Public Secrets
Chapter 17 : Brian's child. Instinctively Bev laid a hand over the life she carried.She'd

Brian's child. Instinctively Bev laid a hand over the life she carried.

She'd wanted so desperately to give Brian his first child. That wasn't

to be. Yet every time she felt resentment, she had only to look at Emma

for it to fade. How could she resent someone so utterly vulnerable?

Still she couldn't bring herself to love, not as unquestioningly, as

automatically, as Brian loved.

She didn't want to love, Bev admitted. This was another woman's child,

a link that would forever remind her of Brian's intimacy with someone

else. Five years ago or ten, it didn't matter. As long as there was

Emma, Jane would be a part of their lives.

Brian had been the first man she'd slept with, and though she had known

when they'd become involved that there had been others for him, it had

been easy to block it out, to tell herself that their coming together

had been an initiation for them both.

Dammit, why had he had to leave now, when everything was in upheaval?

There was this child slipping around the house like a shadow. There

were workmen hammering and sawing hour after hour. And there was the

press. It was as ugly as Brian had warned her it would be, with

headlines screaming his name, and hers, and Jane's. How she hated, how

she detested, seeing her picture and Jane's on the same page of a paper.

How she loathed those nasty, gloating little stories about new wives and

old lovers.

It didn't fade quickly, as she had prayed it would. There was

speculation and questions about the most personal areas of her life. She

was Mrs. Brian McAvoy now, and public property. She had told herself

countless times that because marrying Brian was what she wanted most,

she would be able to tolerate the public dissections, the lack of

freedom, the smirking headlines.

And she would. Somehow. But when he was away like this, thousands of

miles away, she wondered how she could bear a lifetime of being

photographed and hounded, of running away from microphones, of wearing

wigs and sungla.s.ses to do something as ordinary as buy shoes. She

wondered if Brian would ever understand how humiliating it was for her

to see something as intimate as her pregnancy splashed in headlines for

strangers to read over their morning tea.

She couldn't laugh at the stories when he wasn't with her, and she

couldn't ignore them. So she rarely left the house when he was gone. In

less than two weeks, the home she had envisioned for them with its cozy

rooms and sunny windows had become a prison. One she shared with

Brian's child.

But she was enough her parents' daughter to know her duty, and to

execute it unwaveringly.

"Emma." Bev fixed a bright smile on her face as Emma turned. "I thought

you might be ready for your tea."

There was nothing Emma recognized quicker or distrusted more than a

false smile. "I'm not hungry," she said and gripped Charlie tighter.

"I guess I'm not, either." If they were stuck there together, Bev

decided, at least they could talk to each other. "It's hard to have a

nice tea with all the hammering going on." Taking the step, she sat on

the window seat beside Emma. "This is a nice spot. I think I should