“Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a horse.”
“Then he’s not a real prince.” She sounded deeply disappointed. “Auntie Miley, does he kiss you? Mommy says married people kiss. Do you kiss him?”
My face went red. “Eloise?—”
“Mommy said if he doesn’t treat you like a princess, she’ll come down there and, and—” I could hear Vicky in the background making frantic sounds. “She said she’ll kick his?—”
“ELOISE!” Vicky’s voice, muffled, followed by the sound of a hand covering a small mouth, then rustling. Vicky came back on the line, breathless. “Sorry. She has no filter. She gets it from me.”
I laughed. “She gets it from both of us.”
“Put him on the phone,” Eloise demanded in the background. “I want to talk to the prince!”
“She wants to talk to Christopher—absolutely not!” Vicky said.
Christopher was walking past my door toward the kitchen.
“I want to talk to the prince, why can’t I, Mommy?”
Heat crept up my neck. Christopher had stopped. He was staring at me, one brow arched perfectly.
“My niece wants to talk to you. She’s been… insisting on talking to the prince,” I said in a single breath.
His brow climbed higher. I held out the phone. He took it slowly, like a man accepting a suspicious package.
“Hello?”
I could hear Eloise’s voice, tiny and fierce. “Are you the prince?”
“You could say so?”
“Do you have a horse?”
“I don’t.”
“Do you have a castle?”
“I have a house.”
“Is it big?”
“It’s big.”
“Do you love my Auntie Miley? Because if you don’t love her, my mommy says she’ll kick your butt and my Auntie Miley is the best person in the whole world and she makes the best empanadas and if you’re mean to her I will come down there and I will—” Eloise said in one breath.
“ELOISE!” Vicky again. More rustling. The sound of a phone being wrestled from small hands.
Christopher handed the phone back to me. His expression was unreadable, but there was something at the corners of his eyes—a warmth he was working to contain.
“Do you gossip about me to your family?” he asked. “Even the five-year-old has an opinion.”
“I don’t gossip.” I denied, completely embarrassed.
“She threatened me, Miley. A kindergartener just told me she’d come for me.”
“She’s protective.”
“She’s terrifying.”
