The cabin was modestly sized but exquisite. It was double gabled, had a slate roof, and featured a wraparound veranda that probably doubled its square footage in the summer. A curl of smoke rose from a stone chimney.
And, more importantly, it was a log cabin—jackpot.
Its owner emerged out of another structure Leo hadn’t noticed at first—an outbuilding of some sort. Semiobscured by a stand of trees, it was cruder in its construction but also made of logs.
So he had definitely come to the right place.
Kai scowled as he approached them. Imogen from the pub, when she’d given Leo directions, had told him Kai wouldn’t be happy to see him. “He doesn’t like visitors,” she said. “Imagine Ebenezer Scrooge.” She’d looked thoughtful then, as if contemplating a mystery. “If Ebenezer Scrooge spent all his free time making snow globes.” Her face returned to normal as she shrugged, apparently done thinking about the contradiction that was Kai.
Leo didn’t have a lot of time to get this done, so he’d decided to come right out with it. But then, he’d forgotten about the Gabby factor. Not that he gave one single shit about disobeying a royal proclamation or whatever, but there was no reason to involve Gabby in his plot. The odds were high she would end up compromising it somehow—the girl could not keep her mouth shut at the best of times, much less when there was a secret involved. So he tried to speak in code to Kai.
“Hey. I’m here because I’m going to be, uh, working on a project I could use some advice on.” He hitched his chin toward Kai’s cottage. “One you seem to have some expertise on. Or, you know, it’s more that I’m finishing a project.”
Kai’s face twisted into a caricature of annoyed surprise. Well, at least he’d heard the code correctly.
“Let me show you something,” he said gruffly, but he was speaking to Gabby. He didn’t wait for Gabby or Leo to agree, just turned on his heel and headed back to the outbuilding, which turned out to be a workshop.
“Oooh!” Gabby cooed when she caught sight of a table covered with snow globes. “Can I look?”
Kai nodded and pointed past her to where a few projects were under construction. “You might be interested in those, too.” He walked over to an elaborate wooden creation, picked up a small metal marble, and set it on top of the contraption. The marble started making its way down a little ramp before disappearing into the center of the structure and popping out on the other side. It was a marble run. Well, it was the Alps of marble runs. Leo watched, rapt, as the marble underwent an elaborate journey to the bottom of the structure.
Gabby was similarly delighted. “Can I try?” she asked, and Kai nodded.
Leo’s heart squeezed. This was such a bittersweet age, this period between girlhood and womanhood. He hadn’t imagined this . . . limbo.
Not that it took much to be enthralled by the craftsmanship of Kai’s creations. Leo was, for the most part, not prone to thrall, but he was damn impressed.
Kai motioned Leo to the other side of the workshop, where there was a wood-burning fireplace. “What the hell are you up to?” he whispered.
“I’m going to finish the log cabin in the clearing.”
“Who told you about that?” Kai wasn’t bothering to disguise his annoyance, which, hey, Leo could appreciate.
“Marie. She took me there. And I told her I’d finish it.”
“Why would you do that?”
Leo shrugged. “Why not?”
“You’re asking for a world of trouble.”
“Because of the royal proclamation?” Leo infused the words with the disdain he felt.
“No. Because you think you can just come railroading in here with your American arrogance, stir things up, and leave a mess for Marie to clean up.”
Well. That was not at all what was going on here, but it was the sort of answer Leo could respect. So he tried again. Tried the truth, as uncomfortable as it made him. “That’s not what I think. I think . . .” What? He didn’t even know how to articulate to himself why he was doing this. “I think finishing it would help Marie. And, more practically, she spends a lot of time out there. A shelter would be good. And I’m not talking about building a minipalace. Nothing as nice as your place—I don’t have the time for that or, frankly, the skills. I only want to raise it a little higher and add a roof.”
Kai looked at him for a long time, his face unreadable.
“I don’t need you to do anything. I have a plan for finishing it, but I need a lead on logs.” Short of chopping trees down himself and dragging them in—which he’d actually given some consideration to doing, but a bit of research on his phone had illuminated the should-have-been obvious point that you had to debark and dry logs you were going to use in cabin construction—Leo didn’t have a source. Kai kept staring at him. “Look. I have no local connections or knowledge. I just need logs. I’m estimating I need about eight more.”
“Sixteen.”
Interesting. “Why?”
“I was planning a saltbox roof, so there could be a loft in the back.”
“Saltbox,” Leo echoed, rejigging his mental image of the cabin.
“Yes. You Americans are good for something, it turns out.”
A saltbox would mean they’d need to bring the back wall up higher, and that could indeed accommodate a small sleeping loft. It was a good plan. But . . . “I don’t have time for that. I’m leaving on the twenty-sixth. This is going to have to be quick and dirty.”
“I was using a Scandinavian saddle notch on the logs,” Kai went on. Ha. He was starting to crack. “That way it won’t need any weatherproofing.”
“Right. I saw that. But I was going to finish it with a dovetail notch.”
“Amateur.” Kai sniffed.
“But much faster.” According to what he’d read, anyway.
“You can’t just change the technique eighty percent of the way through.”
He had the guy. He performed a shrug. “Not ideal, I’ll grant you, but no one will be looking that high up. Most of it will be obscured by the roofline anyway.”
Kai pressed his lips together like he had tasted something unbearably bitter. “I’ll meet you there tomorrow morning. Be prepared to work.”
Leo grinned. “You’ll deal with the logs?”
“I’ll deal with the logs.”
“Thanks, man.” Leo stuck out his hand.
Kai dropped his gaze from Leo’s face to his outstretched hand, made another of his annoyed faces, and turned on his heel.
She was going to do it.
She was.
So why was Marie standing outside Leo’s door like she was cowering in front of her father?
She had given a speech at the UN last week, for heaven’s sake, a speech that had gone well enough that the United Nations had invited her to become a goodwill ambassador.
So certainly she could manage a minor personal matter such as this.
Honestly. She and Mr. Benz had spent the morning cooped up with a few allies in parliament trying to communicate the palace’s priorities for the budget bill that would be tabled early in the new year. Then she’d called Max because she was losing her nerve—and at risk of backpedaling—when it came to the goodwill ambassador thing. She’d been hoping a little of his breezy confidence-bordering-on-overconfidence would rub off on her. And he had indeed given her a pep talk.
So she could do this. This was nothing.
She rapped on Leo’s door.
“Gab.” She heard him sliding the lock open. “I told you I’m gonna take a shower. I’ll come get you when—”
He had opened the door a crack during his little speech, and when he realized it was her and not his sister, he stopped speaking.
“Good evening,” Marie said. She could only see a slice of Leo’s face, but it was enough to register that it was a smirking slice. “May I come in for moment?”
“Sure thing, Your Highest Splendidness.”
When he swung the door open, he was naked but for a towel around his waist.<
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And a giant grin she was pretty sure the Americans would call “shit-eating.” He waved toward a pair of wingback chairs positioned near the fireplace. “Have a seat.” He overshot the chairs himself, and for a moment she thought he was going to the bathroom to get dressed, but he only grabbed a small box of truffles from the nightstand.
He held them out to her, but she shook her head.
Leo plopped down in the chair opposite hers and popped a chocolate in his mouth. She always ate those truffles in two or three bites. You could really savor them that way, notice the subtle textural differences between the bittersweet coating and the sweeter, softer filling.
But not Leo. He just popped the whole thing in his mouth like it was a piece of popcorn. He was sitting there with his legs splayed—not enough that she could actually see anything, but enough that the edges of the towel came away from each other.
“What can I do for you?” he said with his mouth full.
Was it her imagination, or did he let his legs splay a little more as he spoke?
And what if they had? That would be a sign her overture was likely to meet with success, would it not? She straightened her spine. “I am here with a proposal.”
He raised his eyebrows.
She straightened her spine some more. “I propose we embark on a sexual affair for the duration of your time in Eldovia.”
He choked. Pitched forward in his chair and coughed like a cat trying to expel a hairball.
“Oh my goodness!” She shot to her feet and crossed the short space between them. Once there, though, she didn’t know what to do. “Are you all right?” she finished weakly.
The coughing tapered off and he gradually got himself under control. It occurred to her that this was the first time she’d ever seen Leo not in control.
She tried to retreat to her chair now that she was assured he was all right, but one of his hands shot out and grabbed her forearm.
“Say that again.”
Had she not made herself clear? She didn’t know how to be any more direct. “I propose we embark on a sexual affair for the duration of your time in Eldovia. That’s what? Five more days?” The siblings were scheduled to fly home on Boxing Day.
Leo huffed a disbelieving laugh and let go of her in favor of running a hand through his hair. She took the opportunity to retreat. Which was, perhaps, not the wisest course of action given her aims. Retreating wasn’t very . . . seductive, was it?
“Why?” he asked, finding her gaze when she was back at her chair.
“Because eventually I will have to marry, and it won’t be someone I get to choose.”
“You know this sounds like something from another century, right?”
“To you I am sure it does. I, however, have been aware from an early age that my eventual marriage will have to benefit my country. Ideally, I’ll be fond of the person, too.” She was fond of Max.
Should she tell Leo about Max? No. Max had no bearing on what she was proposing.
“What about your parents?” Leo asked.
“Their marriage was arranged by their parents.”
“But to hear you tell it, they were in love.”
“They were, but that came later.” She gave a sigh of frustration. “The point is that I don’t have an endless amount of time left, and I would very much like to . . . enjoy myself while I can.”
“I see.” He looked amused. She didn’t know what to make of that. “And have you . . . enjoyed yourself before?”
“Are you asking if I’m a virgin?”
“Yep.”
“Does it matter?”
“I’m sure as hell not in the business of deflowering any virginal princesses.”
“You’re not?” He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would care about such antiquated notions of sexual purity.
“I know how that fairy tale ends. With me facing a royal firing squad.”
She couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Eldovia outlawed capital punishment in the 1950s.”
“Still.”
“Well, I’m not a virgin.” Leo raised an eyebrow. “I . . . enjoyed myself while I was away at university.”
“Oh, you ‘enjoyed yourself,’ did you?” He was teasing her, but not in a mean way.
She tamped down a smile. She had enjoyed herself. She’d set out to do so, in fact, just as decidedly as she’d set out to study engineering. “Eldovia is . . . it’s hard to explain. It’s like a small town where everyone knows me. Everyone thinks of me as the princess first and foremost. At Oxford, I’m sure people still thought of me as a princess, but I didn’t have to see them in the village. Here, I can’t just . . .”
“Hook up with someone casually?”
That was exactly it. “I thought of university as my last chance. But then . . .”
He grinned. “Then you ‘enjoyed yourself’ yesterday?”
“Yes.” More than she had ever “enjoyed herself” at Oxford, in fact.
He did let his legs splay a little more—the term one saw on American social media was manspreading, she thought—as he leaned back and grinned.
“Don’t let it go to your head,” she admonished but she couldn’t help mirroring his smile.
“So I think what you’re trying to say, Your Wickedness, is ‘Leo, you rocked my world yesterday.’”
“That’s not at all what I’m trying to say.”
It was, though. It was exactly what she was trying to say.
“I see.” He closed his legs and covered himself fully with the towel, which suddenly seemed like a lost opportunity. “I guess I misunderstood.” He levered himself out of the chair and turned toward the room’s armoire, but not before she caught a twinkle in his eye.
“I’m not sure I would characterize our interlude yesterday as ‘world rocking,’” she lied, because she could tease him, too. “Still, as I said, it was enjoyable.”
“But really, is ‘enjoyable’ a high enough bar?” he called from where he was standing, obscured by the open door of the armoire. “I’m assuming that what you’re proposing would be a big freaking scandal if it came out. That seems like a lot of effort for ‘enjoyable.’”
She bit the insides of her cheeks to keep from laughing as she pretended to give serious consideration to his argument.
“Not to mention Gabby. We’d have to figure out a way to ditch her.”
“Repeatedly.”
“Huh?” Leo stepped out from behind the door, and he was wearing a pair of jeans, which caused a curious little stab of disappointment in her chest.
She cleared her throat. “We’d have to ditch Gabby repeatedly.”
“Because your intention would be to enjoy yourself repeatedly.”
His chest was still bare, so she let herself look. Why not? Clearly they’d long ago abandoned any pretense of propriety. It was broad and dusted in the center with a smattering of dark hair. She ordered herself not to sigh like a lovestruck girl. “As much as I can.”
He started walking, but instead of sitting back in his chair, he kept going until he came to a halt just in front of hers. She couldn’t help but notice, given that she was eye to eye with it, a thin trail of that same dark hair starting at his navel and disappearing into the waistband of his jeans. Those jeans hung low on his hips, exposing V-shaped muscles.
“Tell me what you ‘enjoyed’ about yesterday,” he said, drawing her attention as he made quotation marks with his fingers. He was standing so close to her—though not touching her, it had to be noted—that she had to tilt her head way back to see his face. “But use actual words, not this posh doublespeak. You’re not allowed to use the word ‘enjoy’ anymore.”
All right. She could do this. She’d come this far. “I liked the way you spoke to me.”
It came out softer than she’d intended, and she half expected him to play at not being able to hear her, but he only said, “How did I speak to you?”
“You told me to take what I needed,” she whispered, her face on fire. “
You told me to use your leg to make myself come.”
“Dirty talk,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Yes, dirty talk.” That was part of it. That was a lot of it. “But also . . .” He raised his eyebrows. It was hard to explain, even to herself. “You spoke to me like I wasn’t a princess. Like I was a normal woman.”
“Aren’t you?” His expression turned quizzical. “A normal woman, I mean?”
She ignored the question in favor of continuing her explanation—it suddenly felt imperative that she finish. “And you concerned yourself with my pleasure,” she said, finding that she was working out her feelings on the matter as she went. Being forced to articulate them helped unclutter her own mind. “But again, I got the feeling you didn’t do that because of who I was. That it was more a matter of course.”
“That is correct.” His voice had taken on a stilted, almost formal tone. She might even use the word posh he had so recently sneered at. Which was why she was so shocked when that tone was used to deliver the next thing he said: “I might be a poor schlub from the Bronx, but I know how to fuck.”
Marie gasped.
“And I know that the way to fuck a princess is exactly the same way you fuck anyone else.”
Leo reached for her hand to help her to stand. He was the picture of gallantry, the gesture completely at odds with what had just come out of his mouth.
They still weren’t touching—well, aside from her hand in his. He had taken a step back to make room for her when he tugged her to her feet.
“But not now,” she said quickly. She had to get the necessary paperwork ready.
“Not now,” he agreed. “I told Gabby I’d come find her after I showered.”
“When, then?” She sounded needy. Maybe that was okay, though, because she was needy.
“After dinner,” he said.
“Oh,” she exclaimed. “After Gabby goes to bed.”
“I think,” he drawled. “This Hallmark movie is about to get a lot more interesting.”
Chapter Fourteen
Dinner was, of course, interminable. Marie felt like an exposed nerve. In addition to being on edge about her father—she felt like she had to be on constant alert so she could smooth things over as needed—she could feel Leo’s attention. It was heavy and palpable and . . . delicious.
A Princess for Christmas Page 19
