Can't Stop Loving You Read Online Free PDF

said. “This is
merely a professional argument.”
    “Strictly professional,” Helen agreed.
    Clifford swallowed hard. “All right. Then
let’s start at the top of that scene.”
    “No need to waste time.” Brick sauntered back
to his place. “Let’s just take it from where we left off.”
    “Good.” Clifford took his seat once more,
thinking that there was nothing good about it. “Now, where were
we?”
    “I had just discovered the stinger in her
tail.”
    “Discovery, my foot.” Helen crossed her arms
and glared at him. “It was more like an invasion.”
    “Was it, now?” Brick stalked her, his voice
silky and deadly. “An invasion, you say? That can be arranged.”
    “Not in this lifetime, Brick Sullivan.”
    Clifford smote his forehead. “I’m getting too
old for this,” he muttered.
    In the wings, Marsha whispered to Matt, “What
did I tell you?”
    “It’s better than I expected,” he said.
“Those two are still madly in love.” He winked at Barb Gladly, who
had her arms wrapped around the necks of the Abominables.
    “If they get any madder, they’re going to
kill each other.” Marsha grabbed a glass of water, threw in a slice
of lemon, and marched onstage.
    “Break time,” she announced.
    Clifford groaned.
Now
he was taking
directions from Godzilla the secretary.
    Helen took a long, slow drink from the glass.
The more she looked at Brick’s maddeningly insolent smile, the
madder she got. With careful deliberation she upended the glass
over his head. Water drenched his hair, ice cubes slid into the
neck of his shirt, and the wedge of lemon landed in the crook of
his ear.
    Dead silence filled the rehearsal hall. Brick
and Helen stared at each other as if they were two gladiators
prepared to fight to the death. Then suddenly Brick laughed. His
hearty roar broke the tension, and soon everybody was chuckling and
patting each other on the back and making their way to the break
room for a fortifying cup of coffee.
    “How do you want yours, Mr. Oates?” the girl
at the coffee pot asked. “Cream? Sugar?”
    “With a little TNT,” the director said. “They
say the only way to control a raging fire is to apply a little
dynamite.”
    Break time did wonders to cool hot tempers.
Or so Clifford thought.
    They had started all over with act 2, scene
1, and Helen and Brick were sailing through their lines. Just as
the director sank back into his chair and was starting to relax,
they came to the deadly scene that had lately resulted in Helen
cooling Brick off with a glass of ice water over his head.
    “‘Who knows not where a wasp doth wear his
sting? In his tail.’”
    Clifford breathed a sigh of relief. This time
Brick was being good. No hands on Helen’s backside.
    “‘In his tongue,’” she replied, every bit of
Kate’s tartness evident in her voice and her stance.
    “Good... good,” Clifford said.
    He bragged too soon.
    “‘Whose tongue?’” Brick’s line. Spoken with a
dangerous glint in his eye.
    “‘Yours, if you talk of tails; and so
farewell.’”
    “‘What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay,
Good Kate; I am a gentleman’—”
    Suddenly Brick caught Helen around the waist,
sank onto a low bench, and tipped her over his lap.
    Her roar of outrage filled the stage. She
came out of his grasp flailing and kicking.
    “‘That I’ll try.’” Her line was served up
with a stinging wallop that clipped Brick’s jaw and knocked him
backward across the bench.
    “Cut... cut...” Clifford yelled.
    Offstage the Abominables broke loose from
Matt and galloped onto the stage. Straddling Brick, they licked his
face, his ears, his hands.
    Helen tugged at their leashes, trying to get
them under control.
    “Stop it,” she said.
    “Don’t stop them. I’m a dying man.”
    “You’re a conniving man. Get up off that
floor.”
    “No. I want to lie here and wallow in my
pain.”
    “You want to lie there and gloat in your
victory. You meant to cause mayhem, and you did.”
    Helen