Public Secrets

by Nora Roberts

  She jolted when Drew spoke from behind her. Guilt. It spread through her sharply, as if he had found her and Michael in bed rather than in a room crowded with people. “Oh, Drew, you gave me a start. This is Michael Kesselring, an old friend of mine. Michael, Drew, my husband.”

  Drew hooked one arm fïrmly around Emma’s waist. He didn’t offer Michael a hand, but a brisk nod. “There are people who want to meet you, Emma. You’ve been ignoring your duties.”

  “My fault,” Michael said quickly, concerned with how quickly the glow fled from Emma’s eyes. “We haven’t seen each other in a while. Congratulations, Emma.”

  “Thank you. Give my best to your parents.”

  “I will.” It was jealousy, he told himself, plain and simple jealousy that made him want to grab her away from her husband.

  “Michael,” she said as Drew began to pull her aside. “Keep in touch.”

  “Sure.” He grabbed a glass off a passing tray as he watched them move away. If it was only jealousy, he wondered why every instinct had him itching to bash Drew Latimer’s pretty face in.

  Because he’s got her, Michael told himself ruthlessly. And you don’t.

  DREW WASN’T DRUNK. He’d nursed two glasses of champagne during the long, and excruciatingly boring evening. He wanted to be clearheaded and in control. He prided himself that kissing up to Brian McAvoy would reap rewards. Any fool could have seen that Drew Latimer was devoted to and besotted with his wife. He should have won a fucking Oscar for the performance.

  And all the while he’d been playing the doting husband, she’d been flaunting her success, her snotty boarding-school education, and her society friends.

  He’d wanted to slap her around right there in front of all the cameras. Then the world would have seen who was really on top.

  But her daddy wouldn’t have liked it. Not him, or any of the producers, promoters, and buttoned-down executives who fawned over the great Brian McAvoy. They’d be fawning over Drew Latimer before long, he promised himself. Then she’d pay.

  He’d almost decided to let her have her glory. Then she’d had the nerve to hang all over that “friend.” She needed to be taught a lesson for that. And he was just the man to do it.

  He was silent on the ride home. It didn’t seem to bother Emma. She was half asleep beside him. Pretending to be asleep, Drew decided. She’d probably already made plans to meet that creep Kesselring.

  He imagined them together—in some fancy hotel suite, groping around in bed. It almost made him laugh. Kesselring would be in for a disappointment when he discovered pretty little Emma was a dud between the sheets. But Kesselring wasn’t going to have the chance to find out. No one cheated on Drew Latimer. He was going to drive that point home very shortly.

  She was half dreaming when the limo stopped. With a sigh, she settled her head on Drew’s shoulder as he led her into the lobby.

  “I feel as though I’ve been up all night.” On a sleepy laugh, she snuggled against him. “And the whole night seems like a dream. I don’t think I can manage to wait up for the reviews.”

  It was as though she were floating, Emma thought. And it felt wonderful. She slipped out of her wrap the moment they were in the door. “I think I’ll—”

  He hit her. A resounding blow that sent her tumbling down the two tiled stairs into the living room. Moaning, she touched a hand to the side of her face. “Drew?”

  “Bitch. You sneaky, conniving bitch.”

  Dazed, she watched him advance on her. Instinct had her trying to slide away. “Drew, don’t. Please. What did I do?”

  He yanked her up by the hair, slapping her again before she could scream. “You know what you did. You whore.” When he punched a fist into her breast, she sank bonelessly to the floor. “All night, all fucking night I had to stand around, smiling, pretending to care about your stupid pictures. Do you think anybody came to see them?” He hauled her up by the shoulders, leaving reddening trails where his fingers bit in. “Do you think anybody cares about you? They came to see Brian McAvoy’s little girl. They came to see Drew Latimer’s wife. You’re nothing.” He tossed her down.

  “Oh God, please, don’t hit me again. Please.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.” To emphasize his point, he kicked her, missing her ribs but connecting hard against her hip. “You think you’re so smart, so special. I’m the one they want to see. And I’m the one who runs things around here. You remember that.”

  “Yes.” She tried to curl up, praying he would leave her there until the pain went away. “Yes, I remember.”

  “Did Michael come to see you?” He grabbed her hair again, dragging her over onto her back.

  “Michael?” Dazed, she shook her head. The pain rolled inside it. “No. No.”

  “Don’t lie to me.” He struck her over and over, open-palmed, the back of the hand, until she didn’t feel anything. “You had it all planned, didn’t you? ‘Oh, I’m so tired, Drew. I’m going right to sleep.’ Then you were going to sneak out and sleep with him. Weren’t you?”

  She shook her head, but he hit her again.

  “Admit it, you wanted to fuck him. Admit it.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s why you wore this dress, you wanted to show off your legs and those useless little tits of yours.”

  Dimly, she remembered that Drew had chosen the dress. Hadn’t he chosen it? She couldn’t be sure.

  “And you had your hands all over him. Letting him paw you right there in front of everybody. You wanted him, didn’t you?”

  She nodded. She had hugged Michael. And for a moment, when he’d been warm and solid against her, she had felt something. She couldn’t remember what. She couldn’t remember anything.

  “You’re not going to see him again, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Not ever.”

  “No, I won’t see him.”

  “And you won’t wear this whore’s dress again.” He hooked a hand in the bodice and ripped it down the center. “You deserve to be punished, Emma, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Her mind was floating in and out. She’d spilled her mam’s perfume. She wasn’t supposed to touch Mam’s things. She was a bad, nasty girl and needed to be punished.

  “It’s for your own good.”

  She didn’t scream again until he pushed her onto her stomach and began to beat her with his belt. She had stopped screaming long before he finished.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  HE DIDN’T APOLOGIZE this time. There was no need to. It took her ten days in bed to recover, and all the while he told her she had brought it on herself. There was a part of her mind that knew he was wrong, knew he was crazy. But he was persistent, and in an odd way loving, as he explained, over and over, that he was only acting in her best interest.

  She’d only been thinking of herself, hadn’t she, when she’d spent all those weeks preparing for her show? She’d sent her husband to bed alone, night after night, then had flouted her marriage in public by flirting with another man.

  She’d pushed him to it. She’d deserved it. She’d brought it on herself.

  Though the phone rang constantly for several days following the showing, she didn’t answer any of her calls. At first her mouth was too swollen and sore to allow her to speak. Drew brought her ice packs and fed her soup. He gave her pills that took the edge off the worst of the pain and helped her sleep through it.

  Then he told her that people were only calling her to get to him. They needed to be alone, to work out their marriage, to make a baby.

  She wanted a family, didn’t she? She wanted to be happy and be taken care of? If she hadn’t put so much time and effort into her work, she would be pregnant by now. Isn’t that what she wanted?

  And when he asked her, drilling her with the questions one after another as she lay recovering, she agreed. But agreement was never enough.

  She awoke alone to dark and music. A dream, she told her-self, gripping the sheets, fighting to wake. But even when h
er eyes were open, she could hear it, those odd words sung by a man who was dead. Her fingers shook as she groped for the switch on the lamp at the bedside. She turned and turned and turned it, but the light didn’t shine, didn’t fill the room and chase the shadows.

  As the music grew louder, she put her hands over her ears. But she could still hear it, throbbing, pulsing until her screams drowned it out.

  “There, Emma. There now.” Drew was beside her, stroking her hair. “Another nightmare? You should have outgrown them by now, shouldn’t you?”

  “The music.” She could only gasp and cling. He was her lifeline, the only solid line that could pull her out of the sea of fear and madness. “It wasn’t a dream, I heard it. The song—I told you—the song that was playing when Darren was killed.”

  “There isn’t any music.” Quietly, he set the remote for the stereo aside. It was a good lesson, he thought, as she trembled against him. A good way to keep her dependent and manageable.

  “I heard it.” She was sobbing now between chattering teeth. “And the light, the lights won’t go on.”

  “You’re too old to be afraid of the dark,” he said gently. Reaching down, he plugged in the lamp and turned the switch. “Better?”

  She nodded, her face buried against his shoulder. “Thank you.” Gratitude rushed through and overwhelmed her. With the light she went limp in his arms. “Don’t leave me alone, Drew. Please, don’t leave me alone.”

  “I told you I’d take care of you.” He smiled and continued to stroke her hair. “I won’t leave you alone, Emma. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  By Christmas, she thought she was happy again. Drew took all the details of day-to-day living out of her hands. He chose her clothes, monitored her calls, took away all the business of handling her money.

  All she had to do was tend the house, and him. Decisions were no longer there to trouble her, to make her anxious. Her darkroom equipment and camera were shut away. They no longer held any interest for her. When she thought of her work, it brought on depression.

  He bought her a diamond pendant in the shape of a huge teardrop for Christmas. She didn’t know why it made her want to cry.

  She had a battery of fertility tests. When her most intimate troubles were leaked to the press, she suffered her humiliations in silence, then stopped reading the papers altogether. It hardly mattered to Emma what went on in the outside world. Her world consisted of the seven rooms overlooking Central Park.

  When the doctors confirmed that there was no physical reason for her not to conceive, she hesitantly suggested that Drew have some tests of his own.

  He knocked her unconscious and locked her in the bedroom for two days.

  The nightmares continued, once, sometimes twice a week. Sometimes he would be there to soothe and stroke until she calmed again. Other times he would call her a fool, complain that she was disturbing his sleep, and leave her to tremble in the dark.

  When he was careless enough to leave the remote by the bedside and the Abbey Road album on the stereo, she was too tired to care.

  Dimly, almost dispassionately, she began to realize what he was doing to her. What he was making of her. The whirlwind ten weeks of the tour, and the man she had fallen in love with, were like a fantasy she’d created. There was no portion of him left in the man who kept her a virtual prisoner in the apartment.

  She thought of running away. He rarely left her alone for more than a few hours, and was always with her when she went out. But sometimes, when she lay in bed in the middle of the night, she thought of escape. She would call Marianne, or Bev, or her father. They would help her.

  Then the shame would take over, blistered by the doubts he’d so deeply embedded in her mind.

  He didn’t use the belt on her again until the night of the American Music Awards when he and his group were passed over for record of the year.

  She didn’t resist. She didn’t object. As he pounded her with his fists, she crawled inside herself, as she had once crawled under the kitchen sink. And disappeared.

  In his rage, he made a drastic error in judgment. He told her why he had married her.

  “What the hell good are you?” As she lay on the floor, fighting to hide from the pain, he rushed around the room, smashing whatever came to hand. “Do you think I wanted to get stuck with a spoiled, stupid, sexless bitch?”

  He vented his frustration at having to sit, smiling, while someone else mounted the stage and accepted the award, his award, by hurling a Waterford cracker barrel. The exquisite glass shattered, raining down like ice.

  “Have you done one thing, one bloody thing to help me? Everything I’ve done for you, making you feel important, making you believe that I wanted you. Putting romance into your dull, prim little life.”

  Tired of breaking glass, he swooped down to pull her up by what was left of her dress. “Did you really believe that I didn’t know who you were that first day?” He shook her, but she remained limp, hardly focusing on his face. She was beyond fear now. Beyond hope. She watched his eyes, tawny and dark, narrow into slits. And there was hate in them.

  “You were such a fool, Emma, stuttering and blushing. I nearly laughed out loud. Then I married you, for Christ’s sake. And all I expected was that you’d help me move up. But have you once asked your father to push a few buttons for me? No.”

  She didn’t answer. Silence was the only weapon she had left.

  Disgusted, he dropped her to the floor again. Though her vision was blurred, she watched him pace through the chaos of the room she’d tried to make a home.

  “You’d better start thinking. You’d better start to figure out a way to make all this time I’ve spent on you pay off.”

  Emma let her eyes close again. She didn’t weep. It was too late for weeping. But she did begin to plan.

  Her first real hope of escape came when she heard that Luke had died.

  “He was my friend, Drew.”

  “He was a fucking queer.” He was trying out chords on the grand piano he had bought with his wife’s money.

  “He was a friend,” she repeated, struggling to keep her voice from trembling. “I have to go to the funeral.”

  “You don’t have to go anywhere.” He glanced up, smiled at her. “You belong right here with me, not at some fag’s death march.”

  She hated him then. It amazed her that she could feel it. It had been so long since she’d felt anything. Strange, that a tragedy would make her finally accept what a waste her marriage was. She would divorce him. She opened her mouth, then saw his long, slim fingers run over the keys. Slim they were, but strong as steel. She’d begged for a divorce once before, and he’d nearly choked her.

  It would do no good to make him angry. But she did have a weapon.

  “Drew, it’s public knowledge that he was my friend. He was a friend of Johnno’s and Da’s and everyone. If I don’t go, the press is going to start by saying that I ignored him because he died of AIDS. It won’t look good for you, especially now that you’re doing that benefit with Da.”

  He pounded on the chords. If the bitch didn’t stop nagging, he was going to have to shut her up. “I don’t give a flying fuck what the press says. I’m not going to a funeral for a freak.”

  She held on to her temper. It was vital. She kept her voice soft and soothing. “I understand how you feel, Drew. A man like you, so virile.” She almost choked on the word. “But the benefit is going to be televised here, and in Europe. It’s the biggest thing since Live Aid. The money’s going to research a cure for exactly what Luke died of.” She paused, letting it sink in. “I can go with Johnno. Representing you,” she said quickly.

  He looked up from the keys again, his eyes flat. Her heart began to pound. It was a look she knew, and feared. “Anxious to get away, are you, dear?”

  “No.” She forced herself to move to him, to touch a hand to his hair. “I’d much rather you go with me.” She gritted her teeth. “We could go on down to the Keys afterward.”

>   “Dammit, Emma, you know I’m working. Typical of you to think only of yourself.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry.” She backed off in a submission that was only partly an act. “It’s just that I’d love it if we could get away for a few days. Just the two of us. I’ll call Johnno and tell him I can’t make it.”

  Drew considered a moment. The benefit was the break he needed. He intended to dump Birdcage Walk and strike out solo. He was the star, after all, and the rest of the group was holding him back.

  He needed big exposure, and lots of interested press. If a funeral could help him along, that was fine. In any case, he wanted nothing more than to get rid of Emma for a day or two.