Page 41 of The Duke Who Saved Christmas
“Please let me go,” I groaned, flapping my elbows to shrug her off.
Julian came over and extracted her hands from my arms where, if it weren’t for my coat, I’d definitely have fingerprint-sized bruises from her ironclad grip on me.
“I’ll buy you marzipan if you stop harassing your sister,” he told Hazel.
“Can we add a ten-year clause on that?” I asked.
Hazel shot me a look. “It’s my job to annoy you. It’s in every little sister manual.”
“Oh, so you can harass me, but when I put chewing gum in your hair, I’m the problem?”
“Yes.”
“You broke the head off my Barbie.”
“She was sleeping with my Ken. She was a homewrecker. That was hardly my fault.”
“Maybe you don’t need any more sugar,” Julian said slowly, looking at Hazel before he met my eyes. “Now I’m worried about your wedding speech.”
I grinned. “You should be. I know all her secrets, and I have the family photo albums.”
Hazel’s eyes widened to the picture of absolute fear. “What—”
Julian hauled her away, and I laughed. If only I’d been able to get a photo of the look on her face, I’d have added it to the extremely embarrassing slideshow that was going to accompany my wedding speech.
She was going to kill me for it, but I happened to know that Julian’s older brother and best man was doing the exact same thing for him.
Hey, were what big siblings for if not to embarrass the shit out of the younger one?
I also fully expected she’d do the same to me if I ever got married, so I absolutely knew what I was signing myself up for.
When Julian had carted her out of sight, I turned around to see if Nana had managed to extract Danny from the pig, but came face-to-face with a thick, black coat that I recognised as belonging to Thomas.
Excellent.
“Do you mind?” I said, craning my neck back to look up at him. “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough to hear your fun sibling banter. Did you really put chewing gum in Hazel’s hair?” Thomas’ eyes glittered with laughter.
I huffed and folded my arms across my chest. “She ripped the head off my Barbie. It was justified at the time.”
“I’m just mad I didn’t do the same thing whenever Zara broke my Lego,” he mused. “That would have put an end to that pettiness.”
“Shouldn’t you be paying attention to your nephew instead of harassing me?”
“You’re being harassed a lot today. Are you sure that’s not a projection?”
“Your nephew, Thomas.”
“Is fine.” His lips tugged to the sides in a wry smile. “He and Beatrix Trotter appear to have taken a liking to one another,so he and your grandma have gone to deliver the pig to my mum.”
Right.
The pig was switching on the lights with his mum.
There’s a sentence I never thought would cross my mind.
I rubbed my temple. “I can’t believe Castleton’s famous Christmas lights are being turned on by a miniature pig in a Christmas jumper.”
