Can't Stop Loving You (10 page)

He stepped away from her so that no part of
them was touching.

“So did I... God help me, so did I.”

Real agony twisted his face. Shocked, Helen
stood in the glare of the spotlight, silent.

He turned his back to her, rammed his hands
deeper into his pockets. She thought he would leave. Brick Sullivan
had never stood around to witness the aftermath of anything. They’d
had fights in their five year marriage. Didn’t everybody? But the
fights had never ended with any resolutions of the problems. Both
of them were explosive. If one of them had the last word, the other
always made the best exit.

The storm clouds never lasted long. He’d come
smiling to her thirty minutes later with a handful of gifts,
chocolate bars he’d bought at the corner store, a bouquet of wilted
daisies he’d picked in the backyard, a perfectly shaped red leaf
that had fallen from the maple tree beside the driveway.

She always forgave him. Who wouldn’t? He had
that special smile, that special touch.

Making up meant a torrid session in the bed
or in front of the hearth or wherever they happened to be. They had
camouflaged every problem with passion.

Now they were trapped on the stage, stripped
of the one solution they’d always depended upon.

Helen’s heart hurt so much that she pressed
her hands over it to keep it from breaking and falling to the floor
in a million pieces.

“I wanted your child,” she said.

Brick stiffened as if he’d taken a hard punch
in the stomach, then whirled toward her, his eyes blazing.

“Don’t!”

“I want to tell you the truth.”

“It’s too late. The truth will change
nothing.”

“It will change this...” Helen spread her
hands wide in a hopeless gesture. “... this horrible warfare that’s
going on between us.”

“Warfare is preferable to hell.”

Their eyes locked. For a small eternity they
held the fierce stare. Helen was the first to turn away.

“All right, then.” She wheeled around to
leave. Her footsteps sounded hollow on the stage floor. She had
almost gained the wings when his voice roared out.

“Wait!”

What was the point in staying? He was right.
It was far too late to change things. She was making a life of her
own, and he had Barb.

She kept walking.

“Helen.” He caught her shoulders from behind,
gently turned her around.

His face.
She’d never seen a man’s
face so filled with emotion.

“What is the truth, Helen? Tell me. I want to
hear it. I
need
to hear it.”

“What good will it do? The past is over and
done with. Nothing can change that.”

“No, nothing can change that. But maybe the
truth will take away some of the pain.”

“I never meant to hurt you, Brick.”

“I didn’t know that then, Helen.” His thumbs
circled her shoulders. “Maybe I know it now, but I didn’t
then.”

She absorbed the feel of his hands on her. No
matter what happened between them, no matter where she was, no
matter what she was doing, she would always remember the feel of
Brick’s hands on her skin, remember and cherish.

“I wanted your child more than anything in
the world, Brick. I used to dream about having a daughter with your
smile and your eyes. I’d dream about dressing her in frilly clothes
and taking her to the park to watch the ducks on the pond.”

Brick’s eyes were moist. He cleared his
throat.

“You don’t put frilly clothes on kids when
you take them to the park, Helen.”

“Why not? I’d like to know.”

“Because... you take kids to the park so they
can get dirty.”

“Why can’t you get a frilly dress dirty?”

“You get frilly dresses dirty in Sunday
school. When my daughter goes to the park, she goes in tomboy
clothes so the other kids won’t make fun of her.”

“My daughter will
not
be a
tomboy.”

“She’ll be a
Sullivan.”

Helen put her hands on her hips.

“And just what is that supposed to mean?”

“No self-respecting Sullivan is ever a
sissy.”

“She’s a
girl,
for goodness
sake!”

Suddenly Helen pressed her hands to her
mouth, and he gave her a sheepish grin. Then they both burst into
laughter.

“See?” she said. “We even fight over things
that haven’t happened yet.”

“Yet?” His eyebrow quirked upward.

Helen felt the flush that crept over her
face, heating her skin and making her feel light-headed.

“What I meant to say is... it’s just as well
I left. We fight all the time.”

“Why did you leave, Helen?” She drew back
into herself, but Brick would have none of it. He bracketed her
face with his hands and tipped it up so he could look deep into her
eyes. “You said you wanted to have my baby. Then why did you
leave?”

“It’s not important.”

“I think it is... for both of us.”

Helen tried to think of reasons to hide the
truth from him and found there were none. He couldn’t leave her
because she’d already left him. She couldn’t lose him because he
was already lost.

The time had come to tell Brick the
truth.

o0o

Brick waited for her reply. He didn’t realize
he was holding his breath until Helen began to speak.

“I didn’t want to be abandoned.”

“Abandoned?”

“Left alone to bring up a baby.”

“I wouldn’t have accepted as many road
shows.”

“I’m not talking about temporary abandonment.
I’m talking about permanent.”

“You thought I’d leave you and the baby?”

“Yes.”

It was the most absurd thing Brick had ever
heard. He was on the verge of telling her so until he saw her face,
her eyes. Helen was dead serious. She had really thought he would
leave her alone with his baby. He, who had grown up in an orphanage
without another soul to call his own. He, who had wanted a family
more than any man on earth. He, who would have fought anyone who
dared suggest that he abandon his wife and child.

“But, why, Helen? Had I ever done anything to
make you think I was that callous, that irresponsible?”

“It wasn’t you; it was me... or rather what
had happened to me.”

Brick realized that he and Helen had never
really had time to talk. Theirs had been love at first sight
followed by a whirlwind courtship and a wedding that made the front
pages of every paper in America. They hadn’t even had time for a
honeymoon, but had launched immediately into a joint
project—
Much Ado About Nothing.

All he really knew about his wife—his
ex-wife, he had to keep reminding himself—was that she was a
beautiful, talented woman who was his match onstage and off, that
she hailed from the South, that she could throw together an elegant
meal in fifteen minutes flat, that she loved animals but hated
snakes and frogs, that she laughed at things he didn’t find
remotely funny, and never cried except at old movies.

Nor did she know anything about him. Maybe it
was about time they got to know each other.

“I’d like to hear about your life before I
met you, Helen.”

“It’s not pretty.”

He waited, letting her take her time. Closing
her eyes, she drew a deep breath. When she opened them he could see
tears collected on her eyelashes.

“My father abandoned us when I was a baby.
After three hard years, my mother married again. Six months later
my stepfather left, saying he couldn’t manage somebody else’s
child. My next stepfather lasted a year, the third only two
weeks.”

Brick could picture Helen as a small child,
watching out the window as each of her stepfathers departed. How
devastating it must have been for her. She must have thought
she
was the cause.

Suddenly his orphanage seemed a sane and safe
place. At least he’d been surrounded by the same people during his
childhood. Nothing had ever changed at St. Dominic’s except the
size of the chores. They had gotten increasingly bigger as he had
gotten older.

“I’m sorry, Helen.”

“I can’t seem to hang on to people,” she
said.

“I was your
husband.
I had pledged
to honor and cherish you all the days of my life.”

“So did Roy Wayne... unofficially.”

“Who is Roy Wayne?”

“The man I was dating before I met you.”

“You loved him?”

“I thought I did.”

“How could you
think
you were in
love?”

For Brick, love had been so clear, so
certain, as if the hand of God had written across the sky,
Brick loves Helen, forever and ever.

“He was kind to me, affectionate.”

“Passionate?”

“Affectionate.”

“What kind of man wouldn’t be passionate with
you, Helen? He must have been a wimp.”

“He was
not
a wimp. As a matter of
fact, he was a weight lifter.”

“You were in love with a brainless jock?”

“He was
not
brainless. And I never
said I was in love with him.”

“But you thought you were?”

“He seemed the steady kind.”

“A
weight
lifter?”

“He only did that as a hobby. He was a
CPA.”

“Good Lord, a weight-lifting CPA? Why didn’t
he jog like sensible people? How much muscle does it take to push a
pencil?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

Helen jerked away and stormed toward the
wings. He caught up with her in two strides.

“I’m sorry, Helen. That was a silly
argument.”

She shook his hand off her arm. “All our
arguments are silly, Brick. But that doesn’t alter the fact that we
argue about everything.”

“Makes life interesting, doesn’t it,
Helen?”

“It makes me realize that my decision to
leave you was the right one, no matter if my reasons were
wrong.”

Good.
At last she had admitted she
was wrong. Brick wanted to gloat a little, but he decided he’d best
keep his glee to himself. After all, he still had a play to do with
Helen.

He couldn’t even effectively argue with her
that her decision to leave him was
not
a good one. Even
with her standing at his side and him wanting her more than he’d
ever wanted another woman in his entire life, he was in no position
to try and win her back.

He was a man tangled in a web of his own
making.

Barb Gladly. His fiancee.

How was he ever going to explain her without
looking like a liar. And if he admitted to being a liar about one
thing, how would Helen trust anything he said?

Hoisted on his own petard... whatever the
devil that was.

o0o

Helen waited for Brick to contradict her. Why
didn’t he? All he had to do was say the word and she would
stay.

Helen, you’re wrong
, he could say.
You should never have gone
.

Or he might say,
Helen, I love you. I
never stopped loving you
.

But he said none of those things.

Silence. It filled her until she wanted to
scream.

Brick’s eyes became shuttered, his face
closed. What was he thinking?

Barb Gladly
.

How could Helen have forgotten about Brick’s
fiancee? Mentally, she upbraided herself. In the heat of passion
and the euphoria of finally getting an old burden off her chest,
she’d almost made a fool of herself over her ex-husband.

She wouldn’t be caught doing that again. A
few more days of rehearsal, then the play, and Helen would be out
of New Hampshire and out of Brick Sullivan’s sight.

“I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I’m
starving. I think I’ll go up to the house and see if there’s
anything to eat.”

She was almost out the stage door before
Brick spoke.

“A little chocolate cake, maybe?”

Passion hit her full force. She squeezed her
hands into fists and kept on walking.

That was another thing. From now on she
wouldn’t miss any meals.

She didn’t dare get trapped in the kitchen
with Brick again. The next time she might not be able to
escape.

What next
? Brick wondered. They
couldn’t go back and they couldn’t seem to go forward.

He loved her. There was no question about
that. He’d never stopped loving her. But even if he decided to try
and win her back, where were the guarantees that she wouldn’t run
away again? Admitting why she had run was not the same as saying,
I would never make that mistake again.

“Shoot!” He’d buttoned his shirt wrong. Helen
was even interfering with his ability to dress. He re-buttoned it
and left the room.

As he descended the staircase for lunch he
saw Barb waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.

“Hi, Brick.” She laced her arm through his,
then leaned closer to whisper, “Everything all right?”

“Everything is just fabulous.”

His smile was an even bigger lie.

Brick Sullivan. Actor
.

o0o

Helen forced herself to eat. One bite at a
time. When the food wouldn’t go down, she forced it with big drinks
of water.

Across the table Brick seemed oblivious to
her turmoil. His head was never far from Barb’s; his smile was only
for her.

Helen might never have confessed a single
thing for all Brick cared.

Well, so be it. She had a life
.

Didn’t she
?

o0o

The gym at Farnsworth Manor was fully
equipped with the best machines money could buy. The exercise
machines were in a carpeted area in the center of a track that was
a tenth of a mile long. The weights were positioned along a wall of
mirrors, and beyond them was a heated pool.

Helen stood on the diving board poised to
jump. Matt Rider sat on the edge of the pool with his feet in the
water. When Helen dived, he didn’t even get wet.