What She Doesn't Know Read Free

the hospital for each ICU visitation period today; and tonight he’d said his final farewell to a man he loved and admired.
    Hurriedly he lathered his face with shaving cream and ran a new disposable razor over his two-day-old beard. With small patches of lather still clinging to his skin, he turned on the shower, removed his shorts, and stepped beneath the tepid spray. As he washed himself, his penis grew hard. He hadn’t been with a woman in weeks, and his body badly needed release. He’d been too damn busy to even stop by to see Eartha, let alone take the luscious redhead to bed.
    The impending death of someone you knew, someone close, had an odd effect on a person, making him want to reassure himself that life went on, to celebrate the fact that he was alive in every way that mattered to a man.
    Just as Max stepped out of the shower, the phone rang. Without giving a thought to his wet naked state, he tromped out of the tan-and-white-tiled bathroom. His feet left moist footprints as he trekked across the bedroom floor. His heart raced wildly when he lifted the receiver, as fear coursed through his body, instinctively knowing bad news awaited him.
    “Devereaux here.”
    “Max.”
    God damn it! His instincts had been right. He could hear the barely constrained tears in his sister’s voice.
    “Mallory, honey, is everything—”
    “Daddy’s dead, Max.” Mallory Royale choked on her tears.
    “I’ll be right there, baby. Stay strong…for Mama. Okay? Can you do that for me?”
    “Mmm-hmm…yes…I—I can.”
    “Tell Mama that I’ll handle everything when I get there.”
    “Max?”
    “What, honey?”
    “Aunt Clarice said that you should call Jolie.”
    “Yeah. Okay. Tell her I’ll take care of that, too. Later.”
    Max gently returned the receiver to the base, took a deep steadying breath, then swallowed the emotion lodged in his throat. There had been a time years ago when he’d hated Louis Royale, but his feelings about Louis changed drastically over the years, after his mother married the man whom he’d once blamed for his father’s death.
    Philip Devereaux had been a good, decent man who’d made an honest woman out of Georgette Clifton and had accepted the child she carried as his own. Max didn’t know if Philip had been his biological father, and somehow it didn’t really matter anymore. He could have a DNA test run, but unless he planned to print the results on the front page of the Sumarville Chronicle , no one in the county would ever believe he was a legitimate Devereaux. There had been no physical similarities between Max and the small timid Philip, who like his father before him had been a freckle-faced redhead. Years ago Max had convinced himself that sometimes sons looked like their mothers. He certainly did.
    He’d spent his entire life pretending he didn’t care that local society looked down their snobby noses at him, even after he became Louis Royale’s heir apparent. And those old rumors lingered to this day, those whispered innuendoes that Maximillian Devereaux—the bad seed—had possibly been the one who’d slain the Desmond sisters and Lemar Fuqua. Some people had said, “That boy just wanted to clear the way for his mama to become the second Mrs. Royale.”
    The fact that Max’s wife had been murdered less than three years into their marriage had only added fuel to the ancient gossip flames. It didn’t matter, of course, that there had been no substantial evidence against him in either case. People simply enjoyed painting him as a villain.
    As Max towel-dried his hair and then dressed hurriedly in jeans and a short-sleeved cotton shirt, he thought about the arrangements that would have to be made. The funeral would be a major event in Mississippi. The governor would attend the service. He and Louis were old friends; they’d been fraternity brothers.
    Trendall Funeral Home would handle the arrangements. Here in Sumarville, there were only two funeral homes. Trendall for