Can't Stop Loving You (2 page)

Gwenella sassed Chelsea, who retreated in
alarm and wrapped her leash around the trainer’s legs. With a
mountain of Great Dane pulling at him, Matt Rider might have gone
down if he hadn’t had muscles the size of Arkansas. As it was, he
merely unwrapped the first dog only to have the second try to hide
between his legs when the cat took exception to something Sami had
done.

Helen moved in the midst of the melee,
laughing in her throaty way and flashing her dark eyes in his
direction.

Brick wanted to catch her by the shoulders
and shake her until her teeth rattled. Then he wanted to throw her
over his shoulder and disappear into the woods until he had loved
the truth out of her.

Why did you leave me, Helen?

It was Chelsea who started the entire crew
moving in his direction. With a yelp that sounded like recognition,
she broke loose from Matt and raced across the portico, her long
tongue hanging out in the goofy smile he remembered and her tail
flapping like a flag in a windstorm.

Suddenly Brick had his audience.

“Hello, Brick.”

That was all Helen said. Just
hello
and then his name, all soft and sexy the way she used to say it
when the lights were low and the fire was crackling and he was
stroking her long, long legs.

“Helen.” Lord, he sounded like a dying calf
in a hailstorm. He’d have to do better than that if he wanted to
survive the next two weeks with Helen Sullivan. “I see you still
travel light.”

Several of Farnsworth’s employees had come
from the house and were struggling up the steps under the weight of
her luggage. She stood amidst her entourage as bright as the
evening star in a New Hampshire sky, and just as inaccessible.

“I travel with the people and the possessions
that are necessary to me.”

“So do I.” With a subtle pressure of his arm,
he positioned Barb for the best effect. Her blatant sexual impact
was totally lost on Helen, but Matt got pink around the ears.
“Helen, meet my fiancee, Barb Gladly.”

“Nice to meet you, Barb. Congratulations,”
Helen said, her eyes never leaving his face.

He’d expected more of a reaction. He decided
to goad until he got one.

“You used to have more than that to say in
the shower.”

“You used to put on a better show in the
shower.”

The gleam in her eye told him he’d scored.
That and the color in her cheeks. He bit back his gloating
grin.

“This scene on the portico has all the
makings of a grade B movie,” she added.

“Even grade B movies have appreciative
audiences.”

As if she’d heard her cue, Chelsea licked his
hand and, for good measure, licked his shoes.

Helen chuckled. “You know how Chelsea is. She
never could resist a good ham.”

With that parting shot, she swept toward the
front door.

“Did I do all right?” Barb asked after Helen
had disappeared into the house.

“You were great. Thanks.”

“Is it all right if I take a walk? I’d like
to get a good look at this place.”

“Do whatever you like. Just be sure to be at
dinner on time, dressed to kill.”

Catching her lower lip between her front
teeth, Barb glanced toward the front door, obviously awestruck

“I can’t believe I was that close to Helen
Sullivan,” she said.

“Neither can I.”

The smell of Helen’s perfume still lingered
on the portico. He didn’t dare breathe deeply until he was safely
in the woods.

Thinking of the next few days with her made
his stomach turn over. He hadn’t won the first skirmish, but he’d
survived. He could do it again.

“Are you unpacking these clothes or
mutilating them?”

In a fine fury, Helen threw the plain gray
slacks in the general direction of the closet and whirled toward
Marsha.

“Did you see the size of those”—Helen
gestured dramatically toward her own small
breasts—“
things?
Like the peaks of Mt. Rushmore. And that
fanny. I’ll lay you odds it was hip pads.”

She stalked across the room, trailing classic
white blouses. The Abominables hid their faces behind their paws,
and even the audacious Gwenella scooted out of the way.

“Fiancee, indeed!” She kicked a pair of black
riding boots on her march back to the suitcase. “I’ll bet she’s
after his money... or his you know what.”

“No. What?” The doleful Marsha had a wicked
side.

“I’m going to fire you, Marsha.”

“You already did. Twice today.”

“Well, I’m going to mean it next time.”

“Who in the world would put up with you?”

Helen sank to the floor and wrapped her hands
around her knees. With her bare feet and freshly scrubbed face she
looked more like a teenager than a famous star of stage and
screen.

Marsha had a hard time retaining her stern
demeanor. It wouldn’t do for both of them to get sentimental at the
same time.

“She really was quite winsome, wasn’t she,
Marsha?”

“I offer no opinion. Obviously Brick likes
her, and that’s all that counts.”

“Ouch.”

Marsha put her hands on her hips and
stretched her neck the way she always did when she was getting
ready to deliver a lecture.

“Now you listen to me, missy. I don’t know
why in the world you ever left the man in the first place, and I
don’t want to know. But the fact is, you did. And now he’s got
another woman.” Leaning down, she shook a bony finger in Helen’s
face. “I’m not fixing to watch you make a fool of yourself. You put
on your glad rags and hold your head up as if you’re
somebody.”

Helen stood up, five inches taller than
Marsha even in her bare feet.

“I’m Helen Sullivan, actress.”

“Then, by George,
act.”

Helen kissed her cheek. “You’re not fired
anymore, Marsha.”

“I never was in the first place.”

o0o

Jealousy was not her motive. At least that’s
what Helen told herself as she slithered down the staircase like
the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Her red Chinese dress fit like sin. Each step
she took revealed a long length of silk-clad leg.

“My dear, you look smashing.”

Her host came to the foot of the staircase
and gazed raptly up at her. But Farnsworth was not her target. Her
target was leaning casually against the mantel, lifting his famous
sardonic eyebrow at her as if to say, “I know exactly what you’re
up to.”

She wasn’t even sure herself what she was up
to. Maybe she wanted to prove that she could act any part in any
situation, including
ex-wife meets husband’s fiancee and
emerges triumphant.

Farnsworth escorted her into the enormous
paneled room and placed her in a seat of honor beside the hearth. A
chilled drink was handed to her, and she made small talk with her
host until he trotted off to show his gun collection to Matt Rider
and Barb Gladly.

Brick’s eyes blazed like the fires of hell as
he started toward her, every move calculated. Riveted, she watched
him come. Shivers skittered down her spine, and hairs along the
back of her neck stood on end. She only hoped that the heat
flushing her body didn’t show in her face.

“It won’t work.”

His voice was smoky and intimate, for her
ears only. He towered over her, deliberately positioning himself so
that she was eye level with his crotch. If she’d had a gun, she
would have shot him.

She had to wet her dry lips with her tongue
before she was capable of speech.

“What won’t work?”

“That Maggie the Cat role you’re
playing.”

Maggie the Cat
, who tried every ploy
in the book to get her husband’s attention. Come to think of it,
she felt rather like a cat on a hot tin roof.

“I’m not playing a role. I’m dressed for
dinner.”

“You’re dressed for seduction.” Brick leaned
down and casually ran one finger around the high collar of her
dress, skimming the sensitive skin of her throat. “I bought the
dress for you in New Orleans, then took it off of you in the Hotel
Saint Helene.”

It had been a night to remember. They’d both
said the dress would always remind them of that night.

His hand left her throat, but he might as
well have been stripping her bare in the presence of Farnsworth’s
dinner guests. The front of her dress rose and fell in telltale
agitation.

“Do you remember, Helen?”

Silently she damned the wicked impulse that
had sent her slithering down the stairs in her red dress.

His slow, audacious gaze raked her face and
the front of her dress.

“No need to answer that,” he said. “I can see
that you do.”

“Damn you, Brick Sullivan.”

“You disappoint me, Helen. An actress with no
better line than that. Come, my darling. Surely you can think of
something better.”

“You’re the one with all the lines tonight...
and all the moves too. Why should I upstage you?”

“You’ve done it before.”

“Yes, and I’ll do it again.”

“But not tonight, my sweet. In spite of that
sinfully seductive dress and those long, silky legs, you will play
only a minor role. Brick Sullivan has a new leading lady.”

“... whose charms are obvious.”

“Not all of them, my love.”

Helen bared her claws.

“She has something I haven’t seen?” Her sweet
smile belied her words.

“Yes... Loyalty.”

She sucked in an angry breath. Brick pinned
her to the seat with his fierce black eyes, daring her to refute
him.

What do you know about loyalty
? she
wanted to scream.
What do you know about being abandoned
?
But of course she couldn’t say those things to him, not when they
were in a room full of people.

Not now. Not ever.

“How lovely for both of you,” she said. Her
voice was firm, cheerful, a masterpiece of control. She could have
commented that Miss Loyalty was at that moment wrapped around Matt
Rider’s muscled arm, but she saw no need to truly earn the nickname
Maggie the Cat.

Brick held her with his eyes a heartbeat
longer, his lips parted as if he had something else to say; but in
the end he left her. Abruptly. The master of the dramatic exit left
without the last word, and Helen finally understood the depth of
his turmoil.

In that instant she knew nostalgia and
something sharper, something much deeper. Helen knew regret.

o0o

How he had survived dinner, Brick would never
know. During this trip he was destined to do his best acting
offstage.

He paced his room in the south wing like a
novice backstage at his first performance. The thick carpet muffled
his footsteps, and the heavy drapery muffled his curses.

Helen’s red dress had been lethal. It had
taken all his willpower to keep his eyes off her.

He needed cold air... and lots of it. Ripping
off his tie and flinging aside his dinner jacket, he grabbed his
parka and headed outside.

o0o

Helen considered it a miracle that she had
survived dinner. Her hands shook as she unzipped her red dress and
stepped into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. They were still
shaking when she picked up the phone and dialed the New Orleans
number she knew by heart.

Kathleen Shaw answered on the first ring.

“Thank God, Kat!”

“Helen? What’s wrong?”

The great thing about old friends is that
they know you so well they can read you from more than a thousand
miles away and over the phone, to boot. She and Kat had been
roommates when they were both getting started, Kat in a small,
little known ballet company and Helen doing repertory theater. A
year later, the Corban sisters moved in, first B. J., who was
attending law school, and then Maxie, who was studying interior
design. The four of them formed such a loyal circle they called
themselves Forever Friends.

Because of her logical nature, B. J. was the
problem solver of the group, and Maxie was the one who made
everybody laugh. Still, Helen always turned to Kat first. Both of
them were older and had known each other longer.

“Helen, are you still there?”

“I’m here, Kat.” Helen didn’t waste any time
filling her old friend in on the strange circumstances she found
herself in. Including the interminable dinner.

“When Brick draped his arm around Barb’s
shoulders, I wanted to kill them both.”

“It’s a wonder you didn’t dump your soup bowl
over his head.”

“Believe me, I wanted to. By the time dessert
was served, I wanted to string them up by the heels, cover them
with honey, and hang them outside for the bears to eat.”

“Oh, my Lord, you haven’t seen a bear, have
you? I’d just die.”

“I’ll have to take my chances. One more
minute in the Farnsworth mansion with Brick Sullivan just down the
hall is going to drive me over the brink.”

“You still love him, don’t you, Helen?” Kat’s
inquiry was soft and filled with a certain longing. She put on a
great show, much like Helen, but she’d never recovered from losing
Hunter La Farge.

“I refuse to love him. He’s nothing but
trouble.”

Helen switched the conversation to Kat’s
latest ballet,
Swan Lake,
and Kat promised to make it to
New Hampshire in time to see their play before it closed. After
Helen said goodbye, she grabbed her cozy anorak and headed for the
great outdoors.

o0o

The golf course was a mysterious landscape of
moonlight and shadows. Brick walked mostly in the shadows, for the
darkness suited his mood. With his fists clenched at his sides, he
took deep breaths, trying to get Helen out of his system.

It was an impossible task. She still smoked
through him, a fire that refused to be smothered.

Icy winds whipped his open jacket back from
his body. He was dressed for a stroll down a Georgia lane, not a
stalk through the New Hampshire night in the dead of winter. He’d
probably freeze to death.