Public Secrets by Nora Roberts Page A

remembered when she’d told him, her face pale and her eyes full of hope and fear. He hadn’t wanted children. Good Christ, he’d only been twenty. His music had come first, had had to. And if his parents had discovered he’d fathered a child with a Dutch cocktail waitress … It had been lowering to realize that no matter how far he’d run, how much he’d protested, what his parents thought had still mattered so much.
    Pete had arranged for an abortion, discreetly, expensively. Sylvie, with the tears flowing down her cheeks, had done what he’d asked. Once she had, she had walked out of his life. Until she had gone, Stevie hadn’t realized he’d loved her even more than he’d believed himself capable.
    He didn’t want to think of it, hated to remember it, and her. But just lately it had begun preying on his mind. It probably had to do with Emma, he thought as he glanced over and saw her sitting flushed and delighted in her swivel chair. His child, whatever it had been, would have been about her age now.
    The day in the studio was fun for Emma. So much fun her only regret was that Darren wasn’t there to share it. Watching her father and his friends play now was different from seeing them in the theaters and auditoriums across America. There was a different energy here. She didn’t understand it, but she felt it.
    On tour, Emma had begun to see them as a unit, like a body with four heads. The picture that made in her mind made her laugh to herself, but it seemed a true one. Today, they argued, and swore, joked or just sat silently during playbacks. She didn’t know the meaning of the technical terms being tossed back and forth—didn’t need to. She amused herself when they huddled together, or was amused by them when they took a moment to tease her. She ate gobs of greasy chips and bloated her belly with Cokes.
    During a break she sat on P.M.’s lap and bashed away at the drums. She said her name into one of the mikes and heard her voice echo through the room. With a spare drumstick in her hand, she dozed in the swivel chair, her head pillowed on the faithful Charlie. And she awoke to her father’s voice, soaring in a ballad of tragic love.
    Spellbound she watched, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and yawning into Charlie’s fur. Her heart was too young to be touched by the lyrics. But the sound reached her. She would never hear the song again without remembering the moment when she’d awakened to hear his voice filling her head. Filling the world.
    When he had finished, she forgot that she was supposed to be quiet. Bouncing on the chair, she clapped her hands together. “Da!”
    In the engineering booth, Pete swore, but Brian held up a hand. “Leave that on.” With a laugh, he turned to Emma. “Leave it on,” he repeated as he held out his arms to her. When she reached them, he tossed her into the air. “What do you think, Emma? I’ve just made you a star.”

Chapter Seven

    I F BRIAN’S FAITH in man had been shaken in 1968 with the assassination of Martin Luther King, then Robert Kennedy, it was expanded during the summer of 1969 with Woodstock. It was a celebration for him of youth and music, of love and brotherhood. It symbolized the chance to turn around the year of bloodshed and war, of riots and discontent. He knew, as he stood onstage and looked out at the sea of bodies, that he would never do anything so huge or so memorable again.
    Even as it thrilled him to be there, to leave his mark, it left him by turns depressed and terrified that the decade, and its spirit, were ending.
    He rushed through his three days in upstate New York at a fever pitch of emotional and creative energy, fueled by the atmosphere, heightened by the drugs that were as handy as popcorn at a Saturday matinee, and pushed by his own fears about where success had taken him. He spent an entire night alone in the trailer the band used, composing for a marathon fourteen-hour stint while cocaine stormed through his system. On