Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
LEO
“You moved in already?” Emma leaned forward to peer out the windshield.
Tendrils of red crept up from the horizon as he pulled into his parking space.
Leo nodded. “The landlords agreed to let me move in early and gave me a line of credit until the first. One of the perks of being part of the royal family, I guess.”
“That’s a big step,” she said.
“It’s very small. But it’s nice to have my own place,” he said, staring off into the distance. “I’ll be staying with Sal and Callum, so you’ll have a bit more room. The dogs alone will take up the whole floor plan. You might have to sleep in the bathtub.”
He had a sudden vivid mental picture of her in the bathtub, which did not help him focus on the matter at hand.
She laughed and clambered out with the dogs. “We’re not afraid of small spaces,” she said. “Thank you.”
Smoke drifted up from the chimney, and a small electric candle flickered in the window. Hopefully it would be comfortable enough for them.
Leo ushered them inside. A chorus of mews greeted them, and Emma stopped in her tracks.
“When did you have time to get…four cats?”
Ah, bollocks. He had forgotten to tell her about the fosters.
The chubbiest of the lot, an orange kitten he had nicknamed Marmalade, clawed his way up his pantleg until he sat on Leo’s shoulder.
“Sorry, I forgot to mention it. I’m just fostering them,” he explained.
“The resident cat at their previous foster home couldn’t tolerate them, and the shelter was out of space. You aren’t allergic?”
“No,” Emma said, holding one finger out for the smallest one—Dahlia—to sniff. “I love them. I’m just surprised.”
The mama kitty had immediately claimed Lisa’s lap, and the last kitten was booping noses with Cooper.
The apartment was small, charmingly out of date, and sparsely decorated with the only furniture he could ferret away from his suite in the castle—a bed, a couch, and a French press.
Lisa had ignored Emma’s protests about jet lag and insisted on a nap before Leo’s promised tour, so he and Emma left her in the company of the animals and strolled the still-empty streets.
“Let’s walk toward the castle,” she said.
He put an arm around her and drew her in. Her arrival had extinguished his anxiety. With her by his side, everything seemed possible. “Are you hoping to get another verbal lashing from my mother?”
“Don’t get mad when I say this,” she said slowly. “I know you’re not interested in being seen as a royal.”
“Correct,” he said flatly.
“But it’s part of who you are. Part of your brand. And it’s going to get you a lot more attention than being some random guy who’s mad about something. Leveraging your identity is going to help save the community center.”
Leo’s mouth opened, ready to refuse. But seconds later, he snapped it shut. “I don’t like it. I’m not some attention-seeking sellout like John.”
John had a very active Instagram account with twelve million followers. The vast majority were staged photos carefully taken by Beatrice or a royal photographer. Why would he want to be a part of something that celebrated that kind of vanity?
“I know,” she said. “It’s just for a little while. When we win, we can delete it. Or migrate it into an account for community news or something. Give me your phone.”
He pressed his lips together but handed it over.
“Remember, this is for your people.”
The sun was creeping into the sky, enchanting everything in a golden hue. How long had it been since he had slowed down enough to admire how beautiful the village was at the first light of dawn?
She pulled to a stop next to a wooden fence and seemed to be calculating a perfect shot with the castle and the lake in the background. The tips of her ears were pink from the cold, and she was still wearing her hand-stitched jacket. Someday he’d get her a new one.
“Stop scowling,” she chastised.
“Do we have to do this?” he asked.
She looked up from the screen. “You asked me for help. Do you want to get this project built or not?”
“Fine.”
She instructed him to turn this way, then that way. Glasses on, glasses off. He leaned against the fence, staring over his shoulder at the castle grounds and lake. He felt like an idiot.
Emma eventually gave him permission to relax and flicked through the pictures. “Oh, man. You are so stupidly hot. People are going to go feral over these. You’re going to have so many groupies.”
“I don’t want groupies.”
“Groupies will get this protest off the ground. Trust me.”
He scowled and looked over his shoulder at the castle.
Though he had lived there his entire life, it had never felt like home.
It was a prison. An albatross. A reason for constant supervision and criticism.
Everyone he met treated him differently because of the family he was born into. Everyone except for Emma.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. She must have noticed his space-out.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For coming here. For not treating me differently because of who I am. And for putting your life on hold. I know it wasn’t part of your plan.”
“Plans change. This is worth it,” she said with a squeeze of his hand. “But you won’t be thanking me in a minute.”
“Oh, god. What now?”
She averted her eyes to stare out over the snow-capped mountains. The sun had just burst over them, bathing the village in brilliant light. “Making an account isn’t going to be enough. We have to ask someone for help.”
“Who?”
“What’s your brother’s schedule like today?”
“Absolutely not,” John said as the three of them stood in the castle library. He had a pickleball racket slung over his shoulder, and his scowl suggested he was being held up. John didn’t seem surprised to see Emma, who was strolling the perimeter of the library, examining spines.
“Mother will kill me,” John added. “I’m already on the outs because of the whole…you know.”
“It’s just a family picture. She’ll love the warm fuzzies. Great publicity,” Leo said.
John considered the flames cracking in the hearth. “She won’t be happy about me tagging a social media account she didn’t approve of. Especially if it’s you. No offense.”
Leo raised his eyebrows. “Need I remind you that you’re going to be king someday? You don’t need to be afraid of her. And beyond that, you’re my brother. I’ve never asked you for anything. You know I wouldn’t ask unless it was really important.”
He could feel Emma’s eyes on him from across the room. He didn’t enjoy having her eavesdrop on his forced groveling to the king-dick-to-be.
John spun the head of his racket on a table for a moment and seemed to consider it.
“Why are you suddenly embracing social media? You’ve never wanted to be online before. Is this about the thing you’re trying to build?” he asked.
Leo nodded. Sometimes his brother was more than a pair of testicles in a tuxedo. While he had told John that he needed to tag his new account to get the word out, he had left out the part that he was planning to use it to garner followers and start a protest. Against their own parents.
“I just need to raise a little support, that’s all. This project is going to change lives, John. I need your help. Please.”
John sighed and pulled out his phone. He tapped away for a minute or two, then slid it back into his pocket.
“Close your DMs. Trust me.” He walked toward the door, then stopped. “By the way, whatever you’re planning to do, you need to do it quickly. They’re supposed to break ground on the ski resort on Monday.”
“Great,” Leo said. Another deadline.
They were going to have to work very fast. Would they pull it off, or would the project be pushed months or years down the road while they scouted a new location and rebuilt the entire crew while Hollybrook fell to gentrification? The women and children of Lynoria couldn’t wait.
“Exactly. Emma?” John asked.
She whirled around looking surprised. “Yes?”
“You quit the bakery?”
“In a manner of speaking,” she said.
“Good.”
He left without another word.
“Well,” Emma said after a beat, “I guess we know where things stand with him and Maya.”
Leo nodded. “Whatever happened with the bakery anyway? Did they reopen?”
Emma suppressed a smile. “It’s been closed all week. There are some rumors online it might be permanent.”
“I was hoping a disgruntled former employee might have burned it down,” he said. It was what Maya deserved.
Emma threw up her hands. “I don’t mess with arson. So you didn’t tell John about the whole trying-to-start-a-protest-to-save-the-lot thing?” she asked.
“I didn’t think it was important.”
“Right. Well, let’s have a quick meeting and schedule some posts so we can warm people up to the idea. Then we can take Mom out on the town. And take some more pictures.”
“No more pictures,” he said sternly.
“Do you want to save this project or not?” she asked.
He threw up his hands. The things he did for his country.
“What are you doing?” Leo asked as they stood on a street corner.
“Looking for paparazzi,” Emma said, scanning the streets.
“And why would we want to run into them?” he asked slowly.
“I told you. We need you to blow up. You’ve stirred up some interest since you’re dating a crazy American gingerbread-smasher. Unfortunately, right now all attention is good attention. We need to go make out in the square or something, get the press talking.”
He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Absolutely not. I don’t need them hounding you. And if I’m going to kiss you, it’s because I want to kiss you. Not because someone’s watching. You’re not a pawn.”
She turned to look at him. “They’re already hounding me, remember? We might as well do something good with the unsolicited attention. Maybe we could really stir things up and go publicly buy a pregnancy test. It could be good for my business too. If I had one. Or could think of a name for it.”
“All that time preparing for your future business, and you never thought of a name for it?”
She shook her head. “Nothing ever felt right.”