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wonder and surprise.
    “Yes.”
    “I guess we put on quite a show.”
    “Isn’t that what we do, Brick? Put on
shows.”
    “That’s what we do, Helen.”
    They lay together still, his back flat
against the floor and her body flattened on top of his. Both of
them were reluctant to end the contact.
    “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Brick.”
    The double entendre was not lost on him. His
face thunderous, he moved quickly, disentangling them and setting
Helen on the bench. With one booted foot propped next to her thigh,
he treated her to his famous “look,” the lifted brow, the curled
lip.
    “It was just a spill on the floor.”
    “Still, I shouldn’t have hit you so hard.”
She pressed her hands together in her lap. “I’m sorry, Brick.”
    “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.

CHAPTER FOUR
    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