Page 60 of A Princess for Christmas

“Fuck,Princess,” he bit out. Leo’s face screwed up, and he sounded pained.

“I’m sorry if doing that was out of line, or if I was... using you.”

“Youwereusing me. Itoldyou to use me.”

“Right.” Well, she was supposed to be owning this, wasn’t she? So she lifted her chin and straightened her spine.

The gesture seemed to amuse him. He pressed his lips together like he was trying not to smile. “Let’s just say no apologies are required.”

“Good. So. Regrets: none on my part. You?”

He reached out and smoothed her hair. Plucked a leaf out of it. “Maybe just that we wasted so many daysnotdoing this.”

She felt the grin all over her body. She felt like her face might crack open. Like herchestmight crack open—like it wouldhaveto, to let all the exhilaration inside her escape so she didn’t burst. That he had enjoyed himself that much with her made her almost giddy. Not with the princess. Withher. Even in her relatively carefree university days, away from the scrutiny of the palace, she’d never been able to fully trust that people—friends and lovers alike—were attracted to her and not to her position.

Leo had his head tilted up to the sky. “It’s starting to get dark.”

She had to revise her earlier claim of no regrets. She did feel a little bad that she had gotten off as a result of their hot, snowy interlude, buthehad not. That was also unprecedented. In fact, she couldn’t think of one time that had happened. In her experience, male orgasm was inevitable and female orgasm was an occasional, irregular bonus.

But Leo didn’t seem fussed that his needs hadn’t been attendedto, and it was getting dark. And to be honest, she was enjoying the lopsidedness of the situation. This moment of selfishness. She busied herself smoothing her coat, still debating whether she should say something. Or attempt to . . . do something. But he was staring at the cabin with a contemplative look. “So what’s the story with the unfinished cabin?”

“I told you this clearing was my mother’s special place. Our family retreat. The summer before she died, she got the idea to build a little log cabin here. She was always getting these crazy ideas—everything from an ice cream buffet for breakfast to impromptu trips to the Riviera.”

He smiled and held out his hand. She was used to people doing that with their elbows. She was used to resting her hand on a man’s arm and letting him escort her into dinner or one of those infernal balls. But she wasn’t used to holding hands for the sake of it. It seemed almost painfully intimate suddenly, which was silly given what had just happened.

She took his hand, hoping the mitten on hers would obscure the fact that it was shaking. “And it’s not precisely true that no one else has ever been up here. There’s a carpenter in the village. Kai—he made the snow globes at the Owl and Spruce.”

“I met him today. I took Gabby for lunch, and he was there. He was... exceedingly silent.”

She smiled. “Yes. So you can imagine that my secret is safe with him. And I went to school with him. I trust him.” Leo led the way back onto the path. He walked a little ahead of her on the narrow path, but he didn’t let go of her hand. “My mother presented the plan for the cabin to my father. She said it would make our clearing a more comfortable all-season retreat. He agreed easily.”

“That’s hard to imagine.”

“It’s hard to... overstate how different he was back then.” Marie was having trouble getting the words out.

Leo stopped walking and turned to look at her without letting go of her hand. It was starting to get dark. He did that thing she’d come to recognize as a signature Leo move where he slouched so he could get right in her face and perform an assessment.

“He agreed,” she said, pushing through the lump in her throat and rushing to get on with the story. “And she hired Kai, but what you saw was as far as he got. She got sick as the weather turned. She really wanted to see it finished, and Kai, God bless him, worked like a fiend. But in the end, she declined faster than the doctors predicted.” She nodded toward the path to signal that she wanted him to start moving again.

He obeyed, asking, “And you didn’t want to finish it after she was gone?”

“Oh, I did. More than anything. I still do. But my father won’t hear of it. I took him out here and tried to convince him to let me keep going. I shoveled off the pond and brought our skates...”

“The bad memory you referenced when we were shoveling my place,” Leo said gently.

“Yes.” Marie still remembered the pain of that day. There was the fresh hurt of her mother’s death but also the sharp sting of her father’s reaction to the clearing. She had thought it would bring them together. But instead she’d lost her motherandher mother’s place. “I was still naïve enough then to think that he might heal. That we might heal together. But he ordered construction halted. I tried to strike a deal with Kai to go behind his back, but my father found out and lost his mind. He issued a royal proclamation sayingthat it was forbidden for anyone to construct a monument to my mother.”

“What?” Leo snorted.

“Mind you, it has no legal teeth. Though the mechanism still technically exists for the crown to issue royal proclamations, they’re not actually enforceable. They’re only used for things like proclaiming a day in honor of an athlete who medals at the Olympics, that sort of thing. And of course no one knew about the cabin. So the proclamation was targeted solely at Kai. Which Kai knew. So he backed down. Not that I blame him.”

“Why no monument? What if someone wanted to put up a statue in the village or something?”

“I don’t know. It’s like he doesn’t want to remember. He never even talks about her.”

“It hurts too much,” Leo said, and he said it kindly, like he understood, even though her father had been nothing but rude to him. Marie was glad Leo was ahead of her, glad she didn’t have to look at him.

“I’ve always wanted to finish the cabin, but there’s no way I’ll find anyone to help me. Even if there was someone I could trust, no one is going to directly disobey a proclamation from their king. Not for something trivial like this, something that doesn’t matter.”

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