A Princess for Christmas Read online

  She missed Maman so very much.

  “So, even though they started out at odds on the project, it’s interesting that the final plan was a combination of their visions. Now, I’m not sure how happy Niemeyer was about that. He may have just given up and let Le Corbusier have his way.”

  “Superinteresting,” Gabby said.

  Leo was executing a complicated U-turn to put them in the direction of home, so he couldn’t check her out in the mirror, but he could hear the eye roll in her tone. He decided to lean in, to further antagonize her in the hopes of getting her to laugh. “The other interesting fact about the UN Headquarters is that the Secretariat Building—that’s the tall one—was the first skyscraper in North America to use a curtain wall. It was—”

  “I got my period yesterday.”

  Wait. What?

  He was drowning. Plunged into dark, swirling, freezing water. His body might appear to be sitting placidly in the driver’s seat of his cab, but he, his real, inner self, was a block over, sinking like a stone in the East River.

  Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the saints—what?

  He started sweating—like, his body just started shoving perspiration out of his pores—and Max started yapping. Probably because he could sense Leo’s panic. Leo couldn’t think through all the racket. He was going to die, and the last thing he was going to hear would be that glorified rat.

  But no. He couldn’t die. He was all Gabby had left.

  Okay. Think. Gabby got her period. She was too young for that. Wasn’t she?

  Well, obviously not, Einstein.

  Also, his sister liked to give him shit, but he found it hard to imagine her joking about something like this.

  So, he needed to acknowledge her news. To say something.

  He cleared his throat. “You mean like your first one?”

  “Yeah.”

  Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  It wasn’t like he hadn’t known this was coming. But Gabby was eleven.

  Oh god, maybe there was something wrong with her.

  He rolled his neck to try to work out some knots that had taken up residence in it and made an effort to sound casual. “So I guess we should go to the doctor?”

  The doctor for which the copay was four hundred dollars.

  “I don’t need a doctor, Leo. I’m not sick.”

  But what if you are? What if you have some terrible disease that causes little girls to—

  “I just need some money to buy supplies.”

  Right. Supplies. Right.

  Oh, fuck, he wished Mom were here.

  “Yeah, of course. No problem. We can stop on the way home.”

  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 had no 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 period yesterday.

  “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 it took 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 as Toto in the Bronx Technology Charter School production of The 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. Miss Cake Topper was going to be jumping for a while.

  Which, okay, maybe he felt a tiny bit 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.

  But she got right in the front and, without even making eye contact with him, twisted around to face the back seat and said, “Can that thing go in the trunk so my . . . associates can sit in back?”

  Leo did not care for that tone. Not at all. It was cool and entitled. And coming from someone who hadn’t even made eye contact with him yet.

  “That thing is a dog, so no, he can’t go in the trunk.”

  Funny how quickly Leo had become Team Max.

  His passenger’s brow furrowed as she looked at the crate—it was huge and took up half the back seat. Max was small like Toto, but, as the beneficiary of Dani’s complete over-the-topness when it came to her canine companion, he had an enormous kennel they were using to transport him between school and home.

  After silently assessing the backseat situation, the woman transferred her attention to her companions, who, given their extreme physical divergence, kind o
f looked like a nursery rhyme come to life—if Jack Sprat was a competitive body builder and his spouse was a stuffy professor of philosophy. “Well, you two are going to have to stay behind—which is fine.”

  “I can’t allow it.” The proper man, who was, upon closer examination, not as old as his formal attire had initially suggested, spoke with what sounded like a German accent. “You need Torkel at least for the party.”

  “I don’t. I’m not taking him on board with me. You will recall that I’m attempting to be casual. To circumvent all the formal meetings Gregory won’t take with us.”

  “You can’t go alone.”

  “Well, I’m not taking Torkel on the boat. I never was.” She looked at the beefy guy. “My apologies, Torkel. You would be a . . . what do they call it here? A down bringer?” Her brow knit slightly, then quickly smoothed as she found a phrase she apparently liked better. “No, a mood killer.”

  The man—Torkel—nodded. It was a strange, deep nod that almost looked like a bow.

  The other man sighed and opened the back door, like he was about to get in. “I’ll come, then.” He directed a “move over” motion to Gabby. “This young lady and I shall endure these tight quarters.”

  “Hang on, now.” Leo spoke to halt the man’s progress, but he directed his words at the woman. “Rewind.”

  She looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time since she’d gotten in his car.

  His mind had made the cake topper bride comparison because of the voluminous white dress, and maybe because her dark hair was twisted into a low bun that seemed sort of formal and weddinglike, but up close, she did not look like a cake topper at all. Cake toppers were made of plastic and wore generically bland expressions.

  This woman’s face was the opposite of generic. It cycled through a rapid-fire slideshow of emotions: confusion gave way to annoyance, and there was still a touch of that entitlement he’d seen earlier. It got his hackles up. She had dark blue eyes fringed with eyelashes so long they looked like cartoons—like someone had drawn them on with a Sharpie—and full, pink lips that also looked kind of cartoonish in the way they formed a heart on top.

  It was good she was so snooty underneath all that beauty. That made it easier to say, “Did you not notice that the ‘Off Duty’ part of my sign was lit up?” He pointed to the ceiling.

  “It was?” The entitlement slid off her face. It was very satisfying.

  “Yeah. We’re headed home, so if you’re on our way, we’ll take you.”

  “I’m going to the North Cove Marina.”

  “In Battery Park?”

  “Battery what?”

  “Park?”

  “Well, I’m getting on a yacht on a pier in the North Cove Marina. It’s down around the tip of Manhattan. Is that Battery Park? You should be able to take FDR Drive around, and it should take twenty minutes. Exactly twenty minutes—that’s not me rounding up or down.”

  “That might be true if FDR Drive was open.”

  The cascade of emotions continued: dismay, panic, and, he was pretty sure, outright fear.

  That did something to him. Whatever this lady’s deal was, she apparently really needed to get to Battery Park.

  “FDR Drive is closed?” she whispered.

  “Yep. For resurfacing. Between here and the Manhattan Bridge.” When she didn’t say anything, he added, “So you’ll have to go straight across, which, this time of day, will probably take you at least forty minutes.”

  She looked at her watch. It was big and chunky and seemed out of place with the fancy, poufy dress she was wearing. She blew out a staccato little breath, like she was steeling herself for something, and turned to him. “I so appreciate you stopping for me. I will pay you any amount of money you name if you will get me to the North Cove Marina by seven o’clock.”

  He barked a laugh. Any amount of money he could name? Maybe four hundred bucks so he could take Gabby to the doctor to talk about her period? Or, no, maybe whatever amount it would take to hire a shrink for him so he could talk about Gabby’s period?

  Or maybe just thirty-five bucks for a case of Moretti.

  “Of course we’ll take you,” Gabby said from the back seat.

  The woman turned to the serious man, who was still frozen half in, half out of the car. “Really, Mr. Benz, there’s no need for either of you to come. I’m getting on the boat by myself anyway.”

  Mr. Benz looked like he was going to object, but the woman lifted her chin a good two inches, turned to Leo, and said, “It will just be me, thank you.” Then she turned back to her companions and said it again, more emphatically. “Just me.”

  That last “just me” sounded like an order, but it also sounded like maybe this woman wasn’t in the habit of issuing orders.

  “You can sort out the car service and send someone to pick me up,” she added in a mollifying tone.

  The man’s nostrils flared, but he backed away from the car. “I must insist on collecting your name and contact information,” he said to Leo.

  “Hang on, now.” Leo wasn’t really sure what was happening. He had not agreed to take this woman to Battery Park. If he did that, it was going to be three hours before they got home. They had maxi pads to buy and pasta to eat. And the mutt was going to need to pee—Leo had only been going to pick up Gabby and Max from the play, dip down for a quick architecture tour/sibling bonding sesh, and head back home. Dani would be home soon, and she would start worrying about the damn dog.

  Which with anyone else Leo would give a fuck about, but they needed Dani. She was the closest thing they had to family.

  The woman with the not-plastic face looked at him and said, “Please.” She whispered it so quietly, he was pretty sure Gabby couldn’t hear. Certainly her dude-posse outside the car couldn’t. And after she said it, she bowed her head and covered her face in her hands. Almost like she was already giving up.

  Shit.

  Damsels in distress. They did it to him every goddamn time.

  He tipped his head back and sighed.

  Both Gabby and Miss Cake Topper must have interpreted that sigh as the surrender it was, because they both started exclaiming, thanking him like he had just saved a kitten from drowning or some shit. They didn’t understand that this afternoon, he was the one drowning.

  But, resigned, he pulled out his phone so he could text Dani before they set off—and also to figure out where they could stop to let Max out to pee after they dropped their posh passenger at her yacht since it was going to take them approximately a hundred years to get home.

  “You’ve saved me. Thank you.” She spoke loudly enough that she drew the attention of the man she’d called Mr. Benz. He had moved away from the back door of the cab, but now he stuck his head fully in the open window on the front passenger side. He looked at the woman for a long moment and transferred his gaze to Leo.

  “I think it important that you know the identity of your passenger, sir.”

  Yeah, he wanted to say. That would be good. Because I’m guessing Miss Cake Topper isn’t actually her name. The woman started speaking rapidly to Mr. Benz in German, but he ignored her, raising his voice so Leo could hear him over the woman’s protests—you didn’t need to speak German to know she was annoyed. “You are transporting Her Royal Highness Marie Joséphine Annagret Elena, Princess of Eldovia.”

  There was a squeal from the back seat.

  “And in case it matters,” Mr. Benz went on, “I shall inform you that Eldovia has always embraced absolute primogeniture.”

  “Absolute what?” Gabby asked.

  “It means the firstborn inherits the throne, regardless of gender. No tinkering with succession laws necessary in our country.” He sniffed and performed the slightest of shudders. “Her Royal Highness has been heir to the throne from the moment she was born. Which means, my good sir, that you are transporting the future Queen of Eldovia.”

  Gabby started shrieking.

  For his part, Leo rested his head—it was suddenly too h
eavy to hold up—on the steering wheel and groaned.

  Chapter Two

  She had almost made it!

  If Marie were a different sort of person, she would have cursed here. Goddammit, she’d almost made it!

  She wasn’t naïve enough to think she could pass as a normal person. Not with Torkel and Mr. Benz hovering over her like a pair of helicopter parents at kindergarten drop-off. But she had hoped her rescuer would classify her as merely a run-of-the-mill rich person.

  But, really, what did it matter? This man was going to drive her to the boat, and she would never see him again. She had nothing to be ashamed of. She had just given a speech at the United Nations, for heaven’s sake! And done a rather fine job of it, too.

  So she straightened her spine and lifted her chin. “It is vitally important that I reach the North Cove Marina by seven o’clock.”

  “So you can go to a party on a boat,” the taxi driver said flatly. He was not impressed.

  She could try to explain that it wasn’t merely a party, but actually, if things went well, a stealth trade meeting. But, again, what was the point? Mr. Benz’s wildly unnecessary little speech had probably already cemented this man’s opinion of her. So she merely said, “That is correct.”

  He didn’t bother hiding his disdain as he reached across her and handed Mr. Benz a business card through the open window, and as they pulled away from the curb, his lip physically curled upward.

  His other passenger didn’t seem to share his disregard, though. “Are you really a princess?” she exclaimed.

  Marie turned to look at the girl though the open window in the clear plexiglass partition that separated the front seat from the back. “I am.”

  “Eeee! That is so amazing!” The girl threw up her hands. She must be the driver’s daughter. They had the same thick, dark hair, though hers was in a ponytail and her dad’s was a shaggy mass of waves. Matching light-brown eyes were topped with heavy, unkempt brows. Thick, pillowy lips that would make the girl a knockout when she got older made her dad . . . a knockout currently. His were surrounded by a beard that was a little too long to be called stubble, but only just. She found this tendency of some American men to hover perpetually in limbo between clean-shaven and bearded rather vexing.