Not At Eight, Darling

A real-life romance hits the small screen in this acclaimed story from New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods

Barrie MacDonald gave everyone involved with the TV sitcom she produced consistently high ratings—except executive Michael Compton. Charmingly persuasive, Michael was clearly interested in Barrie, but he also wanted to reschedule her show, which would be a disaster.

Was Barrie’s commitment to the program worth her tuning Michael out completely? She wasn’t sure she could deny their attraction. But when she realized the romance of her on-screen heroine was beginning to echo Barrie’s real-life dilemmas, she felt that things were getting out of control!

Not at Eight, Darling

Sherryl Woods

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Copyright

Chapter One

The only sound in the hushed, cavernous television studio was the increasingly rapid, evidently angry tapping of Barrie MacDonald’s pen against the metal top of a makeshift conference table. Then, as a dozen people looked on in anxious and surprisingly silent anticipation, she dropped the memo she’d been reading, peered over the top of her oversized glasses with indignant brown eyes and spoke in a voice that, she noted proudly, was quiet and controlled. It was not at all like the scream of pure frustration she wanted to unleash on poor, unsuspecting Kevin Porterfield.

“Kevin, dear, did you read this?”

The young man gulped nervously. “Of course, Miss MacDonald.”

“Then you know how utterly absurd it is,” she said softly. She actually sounded calm. Amazing. “I will not add a sheepdog to the cast of Goodbye, Again, just because some crazy demographic study shows that kids like sheepdogs.”

Several members of the cast gasped as eyebrows lifted toward the ceiling in a disgusted, what-did-you-expect expression. Others simply giggled. If the memo hadn’t sounded so incredibly serious, Barrie might have laughed herself. Instead she managed an expression she hoped would put the fear of God into this…this Yuppie who was still wet behind the ears and who was staring at her now with a look that teetered between misery and smug satisfaction. It was actually a rather amazing combination, and she wondered for a fleeting second how he managed it. If he could do it on command, he might make a decent actor.

“But Miss MacDonald…” he began again.

“That’s all there is to it, Kevin,” she interrupted firmly. “End of discussion.”

“But Miss MacDonald, I’m afraid Mr. Compton was adamant. The show has to have a dog. The research shows that dogs…”

“I know what the bloody research shows, Kevin,” she said, her voice beginning to rise toward a less-than-serene screech, despite her best efforts to control it. She took a deep, relaxing breath—precisely as she’d learned in her stress reduction class—and added more gently, “If the research showed that viewers liked ax murders, would you expect me to put one of those in each week, too?”

Kevin looked at her indignantly. “Of course not.”

“Then don’t talk to me about research. Have you read the script for this show, Kevin? We are talking adult situation comedy here. We are talking relationships. Funny, sophisticated relationships. We are not talking dog food commercials.”

Poor Kevin turned absolutely pale, but Barrie was not about to relent and let him off the hook. She had created Goodbye, Again. It was her statement about the transitory nature of romance in the 80s, about her values. There was an awful lot of her in the single, independent, fiesty heroine. Each time Karen Devereaux spoke, Barrie felt as though it was an echo of her own thoughts. Goodbye, Again had been born of her beliefs, and she had spent three long, agonizing years trying to get it on the air. She was not about to let these mindless, research-oriented twits destroy it on the first day of production. If she gave in on the dog, next week they’d want to add kids, and the week after that her lead character would be married and pregnant, and there would be a whole disgustingly cheery episode revolving around diapers and baby food. Well, they could take their blasted market research and stuff it!

Aloud, she said none of this. Exercising what she considered to be Emmy-Award-winning restraint, she murmured pleasantly, “Now you run along and explain that to Mr. Compton, dear. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“Understand what?”

The question, asked in a low, velvet-smooth tone, came from the back of the studio. It was exactly the sort of warm, soothing, sensual voice that radio stations liked to have on the air in the wee hours of the morning to stir the imagination of their female listeners. Despite her instinctive, sinking feeling that the voice belonged to Michael Compton, Barrie’s own heart lurched at the seductive sound. Then it had a far more sensible reaction. It slammed against her ribs in sheer panic.

Michael Compton, the recently appointed network vice president for programming, was a man who reportedly dissected into tiny, insignificant pieces the people who dared to question his orders. Barrie wondered how much of her conversation with Kevin he’d overheard. Not that she’d change a word of it, she thought stoutly. It would just be nice to know exactly how much trouble she was in.

She had to admit that the man’s timing was impeccable. “Just when I’ve got the battle under control, the enemy general has to show up with reinforcements,” she muttered resignedly under her breath.

She should have anticipated something like this. The day had not gone well since the alarm clock had jarred her awake at daybreak. In fact, on a scale of one to ten, it ranked somewhere on the minus side of the ledger. First she had inadvertently washed one of her new soft contact lenses down the drain, leaving her to choose between blinking nearsightedness or the huge old rose-tinted glasses that made her look a bit like an owl. Then her hairdryer had sparked and sizzled to an abrupt halt, leaving her frosted ash-brown hair to dry naturally to a curly tangle, rather than the smoother style she preferred. Her windshield wipers had broken in the middle of a downpour, and she’d had to creep along the L.A. freeway, arriving at the studio an hour late. And finally, she had snagged her new hose as she was getting out of her sporty fire-engine-red Sentra in the parking lot. The run had made its way from her ankle to her thigh in less time than it had taken her to utter a satisfying string of obscenities under her breath.

“Apparently I’m on a roll,” she said dryly as the man whom she assumed to be Michael Compton stepped out of the shadows and strolled confidently to the temporary office set of Goodbye, Again, where Barrie and the cast were assembled. They had been rehearsing the premiere episode when Kevin had wandered in with the latest memo from the network.

“Well, Miss MacDonald,” the man said, a hint of amusement twinkling in his eyes as he perched on the edge of the conference table right next to her. One very solid, very tempting thigh was mere inches from her fingertips. “Exactly what is it you’re so sure I’ll understand?”

Barrie’s gaze shifted reluctantly upward into dazzling blue-green eyes. She studied the square jaw and the determined set to his mouth and gulped. Perhaps a dog wouldn’t be so bad, after all. He could stay in the bedroom and bark occasionally. That ought to keep everyone happy.

What in God’s name am I thinking of? she snapped back mentally. I will not have a dog in this show!

Staring him straight in the eye, she said coolly, “We were just discussing your memo, Mr. Compton.”

“About the sheepdog.”

“Yes. I’m not sure you’ve thought this through,” she began cautiously, wincing as his eyes hardened and bored into her. Mincemeat. This was definitely a man who made mincemeat out of his adversaries. She rushed on, anyway. If she was going to commit professional suicide, she might as well go out fighting. “I mean these people live in a thirty-five story condominium in the middle of Manhattan. What would they be doing with a sheepdog?”

“That’s something else we need to talk about,” he said.

Although he spoke softly, there was no mistaking the authoritative tone. A warning signal flared in Barrie’s brain, and she prepared for the next wave of his absurd, ill-conceived game plan to destroy her show.

“I don’t think a condominium is quite the right environment,” he explained.

“Oh? And what would you suggest? A vine-covered cottage with a white picket fence?”

He grinned, and her own lips defied her by twitching upward in an involuntary response. “That might be a little extreme,” he agreed. “I was thinking more along the lines of a town house.”

Barrie considered the idea thoughtfully. She was not above making some small compromises. “Maybe it would work,” she said slowly. “One of those nice brownstones on the East Side, perhaps.”

“Umm…” He shook his head. “Not exactly.”

“What, then?”

“I was thinking of one of those town house developments. You know, with a swimming pool, tennis courts, sailboats, that sort of thing.”

Barrie’s eyes widened incredulously. The man had obviously come up through the ranks from sales. He had the creative mentality of an accountant.

“In Manhattan?” That distressing screech was back in her voice, though it had been weakened considerably by her absolute dismay.

“Well, we probably would have to move the location of the show. Maybe Marina del Ray or Santa Monica.”

At that, her mouth dropped open, and her glasses slipped to the tip of her pert turned-up nose. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

“What’s wrong with that? It worked for Three’s Company.”

To her thorough astonishment, the man seemed genuinely puzzled. In fact, he looked downright hurt that she hadn’t liked his suggestion.

“That’s what’s wrong with it,” she explained as patiently as she could, considering her desire to deliver a primal scream that would shake the studio. “It’s been done. I don’t want to copy another series. Goodbye, Again is going to be fresh, different, contemporary. It’s going to give viewers something to think about.”

She glared at him defiantly. “It is not going to be an endless parade of bikini-clad bodies jiggling to the Jacuzzi.”

“You think that’s a bit too sexist?” he wondered aloud with apparent innocence. While she held her breath and waited, he seemed to consider her strenuous objection carefully. “Maybe you’re right. Of course, if we put a couple of guys in there…”

“Forget it!” Barrie’s shout echoed as she slammed her fist down emphatically. To her utter chagrin it landed squarely on his thigh. The damn muscle felt like granite. It felt, in fact, wonderful. However, she warned herself dryly, this was no time to get caught up with the feel of the man’s physique. She had an important point to make. Several of them, in fact. “No bikinis! No swimming pools! And no damned sheepdog!”

A deep, rumbling laugh suddenly erupted from Michael Compton’s chest. Barrie’s hand twitched nervously where it had come to rest on his leg, and she yanked it back, looking at him as though he’d suddenly gone mad. The cast tittered uncertainly.

“You’re wonderful, Miss MacDonald. Absolutely priceless,” he said when he’d regained his composure. “I like a producer with spunk. I want my people to stand up for what they believe in.”

His people? Spunk? Barrie’s indignant roar dwindled down to a low growl as she stared at him, first in blinking confusion, then with slowly dawning understanding. “You were teasing me, weren’t you?” she accused.

“Me?” The attempt at innocence failed miserably. There was far too much of a twinkle in his eyes.

“Yes, you.”

He nodded contritely, though his lips continued to twitch with amusement. “I’m afraid so. I couldn’t resist.”

“You don’t want me to move the show to Los Angeles?”

He shook his head.

“You don’t expect me to spend five minutes per episode in a Jacuzzi?”

“Nope.”

“You’re not really asking for a sheepdog?”

“Well…”

“Mr. Compton,” she thundered.

He smiled at her. Slowly. Winningly. It was a smile that belonged on the cover of an album of romantic ballads. “Okay, you win. No sheepdog…if you have dinner with me.”

Despite the flutter in the pit of her stomach, Barrie refused to be won over. “Business conferences usually take place over lunch.”

“I’m booked for lunch for the next month.”

“I’ll wait.”

“I won’t. If this show is going to go on the air in September—three weeks from now, in fact—we need to discuss it.”

Barrie regarded him closely, one eyebrow lifting quizzically. “Mr. Compton,” she began sweetly. “Are you blackmailing me into having dinner with you?”

“Miss MacDonald, do I look like I need to blackmail women into going out with me?” he inquired with entirely too much amusement.

Barrie surveyed him critically from head to toe and decided reluctantly that the amusement didn’t stem from conceit. If anything, the man was probably being modest. Her gaze traveled slowly from the neatly trimmed thick brown hair and twinkling blue-green eyes over broad shoulders and narrow hips that not even a depressingly businesslike navy blue suit could disguise. The Kirk Douglas dimple in his chin and the square jaw only added to his aura of sex appeal. To top it off, he apparently had charm, and he definitely had power, both potent aphrodisiacs.

No, she decided with an unconscious sigh, this man would not need to resort to blackmail. Women probably lined up hoping for a chance to have him as an escort. Her glance swept over the cast of Goodbye, Again. Although they all seemed to be nervously awaiting her decision, disgustingly the women also appeared to be panting. Any one of them would probably kill to trade places with her.

“Well?” he taunted. “Are you going to take me up on this opportunity to discuss your future at the network?”

“Don’t rush me. I’m thinking,” she retorted, deliberately ignoring the ominous overtone of his question.

“If it takes you this long to reach a decision, Miss MacDonald, perhaps you’ve chosen the wrong career. Producers need to think on their feet.”

“Perhaps I could become a network vice president,” she suggested darkly. “They don’t seem to think at all.”

To her absolute amazement—and probable salvation—he laughed again. Her eyes widened as the hearty, unrestrained sound bounced off the studio walls. “Watch it, Miss MacDonald,” he warned with a wink as he headed toward the door with Kevin trailing along behind him like an obedient puppy. “Casting has a huge sheepdog that would be just perfect for this show.”

Barrie winced and took a deep breath. “Pick me up here at seven,” she called after him.

With her glasses clenched tightly in her hand, Barrie couldn’t quite see to the back of the studio, but Michael appeared to nod in satisfaction. “Six-thirty. My office,” he called back as the door slammed shut behind him.

“Smart…” she muttered under her breath.

She hated men who had to have the last word. She especially hated men who had irresistible thighs.

Chapter Two

The studio was silent for exactly thirty seconds following Michael Compton’s departure. Then all hell broke loose. Though Barrie would have liked to believe they were above it, the women immediately—and probably predictably—began debating the man’s availability amid a chorus of heavy sighs. At the same time, the men’s grumbling remarks about interference in the creative process by self-important pompous jerks contained more than a hint of jealousy. The writer of the opening episode muttered something about cretins under his breath, while he crushed empty Styrofoam coffee cups one by one. And Danielle Lawrence, Barrie’s best friend and the director whom she’d chosen for the series’ premiere, was ignoring all of it and smirking at her.

“What’s your problem?” Barrie snapped.

“Nice looking, isn’t he?”

“Who?” It seemed to be a good time to be deliberately obtuse.

“Who? Attila the programmer, of course.”

“I didn’t notice.”

Danielle regarded her skeptically. “The woman who has taken a personal oath not to marry until she finds the perfect set of male thighs did not notice a man whose legs could have been carved by Michelangelo? I find that difficult to believe.”

Barrie’s eyes flashed dangerously. “There are other directors in Hollywood.”

“But I’m good,” Danielle retorted cheerfully. “I am also available, reasonably inexpensive, and I know all of your character flaws and love you, anyway. You can’t top that.”

Barrie sighed. “You’re probably right, but could we drop the subject of Michael Compton for now? We have to go over this opening scene again. The pacing is all wrong.”

An explosion of sound erupted just behind Barrie’s shoulder. “What do you mean the pacing is all wrong?” Heath Donaldson hissed. “I’ve been writing comedy since before you were born. If you’d hired actors who knew how to deliver a line, the pacing would be just fine.”

Barrie rolled her eyes at Danielle and turned around slowly. She put her arm around the short balding man who’d been huffing and puffing angrily in her ear. “Sweetheart,” she began soothingly. “Your script is just fine. We all know you’re one of the best in the business.”

She lowered her voice to a whisper. “And you’re right about some of the cast being inexperienced. But, love, you know they’re just perfect for the parts. I think if you work with them and make just a few tiny adjustments to help them out, the opening scene will click right along.”

Heath blinked back at her, and the fiery red that had crept up his neck was fading away. He now looked a little less like a coronary waiting to happen. Barrie breathed a sigh of relief as he muttered more calmly, “Well, I suppose I could change a few lines just a little, tighten it up.”

“That’s it,” Barrie said with exaggerated enthusiasm. “I knew you could do it. Why don’t you and Danielle go over the first couple of pages of the script and see what you can come up with?”

For the next few hours Barrie felt like a firefighter who’d been asked to put out an entire county of brush fires with a pail of water. There was one crisis after another, none of them serious, but all of them requiring diplomacy, patience and a serenity she was far from feeling. The only possible advantage to a day like today, she decided, rubbing her throbbing temples, was that it had left her absolutely no time to work herself into a state over her impending dinner with Michael Compton.

At six-fifteen she sent the cast and crew home, touched up her makeup, took another stress-reducing deep breath that didn’t do a bit of good and walked across the studio lot to the nearby network facilities. At precisely six-thirty she presented herself to Michael Compton’s secretary, a cheerful woman with gray hair, rosy cheeks and sparkling, periwinkle blue eyes.

Mrs. Emma Lou Hastings looked as though she’d be perfectly at home in the kitchen making applesauce with an army of grandchildren underfoot. She also seemed like the type you could come to for motherly advice, Barrie decided, suddenly struck by the oddest desire to sit down and tell this perfect stranger that she was a nervous wreck because she was having dinner with a man who held the key to her future, a man who also had incredible thighs. She wondered what Mrs. Hastings would have to say about that.

Since Barrie kept her mouth clamped firmly shut, Mrs. Hastings only said, “You can go in now, Miss MacDonald. Mr. Compton is expecting you.”

Barrie had started toward the door when the secretary added softly, “Don’t worry, dear. He’s really a very nice young man.”

Very nice young man, indeed! Mrs. Hastings obviously didn’t know that Michael Compton had virtually threatened to cancel Barrie’s series unless she agreed to this dinner. What would she say about her nice young man if she found out about that? Barrie looked into her round, honest-looking face with the tiny laugh lines around the eyes and the encouraging smile and didn’t have the heart to tell her. After all, she defended herself, could you tell a mother that her son is rotten to the core? Of course not. No more than she could tell Mrs. Hastings that her obviously well-liked boss was a thoroughly obnoxious louse who indulged in emotional blackmail.

Instead she smiled back. “Thanks,” she said as she turned the brass doorknob and walked into Michael Compton’s office. Grateful for any reprieve, she was delighted to see that he was on the phone. He looked up and grinned at her with that sinfully sensual smile of his and motioned for her to sit down. She selected the chair farthest from his desk and sank down, tucking her legs back in a futile attempt to cover the run that displayed a pale white trail of skin from her ankle up, disappearing at last under the hem of her beige linen skirt. Why the hell hadn’t she remembered the damn run earlier? She couldn’t very well go tearing out of here now to buy new hose. Blast Michael Compton, she thought irrationally. Somehow this was all his fault.

She glanced over to discover that the object of her irritation was paying absolutely no attention to her. His head was bent to one side in order to keep the phone braced against his shoulder. If he did that long enough, he was going to have one heck of a neck ache, Barrie noted. She was torn between a perverse delight at the prospect and an even stranger desire to massage the soon-to-be-knotted muscles. She blinked and looked away, but, as though she’d been hypnotized, her eyes were drawn back time and again.

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.