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Okay, so maybe that hadn’t been exactly how the day had unfolded, but who said she couldn’t use some creative license and remember the fun parts. And with Grayson’s lips pressed to hers, this was the best part of all.
When he pulled back, she looked up at him. “What was that for?”
“So you don’t have to lie to anyone. When they ask why you slipped away, you’ll have a very good reason.” His voice was warm and deep.
She wasn’t quite sure what to say. In that moment, she wasn’t sure she trusted herself to speak. Her heart was still beating wildly in her chest.
“What?” He studied her for a moment. “You don’t have anything to say?”
She swallowed hard. “Yes. Let’s look at this note.”
Under a light along the sidewalk, they stopped. Annabelle carefully removed the note from the plastic, afraid the paper would disintegrate in her hands, but luckily it didn’t.
When she had it unfolded, she asked, “Can you tell what it says?”
Grayson studied the paper. “There’s something there, but in this light I can’t make it out. We’ll have to look at it when we get back to the palace.”
And so they set off for home. Annabelle didn’t know which had her stomach aquiver—the new message or the very unexpected, very stirring kiss.
* * *
This was impossible.
The next morning, Grayson sighed and leaned back on the couch in the palace’s library. They both studied the note.
The paper was old and weathered. And worse yet, some of the ink had faded. But Annabelle refused to give up. And he couldn’t blame her. If he were in her shoes, he wouldn’t give up either.
“What are we going to do?” Annabelle asked, sitting down beside him.
“Find a solution.” He opened his laptop and started typing keywords into the search engine about recovering writing from a faded document. Surprisingly, results were immediately available. “At last an answer.”
He turned the computer so Annabelle could read the instructions. It certainly seemed easy enough. But would it work for them?
“Let’s do it,” Annabelle said.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Of course. Why not?”
“Because those are some serious chemicals. They could ruin the paper beyond repair.”
“And what good is that note the way it is? We can only make out bits and pieces of the message. Certainly not enough to figure out what it says. I say let’s do it.”
“Okay then. Can you get the chemicals they mention in the article?”
“I think everything should be here at the palace. The trick is knowing who to ask or where to look.”
He nodded in understanding. “You find what we need and I’ll meet you out on the balcony.”
“The balcony?”
“You surely don’t want to use those chemicals in here. Do you?”
“You’re right.” She started for the door.
“Annabelle,” when she paused and turned to him, Grayson asked, “you did read the part where the blog post said to let the paper dry for a few hours before trying to read it?”
She frowned but nodded. “This is going to be the longest few hours of my life.”
