Page 40 of A Princess for Christmas

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 Gabby 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 overthem. 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 youkiddingme?” 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, youarefrom 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 berude, Leo.” She turned to Marie. “That is thebest thingI haveever 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.

Exactlylike 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.

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