Read Online Can't Stop Loving You by Peggy Webb - Free Book Online

look, hoping for a reaction, a sound, a
tear.
Anything.
    Even her breathing didn’t betray her. The
front of her gown rose and fell as if she were resting in her warm
bed instead of spread-eagle on the kitchen table under the glaring
fluorescent lights.
    Even now he wanted her. Even with anger
scorching his skin and holding his muscles rigid.
    He stepped back and held out his hand to help
her off the table. She batted it back.
    “Go,” she said.
    What else was there to do? He had hoped to
humiliate her, hoped to punish her for leaving him. But the only
one he’d punished had been himself.
    He didn’t dare risk another glance at her,
didn’t dare risk seeing how the silk gown molded her legs, how her
dark lashes rested against her cheeks, how her lips had the pouty,
slightly bruised look of a woman who has been thoroughly loved.
    His footsteps sounded hollow on the kitchen
floor. There was no movement from the table. For all he knew, she
might be planning to spend the rest of the night exactly where he’d
left her, in exactly that position.
    Every nerve ending was supercharged. Sight
and hearing were heightened. He could hear his own blood roaring
through his veins, like waterfalls when the snows have melted from
the mountaintops and the rivers are swollen with too much rain.
    Outside the kitchen door, he stopped. He was
breathless, disoriented. There were no sounds from the kitchen, not
even the whisper of her bare feet against the floor.
    She might have been made of stone. Perhaps
she was where he was concerned. Pure, cold marble. Untouchable.
Unmovable.
    Leaning against the door, he swallowed a lump
in his throat.
    His anger at her had already abated. He was
mad at himself, mad at the way he had treated her in the kitchen,
mad at the way he had let her get to him in the first place. But
most of all, he was mad at himself for losing her. He should have
been able to hold on.
    What had he done wrong? Had he taken her for
granted? Traveled too much? Spent too much time and energy on his
career? Not satisfied her in some deep-seated way that was so
obvious, he should have known without being told?
    Pain. There was so much pain.
    He stopped trying to analyze why he was
hurting so. If he fell down the stairs and broke his neck, he
wouldn’t analyze the pain, he’d merely nurse his hurt.
    He wished he’d brought a bottle of wine from
the kitchen. It was too late now. He’d have to nurse his hurt the
best way he could.
    He pushed away from the kitchen door and
started toward the stairs.
    That’s when he heard the crash. It was a loud
muffled thump, like something soft squashing against the wall.
    It was quickly followed by another noise. The
tinkling of broken glass. Then the unmistakable sound of silver
being flung about the kitchen.
    Riveted, he listened. Was that rage he heard?
Or pain?
    “Noooo...”
    Her cry of anguish made the hair at the back
of his neck stand on end.
    She wailed again, the long keening sound so
tormented that only a rock would remain unmoved.
    “Helen!”
    The next cry chilled his blood.
    My God. Was she killing herself?
    “Hang on, Helen! I’m coming.”
    As he bolted toward the door he prayed that
he would not be too late.

CHAPTER SIX
    Chocolate icing dripped from the walls.
Crystal lay in shards at her feet. Silver was scattered over the
floor. The chicken looked as if it had been slaughtered on the
spot.
    Helen was only vaguely aware of the
destruction. Pain blocked everything out, everything except what
Brick had done to her, what he had said to her.
    God, he had thought she didn’t want children.
He’d thought she was so proud of her body that she didn’t want to
mar it with a pregnancy.
    Tears rolled down her cheeks, down the side
of her neck, and wet the top of her gown. There were not enough
tears in the world to supply her anguish.
    She hated Brick. Hated herself. Hated the
whole world.
    A piece of glass crumpled under her foot. She
felt a sting, saw blood. Her own.
    “Don’t