A Princess for Christmas - Jenny Holiday Page 0,75

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.

And a giant grin she was pretty sure the Americans would call “shit-eating.” He waved toward a