . . . heartier than she was. So when he held out his arm and said, “Your pastrami on rye awaits, Your Honorable Ladyness,” all she could do was take it.

“So what’s the verdict?”

He should probably have let her take more than a bite before he started pressing her. Or at least given her a chance to properly chew and swallow her first bite. But Leo found himself wanting the princess to approve of his deli. As much as he hated to admit it, he’d been thrown for a loop to find her on the verge of tears outside that last shop. He’d wanted to cheer her up.

It was worth remembering, though, that cheering up princesses wasn’t in his job description. They would finish up here, and he would take her back to the hotel and head up to Gabby’s play.

When she’d conquered her bite, Marie set the sandwich down and looked at it skeptically. “It’s very good, but it’s so big. You Americans always put so much meat on everything.”

So big. So much meat. He chuckled. He couldn’t help it. As much as he’d had to grow up in recent years, he still had an inner thirteen-year-old.

“What is amusing?”

Leo shook his head. “You are.” Marie was such a strange mix of competent and innocent. Smart and oblivious. Some of it was probably due to the fact that English wasn’t her first language—though she spoke it perfectly—but some of it, he suspected, was just her.

She frowned. So, not wanting her to feel self-conscious, Leo said, “So what happened at the last store? Do I need to go back there and kick someone’s ass?”

Marie’s forehead smoothed as she smiled. Mission accomplished. “No. I was merely upset because I found out we’re losing some more business.”

He had achieved his goal to make her smile. And he didn’t really give a fuck about the Eldovian watch industry, so he had no idea why he opened his mouth again and said, “You want to tell me about it?”

It turned out she did.

The luxury watch industry, he learned as they ate, was facing some trouble. Production runs, as she’d mentioned before, relied on preorders. That made sense to him. You weren’t going to want to manufacture really expensive products unless you knew there was a market for them. The rest? Not so much.

“So why not make a smart watch?” he asked. “Something classier than the Apple Watch. Every idiot has one of those these days.”

“My father thinks it’s a fad that will pass. He sees it as sullying the brand. Morneau watches have been made entirely in our country via traditional methods for more than two hundred years. He takes pride in that.”

Leo could see it, and oh how he wished Apple everything was a fad. New York was full of zombies too lazy to take their phones out of their pockets, marching through the city staring at their wrists. But... “I don’t think smart watches are going anywhere. But anyway, do you have to make them? Can you license the Morneau name? Like, you know the Fitbit?”

She nodded. “It never really took off in our country—I feel as though when you have the Alps, you don’t need a device to tell you how much to walk—but I know it.”

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