If it’s good enough,” he said slowly, throwing down the gauntlet, “they’ll watch it while they get ready to go out.” He paused to let that sink in, then added pointedly, “They watched Mary Tyler Moore on Saturday nights.”
Mary Tyler Moore, indeed! They didn’t even bring her back on Saturday night. Barrie’s eyes were flashing, their usual soft brown shade glinting with sparks like flaming firewood. “Are you challenging me?”
He chuckled at her reaction. “You bet I am. Think you’re up to it?” he asked softly, his eyes meeting hers with a question that had nothing to do with challenges and everything to do with romance and the very real male-female pull that had been playing tug-of-war with them since the moment they met.
A perfectly manicured, very masculine finger reached out to the tear in her hose and slowly traced the path it had taken from ankle to knee.
Barrie gasped softly. “Now we get to the part where you ask for my cooperation,” she murmured shakily, fighting the heat that had swept through her at his touch.
He shook his head. “Not everything in this business comes down to sex.”
She glanced down at his hand, which was still resting lightly, provocatively on her leg. “I wonder where I got the idea that it did?”
He chuckled and removed his hand. “Oh, I want you, Barrie MacDonald. I’m not about to deny it. I’ve wanted you since the first moment I saw you in that studio this afternoon. We’re two of a kind, and I think we’d be very good together.”
He paused to let his words sink in. Barrie gulped, wet her lips and waited breathlessly for what was to come. She couldn’t have managed two sensible words had her life depended on it.
“But I won’t ever ask anything of you that you’re not prepared to offer,” he promised in a voice that tantalized her with its rough huskiness. “And it will never have anything to do with Goodbye, Again.”
He paused again, and his blue-green eyes locked with hers. Finally, after several long seconds in which Barrie could feel each contraction of her pounding heart, he asked softly, “Do you believe me?”
Oddly, despite her thundering heartbeat and the wildfire that blazed through her, heating her blood to a glorious warmth, she did believe him. She believed she could trust him. She certainly believed he wanted her. And she also knew with absolute certainty that she’d better get the hell out of there before she made him that offer he’d just sworn to wait for.
“I think I’d better be going,” she announced firmly.
“Stay.”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“Does it matter? I’m leaving?”
“Okay, producer lady,” he said quietly, surprising Barrie with his complete lack of anger, his ready capitulation. “If that’s what you have to do. But I’ll be in touch.”
“I’m sure,” Barrie said dryly. “You’ll probably decide you want that sheepdog in the show, after all.”
“Now that you mention it…”
“Forget it, buster,” she said emphatically, unable to prevent the small grin that tugged at her mouth and softened the effect of her vehemence. “Heath Donaldson is going to flip out when he hears about the time change. If I have to tell him to incorporate a sheepdog, as well, he’ll quit faster than you can say demographics.”
“In that case, I’ll hold off on the sheepdog…for a few days,” he said, his eyes taking on the sort of caressing, speculative masculine gleam that usually precedes a kiss.
“Good night, Mr. Compton,” Barrie said firmly, ducking past his descending head.
“Good night, Barrie MacDonald.” The words were softly spoken and tinged with tolerant amusement.
As she walked to the elevator, Barrie wondered idly what it would be like to hear those perfectly innocuous, ordinary words murmured in her ear as she fell asleep each night. Probably wonderful. She pressed the Down button and leaned weakly against the wall while she waited.
MacDonald, you are crazy. Certifiably insane! You are going to get yourself in over your head on this one yet. She shook her head. Going to? Lady, the water’s already up to your eyebrows!
The door to Barrie’s tiny nondescript office crashed open at barely 8:00 a.m., and Danielle breezed in with a paper bag in one hand and her script in the other. She tossed the script into a chair, took two cups of coffee and two gooey sweetrolls from the bag and arranged them neatly on the desk, then sat down on the sofa with her jeans-clad legs crossed under her and stared at Barrie expectantly.
“Well?”
“Don’t you ever knock?”
“Rarely,” she retorted easily, obviously not the least bit put off by Barrie’s grumpiness. “Why are you in such a snit? Didn’t your dinner with the scrumptious Michael Compton go well?”
“Dinner was just fine,” Barrie admitted honestly. “The problem came after dinner.”
Danielle’s gray eyes immediately narrowed. “Ohhh…” she began softly. Then her voice heated up angrily. “Why, the absolute gall of that man! Did he come on to you? File charges. That’s what you should do. File charges. You can’t let him get away with that.”
“Whoa! You sound like an ambulance chaser. Do you have an attorney someplace who needs a case?” Barrie responded, chuckling at her friend’s immediate rush to her defense. She reassured her, “It was nothing like that.”
“He didn’t come on to you?” Danielle’s tone teetered between disappointment and skepticism.
Barrie’s expression softened as she recalled in precise and blood-stirring detail Michael’s almost casual advances, his seductive promises. “I wouldn’t say that exactly,” she admitted. “But it wasn’t like what you meant.”
“You mean you liked it.”
“No, I didn’t like it,” Barrie said defensively. “I mean, it was okay. Oh, I don’t know what I mean.”
“He got to you, didn’t he?” Danielle said triumphantly. “I knew it. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist those thighs.”
“Damn it, Dani, it is not what you think!” There was an almost plaintive note in her protest. Michael Compton was the network vice president for programming, her boss, and that was all. It had to be. She was not going to let Danielle or her own skittering pulse rate tell her otherwise.
“Then what was the problem?”
“He’s moving the show to eight o’clock on Saturday,” she said in a rush of words, grateful to change the subject to one she knew would completely distract Danielle from her pursuit of the intimate details of her dinner
