Page 76 of A Princess for Christmas

They walked in silence, the snow crunching beneath their feet the only sound as they made the turn onto the small, ungroomed path that would take them to the clearing. Apparently they were going to pretend that last night hadn’t happened.

Which was fine. Denial worked for him.

She was walking in front of him, so she broke through the tree line into the clearing before he did. He heard her gasp, though, and, shit, that did something to his chest.

He emerged to see her running, literally running, toward the cabin. When he caught up with her, she turned to him, her hands clasped under her chin and her hood fallen.

“Oh, Leo, it’s wonderful!”

She was overreacting. Despite today’s work, the structure itself wasn’t that different looking than it had been. It was just a bit taller, the newer logs a slightly darker color than the old ones.

But he’d be lying if he said her delight didn’t please him. A strange, warm sensation began unspooling in his gut—it turned the corners of his mouth up, too, almost against his will.

She ducked under the doorway, and he followed her inside. The walls were now taller than he was, so the sense of being enclosed was magnified. It was going to be pretty damn cozy in here when it was done.

She continued a slow twirl, cooing over the space.

“We’re doing the roof over the next two days,” Leo said.

“We?”

“Kai,” he said. “He’s been a huge help.”

Marie turned a mock-annoyed face to him. “SoIcan’t get him to go against my father, butyoucan?”

He shrugged.

And continued to do that involuntary smiling thing.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

Thatwas probably what the warm feeling in his belly was. “I am.”

She set her basket down and produced a blanket from it. He took it from her and spread it on the ground in one of the far corners. It was where he would put the kitchen if this was his place.

He sat back while she unpacked the basket, narrating as she went. “Cheese.” She pulled out several hunks, each wrapped in wax paper. A long, skinny loaf of bread followed. “This was still warm when I raided the kitchens.” She was like Mary Poppins, unpacking a seemingly endless feast from her modestly sized basket. Everything on its own was simple, but also kind of posh in its simplicity. There was some kind of deli meat, very thinly sliced. “This is a local variation on the Swiss Bünderfleisch—it’s cured, dried beef,” she explained. Next she produced mushroom sausage, plums, and walnuts. “And this,” she said, unwrapping a large pastry of some sort. “I am not sure how to translate this. It’s like a cake but also like bread. Like a sweeter croissant, perhaps. But our cook makes it with lemon curd inside, which isn’t traditional, but my mother loved it, and I do, too!”

Marie’s enthusiasm was infectious. Leo grabbed a knife from the pile of cutlery she was unpacking and sliced into the mystery dessert.

“You can’t eat that first!” she scolded, her tone split between scandal and amusement.

“Can’t I?” He extracted the slice and held it in front of him so they could examine it. He hadn’t done a very good job—the lemon had been clustered in the middle and was now spilling out of the tip of his slice onto his fingers. There was probably some kind of royal protocol for cutting whatever this was.

He licked the lemon off his fingers, realizing as he did so that she was staring really intently at him.

So, even though nothing could come of it—except perhaps to demonstrate what she and her paperwork were missing out on—he made a show of it. Let his tongue drag over each finger individually. Really went to town on the last one—which didn’t even have any lemon on it—biting down on it and letting his teeth scrape against it.

Marie was still staring at Leo’s mouth when he was done, so he lifted the cake thing to it and took a bite. It was pretty fucking fantastic. Light and airy like the croissant she’d referenced, but sweeter. But with just enough of the tart lemon that the sweetness didn’t become cloying.

It was so good he sort of lost his momentum on the whole “torment the princess” front.

Which is why he only half heard her when she said, “At least hold off on the sweets until I’ve unpacked everything.” She rummaged around in her basket. “I’ve brought you the NDA.”

The residual sweet tanginess in his mouth turned to ashes. “Itoldyou, I’m not signing your NDA.” He could maybe forgive her for asking the first time. It was habit for her, no doubt. But that she was going to try again was insulting. It made him feel like she didn’t know him at all.

She produced a small, earthenware jar. It had a piece of light-blue checked fabric in place of a lid, affixed to the jar by a thin, blue ribbon. It looked like one of Dani’s fancy hot fudge jars. “Here you are.”

“What’s this?”

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