Public Secrets

by Nora Roberts

  With a sigh, Brian sat again. “She has always been the most constant and beautiful part of my life. Something I made thoughtlessly that turned out perfectly right.” With a ghost of a smile, so much like his daughter’s, he looked at Michael. “You made me nervous the day Emma brought you to that miserable house of P.M.’s in Beverly Hills. I looked at you and thought, This boy is going to take Emma away from me. Must be the Irish,” he said as he drank again. “It seems the lot of us are drunks or poets or seers. I’ve had a chance to be all three.”

  “I can make her happy.”

  “I’ll hold you to it.” He picked up the letter again. “As important as it is to me for you to find who killed my son, it’s more important that you make Emma happy.”

  “Da, P.M. and Annabelle have brought the baby. Oh, I’m sorry.” Emma stopped with her hand on the knob. “I didn’t know you were here, Michael.”

  “You were shopping when I got back.” He stood, casually taking the letter from Brian and slipping it into his pocket.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Brian came around the desk to kiss her. “I’ve been grilling Michael. It seems he has ideas about my daughter.”

  She smiled, on the verge of believing it before she saw her father’s eyes. “What is it?”

  “I’ve just told you.” He put an arm around her shoulders and would have led her out, but she turned to Michael.

  “I won’t be lied to.”

  “I do have ideas about his daughter,” Michael countered.

  She shrugged off the arm around her shoulder and stood firm. “Will you let me see the envelope that’s in your pocket?”

  “Yes, but I’d rather do it later.”

  “Da, would you leave us alone a moment.”

  “Emma—”

  “Please.”

  Reluctantly he closed the door behind him and left them alone.

  “I trust you, Michael,” she began. “If you tell me that the only thing you and Da talked about in this room was our relationship, I’ll believe you.”

  He started to. He wanted to. “No, it’s not all we talked about. Will you sit?”

  It was going to be bad. She found herself gripping her hands together in her lap as she had done since her school days when she was afraid to hear what she had to hear. Instead of speaking, Michael took the envelope out of his pocket and handed it to her.

  Ice prickled along her skin as she saw the name on the back of the envelope. A message from the dead, she thought, and wished she could have laughed at the phrase. She opened the letter and sat in silence reading it.

  She was so much like her father, Michael noted. Her expressions, the way grief came into her eyes, the quiet way she held herself as she coped with it. Before she spoke, she folded the letter again and gave it back to him.

  “This is why you’re here?”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes were dark and wretched when they met his. “I wanted to think you couldn’t stay away from me.”

  “I can’t.”

  She lowered her head again. It was so difficult to think when the ache came this way, marching hard. “Do you believe this letter?”

  “It’s not up to me to believe,” he said carefully. “I’m following it up.”

  “I believe it.” Emma had a flash of her last dear image of Jane, standing in the doorway of the dirty house, her face shadowed with bitterness. “She only wanted to hurt Da. She wanted to make him suffer. I still remember the way she looked at him the day he took me away. I was only a baby really, but I remember.”

  She took a ragged breath. Tears were useless now. “How is it possible to love and hate a person as she did? How is it possible to take those feelings and distort them so completely that you could play a part in taking a little boy’s life? It’s been almost twenty years, but she still wants him to suffer.”

  He crouched beside her and took the envelope that lay in her lap. “Maybe that’s true, but she may have started something that will help us find out who killed him, and why.”

  “I know.” She closed her eyes tight. “It’s buried somewhere deep inside me, but I know. This time I’m going to dig it out.”

  WHEN THE MUSIC started she was standing in the dark doorway in her favorite nightgown, clutching Charlie. Darren was crying. She wanted to go back to bed, back to her own bed and the glow of the night-light. But she’d promised to take care of him, and he was crying.

  She stepped out, but her foot didn’t touch the floor. It seemed to float on a dark gray cloud. She could hear the hissing, the dry skittering of the things that liked the dark. The things that ate bad little girls, like her mam had told her.

  She didn’t know which way to go. It was too dark and there were sounds everywhere, under and over the music that wouldn’t stop. She walked toward her crying brother, trying to be small, so small no one could see. She could feel the sweat running down her back.

  She had her hand on the knob. Turned it slowly. Pushed the door. Open.

  Hands gripped her arms, twisting.

  “I told you not to run away from me, Emma.” Drew slipped a hand around her throat and squeezed. “I told you I’d find you.”

  “Emma!” Michael caught her flailing arms and pulled her close. “Wake up. Emma, wake up. It’s just a dream.”

  She couldn’t get her breath. Even when she realized where she was and who was holding her, it seemed that Drew still had his hands locked around her throat.

  “The light.” She dragged the words out. “Please, turn on the light.”

  “All right. Hang on.” He shifted, dragging her with him as he hit the switch. ’There. Now look at me. Emma, look at me.” He put a hand firmly under her chin and held it. She was still shuddering, and in the gleam of the lamp her face was marble-white, sheened with sweat. “It was a dream,” he said quietly. “You’re with me.”

  “I’m all right.”

  He pulled the sheet up around her shivering shoulders. “I’m going to get you some water.” When she nodded he slipped out of bed into the adjoining bath. Emma brought her knees close to her chest, listening to the sound of water hitting glass. She knew where she was. In the hotel room with Michael. She’d wanted one night alone with him before he went back to the States. Though she knew it had only been a dream, she lifted a hand to her throat. She could still feel the grip of Drew’s fingers.

  “Drink a little.”

  She sipped. It didn’t burn as she’d feared. “I’m sorry, Michael.”

  He wasn’t interested in apologies. Nor did he want her to know he was as shaken as she. She’d sounded as though she had been choking in sleep, trying to gasp for air that was trapped in her throat.

  “How often do you have these?”

  “Too often.”

  “Is this why you wouldn’t ever spend the night with me before?”

  She moved her shoulders and looked miserably into the glass.

  “You’re too beautiful to be a jerk, Emma.” He shoved the pillows into place and pulled her back beside him. “Tell me about it.”

  When she’d finished, he continued to stare into middle distance. She was calm now. He could feel it in each easy breath she took. He was wired tight.

  “The letter probably set it off,” she murmured. “I used to pray that the nightmares would stop. Now I don’t want them to. I want to see. I want to get through the door and see.”

  He turned his head to press his lips to her hair. “Do you trust me?”

  His arm was firm around her, not holding her down. Just holding her. “Yes.”

  “I’m going to do everything I can to find out who’s responsible for your brother’s death.”

  “It was so long ago.”

  “I’ve got some ideas. Let me see if I can put them together.”

  She rested against him, wishing she could go on forever beside him, her head cushioned on his shoulder. “I know I said I’d go back with you if you wanted. But I need to stay. I have to talk to Katherine. I need a
few weeks.”

  He said nothing for a moment, adjusting himself to the idea of being without her. “While you’re here, think about whether you could handle being married to a cop.” He turned her face up to his. “Think about it hard, will you?”

  “Yes.” She slid her arms around him. “Make love with me, Michael.”

  THE CLUB WAS noisy, filled with young bodies stuffed into tight jeans. Snug, short skirts barely covered the hips of long-legged girls. The music was hard and loud, the liquor watered. But the club was packed, the dance floor jammed. Colored lights whirled, distorting faces. Couples standing hip to hip had to shout to communicate. Drugs and money exchanged hands as casually as phone numbers.

  It wasn’t what he was used to. It certainly wasn’t what he preferred. But he had come. He squeezed into a small corner table and ordered a Scotch.

  “If you’d wanted to talk, you could have picked a better spot.”

  His companion grinned and downed a whiskey. “What better place for secrets than in public?” He lit a cigarette with a monogrammed gold lighter. “The grapevine has it that Jane slipped something by you.”

  “I know about the letter.”

  “You know, and didn’t think it was worth mentioning?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It won’t do to forget that what concerns you concerns me.”

  “The letter only implicates Jane, not you, or me. Since she’s dead, it hardly matters.” He paused, waiting until the waitress had set down his drink. “There’s something else that may be more pressing. Emma’s having troubling dreams.”

  The man laughed and blew smoke between his teeth. “Emma’s dreams don’t bother me.”

  “They should. Since they concern us both. She’s in therapy, with the psychiatrist who treated Stevie Nimmons.” After sampling the Scotch, he decided it wasn’t good enough to water a plant with. “It looks as though she may be starting to remember.”

  His expression changed. There was a trace of fear, then a flood of anger. “You should have let me kill her years ago.”

  “It wasn’t necessary then.” The other man shrugged and sipped his Scotch. “It may be necessary now.”

  “I don’t intend to get my hands dirty at this stage, old man. You take care of her.”

  “I dealt with Jane.” His voice was cool and level. “At the moment, I think Emma only bears watching. If it goes further, it will be up to you.”

  “All right. Not because you order it, but because I owe her.”

  “Mr. Blackpool, can I have your autograph?” He set down his lighter and smiled at the curvy young redhead. “Of course, dear. It would be a pleasure.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  THROUGH THE PARLOR window, Emma could see the last of the New Year’s snow melting from the hedgerow.

  “Michael wants me to marry him.”

  Katherine barely lifted a brow. “How do you feel about that?”

  Emma nearly laughed. It was such a standard response, therapist to patient. “I feel a lot of things about that. Surprise isn’t one of them. I’ve known for some time he’s only been waiting to ask me. When I’m with him, I start to believe that it could work. A home, a family. It’s what I’ve always wanted.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Oh yes.” That part, it seemed, was quite simple. “I do.”

  There was no hesitation there, Katherine noticed. “But you’re not sure of marriage.”

  “It works for some people. We could hardly say it worked for me.”

  “How does Michael compare with Drew?”

  “In what way?”

  Katherine merely lifted her hands palms up, fingers spread.

  “They’re both men. Attractive, determined men.”

  “Anything else?”

  Emma wandered the room. The house was empty and quiet. It was understood that at three each afternoon she would be left alone to talk to Katherine. She hadn’t meant to speak of Michael today, but of the nightmares. But her thoughts had focused on him.

  “No, nothing. Even before I realized Drew was violent, I couldn’t have compared them. He was careless with people, only able to focus on one at a time. There was no real sense of loyalty. He could be very clever and very romantic, but it was never done out of simple generosity. He always required payment.”

  “And Michael?”

  “He cares. About people, his job, his family. Loyalty is like, well, the color of his eyes Just part of him. I never thought I’d want to be with a man again. To have sex. When we made love for the first time, I felt things I’d always wanted to feel and hadn’t been able to.”

  “You call it having sex when you refer to Drew. Making love with Michael.”

  “Do I?” Emma paused and gave Katherine one of her rare smiles. A memory drifted back—Johnno sitting on her bed in her room in Martinique. When it’s with someone you care about, it’s almost holy. “I don’t suppose a degree is required to puzzle that out.”

  “No.” Pleased, Katherine leaned back against the cushions. “Are you comfortable, physically, with Michael?”

  “No. But it’s a wonderful kind of discomfort.”

  “Exciting?”

  “Yes. But I haven’t been able to…initiate.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “I don’t know. I think—I’d like to show him. I suppose I’m afraid of doing something wrong.”

  “In what way?”

  Baffled, Emma lifted her hands and let them fall. “I’m not sure, just that I might do something to annoy him, or…” Impatient with herself, she turned back to the window. “I can’t shake Drew, and the things he said to me about how stupid, how useless I was in bed.” She hated that, knowing she was still allowing him to control some part of her life.

  “Have you considered that if you were inadequate in bed, it was due to your partner and the circumstances?”

  “Yes. Up here.” Emma touched a finger to her temple. “I know I’m not cold and unresponsive. I can feel passion, desire. But I’m afraid to move toward Michael, afraid I might spoil something.” Pausing, she picked up a crystal pyramid and watched the colors run through it. “And it’s the nightmares. I’m almost as afraid of him now as I was when he was alive. Somehow I think if I could pull him out of my dreams, erase his face and his voice from my subconscious, I’d be able to take that next step with Michael.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Of course that’s what I want. Do you think I want to go on being punished?”

  “For what?”

  “For not doing what he wanted quickly enough, or in the wrong way.” Agitated, she set the crystal down to wrap her arms around her breasts. “For not wearing the right dress. For being in love with Michael. He knew, he knew I felt something for Michael.” She began to pace again, twisting her fingers together. “When he saw us together at the showing, he knew it. So he beat me. He made me promise I’d never see Michael again, and he still beat me. He knew I wouldn’t keep the promise.”

  “A promise made under duress isn’t a promise at all.”

  Dismissing logic, Emma shook her head. “The point is, I tried to keep it, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. So he punished me.”

  She dropped into a chair. “I lied,” she continued, half to herself. “I lied to Drew, and to myself.”

  Katherine leaned forward, but she kept her voice very low and mild. “Why do you suppose Drew is there in your dream, your dream of the night Darren died?”