Public Secrets by Nora Roberts

the sex was as strong and sweet as it had been when he had had nothing in his pockets but desperate hopes and shiny dreams.
    They rolled over the bed, limbs tangled, mouths growinghungrier. As she rose over him, he watched her aching pleasure reflected on her face.
    She’d changed so little. Her hair swung to her shoulders now, sleek and straight. Her skin was milk pale, delicately flushed from the passion that heated it. Pushing up, he circled her breasts with slow, whispery kisses. When her head fell back, he sucked greedily, excited by the small, helpless sounds she made.
    With Bev, he wanted the beauty. With Bev, he found it.
    Gripping her hips, he lifted her up and onto him, letting her set the pace. Letting her take him exactly where he wanted to go.

    N
AKED, SHE STRETCHED , then curled up against him. With her eyes half closed she could see the sun pouring through the windows. She wanted to pretend it was morning, some lazy morning, when they could stay just as they were for hours.
    “I didn’t think I’d like staying here this time, for all these months while you recorded. But it’s been wonderful.”
    “We can stay a bit longer.” His energy was beginning to build, as it always did after making love with her. “We could take a few weeks, lie around, go to Disneyland again.”
    “Darren already thinks it’s his own personal amusement park.”
    “Then we’ll have to build him one.” He rolled over, propping himself on his elbow. “Bev, I had a quick meeting with Pete before I came home. ‘Outcry’ has gone platinum.”
    “Oh, Bri. That’s marvelous.”
    “It’s more than marvelous. I was right.” He pulled her by the shoulders until she sat beside him. “People are listening, really listening. ‘Outcry’ has become like an anthem for the antiwar movement. It’s making a difference.” He didn’t hear the faint desperation in his voice, the desperation of a man trying to convince himself. “We’re going to release another single from the album. ‘Love Lost,’ I think, though Pete’s muttering about it not being commercial enough.”
    “It’s so sad.”
    “That’s the point.” The words snapped out, and he bit off the impatient rest to continue more calmly. “I’d like to pipe it into Parliament and the Pentagon and the U.N., all those places where the smug, fat bastards make decisions. We need to dosomething, Bev. If people listen to me because I have hit records, then I have to make sure I have something important to say.”

    I
N THE PENTHOUSE he’d rented in the heart of LA, Pete Page sat at his desk and considered the possibilities. Like Brian, he was delighted with “Outcry’s” success. With him it was a matter of sales generated more than social conscience. But that’s what they paid him for.
    As he had predicted only three years before, Brian and the others were very rich. He was going to see to it that they all became a great deal richer.
    Their music was sterling. He had known that since he’d listened to their first demo six years before. It had been a little rough, a little raw, and exactly the right sound for its time. He had already managed two other groups to solid record contracts, but Devastation had been his chance for glory.
    He had needed them. They had needed him. He’d gone on the road with them, sat in dives, hustled record producers, called in all of his markers. It had paid off far beyond his initial expectations. But his expectations were flexible. He wanted more for them. He wanted more for himself.
    The band, individually and as a group, was beginning to worry him. They wandered off on their own too much these days, Johnno with his frequent trips to New York, Stevie spending weeks at a time God knew where. P.M. was always within arm’s reach, but he was taken up in an affair with some ambitious starlet. Pete no longer believed it was a fling. There was Brian, of course, spouting antiwar politics at the drop of a hat.
    They were a band, dammit, a