A Princess for Christmas - Jenny Holiday Page 0,123
aquamarine. In other words, nothing special. “Turn it over.”
“AR and VM,” she said, hunching over to examine the ring. “Oh! And LR and MA! That’s us!”
“Yeah. I had us added.” He felt sheepish all of a sudden, like maybe he should have shown her before he had the engraving done, rather than assume she’d want to wear it. “I figured you have access to literal crown jewels. How can I compete with that?”
“You can compete with that by not competing with it,” Marie said quietly. “By giving me something like this, something from your family. From your heart.”
Leo swallowed to get rid of the lump that had risen in his throat. “Well, you have that, too, Princess.”
They were home. “All right. Enough of this.” He looked at his watch. “Gabby’s gonna be home from school in an hour, and then it’s going to be all grilled cheese sandwiches and nonstop chatter, and tomorrow you have your meeting at the UN first thing so . . .” He let his gaze rake over Marie’s body and waggled his eyebrows to make sure she got his point.
“So we should make the most of that hour?” She was out of the car before he had cut the engine.
He caught up with her and grabbed her hand. “I mean, yeah. While we can, you know? I’m imagining that as soon as the news gets out, there’s probably going to be a shitload of royal wedding protocol unleashed.”
“Probably,” Marie agreed cheerfully. “I’m sure it will provide hours of fodder for you and my father to argue over.”
“I am prepared to lose all those arguments except one.” Marie raised her eyebrows inquisitively as they mounted the stairs. “I want Dani to be my best man. Best person. I know that’s probably ‘not done,’ but I don’t give a shit. I’ll let your father win on everything else. You can dress me up and put me in a pumpkin carriage and I’ll sign whatever papers he wants me to, but Dani’s not negotiable.”
“Of course it’s not. Dani will be your best man, and Max will be my maid of honor. My father will lose his mind. It will be epic. It will be—”
He cut her off with a kiss, pressing her against the inside of his door as he let her bag fall to the floor. Fuck, he had been waiting forever for this, to hear her sigh into his mouth as her jaw went slack. To feel her wind her arms around his neck and lean into him and kiss him like she had no plans of stopping.
She lit him up like all the lights of an Eldovian ballroom at Christmas were suddenly flipped on inside his chest. As she moaned softly, trying to rock herself up against him, he started to feel a little frantic, like he couldn’t get close enough to her. But he forced himself to take a step back, shedding his coat as he did so and assessing the problem of how to most efficiently divest her of her clothing. Gabby was going to be home before they knew it. So they could either stand here and make out by the door forever or they could get on with it.
Marie was dressed in her princess gear. Her coat was a sort-of trench coat, but it sloped out at the bottom like a skirt and featured a wide belt tied tight over two rows of buttons. He unwrapped the belt and started on the buttons. So many buttons. But that was kind of her signature thing, wasn’t it? He persevered even though his fingers were made clumsy by lust. She talked while he worked. “You still have your Christmas stockings up!”
“Yep.” It was April, but he hadn’t taken the cardboard mantel down.
Finally, he slid the coat off her shoulders to reveal . . . a pink suit-dress thing that featured approximately one million buttons. “Are you kidding me?”
Marie looked down, bewildered.
He rolled his eyes and started on them. She laughed, belatedly catching up. “This wasn’t the right thing to wear, was it?”
“Gabby’s going to be home in”—He looked at his crappy watch. He had, so far, refused her attempts to give him a Morneau—“fifty-one minutes.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Well, you’d better pick up the pace then, hadn’t you?”
He picked up the pace.
“Really, Leo,” she pressed. “Why do you still have your Christmas stockings up?”
“Because,” he said, not caring—much—that what he was about to say was going to make him sound like a giant