Page 67 of A Princess for Christmas

Leo very much feared he did, too.

For god’s sake, Leo thought as he and Gabby approached a cabin in the woods a half mile or so out of the village,this damn country really is a Hallmark movie come to life.

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 alogcabin—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’mfinishinga 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 disappearinginto 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 theroyal 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 thetruth, 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?”

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