Can't Stop Loving You (5 page)

“Are you?” He captured her in his fierce
black stare. “Are you?”

“Yes. I never meant to hurt you.”

The morning she had left shimmered between
them, a memory almost too painful to recall.

She had left him softly while he was still
sleeping, sprawled in the warm bed where they had pledged their
love in a hundred different ways. Blinded by tears, she’d placed
the note on the nightstand where it would be the first thing he
saw.

Watching him sleep, her heart broke.

Go quickly, while you can
.

Taking the Abominables and the cat and only
enough clothes for overnight, she had slipped through the house and
silently out the door. The chill of spring seeped through her bones
and invaded her heart. Standing in the dew, she thought she might
never be warm again.

Spring would always remind her of leaving
without saying good-bye.

Now, sitting in the empty building with Brick
so close, she couldn’t afford any weakness, couldn’t afford to
second-guess herself.

“Broken hearts are like broken bones; they
have a way of mending,” he said.

His boots thudded against the floor, and he
strode off the stage, leaving her with her hands folded in her
lap.

She squeezed her eyes shut against the hot
tears. Raw and vulnerable and hurting, she sat on the hard bench
and thought of the safety of her house in Georgia. It seemed
another world away.

“I won’t cry,” she said, even as the tears
rolled down her cheeks.

“I will be brave,” she whispered, then she
placed her hands over her face and wept.

Brick stood outside the stage door sucking
oxygen into his lungs like a suffocating man. Helen was inside,
sitting on the bench with her hands clasped so tightly, the blue
veins showed through her fair skin.

With every fiber in his being, he longed to
go to her.

And then what? Wait around for her to walk
out the door again?

He had been a fool to touch her, a fool to
tempt fate. With a muttered curse he rammed his hands into his
pockets.

It wouldn’t happen again. He’d see to
that.

Kicking gravel out of his path, he made his
way to Farnsworth Manor and the relative sanity of a fiancee for
hire and an evening of pretending that nothing out of the ordinary
had happened between him and his ex-wife.

He was an actor, wasn’t he? It was time for
his greatest performance.

o0o

“Just what do you think you’re doing?”

Marsha stood in the doorway of Helen’s room
surveying the disarray of clothing scattered across the carpet and
over the furniture.

“I’m going back home to Georgia.”

“Fine.” Stiff-backed, Marsha marched into the
middle of the mess and scooped up a handful of lingerie. “I’ll help
you pack.”

Still clutching an armload of blouses, Helen
sank onto the edge of the bed.

“Just like that?
I’ll help you
pack
?”

“Yes. It’s cold up here. I hate it. I’ll be
glad to get back home.”

They worked for a while in silence. Every now
and then Helen cut her eyes toward Marsha, but her secretary’s face
revealed nothing.

Fine
. They would leave. Just the way
she’d planned.

Her heart was heavy as she put the last
blouse into the suitcase and closed the lid.

“We’ll leave first thing in the morning,”
Helen said.

“I’ll tell everybody to be ready.”

Helen glanced from the suitcase to the
doorway. Beyond she could hear the dinner preparations of the
Farnsworth household, the distant tinkle of silver against china,
the muffled sound of footsteps, an occasional burst of
laughter.

Brick would devote himself to Barb Gladly at
the dinner table. And Helen wouldn’t be there to suffer.

“You’re not going to argue with me?” she
asked.

“Why should I argue? You’re the boss.”

Helen walked to the window and stood looking
out. Snow fell silently onto a land already covered with a fine
white blanket.

“We could wait until it quits snowing,” she
said.

“Whatever you say.”

“The weather forecast predicts snow for the
next four days.”

“I’ll sit in front of the fire warming my
toes instead of traipsing with you all the way across the estate to
that drafty old barn Farnsworth calls a playhouse.”

Helen wadded the curtain in one hand,
released it, and wadded it over again.

“I don’t suppose he’ll say anything.”

“Who?” Marsha pretended ignorance.

“Brick.”

“Not likely.”

“They can get someone to replace me.”

“Certainly.”

“I mean...” She wadded then smoothed the
curtain. “It’s not as if I’m the only actress who can play
Katharina to Brick’s Petruchio.”

“I agree completely.”

“You do?”

“Of course.”

“Ginger Rutters will be happy to do it. She’s
always wanted to play this role opposite Brick.”

“Lots of women would.”

Helen whirled from the window.

“Are you saying Brick is appealing?”

“I didn’t say it. You did.”

“No, I didn’t. I simply asked you the
question.”

Helen paced the floor, occasionally frowning
at the suitcase as if it had done something to offend her. The
afternoon in the theater filled her mind. Her skin still burned
from Brick’s touch.

“Well... he certainly has no appeal for me,”
she said.

Marsha gave her an arch look but wisely
declined comment.

“Don’t give me that look, Marsha.”

“What look?”

“You know the one. The one that says I’m
being irrational and overreacting.” Suddenly all the fight left
Helen. She sank onto the carpet and wrapped her arms around her
knees. “Go ahead, Marsha. You might as well say it.”

“Say what?”

“What you’ve been dying to say ever since we
left the theater.” Marsha pulled up a chair, folded her hands in
her lap, and waited.

“All right. I admit it. Brick flustered
me.”

Helen pushed her heavy hair off her forehead.
“It was more than that. Oh, God... Marsha... I felt the earth
move.” She dropped her head onto her knees. The tears that had not
been far away since rehearsal started all over again.

Marsha dropped to the carpet, put her arms
around Helen, and held on, silently lending both comfort and
support. When the tears finally ran their course, Helen wiped her
eyes with the back of her sleeve, then went into the bathroom to
blow her nose.

With her tear-streaked face she looked
nothing like the idol of stage and screen who had earned the
adulation of fans around the world, but like a fragile, vulnerable
woman, capable of intense emotions and great pain.

“There were no tissues in the bathroom. How
can a man like Farnsworth not have tissues in his bathroom?”

She held a wadded piece of toilet paper in
her hand, and behind her was a white trail leading from the doorway
to the bed. She blew her nose once more, then began to unload the
suitcase.

“We’re not leaving,” she said.

“I never thought for a minute we would.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“I figure when a person is upset about
something, it’s best to let him get it out of his system.” Marsha
picked up the toilet paper and threw it into the wastebasket. “Is
it out of your system now?”

“Not quite. I think I have a few tears
left.”

“Then cry it out. My shoulder’s broad.”

Helen hugged her hard. “How can I ever thank
you?”

“With a raise.” Marsha never cracked a
smile.

“If I paid you any more, you’d be making more
than the governor of Georgia.”

“I figure I’m worth more to you than the
governor.”

“Then earn your keep by making some excuse
for me tonight at dinner. I don’t want to be ailing. Think up
something much more dramatic and important than that.”

“You’re plotting the takeover of a small
island in the Caribbean?”

“Something like that... and, Marsha, smuggle
some food up here.”

“I hope my raise is enough to cover all this
cloak-and-dagger stuff.”

Helen made a face at her across the suitcase
she was unpacking.

o0o

Marsha paused outside the door and shook her
head.

“Lord, Lord. What’s to become of those
two?”

As she started down the hall, Barb Gladly
emerged from Brick’s room.

“That man is going to be the absolute death
of me,” Barb said.

Thinking of the look on Helen’s face, Marsha
hoped it wasn’t death by loving, but she didn’t say so.

“Great artists can be touchy,” she said,
inviting conversation.

“Grouchy is more like it. I went in there to
ask him what I should wear to dinner, and he nearly bit my head
off.”

“Why?”

“Said he wasn’t going to dinner. I told him
Mr. Farnsworth would be expecting him, but he said he didn’t care
if the president of the United States was expecting him, he wasn’t
going.”

Barb inspected her long red fingernails,
buffed them across her thigh, then gave Marsha a sly look. “I don’t
suppose it had anything to do with what happened at the theater
this afternoon?”

“Don’t look at me. I never interfere with
things that are none of my business.”

“Well, I do.”

Good
, Marsha thought as Barb
sashayed off. It was high time somebody interfered.

o0o

The peanut butter and crackers Marsha had
brought upstairs after dinner would never sustain her through the
night. Helen glanced at the clock on the bedside table.
Midnight.
And she hadn’t slept a wink. She’d look like a
raccoon at rehearsals. A
starving
raccoon.

She kicked at the twisted covers, punched her
pillow, and tried to forget that her stomach was growling.

“It’s all your fault, Brick Sullivan.” It
would serve him right if she starved to death.

She looked at the clock once more. Two
minutes after twelve. Too late to call Kat. Or even B.J., who was a
workaholic and a night owl. Helen wondered if she could possibly
find the kitchen without being detected.

Throwing on her robe, she padded barefoot to
the door, then peered up and down the hall like a teenager on an
escape mission. Seeing it empty, she raced toward the
staircase.

So far so good.

She kept in the shadows close to the wall.
The third stair from the bottom squeaked, and Helen placed her hand
over her heart as if she’d been caught stealing the crown
jewels.

Laughter bubbled up, and she had to press a
hand over her mouth. When she was certain that no one had heard,
she made her way across the darkened hallway and toward what she
hoped was the direction of the kitchen.

Her white silk robe and gown gleamed in the
moonlight pouring through the French windows.

“Should have worn black,” she muttered. “Like
a cat burglar.”

Laughter threatened to be her undoing once
more, and she had to stop and pull herself together. At the rate
she was going she could starve to death on the way to the
kitchen.

When she had sobered up, she began her
journey once more. She could see the kitchen door now, just a few
steps away.

“Food. I hear it calling my name.”

She put her hand on the door and pushed.

o0o

When the door creaked, Brick bolted from his
chair.
Discovered.
Of all the rotten luck. And just when
he was well into the cold chicken.

The door swung slowly inward. He grabbed the
chicken and bolted for the nearest hiding place he could find. The
pantry was crowded, but he squeezed in between the pickles and the
olives and prepared to wait out the intruder.

Helen stood just inside the door, trying to
adjust her eyes to the darkness. There were no windows in the
kitchen to give even the faintest hint of light. Rather than fumble
around in the darkness knocking over chairs and the Lord only knew
what else, she decided to find the lights.

She ran her hands along the wall until she
finally found the switch. Lights flooded the room, and for a moment
she stood blinking in the brightness.

Feeling like a thief, she stole to the
refrigerator and rummaged around until she found leftover chicken,
green salad, and chocolate cake.

She tiptoed to the cabinets and tried not to
rattle dishes. A silver fork slid from her hand and landed with a
clatter on the floor.

Her heart pounding, she stood perfectly still
for the count of ten. When no one rushed into the kitchen to find
her skulking around like a burglar, she carried her ill-gotten
bounty to the table and sat down.

“Mind if I join you?”

Helen turned around so fast, she nearly
toppled her chair. Brick stood in the doorway to the pantry, his
hands full of chicken and his face full of wicked glee.

If she told him no, she’d be giving herself
away.

“Certainly not.” To show that she meant what
she said, she shoved a chair out from the table with her bare
foot.

Brick plopped his chicken on the table and
caught her foot.

“Barefoot, Helen?”

“Yes.”

“You always did like to pad around the house
in your bare feet.”

He traced her toes with the tip of his index
finger. The heat from that simple contact left her absolutely
breathless, but she wasn’t about to let him know what he did to
her.

“Some habits never die,” she said.

“No. Some never die.”

Still holding on to her foot, he caught her
with a riveting gaze that sent a flush throughout her body. She sat
perfectly still, praying that she’d have the strength to endure
this late-night encounter with Brick Sullivan.

“I never could resist kissing that dominant
toe.” Leaning down, he pressed a light kiss on the toe he’d always
called
dominant
, the one that extended slightly beyond her
big toe.