Public Secrets

do have to get back. It was … nice meeting you.”
“Emma.” He paused, enjoying the way she hesitated and turned back. “Maybe sometime over the next ten weeks, you can find time for that candy bar.”
“All right.” She let out a long breath as she walked back to the stage.
He sent her a Milky Way tied with a pink ribbon, and her first love letter. Emma stood in the doorway long after the messenger had left, staring down at the note.
Emma ,
I’ll do better when we get to Paris. But for now, this is just a reminder of our first meeting. When I play “In Your Dreams” tonight, I’ll be thinking of you .
Drew
She looked down at the candy bar. If it had been a basket of diamonds, she would have been no more enchanted. With no one to see her, she spun a trio of pirouettes in the wide foyer, then, on impulse, grabbed her jacket and raced from the house.
Alice answered the door again, but this time she didn’t cry. Her lips curved, just slightly, as she looked at Emma. “You came back.”
“Yes. Hello, Alice.” She could hardly keep her feet from dancing. She leaned over and surprised her old nanny by kissing her cheek. “I came back. I was hoping to see Bev. Is she home?”
“She’s upstairs, in the office she keeps here. I’ll tell her.”
“Thank you.” She not only wanted to dance, she wanted to sing. Never in her life had she felt like this. Giddy, nervous, and absolutely beautiful. If this was infatuation, she had waited much too long to experience it. There was a bouquet of daffodils and hyacinths in a vase by the door. Bending over them, she knew she’d never smelled anything sweeter.

“Emma.” With a pencil tucked behind her ear and big black-framed glasses perched on her nose, Bev hurried down the stairs. “I’m so glad to see you.” She wrapped her arms around Emma and hugged. “I know you mentioned when I saw you in New York last winter that you’d be coming over, but I didn’t think you’d have time to visit.”
“I have all the time in the world.” With a laugh, Emma hugged her again. “Oh, Mum, isn’t it a beautiful day?”
“I haven’t had a chance to so much as sniff the air, but I’ll take your word for it.” Bev held her at arm’s length, her eyes narrowed behind her reading glasses. “You look as though you’ve lapped up the cream and the saucer as well. What is it?”
“Do I?” Emma pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Do I really?” Laughing again, she tucked an arm through Bev’s. “Oh, I had to talk to someone. I couldn’t stand it. Da’s off somewhere meeting with Pete and the new road manager. He wouldn’t have done me any good anyway.”
“No?” Bev slipped her glasses off, setting them on a table as they walked toward the parlor. “What couldn’t he have helped you with?”
“I met someone yesterday.”
“Someone?” Bev gestured to a chair, then sat on the arm of it herself as Emma continued to move around the room. “A male someone, I take it.”
“A wonderful male someone. Oh, I know I sound like an idiot—the type of idiot I’ve always promised myself I’d never be, but he’s absolutely gorgeous, and sweet and funny.”
“Does this gorgeous, sweet, and funny man have a name?”
“Drew, Drew Latimer.”
“Birdcage Walk.”
With a chuckle, Emma gave Bev a hug before she began her nervous pacing again. “You keep up.”
“Of course.” She frowned a moment, then called herself a prissy fool for worrying about Emma having a romance with a musician. Pot calling the kettle, she reminded herself and smiled. “So is he as wonderful to look at in person as he is in pictures?”

“Better.” She remembered the way he had smiled at her, the way his eyes had warmed. “We just sort of ran into each other backstage. He was sitting there on the floor, playing the guitar and singing, like Da does sometimes. Then we were talking, and he was flirting with me. I suppose I babbled a bit.” She shrugged. Babbling or not, she wanted to remember every word of the meeting. “The best part, the very best part is, he didn’t know me.” She swirled back to grab Bev’s hands. “He didn’t have any idea who I was.”
“Does that make a difference?”
“Yes. Oh yes. He was attracted to me, you see. Me, not Brian McAvoy’s daughter.” She did sit then, for an instant, then was up again. “It seems everyone I’ve dated has wanted to know about Da, or what it’s like to be Brian McAvoy’s daughter. But he asked me to dinner before he