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Despite the late night, Chris woke before dawn and for the life of him couldn’t get back to sleep. Too much on his mind. Namely Melissa. Things were progressing more quickly than he’d imagined. Than he could have possibly hoped. And he was eager to take it to the next step.
He also had the crops to think about. He’d been doing Internet research last night when he saw Melissa outside. And now that he was awake, he might as well see what else he could find.
He booted up his computer, opened his browser and returned to the site he’d bookmarked—a study of botanical diseases in organic crops—immersing himself in the text.
A while later Aaron poked his head in. “You’re up early,” he said.
Chris looked at the clock. “It’s half past seven.”
“Which is early for someone who spent half the night traipsing through the gardens,” Aaron said with a cocky grin.
Apparently Aaron hadn’t been asleep either. Chris shot him a look. “I don’t traipse.”
“I take it things are moving right along with your princess.”
“You might say that.” He could see that his brother wanted details, but he wasn’t going to get any. And he didn’t push the issue.
“Oh, and by the way,” Aaron said, “nice e-mail. You have a twisted sense of humor.”
Chris didn’t recall sending his brother anything lately, much less something that could be defined as twisted. “What e-mail?”
“The one you sent last night. I never knew you were such a poet.”
Poet? “Seriously, Aaron, I haven’t sent you an e-mail.”
Aaron unclipped his cell phone from his belt. He punched a few buttons, then handed it to Chris. “This e-mail.”
The address was definitely his. The subject was Funny, and the body of the e-mail read:
Eeny Meeny Miny Mo
String Prince Aaron by the toe
Light the fuse and watch him blow
Eeny Meeny Miny Mo
That was rather twisted, and it wasn’t from him.
“That’s my e-mail address,” Chris said. “But I didn’t send it.”
Aaron frowned, looking perplexed. “Seriously?”
“I would tell you if I did. I’ve never seen it before.”
“Do you think it could have been one of the girls?”
That wasn’t Louisa’s style, but he wouldn’t put it past Anne. “Why don’t you ask?”
The words were barely out of his mouth when Anne appeared at his bedroom door. She was still in her pajamas, her long hair pulled back in a pony tail and her face freshly scrubbed. In her hand she clutched a single sheet of paper. When she saw Aaron standing there, she speared daggers with her eyes.
“You’re a jerk,” she spat.
Aaron looked genuinely stunned. “What the hell did I do?”
She stormed over to him and shoved the paper at his chest.
He read it, his expression grim, then passed it over to Chris.
It was another e-mail with the subject Funny, and a similar, twisted version of a child’s nursery rhyme:
Anne be nimble
Anne be quick
Anne jump over
The candlestick
Anne jumped high
But lost her foot
She burst to flames
And now she’s soot
“I didn’t send this,” Aaron told Anne.
“Nice try,” she snapped back, snatching the paper from Chris and pointing to the header. “It’s your e-mail address, genius.”
It had indeed come from Aaron’s address.
Chris and Aaron exchanged a worried glance. It was disturbing to say the least. It was one thing to receive threatening e-mails, but from their own e-mail addresses?
“I didn’t send that, and Chris didn’t send this.” He showed her the e-mail on his phone.
As she read it, the anger slipped from her face. “What the heck is going on?”
“I’m not sure, but odds are pretty good I got one, too.” Chris opened his e-mail program. Sure enough, there was a message with the same subject, Funny, and it was sent from Louisa. But the contents were anything but humorous.
Star light, star bright
Crown Prince Christian will ignite
I wish I may, I wish I might
Watch him burst in flames tonight
“Somehow I doubt Louisa sent this,” he said, gesturing to his monitor. Aaron and Anne crowded behind his desk to read it.
Aaron raked a hand through his hair. “Is it just me, or is there a theme here?”
“What the bloody hell is going on?” Anne said.
Chris shook his head. “I don’t know. But we need to talk to Louisa and see if she got one, too.”
“Is she up yet?” Aaron asked.
“If not,” Anne said, already heading for the door, “we’ll wake her.”
Chapter Five
Louisa opened her bedroom door, sleepy-eyed and rumpled in pajamas better suited an adolescent than a grown woman, looking surprised to see all of her siblings standing there.
“Have you checked your e-mail this morning?” Anne asked her.
She yawned and rubbed her eyes. “I just woke up. Why?”
“You need to check it,” Chris said.
Louisa frowned. “Right now?”
“Yes,” Anne shot back. “Right now.”
“Fine, you don’t have to get snippy.” She opened the door so they could all pile into her room, which was still decorated in the pale pink and ruffles of her youth. Typical Louisa. Always a girly girl.
She walked over to her desk and booted up her computer. “Is there anything in particular I should be looking for?”
“An e-mail from one of us,” Aaron told her.
“Which one?”
“Probably Anne,” Chris said, figuring that everyone else had already been accounted for.
“You’re not sure?”
Anne’s patience seemed to be wearing thin. “Bloody hell, Louisa. Would you just look for the damned e-mail?”
“My, someone woke up cranky this morning,” Louisa mumbled as she opened the program and scrolled through her e-mails. “Here’s one from Anne.”
“What’s the subject?” Aaron asked.
“Funny.”
Aaron turned to Chris. “That’s it.”
Louisa looked up at them. “Should I read it?”
“Please,” Chris said. “Out loud, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Louisa shrugged and double clicked. “It says: I love you, a bushel and a peck. A bushel and a peck, and a noose around your neck.” She paused and frowned before continuing. “With a noose around your neck, you will drop into a heap. You’ll drop into a heap and forever you will sleep.” She looked over at her twin. “Real nice, Anne.”
“I didn’t send it,” Anne said, casting a worried look to Chris and Aaron. “Hanged or burned alive? These are our choices?”
Louisa looked back and forth between the three of them. “Does someone want to tell me what’s going on?”
Anne handed her the printout of the e-mail she’d received, and told her about their brothers’ similar rhymes.
Louisa shuddered and hugged herself. “That’s creepy.”
“Maybe it’s just a prank,” Anne offered.
“But they were sent from our own e-mail addresses,” Aaron reminded her. “Personal addresses that few people outside of the family even know. That would be an awfully elaborate prank.”
“Should we tell Father?” Louisa asked.
Chris shook his head. “No. At least, not yet. He doesn’t need the extra stress.”
“He looked tired at supper last night,” Anne said. “And he hardly ate a thing. He looks as though he’s losing weight.”
Chris had noticed that, too. All the more reason not to say anything. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was almost eight. “I think we should take this to the head of security. Aaron, can I trust you to talk to him? I have a breakfast date with our guest. I don’t want to give the impression anything is amiss.”
Meaning she couldn’t spend too much time with the king or she might notice his failing health, and he couldn’t take her near the east fields or she might notice the diseased crops, and he certainly couldn’t mention the e-mails.
At this rate, they would run out of things to do and say before the first week was up.
“God forbid she believe things are anything but blissfully perfect,” Anne said with a snicker. “Pretty ironic, don’t you think, considering the mess that she came from?”
Aaron shot her a look, then turned to Chris. “I’ll see that it’s done immediately. And I’m sure the first thing he’ll want is to see the e-mails themselves, so we should all forward them to him.”
“I bet this will turn out to be nothing,” Louisa assured them in her typical optimistic way. “Probably just some harmless computer hacker trying to impress his friends.”
Deep down Chris hoped she was right, but in reality he sensed a disaster coming on.
Melissa stretched out on a lounge chair on the back patio, sipping her latte, the morning sun on her face. She closed her eyes and tipped her face up, breathing in the fresh ocean air, feeling as though she could nod off. She’d slept poorly last night. She had tossed and turned for hours, filled with longing and regret. And confusion. A part of her wished desperately that she’d invited Chris into her room, while another part of her was scared to death to get too close.
Hadn’t she endured enough rejection in her life?
The trick was not letting him get close. After all, how could he hurt her if she didn’t care? The problem with that was, it had only been a day and she already liked him far too much for her own good.
She’d never understood how it happened so easily for some people. Love just seemed to fall in their laps when they weren’t even looking. But despite her desperate longing for a family, the right man constantly seemed to elude her. Around about her thirtieth birthday, she’d begun to worry that she might never find Mr. Right. And now, at thirty-three, she’d nearly given up on the concept of marriage and family and resigned herself to settling for Mr. Right Now.
Maybe the trick was not to look. To just sit back and let it happen naturally. Which was tough when, as every day passed, her biological clock ticked louder.
She heard the door open behind her and turned to see Chris step out onto the patio. He wore a pair of dark slacks and a white silk dress shirt with the sleeves rolled loosely to the elbows that contrasted his deeply tanned forearms.
“I thought I might find you out here,” he said, flashing her one of those heart-stopping, deliciously sexy smiles. The man was far too attractive for his own good. Or hers. She could just imagine the gorgeous children he would have with the lucky woman who eventually nabbed him. Which was inevitable. For a crown prince, marriage and children weren’t a luxury. They were a duty. Like her half brother, Phillip. But he’d been smart enough to marry a woman he loved.
