A Princess for Christmas - Jenny Holiday Page 0,81

present.

“Yes. I’ve already got half the logs notched. We just need to do the rest and build a tripod hoist. The actual raising of the logs will be fast.”

Soon Leo was following Kai around as he did some kind of Grizzly Adams thing to decide which trees to cut for the hoist, which would help them lever the logs up to where they needed to be. He would walk right up to a tree, tilt his head back, and stare at it silently. Then, keeping his head in that position, he would walk a slow circle around the tree to examine it from every angle.

Leo had been unapologetically leaning into his modest city-guy persona in Eldovia. His pride demanded it. When the king made a martini “stirred, not shaken, with a twist of lemon,” Leo drank his beer directly from the bottle, like he had at the Plaza. When Mr. Benz asked if he skied, Leo said, “I live in the Bronx in an apartment and don’t own a car, so what do you think?” When presented with a goddamn NDA, he refused to sign it. It was a reflex, to show these people that he wasn’t ashamed of his humble origins.

“This one,” Kai said suddenly, tapping the trunk of a . . . tree. Leo had no idea what kind it was.

“What do you look for?” He hustled over to try to see what Kai saw. Though in the palace someone would have had to pry his pride from his cold dead hands, Leo didn’t see any reason to cling to it here when there was something useful to be learned. He’d done a lot of time on construction crews, but he’d never really thought about the actual sourcing of the materials. That had always been someone else’s problem.

“Just one that’s long enough and fairly straight. So this one will work, and then we need another, similar one.” Kai paused. “If you’re looking for actual logs to use for a cabin, though, you want them to be about eighteen inches in diameter, and they need to be really straight.”

“Good to know.” It was. Not that he’d be building any log cabins back in New York. It was too bad. This was actually really interesting.

After they’d located their trees, Kai produced a chainsaw and they got to work felling them and building their hoist.

Soon, they were measuring and notching the rest of the logs. Leo was learning a lot. He’d read up on log cabin construction before approaching Kai, but there was theory and there was practice. To his surprise, Kai was tolerant of his questions, and even went so far as to start preemptively offering observations about what he was doing. As Kai had predicted, the actual raising and placing of the logs went quickly.

“Shall we call it for the day?” Kai asked when the last log was slotted into place. “We should be able to get the roof framed tomorrow if that suits.”

Leo, whose stomach was growling audibly, was glad to agree on both points. “Rafters tomorrow, and underlayment?” Kai nodded. “And then what?”

“If we were purists, we’d make bark shingles.”

“We’re not purists. We’re hurry-up-ists.”

Kai did something with his mouth that wasn’t a smile but was maybe less of a frown than his default expression. “Which is why I took the liberty of ordering shingles. If we can get the trusses done tomorrow, we should be able to do the shingles the day after. We just need to decide on pitch.” He extracted a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Leo. “This is a 5:12. It’ll make it easier on us—we’ll be able to walk on it.”

“This looks great.” Leo glanced at Kai. He didn’t want Kai to think that he was stomping all over his original plan. “A steeper pitch would look better, I know.” They would need special equipment for a steeper roof, though. “And the saltbox idea was a good one. It’s just that—”

“No. You’re right. It was one thing when I was doing this before. But now that it has to be done in secret, I agree that we need to cut corners to hurry it up. You and Marie can make changes later, if you want. See how it ages.”

“I won’t be here. I’m leaving in a few days.”

Kai looked at him silently for an uncomfortably long time before saying, “Right,” and turning for the trees.

They trudged along the path in silence. Leo was exhausted, but in a good