A Murderous Persuasion by Katie Oliver

Author:Katie Oliver [Oliver, Katie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

Sorry. My fault,” he apologized, and reached out to steady her elbow. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she mumbled, and brushed a stray ringlet, more of a straggler now, from her face. “I’m good.” He looked exactly the same. No, she decided, he looked even better than he had in high school. She drew back abruptly. “What are you doing here? At Aunt Wendy’s B and B?”

“I’m staying here. I’m a guest.”

“No, you’re not.”

He laughed. “Okay, I’m not. I’m a ghost. A figment of your imagination.”

“More like a memory I’d rather forget.”

The second she blurted out the words, Phaedra regretted them. Not only because they were hurtful, and made his smile slip, but because she didn’t want him thinking, even for a moment, that she cared.

“Well. You haven’t changed a bit,” Donovan said, and tilted his head to one side. “Still honest to a fault.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

He shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s just that you caught me off guard. Wendy didn’t tell me you were arriving today.”

“Actually . . .” He scratched the back of his head. “I’ve been here since Monday. But don’t blame your aunt. She didn’t tell you because I swore her to secrecy.”

Phaedra stared at him, and all at once the pieces fell into place. The mysterious newlyweds and their refusal to leave their room; the single suitcase by the door; and Wendy’s insistence that Eve bring their trays upstairs.

“The bridal suite!” she exclaimed. “You’re one half of the newlywed couple, aren’t you?”

Suddenly, she understood Wendy’s reticence. There was no easy way to explain to Phaedra that her first love, who’d shattered her heart into a million jagged pieces, was staying in the bridal suite with his new bride.

“Newlywed couple?” he echoed. “Not exactly.” He looked uncomfortable and suddenly a lot less sure of himself.

“What does that mean, not exactly? Either you just got married or you didn’t.”

He brushed a hand over his chin. A habit she remembered well, and one that meant he wasn’t being completely honest. He still had that tiny mole just above his jaw. “I almost did. Get married,” he explained. “But Emily backed out at the last minute. The night before.”

“Emily? Endicott?”

“You remember her?”

How could she forget? He’d ditched her for Emily on the night of their senior prom. Rumor had it the pair had driven up to a lookout point on Afton Mountain in Donovan’s GTO and . . . well, she’d figured out the rest.

“Of course I remember. You dumped me for her.”

Discomfort flickered over his face, but he managed a cocky smile. “I don’t remember it that way. You sent me packing, as I recall.”

“After you ditched me for Emily on prom night.” She shrugged. “But that was a long time ago. We were seventeen. Kids.”

Relief warmed his words. “Yeah. Kids. Poetic justice in the end, at least for me.” He held up his hand to show her his bare ring finger. “She cancelled the wedding, returned my ring, and told every one of our two hundred invited friends that I was to blame.

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