Page 65 of A Princess for Christmas

Like Leo.

But what if that wasn’t true?

What if, without her mother, her father was just a big bully?

What if she never got him back?

“You’ll tell the UN you’re honored but you have to decline their offer.”

She blinked at the change of subject. But, fine. They might as well have it out now. “No.”

The king physically recoiled a little. Because if she never scolded him, shecertainlynever outright defied him. She wasn’t sure what made her so bold tonight.

“You won’t have time. We have to focus all our efforts on shoring up Morneau.”

“Father.” She sighed. “About that. I think it might be time to—”

“Mr.Benz reports that Marx is—”

“No.” There it was again. How astonishing. “Mr.Benz does not report.Ireport.” She had made a full report to her father and his cabinet this morning. “I’mthe one who saw Marx.”

“Yes, well, between him and Gregory, we need to focus all our energies internally for the foreseeable future.”

“I can do both.”

“So what I hear you saying is you want to throw open our borders to hordes of people who have no skills and—”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying Europe has a refugee crisis. Theworldhas a refugee crisis. It’s not going to go away, and we—I—want to help.”

He glared at her.

She glared back.

It’s whatMamanwould have done.

She was being uncharacteristically bold tonight, but Marie didn’t quite have the guts to say that out loud.

She wondered if he heard her anyway.

Chapter Thirteen

“I can’t see the phone when you hold it like that.” Leo sounded peevish. He tried not to, but honestly, how was he supposed to copy Hair & There’s tutorial if he couldn’t see the damn phone?

Tryto copy.

Leo was really bad at braids.

It shouldn’t be this hard, with his years of construction experience. What were braids but building with hair? But he’d never gotten the hang of it.

Gabby heaved an extremely put-upon-sounding sigh.

He held his hands up like he was being robbed. “Okay, let’s try again.”

“Forget it,” she snarked, letting his phone clatter to the dressing table she was seated at.

He closed his eyes. Started counting to ten in his head. He tried not to get into arguments with Gabby. She needed the stability of someone who supported her unconditionally. But sometimes she drove him batty. So, yeah, he was bad at even the most basic of French braids, forget the more elaborate creations shecoveted. Dani sometimes reminded him that they were still siblings. Still family. “And what is family,” she said, “if not a bunch of people who annoy the hell out of you a large proportion of the time?”

He tried to comfort himself with Dani’s words, but really, the whole braids thing always gave him that borderline-frantic feeling that he was fucking everything up. That no matter how hard he tried, he would never be enough to replace the parents Gabby had lost.

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