A Princess for Christmas - Jenny Holiday Page 0,107
I want? Have a heart anymore?”
He sighed. “It’s true your father has not been himself since your mother’s passing.”
“We all miss her. But it’s been three years. I can’t keep doing this.” Her voice was rising, and she could hear the hysteria creeping in, but she couldn’t control it. “I can’t keep doing his work as well as trying to do the work I want to do. And I can’t marry the wrong person!”
The wrong person.
That suggested there was a right person to marry, didn’t it?
Oh dear god. That’s what was different now. That’s why she was so upset.
She did want to marry Leo, even though there was “no universe” in which he wanted to marry her.
She was in love with him.
Her stupid, naïve heart had opened right up to him. Marched right over to his rough-gentle hands and laid itself inside them.
Marie gasped. Audibly and mortifyingly. She wanted him so terribly.
She reminded herself, though, that she was accustomed to not getting what she wanted. She closed her eyes and pressed her knuckles against her eyelids, hoping the pain would make the sobs that were about to come recede.
“Aww, Marie.” Max came over to her and tried to touch her arm. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want him. She shook him off.
She had to get a grip. Max aside, there was no scenario in which she was going to marry Leo. She had to stop conflating the issue of the engagement with . . . the fact of Leo.
Marie pulled her fists off her eyes and straightened her spine. “I’m sorry. I lost my head there for a moment.” She turned to Mr. Benz. “I’m sorry I bothered you with this nonsense. If you’ll excuse us for a moment, I’d like to have a word with Max before we join everyone on the grounds.” Max’s family was scheduled to join Marie and her father for a walkabout, to take in Cocoa Fest. She’d invited Leo and Gabby, too. She needed to fill Max in—to prepare him, at least, for the possibility that her father might be horrible to the Riccis. And she needed him to back her up in making them feel welcome.
And then there was the ball. The fucking ball, which was what Leo would call it.
As Mr. Benz left, Max approached cautiously. “You want to tell me what’s wrong?” He held his arms out like he wanted to hug her. She let him this time, burying her face in his shoulder—the wrong shoulder—and saying, “I fell in love, Max. That’s what’s wrong.”
Fuck it. He was going to do it. What was the worst that could happen? She’d say no thanks. Leo, I am not interested in a transatlantic booty call. And he would move on. Go home. Where he belonged.
The decision made him feel oddly light.
Oh, who was he kidding? What was making him feel oddly light was the idea of her back in New York. Boats and fucking cherry blossoms. Getting it on in his rickety double bed while Gabby was at school.
Leo hadn’t felt this light in a long time. Possibly, he had lost his mind and that was what was making him feel so light, but hey, he was going to run with it.
He should have waited for her to respond to his knock. But that stupid lightness was propelling him, making him hurry, like he was a balloon filled with helium skittering along a ceiling.
Marie was in her sitting room. His eyes went right to her. They always did. “It’s my turn to make a proposition, Princess.”
“Leo!”
The problem with the way Leo’s eyes immediately went to Marie when she was in a room was that there was a delay in registering the presence of anyone else in the room.
Like, for example, the guy she was hugging.
The guy she was guiltily jumping away from.
“Leo, this is my friend Max. Maximillian von Hansburg. The von Hansburgs are close family friends, and they’re here for the festivities tomorrow. Max, this is Leonardo Ricci.”
“Ah, he of the moonlit walks,” Max drawled as he stuck out a hand for Leo to shake.
Leo ignored the hand and surveyed its owner. Max was dressed in a suit. A skinny gray one, but instead of a normal tie, he was wearing his shirt open with a scarf thing tied into it. Was that an ascot? Leo had never seen one in person, but he was pretty sure that was it. The dude was wearing an actual fucking ascot.