Public Secrets

by Nora Roberts

  “I called your record company, and I even went there, but they treated me like I was nobody. I told them I was the mother of Brian McAvoy’s baby daughter, and they had me tossed out.” She didn’t add that she’d been drunk and had attacked the receptionist. “I started reading about you and Beverly Wilson, and I got desperate. I knew she couldn’t mean anything to you, not after what we had. But I had to talk to you somehow.”

  “Calling Bev’s flat and raving like a maniac wasn’t the best way to go about it.”

  “I had to talk to you, to make you listen. You don’t know what it’s like, Bri, worrying about how to pay the rent, whether you’ve got enough for food. I can’t buy pretty dresses anymore or go out at night.”

  “Is money what you want?”

  She hesitated just an instant too long. “I want you, Bri, I always have.”

  Johnno tapped out his cigarette in the base of a plastic plant. “You know, Bri, there’s been a lot of talk about this kid, but I don’t see any sign of her.” He rose, and in a habitual gesture, shook back his gleaming mop of dark hair. “Ready to split?”

  Jane sent him a vicious look. “Emma’s in the bedroom. And I’m not having all of your troop in there. This is between Brian and me.”

  Johnno grinned at her. “You always did your best work in the bedroom, didn’t you, luv?” Their eyes held for a moment, the disgust they had always felt for each other clear. “Bri, she was a first-rate whore once upon a time, but she’s second-rate now. Can we get on?”

  “You bloody queer.” Jane leaped at him before Brian caught her around the waist. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a real woman if she bit you on the dick.”

  He continued to grin, but his eyes frosted over. “Care to give it a shot, dearie?”

  “Always could count on you to keep things running smoothly, Johnno,” Brian muttered as he twisted Jane around in his arms. “You said this business was with me, then keep it with me. I’ll have a look at the girl.”

  “Not them two.” She snarled at Johnno as he shrugged and pulled out another cigarette. “Just you. I want to keep it private.”

  “Fine. Wait here.” He kept his hand on Jane’s arm as she walked to the bedroom. It was empty. “I’m tired of the game, Jane.”

  “She’s hiding. All these people put her off, that’s all. Emma! Come here to your mam right now.” Jane dropped to her knees beside the bed, then scrambled up to search through the narrow closet. “She’s probably in the loo.” Rushing out, she pulled open a door off the hallway.

  “Brian.” Johnno signaled from the kitchen doorway. “Something here you might want to see.” He held up a glass, toasting Jane. “You don’t mind if I have a drink, do you, luv? The bottle was open.” He jerked the thumb of his free hand toward the cabinet under the sink.

  The stale scent was stronger there, old liquor, ripening garbage, molding rags. Brian’s shoes stuck to the linoleum as he crossed to the cupboard, then crouched. He pulled open the door and peered inside.

  He couldn’t see the girl clearly, only that she was hunched back in the corner, her blond hair in her eyes and something black hugged in her arms. He felt his stomach turn over, but tried to smile.

  “Hello there.”

  Emma buried her face in the furry black bundle she held.

  “Nasty little brat. I’ll teach you to hide from me.” Jane started to make a grab, but a look from Brian stopped her. He held out a hand and smiled again.

  “I don’t think I can fit in there with you. Would you mind coming out a minute?” He saw her peep up over her folded arms. “No one’s going to hurt you.”

  He had such a nice voice, Emma thought, soft and pretty like music. He was smiling at her. The light through the kitchen window was on his hair, making the deep, rich blond shine. Like an angel’s hair. She giggled, then crawled out.

  Her new dress was smeared and spotted. Her wispy baby hair was damp from a leak under the sink. She smiled, showing little white teeth with a crooked inciser. Brian ran his tongue over a similar one in his own mouth. When her lips curved, a dimple winked at the left corner of her mouth, a twin of his. Eyes as deep and blue as his own stared back at him.

  “I fixed her up real nice.” There was a whine in Jane’s voice now. The smell of the gin was making her mouth water, but she was afraid to pour a glass. “And I told her it was important to stay tidy. Didn’t I tell you to stay tidy, Emma? I’ll wash her up.” She grabbed Emma’s arm hard enough to make the girl jump.

  “Let her be.”

  “I was only going to—”

  “Let her be,” Brian repeated, his voice flat and dull and threatening. If he hadn’t been staring at her still, Emma might have dashed under the sink again. His child. For a moment he could only continue to stare at her, his head light and his stomach fisted. “Hello, Emma.” There was a sweetness in his tone now, one women fell in love with. “What have you got there?”

  “Charlie. My doggie.” She held the stuffed toy out for Brian to examine.

  “And a very nice one.” He had an urge to touch her, to brush his hand over her skin, but held back. “Do you know who I am?”

  “From the pictures.” Too young to resist impulses, she reached out to touch his face. “Pretty.”

  Johnno laughed and swallowed some gin. “Leave it to a female.”

  Ignoring him, Brian tugged on Emma’s damp curls. “You’re pretty, too.”

  He talked nonsense to her, watching her closely. His knees were like jelly, and his stomach tightened and loosened like fingers snapping to a beat. Her dimple deepened as she laughed. It was like watching himself. It would have been easier to deny it, and a great deal more convenient, but impossible. Whether he had meant to or not, he had made her. But guidance didn’t come along with acceptance.

  He rose and turned to Pete. “We’d better get to rehearsal.”

  “You’re leaving?” Jane dashed forward to block his path. “Just like that? You only have to look at her to see.”

  “I know what I see.” He felt a pang of guilt as Emma inched back toward the cupboard. “I need time to think.”

  “No, no! You’ll walk out like before. You’re only thinking of yourself, like always. What’s best for Brian, what’s best for Brian’s career. I won’t be left back anymore.” He had nearly reached the door when she snatched up Emma and raced after him. “If you go, I’ll kill myself.”

  He paused long enough to look back. It was a familiar refrain. He could have set it to music. “That stopped working a long time ago.”

  “And her.” Desperate, she flung out the threat, then let it hang as they both considered it. The arm she had banded around Emma’s waist tightened until the girl began to scream.

  He felt a bubble of panic as the child’s, his child’s screams bounced off the walls. “Let her go, Jane. You’re hurting her.”

  “What do you care?” Jane was sobbing now, her voice rising higher and higher to drown out her daughter’s. “You’re walking out.

  “No I’m not. I need a little time to think this through.”

  “Time so your fancy manager can make up a story, you mean.” She was breathing fast, gripping the struggling Emma with both arms. “You’re going to do right by me, Brian.”

  His hands had balled into fists at his sides. “Put her down.”

  “I’ll kill her.” She said it more calmly this time, having centered on it. “I’ll slit her throat, I swear it, and then my own. Can you live with that, Brian?”

  “She’s bluffing,” Johnno muttered, but his palms were sweating.

  “I’ve got nothing to lose. Do you think I want to live like this? Raising a brat all on my own, having the neighbors gossip about me? Never being able to go out and have fun anymore. You think about it, Bri, think about what the papers will do when I call in the story. I’ll tell them everything right before I kill us both.”

  “Miss Palmer.” Peter held up a soothing hand. “I give you my word we’ll come to an arrangement that suits ever
yone.”

  “Let Johnno take Emma into the kitchen, Jane. We’ll talk.” Brian took a careful step toward her. “We’ll find a way to do what’s best for everyone.”

  “I only want you to come back.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Braced, he watched her grip relax. “We’ll talk.” He signaled Johnno with a slight nod of the head. “We’ll talk it all through. Why don’t we sit down?”

  Reluctantly, Johnno pried the girl from her mother. A fastidious man, he wrinkled his nose a little at the grime she’d accumulated under the sink, but carried her into the kitchen. When she continued to cry, he sat down with Emma on his lap and patted her head.

  “Come on now, cutie, give over. Johnno won’t let anything bad happen to you.” He jiggled her, trying to think what his mother might have done. “Want a biscuit?”

  Damp-eyed, hiccuping, she nodded.

  He jiggled some more. Under the tears and dirt, he decided she was a taking little thing. And a McAvoy, he admitted with a sigh. A McAvoy through and through. “Got any we can pinch?”

  She smiled then, and pointed to a high cupboard.

  Thirty minutes later, they were finishing up the plate of biscuits and the sweet tea he’d brewed. Brian watched them from the kitchen doorway as Johnno made faces so that Emma giggled. When the chips were down, Brian thought, you could always depend on Johnno.

  Going in, Brian ran a hand down his daughter’s hair. “Emma, would you like to ride in my car?”

  She licked crumbs from her lips. “With Johnno?”

  “Yeah, with Johnno.”

  “I’m a hit.” Johnno popped the last biscuit into his mouth.

  “I’d like you to stay with me, Emma, in my new house.”

  “Bri—”

  He cut Johnno off, lifting a hand palm up. “It’s a nice house, and you could have your own room.”

  “I have to?”

  “I’m your da, Emma, and I’d like you to live with me. You could try it, and if you’re not happy, we’ll think of something else.”

  Emma studied him, her full bottom lip pushed out in a pout. She was used to his race, but it was different somehow from the pictures. She didn’t know or care why. His voice made her feel good, safe.

  “Is my mam coming?”

  “No.”

  Her eyes filled, but she picked up her battered black dog and hugged it close. “Is Charlie?”

  “Sure.” Brian held out his arms, and lifted her.

  “Hope you know what you’re doing, son.”

  Brian sent him a look over Emma’s head. “So do I.”

  Chapter Two

  EMMA HAD HER first look at the big stone house from the front seat of the silver Jag. She was sorry that Johnno, with his funny beard, was gone, but the man from the pictures let her push buttons on the dash. He wasn’t smiling anymore, but he didn’t scold. He smelled nice. The car smelled nice. She pushed Charlie’s nose into the seat and babbled to herself.

  The house looked enormous to her with its arching windows and curvy turrets. It was stone, weathered gray, and all the windows were made up of diamond shapes. The lawn around it was thick and green, and there was a scent of flowers. She grinned, bouncing with excitement.

  “Castle.”

  He smiled now. “Yeah, I thought so, too. When I was little I wanted to live in a house like this. My da—your grandda—used to work in the garden here.” When he wasn’t passed out drunk, Brian added to himself.

  “Is he here?”

  “No, he’s in Ireland.” In a little cottage Brian had bought with money Pete had advanced him a year before. He stopped the car at the front entrance, realizing he would have to make some calls before the story hit the papers. “You’ll meet him someday, and your aunts and uncles, your cousins.” He gathered her up, amazed and baffled at how easily she cuddled against him. “You have a family now, Emma.”

  When he walked inside, still carrying her, he heard Bev’s light, quick voice.

  “I think the blue, the plain blue. I can’t live with all these flowers growing on the walls. And those beastly hangings have to go. It’s like a cave in here. I want white, white and blue.”

  He turned into the parlor doorway and saw her sitting on the floor, dozens of sample books and swatches around her. Part of the wallpaper had already been stripped, part of the replastering was finished. Bev preferred tackling a single job from a dozen angles.

  She looked so small and sweet sitting amid the rubble. Her dark cap of hair was cut short and straight to angle down toward her chin. Big gold hoops glinted at her ears. Her eyes were exotic, both in shape and color. They were long-lidded with gold lights flecked in pale sea-green. She was still tanned from the weekend they had spent in the Bahamas. He knew exactly how her skin would feel, how it would smell.

  She had a small triangular-shaped face, and a small angular body. No one looking at her sitting cross-legged in snug checked pants and a tidy white shirt would suspect she was two months pregnant.

  Brian shifted his daughter in his arms and wondered how his pregnant lover would react.

  “Bev.”

  “Brian, I didn’t hear you.” She turned, half rising, then went still. “Oh.” Her color drained as she stared at the child in his arms. Recovering quickly, she stood and signaled to two decorators who were bickering over samples. “Brian and I want to discuss our choices a little more. I’ll call you by the end of the week.”

  She hurried them out, making promises, flattering. When she closed the door on them, she took a deep breath, holding a hand over the baby growing inside her.

  “This is Emma.”

  Bev forced a smile. “Hello, Emma.”

  “’Lo.” Suddenly shy, she buried her face in Brian’s neck.

  “Emma, would you like to watch the telly for a while?” Brian gave her bottom a reassuring pat. When she only shrugged, he went on, desperately cheerful. “There’s a nice big one in this room over here. You and Charlie can sit on the sofa.”

  “I have to pee,” she whispered.

  “Oh, well …”

  Bev blew her bangs out of her eyes. If she hadn’t felt so much like crying, she might have laughed. “I’ll take her.”

  But Emma clung tighter to Brian’s neck. “I guess I’m elected.” He took her to the powder room across the hall, sent Bev a helpless look, then closed the door. “Do you, ah …” He trailed off when Emma pulled down her panties and sat.

  “I don’t wet my pants,” she said matter-of-factly. “Mam says only stupid, nasty girls do.”

  “You’re a big girl,” he said, stifling a fresh flow of rage. “Very pretty and very smart.”

  Finished, she struggled back into her panties. “Can you watch the telly?”

  “In a little while. I need to talk to Bev. She’s a very nice lady,” he added as he lifted her up to the sink. “She lives with me, too.”

  Emma played with the running water a moment. “Does she hit?”

  “No.” He pulled her into his arms, holding tight. “No one’s going to hit you again. I promise.”

  Torn, he carried her out, past Bev, to a sitting room with a cushy sofa and a big console television. He switched it on, settled on a loud comedy show, and said, “I’ll be back soon.”

  Emma watched him walk out, relieved when he left the door open.

  “Maybe we’d better go in here.” Bev gestured to the parlor. Inside, she sat on the floor again and began poking at samples. “It seems Jane wasn’t lying.”

  “No. She’s mine.”

  “I can see that, Bri. She looks so much like you it’s scary.” She felt tears well up and hated herself.

  “Oh Christ, Bev.”

  “No, don’t,” she said when he started to slip an arm around her. “I need a minute. It’s a shock.”

  “It was one for me, too.” He lit a cigarette, drew hard. “You know why I broke things off with Jane.”

  “You said it felt like she could eat you alive.”