Page 91 of A Princess for Christmas

Lunch was great. The pub crowd, headed up by Imogen, was a lot of fun. Unstuffy fun. Even Kai had thawed a bit, pulling out a drawing and asking Leo’s opinion on his expansion plans for his workshop. Imogen kept dropping by and sitting with them for little stretches in which she and Marie would get to yakking like old friends—which he supposed they were.

Soon the two of them were organizing an impromptu hayride for the village kids. And Leo was stupidly happy to learn that Gabby was being included. In fact, Imogen’s niece, who was a little older than Gabby, was bussing tables since she was on break from school. But in reality she was spending more time with Gabby talking about the fact that they had the same favorite YouTubers than she was actually working.

“You can take them, right, Kai?” Imogen asked.

Kai looked at Leo. Leo knew he was thinking about their plans to finish the roof this afternoon. He made a dismissive gesture. “It’s almost done. I can finish it.”

“What’salmost done?” Imogen asked.

“Nothing!” Marie glared at Leo.Shit.He should have been more careful.

“Okay, you all think you can keep a secret from me, but you’re forgetting that I basically run this village—no offense, Marie—so—”

“Would you like to come to dine at the palace tonight?” Marie asked suddenly. If the aim had been to divert Imogen with a new topic, she succeeded, because it turned out that yes, Imogendefinitely wanted to come to dinner at the palace. “You remember when I used to eat with you up there when we were in school? Your cook used to make the most amazing spätzle.”

“I’ll see what I can do to influence the menu,” Marie said.

Kai was dispatched to rig up a cart for the hayride, and soon Leo and Marie were waving at the departing group as Marie hung up the phone with Mr.Benz, whom she’d directed to pick up Gabby at the end of the ride and take her back to the palace.

Which left...

“Hey, Princess, you wanna see my chimney up close?”

Leo started the snowball fight this time. But he started it with a softball of a snowball, one aimed to get her attention more than anything, she thought.

As if he hadn’t had enough of that in the last hour they’d spent “examining the chimney.”

Marie blushed just thinking about it, but she also prepared to retaliate. She did not acknowledge his hit in any way, instead concentrating on quickly forming her own weapons. She fired off two shots—direct hits.

“Damn, why are you so good at that?” Leo shouted as he bent to gather snow.

She moved behind a waist-high stone wall that, in the summer, bordered a rose garden. “I told you, I have a talent for winter activities!” She ducked and missed an incoming missile.

They played for a few minutes, him getting a hit for every half dozen or so of hers. But he was advancing slowly on her. He was indifferent to her hits. They would make him laugh or cry out in mock indignation, but he kept walking toward her. He evenstopped launching his own snowballs. He just kept coming, like a superhero immune to a rain of bullets from mere humans.

Eventually she stopped, too. Stood up straight—she’d been crouching behind the half wall. Waited. He’d been wearing a grin as he approached, but when he got within a few feet of her it slid off his face. She felt her own disappear, like she was his shadow. He looked almost angry, though that couldn’t be right.

She felt cold and hot at the same time. Like her skin didn’t know what to do. The air was, objectively, cold. But she was heating up from the inside.

Leo didn’t pause when he reached the half wall. He wasn’t looking at it, but he seemed to know it was there. Without breaking stride, he pressed one hand on the top of it and leapt over it, landing softly on his feet, like a cat. He shook off his gloves, letting them fall to the ground as he took the final step toward her, planted his hands on her cheeks—which did not help with her skin-temperature confusion—and without ceremony, lowered his mouth to hers.

Marie wobbled. Leo made her knees not work. She grabbed him to bolster herself, winding her arms around his neck as she kissed him. He kept hold of her cheeks and pressed his tongue against the seam of her mouth. She opened. Of course she did. Leo had opened her up already, in so many ways. Would she never not open when he asked?

He emitted a low growl as he swept inside, licking deep into her mouth. She never wanted it to end. She pulled him tighter, went up higher on her tiptoes, and feasted on him, this man who had grown so familiar to her. Familiar and...

The hair on the back of her neck rose as a prickling sensationovertook her. And it wasn’t a good kind of prickling; it wasn’t Leo-induced prickling. She pulled away, registering how flattering it was that he resisted. Growled again. But when she pulled back harder, he let her go. She turned, feeling like someone was watching them.

All she saw was the blank facade of the palace. So it was fine. Probably.

But they needed to be more careful. She liked to think if a staff member had happened to be looking out the window just then, they would keep what they’d seen to themselves, but the fact remained that she shouldn’t be kissing Leo out in the open like this.

“Sorry,” he said. “I got carried away.”

“No, I’m sorry.Igot carried away. I suddenly realized I can’t be seen kissing you like this.”

“Right.” He stooped to pick up his gloves, which had landed rather far from them. She smiled to think that this was the first time a man had been so wild to touch her that he had shed his items of clothing so decisively.

She stopped smiling to think that it would probably be the last. She and Max had agreed that they wouldn’t get in the way of each other’s “discreet social lives,” but the reality was it would be easier for him to carry on in that manner than it would her.

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