As Michael listened to his long-winded and apparently irate caller, he tapped a pencil idly on his huge rosewood desk. With his other hand he shuffled through a stack of papers, sorting them into two compulsively neat piles. Periodically he jabbed at another of the lit buttons on the phone, rumbled directives first into the receiver and then into the intercom on his desk. Two assistants scurried in and out, handing him papers to sign, waiting as he jotted notes on them, then rushing back out. A clerk from the mailroom came in with a half-dozen videotapes, piled them up next to his VCR and the bank of television monitors and left. Mrs. Hastings hurried in with several bulging file folders, dropped them into his In basket and picked up one of the stacks he’d just created. On her way out, she smiled sympathetically at Barrie, who’d begun to feel as though she’d fallen into the rabbit hole and wound up in the middle of Alice in Wonderland. Never in her life had she seen such perfectly orchestrated chaos. Never in her life had she felt so blatantly ignored.
“It won’t be long, dear,” Mrs. Hastings promised. “It’s always this way at the end of the day.”
Barrie glanced at her slim gold watch. It was seven-fifteen. She had suggested that Michael meet her at the studio at seven, but he’d refused and insisted instead that she meet him at his office at six-thirty. He was now forty-five minutes late, and Mrs. Hastings’s reassurances to the contrary, he was showing no sign of quitting for the day.
Barrie waited and fumed. Eager to find any excuse for escape, she prepared herself mentally to rise as regally as she could with that blasted run in her hose and walk out of his office in a dignified protest of his imperious rudeness. Just as she started to stand, the phone clicked into place on his desk. He dropped the pencil, stopped shuffling papers, switched off the intercom and leaned back in his chair.
His pale blue tailored-to-fit shirt with his initials embroidered on the cuff emphasized his broad chest, his tapering waistline. His tie was loosened, his collar open at the neck to reveal a provocative amount of tanned skin and a shadowing of dark, tightly curled hairs. Eyes that now seemed more blue than green stared knowingly back at her. Barrie gulped and studied the pictures on the wall. They were modern splashes of bright, formless color. They were awful.
“So…Miss MacDonald,” he said softly, seductively. “What do you think of my—” there was a suggestive hesitation that brought a guilty blush to Barrie’s cheeks “—office?”
“I think the network overpaid the decorator,” she responded tartly.
He grinned at her. “That’s a rather dangerously blunt comment, don’t you think? How do you know I didn’t do it myself?”
“I’ve been in this office before. The pictures preceded you.”
“Very observant,” he noted approvingly, then added with a weary sigh, “I wish more people in this business would develop their powers of observation. It might improve the quality of the stuff that gets brought in here.”
Barrie’s brown eyes sparkled with excitement as she recognized a perfect opportunity. Heath Donaldson couldn’t have scripted a better opening line for her. “That’s what I want to do with Goodbye, Again,” she said enthusiastically. “I want to create characters and situations that people will recognize. Relationships today aren’t what they were when I Love Lucy went on the air. They’re freer, more open. Women are less dependent on the men in their lives, married or not. They stay married out of choice, not necessity. How many families today are like the Andersons on Father Knows Best? We might wish they were, but, as the saying goes, wishing won’t make it so.”
“So you want to force-feed reality, when what the audience wants is fantasy?” he challenged.
“No,” she responded heatedly, so caught up in explaining her show so that he would understand that she once again missed the teasing glint in his eyes. “You’re twisting my words around. You make reality sound like a dirty word.”
As Michael rose and walked slowly around to where she was sitting, her breath suddenly caught in her throat, her argument sputtered to a halt, and she was immediately struck by the strangest sense of heightened anticipation. It was like waiting for a roller coaster to inch over the crest of its highest peak and fly down the other side. One knew something incredible was about to happen but had no idea quite how to prepare for it. Michael’s impressive body towered over hers, sending out little electrical currents that seemed to head straight for her abdomen, flooding it with a pleasant warmth and a tormenting ache. Barrie’s eyes were drawn to his, locked in a fiery awareness, challenging him to defend his statement.
“Actually, I like reality, Miss MacDonald,” he protested softly, the velvet-smooth tone affecting her like warm brandy. It felt soothing and intoxicating. “In fact, I’m liking it more by the minute.”
His charming, roguish grin brought a responding tilt to her lips. The man could obviously sweet-talk his way past Saint Peter at the gates of heaven. What possible chance did she stand, Barrie wondered a trifle desperately. She’d come here to have a serious discussion to assure the integrity of Goodbye, Again, and here she was melting like some damned stick of butter left out in the sun. Spineless. She was absolutely spineless.
“Mr. Compton, I thought you wanted to have dinner and talk about Goodbye, Again.”
“I do.”
“Well?”
“Dinner’s on the way.”
Barrie gulped. “Here?”
“Why not? It’s more private than a restaurant, and despite the lousy artwork, the atmosphere isn’t bad.”
It is also entirely too intimate, Barrie wanted to shout.
So what? a voice shouted back. Intimacy is only threatening if you allow it to be. After all, the man has done absolutely nothing to indicate that he wants to seduce you. That was an idea that popped into your mind sometime between his thorough, unblinking survey and the soft, sensual smile that made your heart flip over.
Okay. So I’ll force that idea right back out of my mind.
Right. The worst thing that could happen would be that he’d make a pass at you, and you’d file a sexual harassment suit.
No, she correctly dryly, the worst thing that could happen would be that he would make a pass, and she would respond. She steeled herself against that embarrassingly distinct possibility.
“Dinner here is just fine,” she said airily, taking off her glasses. Maybe if she couldn’t see the man, his potency would be less dangerous. Of course, she also might miss the first signs of any planned seduction. She put the glasses back on, just in time to see a waiter wheel in a cart laden with covered silver dishes.
In less time than it would normally take her to scan the contents of her virtually empty freezer, the waiter draped a small table with a spotless white damask cloth, added an Oriental-style arrangement of tiny orchids, lit several tapered candles and set two places with heavy silverware and English bone china that Barrie recognized as one of the most expensive patterns on the market.
“I take it you didn’t order from the commissary,” she commented dryly.
He smiled back at her. “Wait until you see the food before making judgments, Miss MacDonald,” he warned. “Isn’t Hollywood known for creating atmosphere without worrying about substance? You could be in for a dinner of ham on rye.”
“You don’t strike me as the ham-on-rye type. Maybe bologna.”
“Careful. That tart tongue of yours is going to get you in trouble yet.”
“It usually gets me back out of it, as well.”
“Perhaps it has…in the past,” he taunted.