Page 97 of A Princess for Christmas

Eventually, she started to shift like she was preparing to lever herself off him. He didn’t want her to go. Not yet. So he stood, taking her with him. She squealed and laughed and wrapped her legs around him and let him carry her to the bed. He used one hand to hold on to the condom as he eased her off him and laid her down. After ditching it, he slid under the covers next to her.

“Are you going to finish the roof of the cabin tomorrow?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah. I intended to today, but then a princess showed up and spirited me off to lunch. I’m planning to get up first thing and finish. I only have probably another hour’s worth of work, so I’ll be back for all the cocoa nonsense.”

“Thank you, Leo.” She propped herself up on his chest and looked at him intently. “You don’t know what this means to me.”

“I do know.”

She smiled. It wasn’t the fake one, exactly, but it was a wistful one. “I wish I could do something for you.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure you just gave me the best sex of my life.”

Her face lit up. “Really?”

He probably shouldn’t have admitted that, but... “Yeah.” He stopped short of floating the come-to-New-York-in-the-spring idea. Because, ultimately, Dani was right. He needed to not get himself in too deep.

“I was thinking about the concept of pleasing people, actually,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“It’s going to sound odd to compare these two things, but bearwith me. I was thinking about how, since we started . . .” Marie screwed up her face like she was having trouble spitting out the words.

“Ah, come on,” he teased, playing with her hair. “You can say it. You can’t make me doallthe dirty talking.”

She rolled her eyes. “Since we started having sex.”

“And here I was hoping you’d say ‘fucking.’”

“Regardless, the point is, I’ve found myself wanting to please you. Wanting to do exactly what would give you the most pleasure. This evening for some reason I was thinking about how unusual a position that is for me to find myself in. I mean, in normal circumstances, not sexual ones.”

“You don’t have family that allows it.”

“Correct. I would love to make my father happy, but I can’t. My mother, though... Here’s the other memory. In the spring, there are wildflowers everywhere around here. She loved them. When I was young, I used to go out every day and pick some for her. I even did it as an adult. Not as often, but from time to time. And I remember on my first trip home from Oxford in the spring, after the Hilary term in my first year, I was being driven up to the castle and they were in bloom. So I asked the driver to stop, and I picked an armful. It was such a simple thing, but it made her so happy.”

He could see what was missing in her life. Well, there were a lot of things missing in her life. Dancing like no one was watching. Pastrami on rye. But the larger point was that she was, elementally, alone.

“My whole life is arranged so that I’m surrounded by other people whose entire jobs are to make me happy,” she said.

“And do they?”

“They make me comfortable.”

That was a nonanswer. But really, the nonanswerwasa sort of answer, wasn’t it?

“Inever get a chance to makeanyone elsehappy,” she went on. “That’s what I’m trying to say. Happiness—whether you’re experiencing it or creating it for others—is important. And happiness and comfort, it turns out, are not the same things.”

“You know what would make me really happy right now?”If you agreed to come to New York and see me. If this didn’t have to be it.

“What?”

“If you would say ‘fucking.’”

Marie cracked up, which had been Leo’s aim. He knew it didn’t address anything she’d said, but all that stuff about wildflowers and happiness? He got what she was saying, but he was not the person who could fix any of that for her, not in any sort of permanent way. So he stuck with what hecoulddo. “Come on. It’s not that hard. ‘Leo, I enjoyed fucking you very much.’”

She swatted his chest. “Oh, stop it.”

She didn’t really want him to stop it, though. He could tell from the way her eyes danced. He performed an exaggerated sigh. “Well, okay. I guess I’ll just lie here all unhappy-like.”

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