Read Online The Christmas Princess by Patricia McLinn - Free Book Online

serious surgery after the first of the year, another part of her mind wondered if Hunter’s ability to shut down her questions was part of being good at his job.

CHAPTER NINE
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    Hunter arrived in perfect time Friday morning. She’d showered and dressed and was beginning to open the boxes and bags they’d brought from her storage unit yesterday.
    “Good, you’re just in time to help me.”
    He gave the open box in front of her a dour look. “We have work to do.”
    “But it’s Christmas—”
    “It’s the day after Thanksgiving. You asked for Thanksgiving, and you got it. Now it’s time to get back to work.”
    “Don’t you have any Christmas spirit?”
    “No.”
    She sat back on her heels, challenging him. “What do you do for Christmas?”
    “I work.”
    “All day?”
    “Often.”
    “But not every year and even when you work all day you have to go home eventually. What do you do then?”
    “I sit on the couch, drink a beer, and watch an NBA game.”
    “You don’t have any traditions?”
    “I told you. I sit on the couch—”
    “Fine. What about a special meal?”
    He shook his head.
    “Turkey?”
    Head shake.
    “Beef roast? Ham?”
    Head shake.
    “Pie or cookies? Ah.” The head shake had faltered. “Cookies.”
    “Sharon gives cookies to a lot of people.” He sounded defensive.
    “Homemade Christmas cookies. That’s nice.” She brought her gaze back to him. “Sharon knows you very well, doesn’t she?”
    She could have almost sworn he jumped. A small jump, like a nerve ticking under his skin. “No.”
    “Sure she does, because you’re friends.”
    “We’ve worked together a long time. She’s my boss.”
    “One doesn’t preclude the other. I worked for Gerard Littrell and we were friends. I’m friends with Zoe and she’s my boss.”
    “We’re not.” The dour look was back in full force. “It’s time to get to work.”
    Feeling oddly cheerful she said, “No dancing or handshakes, since Derek’s not here to do the grunt work.”
    “We’ll go over terminology and etiquette.”
    She groaned. There went her cheerfulness. His, on the other hand, appeared to increase.
    “Plus Bariavak’s geography and history.”
    She narrowed her eyes. “Then I get at least an hour to ask questions about the king.”
    He looked back at her without expression. “Yes, all right.”
    “And you
answer
the questions,” she specified.
    He raised both hands, palms toward her. As if such a dodge had never occurred to him, but the twitch of his mouth gave him away. “What I can tell you within operational protocol.”
    * * *
    April closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the top of the couch cushion.
    Her mind felt like what was left over after winemakers squeeze every last bit of juice out of a grape. Smashed, deflated, empty.
    Boy, she’d thought Great-Grandmother Beatrice’s lessons in deportment were tough.
    She considered that with her eyes closed. Well, they were tough. They’d seemed downright impossible, not to mention unreasonable when she’d first encountered them as an adolescent. Now … they were still tough, but they covered a lot of situations, and covered them well.
    The ones Hunter kept hitting her with were just so detailed and arcane.
    That pretty much described what he’d told her about Bariavak’s history, too. Lots of dates, treaties, and dodging enemies thanks to the mountains that nearly surrounded the country.
    He’d taken the same approach with her questions about King Jozef and his family.
    “In 1962, his father—”
    “No more dates. Tell me what his father was like. Better yet, what was his daughter like?”
    “I never met her.”
    “You never met any of these fusty old treaties, either,” she snapped, and saw the twitch of his mouth again. “Okay, you say you can’t tell me any details of how the baby princess went missing because of operational security. But what do the reports of Princess Sofia’s character and personality and