by Peggy Webb
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 fiancée, 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.
TWO
"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.
"Fiancée, 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."
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 fiancée 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 h
im, 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.
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. Rip-ping off his tie and flinging aside his dinner jacket, he grabbed his parka and headed outside.
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.
When Brick had draped his arm around Barb's shoulders, she'd wanted to kill them both. And that was just for starters.
By the time dessert was served Helen had been ready to string them up by the heels, cover them with honey, and hang them outside for the bears to eat.
Were there bears in New Hampshire? She had no earthly idea. If there were, she was going to take her chances.
One more minute in the Farnsworth mansion with Brick Sullivan just down the hall was going to drive her over the brink.
She grabbed her cozy anorak and headed for the great outdoors.
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.
Which might be an improvement over his present state.
A night bird called from the nearby forest, mocking him. If he had any sense at all, he wouldn't even be out here; he'd be cozied up next to Barb in her warm bed.
She'd invited him.
Not only was he playing a besotted fool where Helen was concerned, but he was a besotted fool with a code of honor, warped though it might be. He never used women. Barb was being paid handsomely for a job, and that job did not include sleeping with the boss.
Beset by demons, he pulled his collar up, rammed his hands into his pockets, and forged on, occasionally kicking at the tight turf as if stones were blocking his path. Suddenly the back of his neck prickled, and he was aware that he was not alone.
Stopping in the shadows, he lifted his head and strained his eyes into the darkness. She was there on the seventh green, her silhouette as unmistakable as if she'd been standing under the bright lights of a stage instead of in the pale, cold light of the moon.
Brick clenched his hands into fists. Helen Sullivan on the seventh green. Had the same memories that brought him there sent her winging into the night?
Rage tightened his jaw, and hard on its heels came a sense of loss so painful, he almost cried aloud.
Memories overwhelmed him…
She'd been in one of her kittenish, playful moods that night. The gold glitter in the center of her green eyes always tipped him off.
He set his bags inside the door, happy to be home from a three-month tour of Much Ado About Nothing, but happier still to be facing the woman he'd dreamed about every blessed sleepless night and longed for every waking moment.
"Come here, wench. Your lord and master is home."
"Not until I finish basting the beast, darling. The way to a man's heart, they say …" With a wicked grin she cast aside the dark green terry cloth robe she was wearing and stood before him in heels and a flirty blue apron—and not a stitch more.
He stood beside the door, raking his eyes over her, loving the way she responded, the quick tightening of her nipples, the tiny shivers that rippled along her skin, the way she licked her fall bottom lip.
Neither of them moved. Both of them knew how much better the loving would be when it was honed to a fine edge by anticipation.
"You baked a beast for me? You, the woman who abhors the kitchen?"
"Every now and then I'm willing to make the supreme sacrifice to satisfy your ravenous appetite."
"There's only one thing that will satisfy my appetite tonight."
"Don't tell me. Let me guess."
Ever aware of her audience, she put a finger to her temple in a saucy way that lifted her breasts. The heat coursing along his veins turned to a full-fledged firestorm.
"Strawberries," she said, grinning at him. "In strategic places."
"How strategic?"
"Very."
Her tongue slid over her bottom lip once more, then rested there, teasing him. He took one step toward her, then another… and another, his eyes never leaving that sexy pink tongue.
"Can I have all I want, Helen?"
"How much do you want?"
"About two quarts."
"Only two? I thought you said you were ravenous."
"That's for starters." He stood before her now, so awed by the perfection of her body that he hardly knew which part of her to touch first. With one finger he traced her damp bottom lip, then trailed it down the side of her throat and across the swell of her right breast.
"For starters?" she asked, her breath already hitching in her throat.
"I thought we'd have a little exercise before we eat."
"Anything in particular in mind?"
"Golf."
"In the dark?"
"I play my best game in the dark."
She slid one finger into the small gap between the third and fourth buttons on his shirt and began to draw hot, erotic circles. That tiny contact of flesh against flesh was almost enough to make him lose control.
"Show me," she said.
With slow deliberation he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around. The long, slender length of her body from neck to ankle was bisected by the perky bow of her apron. He skimmed his palms down her back, loving the way she shivered, loving the way her skin was already heated.
He untied the bow, and the wisp of an apron drifted to the floor. Helen lifted her hair off her neck with one hand then turned toward him.
"I'm afraid I have nothing to wear for this game."
"Nothing is exactly what I had in mind."
She reached for his belt buckle, and suddenly the waiting became too much for both of them. Buttons ripped, the metal buckle clanged against the floor, his pants bounced off the bar and landed on a chair.
Then she was in his arms, and he was racing through the French doors. A nip of fall was in the air, and when the night breezes swept over them, their skin tightened like the peel of a crisp, juicy apple.
The seventh green lay before them, shadowed by a copse of oak trees, the gentle swell of earth spread out blanketlike and inviting. He was in her before they touched the ground.
The feel of her around him made his senses reel.
"No more road tours," he said, meaning it.
"Liar."
She pushed him back against the cold, prickly grass; then, poised above him like some fine racing filly from Kentucky, she made him forget that he'd said the same thing dozens of times before and that she knew he would always change his mind.
And she didn'
t care. Acting was in his blood… and hers.
They would always be on the road, living out of a suitcase and keeping the telephone hot, moving so fast that the cities soon ran together and nothing was real except the bright lights of the stage and the one who waited at home.
Wind rattled the dead leaves of the oak trees and bit at their naked flesh, but nothing could stop the momentum that sent them reeling over the ground, sometimes racing along like two thoroughbreds in a dead heat, sometimes pausing to touch and taste, to explore and savor.
And when at last their passion was sated, she bent over him with her hair cascading over his belly and licked the fine sheen of perspiration caught in the valley over his heart.
"Promise," she whispered.
"Anything," he said, meaning that too.
"Promise we'll never lose the spontaneity."
"Never, Helen. As long as I have breath in my body."
It was a promise he was destined to break. Not because he wanted to but because two years later she'd walked out the door and never came back.
Now she was standing on another golf course in another state with her face lifted in pensive attitude toward the moon as if she, too, remembered and, remembering, felt the keen sense of loss and the hopeless sense that everything that should have been perfect, that was perfect, had somehow slipped through their grasp. Helen and Brick Sullivan, the two most successful Shakespearean actors of their time, couldn't make the thing most important to them work: Their marriage.
"Damn you to hell, Helen."
The wind caught his whisper and carried it up to the treetops where it startled an owl, who lifted his wings and soared into the darkness. Helen turned slowly in his direction.
"Who's there?" she asked. He stood quietly, not wanting to be discovered—especially by Helen, especially near the seventh green. Her hand, glowing white in the moonlight, flew to her throat. "Is someone there?"
Damned his warped code of honor. He couldn't bear to frighten her. He stepped out of the shadows.
"It's only me, Helen."