Page 5 of A Princess for Christmas

And then they would have to talk, right? About her feelings on the matter, if not the mechanics of things? They had already covered the mechanics during various excruciating versions of the birds and the bees talk in the past two years, Leo reading robotically from a script he’d modified from library books on how to talk to your kids about this shit—because the library hadno books about how to talk to your much younger sister about this shit.

Was he supposed to say something here? Something profound and speechlike?Congratulations, Gabby; you’ve become a woman today.

But not today.Yesterday.She said she got her periodyesterday.

“So, uh, this happened yesterday? What have you been... doing?”

Using? Wearing?

“I went to the school nurse, and she gave me some maxi pads,” Gabby said matter-of-factly. “But I’m out.”

Maxi pads.Leo’s vision started to swim.

“She said I was too young for tampons.”

Oh, Jesus Christ,tampons. He opened his eyes as wide as they would go and forced himself to concentrate on the road in front of him rather than the blurry blobs congregating in his peripheral vision.

All right. They just had to get out of Manhattan. Stop at the store for... supplies. And maybe some takeout. They would get her favorite, pasta from Ralph’s. Which normally he hated doing, because she only ever wanted penne with marinara, which he could make at home. In theory. Not that he ever did. But their mom’s recipe was better than Ralph’s, so it bugged him to spend twelve bucks for subpar pasta from down the street.

But all he could think to do right now was figure out what would make his sister happy, and make it happen. “So, kiddo, what do you say we stop at—”

“Oh my god!”

“What? What?” Leo was already so enervated, that was all ittook for his adrenaline to spike, making him white-knuckle the steering wheel so he wouldn’t fly away like an overinflated balloon. His chest hurt.

“Look at that girl! She’s trying to hail a cab! Stop for her!”

“I’m not on duty.”Also, I’m having a fucking heart attack.

“She looks like a princess!”

She did kind of look like a princess. She was even flanked by a tall, slim man looking very ill at ease in his old-timey suit, and a beefy, sunglasses-wearing bald guy looking very ill at ease in his new-timey one.

“Pick her up!”

“I’m not on duty,” he said again.Also, I’m still having a fucking heart attack.

“Then just give her a ride. She looks like she really needs one.”

She did. She was literally jumping up and down, waving her hands in the air like she was a runway worker at La Guardia trying to signal a plane gone rogue. She was wearing a shiny, white dress that puffed out like a parachute each time she jumped. She looked like a wedding cake topper in an aerobics class. It would have been funny if Leo had any humor to spare.

“Leo! Stop! You can’t just leave her there.”

He could, though. He would have exactly zero qualms about doing just that. He had other stuff to worry about. Maxi pads and pasta, to be precise. And heart attacks—the copay for heart attacks was probably a hell of a lot more than four hundred bucks. “Traffic is terrible, Gab. If we stop, it’ll be forever until we get home. And we can’t keep Max crated that much longer.” Probably. He didn’t really know. Normally, he ignored Max. But normally, he wasn’t driving Max back and forth from his starring role asToto in the Bronx Technology Charter School production ofThe Wizard of Oz. “Also, it’s going to start snowing any minute.” The sky was a heavy, telltale gray.

“She’s never going to get a cab.”

Gabby was not wrong. It was six o’clock, it was about to snow, and the traffic was horrendous, especially over here because FDR Drive was closed. MissCake Topper was going to be jumping for a while.

Which, okay, maybe he felt atinybit bad about. He didn’t like turning his back on a damsel in distress. But he was currently in possession of an eleven-year-old damsel who was taking up all his bandwidth. He wasn’t taking new clients right now.

“Please, Leo.”

Well,shit.

He heaved a sigh, pulled up in front of the woman, and lowered the passenger-side window.

He’d been going to ask where she was headed. To say something about how he was off duty, but if she wasn’t going far, or was going straight uptown, he could take her.

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