What She Doesn't Know by Beverly Barton

father died last night and—”
    â€œOh, Jolie, I’m sorry.”
    â€œYeah, thanks. I’m okay. It’s not as if he was really a part of my life. I told you that I hadn’t seen him since I was fourteen.”
    â€œBummer.” Cheryl plopped down on the sofa in the corner. “So what’s the problem about talking to your aunt?”
    â€œShe wants me to come home for the funeral.”
    â€œAnd?” Cheryl gazed at her, bewilderment in her expression.
    â€œI don’t want to go back to Sumarville. Not now or ever.”
    â€œNot even for your father’s funeral?”
    â€œEspecially not for my father’s funeral.”
    â€œThere must be quite a story behind why you don’t want to—”
    â€œIt’s a story I’m not going to share with you today or anytime in the future.”
    Cheryl shrugged. “You could at least tell me who this Max guy is that your aunt is threatening to send to Atlanta to fetch you home.”
    â€œMax is my stepbrother. His mother married my father less than a year after my mother’s death. Let’s just say that in comparison to my wicked stepmother, all fairy-tale witches come off looking downright angelic.”
    â€œAh-ha.”
    Jolie glowered at Cheryl.
    â€œDon’t give me the evil eye,” Cheryl told her. “So you hate the stepmother and never forgave your father for marrying her. Do you hate Max, too?”
    Heat rose up Jolie’s neck and flushed her face. Her feelings for Max were complicated, perhaps more now than in the past. “I don’t know how I feel about Max. I suppose I don’t hate him, but—”
    â€œThere was something going on between you two. A little Southern-style incest maybe?”
    â€œThat’s ridiculous! Your imagination is working overtime. I was fourteen the last time I saw Max and we weren’t romantically involved. He was dating my best friend’s sister at the time. And even if there had been something between Max and me, it wouldn’t have been incest. We aren’t blood related. And our parents weren’t married then.”
    Cheryl looked Jolie square in the eyes. “Do you realize that you’re practically shouting?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œA fourteen-year-old girl can have the hots for a guy,” Cheryl said. “I was just kidding about the incest thing, so there’s no shame in admitting that you—”
    â€œMy big crush on Max Devereaux ended the day I realized that I suspected he was capable of murder.”
    Cheryl gasped. “Murder? Who? Who do you think he might have murdered?”
    â€œMy aunt and my mother.”

    Now isn’t the time to panic. After all, there’s no need to think Jolie Royale will return to Sumarville for Louis’s funeral. And even if she does make a quick visit, staying for a few days and then returning to Atlanta, how much trouble can she cause?
    I’ve been lucky—damn lucky—for twenty years. Back at the time it happened, perhaps a few people whispered my name, daring to consider me a suspect, but the authorities never seriously considered me. They had their man—Lemar Fuqua. His death was quite conveniently ruled a suicide. Even the slightest hint that there might have been an interracial romance between Fuqua and Lisette Desmond had been enough to make the man the chief suspect, and in the end, the only suspect .
    Jolie was supposed to die that day. I shot her three times. Why didn’t the damn girl die? Once she was in the hospital, I couldn’t get to her to finish the job. Louis kept a guard at her door twenty-four-seven. Hell, even now, I break out in a cold sweat whenever I think about how I felt when she finally regained consciousness. At first she couldn’t remember anything, then gradually her memory returned, until she recalled every detail of the day she’d been shot. She swore she never saw the person who shot