Page 20 of A Prince for Christmas

“True,” I said, a warm feeling filling me up at the familiar crunch. Jenny handed out steaming cups of hot cocoa, and I snuggled back on the sofa.

I choked on the first sip from the mug, though. My cup was half full of Kahlua, which I certainly needed by this point, but which my little sisters had no business drinking.

“Don’t worry,” Jenny said as she held out her cup. “There’s none in ours.”

“There better not be.” I scowled at my two little sisters. “Now what on earth is going on?”

The girls dissolved in giggles. “Do you think she really doesn’t know?” Lizzie gasped, as soon as she could stop laughing.

“Know what?” I demanded.

“I don’t think she does,” Jenny said and dissolved into laughter. “She’s gonna need that drink!”

“What is wrong with the two of you?” I asked in frustration. “Have you lost your minds?”

“How did you meet Nick?” Lizzie asked, sobering and wiping away a tear of laughter.

“He works at Wayward Wings with me,” I said. “I trained him.”

“And?”

“And he’s English, and he’s going to MSU. We’ve been getting to know each other pretty well, I think. He really loves the mountains.”

“What about his family?” Lizzie pressed.

“They live in London, from what I gather. He seems to get along with them fine, but he didn’t go home for Christmas this year, so I brought him here.” Her questions were making me realize how little I really knew about his background. Mostly I knew how his eyes lit up when he looked at me, how being close to him made me feel.

Jenny snorted. “You didn’t think to ask why he wasn’t going home for the holidays?”

“I did,” I said, sitting up and raising my chin. “He had a fight with his mom.”

“And you haven’t picked up a People magazine in this century?” Lizzie demanded.

“You know I don’t have time for celebrity gossip. What does that have to do with anything?”

Jenny giggled again. “You tell her,” she said to her sister.

“You really don’t know who you’re dating?” Lizzie asked, her eyes wide. “Doesn’t the name Lancaster mean anything to you?”

“Is there something it should mean?”

“You do know England has a Queen, don’t you?”

By now my frustration was about to boil over. “Lizzie, stop playing games. The queen is not a Lancaster. What does she have to do with this?”

“The Queen has no last name, and technically, neither do her sons…”

I stared at my sister, a hollow sense of dread beginning to grow in my stomach. “Yes, so?”

Lizzie stared at me as if I were daft. “So, they probably take the last name of the nearest relative if they’re required to do something like, I don’t know, apply for college.”

“There have to be hundreds of Lancasters in England. Maybe thousands,” I protested.

“Yes, but only one Nicholas Lancaster who made the front page of my favorite magazine this summer. There was a big stir when he decided to transfer to a U.S. university.”

“That’s impossible. He’s working at the bar with me.” I suddenly felt adrift, and it wasn’t a good feeling. “Why would someone who’s a relative of royalty be working at a bar?”

“Not a relative of royalty,” Jenny corrected, ignoring my question. “He is Royalty. To be exact, he’s a prince. The prince.”