Barrie sighed. “Okay. We’ll be right there.”
This was not going to be pleasant. If Michael hadn’t even called her himself, he must be in quite a state of agitation. Whatever doubts he had had on Saturday night must have been solidified by the low ratings. Quickly she rounded up Heath and Danielle, and they walked across to the executive tower together. Barrie had a rough idea of what it must have felt like to walk to the guillotine.
“You don’t suppose he’d cancel us after just a week,” Danielle said, anticipating the worst.
“Of course not,” Barrie said with far more conviction than she felt. “I’m sure he just wants to try to figure out some new game plan. Maybe he’ll even see how right we were about the time period and move us.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Heath muttered, his defensiveness back in place.
Once they were in Michael’s office, Barrie knew that her optimism had been unfounded. Michael’s expression teetered somewhere between serious and ominous. To top it off, he hadn’t even glanced in her direction, as though he found the idea of a direct confrontation with her over this too uncomfortable after all they had shared over the weekend.
“We have a problem,” he announced without preamble.
Barrie took a deep breath and plunged in before he could go on. “Michael, I’m sure if we just give the show a little promotional push, it will begin picking up,” she said with bravado. “I’ve already talked to the PR department, and they’re going to set up some interviews for Melinda. On-air promotion says they’ll get some spots on during football. That’s always good exposure for a new series.”
“That’s all great, but it’s not the answer.”
“And I suppose you have one,” Heath murmured belligerently. “Are we back to that blasted sheepdog again?”
Michael chuckled. “No, no sheepdog. But I think we are going to have to make some changes in the show, do a little fine-tuning with the characters.” When Danielle started to interrupt, he shook his head. “Nothing drastic,” he said soothingly.
For the next few minutes he outlined possibilities and asked for their input. For the most part, Barrie found little to disagree with. His comments were incisive and proved that he not only understood what they were trying to do, but that he knew the audience, as well. Heath and Danielle at least seemed relieved by the tone of the conversation. Barrie wasn’t quite so certain. She had a feeling the worst was yet to come.
“Now let’s talk about Karen,” he said at last.
“Karen!” Barrie’s voice rose as though the falling ax had just made contact with her neck for the first time. “Karen is just fine.”
“No, she isn’t,” he said adamantly. “She needs to be softer, more vulnerable.”
“Forget it,” she retorted equally adamantly. “We’re not changing Karen.”
“Do you want the show to stay on the air?” he asked bluntly.
Barrie blinked and stared at him in amazement. “You would kill this show if I don’t agree to let you change Karen’s character?”
“Karen is central to Goodbye, Again,” he said. “Would you agree with that?”
“Of course.”
“Then fixing her is critical to making the show work. Without the changes I’m suggesting, you have nothing. You, not I, will be killing the show.”
Barrie sank back in her chair in temporary defeat. “What did you want to do?”
“I told you. Make her more vulnerable. I want the audience to care about her. The way she is now, she’s too glib, too sophisticated and certain of herself. That must be toned down to make her more appealing.”
Suddenly Barrie couldn’t take another word, another criticism of the woman who was her own alter ego. She was on her feet, her brown eyes flashing sparks. “Do you think I’m too tough? Too independent?” she demanded, as Danielle murmured a hasty excuse, urged Heath to his feet and practically dragged him out of the room. Barrie wasn’t sure whether to bless or curse her for leaving her to deal with Michael alone.
“Of course I don’t think you’re too tough,” Michael responded, clearly perplexed. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Am I loveable?”
“Don’t be absurd. You know how I feel about you. I find your strength, your spunk very appealing. How did we switch from Karen to you?”
“I am Karen. This show is all about me. You know that. You even said it yourself.”
“Barrie!”
“No, wait. Every time you chip away at it, every time you want to change something, it’s as though you’re stripping away a little more of me.”
“Is that what all the defensiveness has been about? You think I’ve been criticizing you?”
“Well, haven’t you? You were the one who cut that scene in the premiere because it didn’t match what was happening with us. You obviously compared me with Karen yourself.”
“I compared the situation and, yes, I suppose I realized that you and Karen had certain similarites. But I had no idea that you identified with her so strongly. I certainly didn’t think you’d be so subjective about a character that you’d think I was attacking you.”
“Would knowing that have made any difference?”
“In my decisions? No,” he said honestly. “But I would have handled this better. I would have tried to make it clear that my comments were not personal in any way, that I was only trying to make the show work.”
He sighed deeply. “Sweetheart, we may not always agree on what’s best for the show or what an audience will accept at eight o’clock, but that’s only a difference of opinion. It’s certainly not a reflection of my feelings for you, any more than it would be if I preferred red wine and you preferred white.”
“I do prefer white.”
A soft smile curved his lips. “I can live with that,” he said lightly. His voice became huskier. “In fact, I would like to live with you.”
Barrie’s mouth fell open. “You can’t be serious.”
“Of course I’m serious.”
“You picked a very strange time to suggest that sort of a step for us.”
“I’ve been thinking about it for weeks now. Hell, I’ve been thinking about it since the day we met.”
“Do you actually think I would live with you when you’re in the process of carving my future to bits?”
“Barrie, don’t you understand yet? That’s professional, not personal.”
“Then I guess I’m just not all that liberated. I don’t see how you can separate the two.”
To her utter chagrin, his blue-green eyes were sparkling with amusement. “Karen could,” he suggested pointedly.
“Well, I’m not Karen,” she flashed back.
“That’s not what you said a minute ago.”
Barrie felt as though her world were suddenly spinning crazily. “You…you… Oh, why don’t you just get out of here?”
“It’s my office,” he countered, infuriating her with his low chuckle and damnable logic.
“Then I’ll go.”
He shrugged. “If you must,” he taunted. “Just think about what I said.”
“I will not live with you, and I will not change Karen,” she repeated firmly. “Not in a million years.”
As she flounced out of the office, she heard him murmur softly, “We’ll see.”
Chapter Ten
Barrie spent the next couple of days thinking about Michael’s taunting comment. He was right. Karen would live with someone if she cared about him as deeply as Barrie was beginning to realize that she cared about Michael. She would accept the relationship for what it was, rejoice in it for however long it lasted, then blithely say goodbye again when it was over. Thanks and no hard feelings. Wasn’t that the way modern relationships ended?
When Barrie had developed that easygoing style for Karen, it had seemed so simple and straightforward. It had been based on her own background of honesty and a complete lack of guile, as well as her ability to recognize clearly her own motives and n
eeds and to act on them without any thought of the future. Apparently she had not allowed for the complexity of emotions that surfaced in a relationship of any depth. Certainly, she had not considered the possibility that any opening of the heart, any prolonged contact with a man of substance and sensitivity such as Michael, would create a natural vulnerability.
Based on her own past experience, she had thought a wise contemporary woman could remain aloof and uninvolved even in the most intimate relationship. She realized now what a short-sighted fool she had been! The men she’d known before had made it easy to stay objective and cool, had encouraged it, in fact. But they weren’t at all like Michael. They had lacked his depth and certainly had lacked his desire for more serious involvement.
What now? she asked herself more than once. There was no point in denying that she was deeply involved with Michael, more than she had ever been with any other man. But how did he really feel about her? He never said that he loved her, only that he wanted to live with her. Was that enough? According to the standards she’d set for Karen, yes. But what about for her, especially now that she knew she was falling in love with him?
The more she thought about it, the more she realized that the only answer seemed to be to go along with his suggestion, to live with him and see what happened. Hadn’t she just resolved to follow the relationship wherever it led? Was she ready to forget that resolution so quickly?
After all, despite her doubts, perhaps they could make it work. They could even discover their true feelings together. As Danielle had noted, Michael was everything she had ever claimed to want in a man. She hadn’t often allowed herself to dream of an ideal mate, convinced that such dreams were futile. But during those sleepy late-night conversations she and Danielle had shared in college, she’d been pressed into describing someone who, in retrospect, had sounded very much like Michael. Strong, secure in his sense of himself, supportive, sensitive and funny. Now that she’d found someone like that, did she dare to risk losing him through her own indecision?
The answer was an emphatic no!
Bravely she picked up the phone and dialed Michael’s office. “Okay, hotshot,” she announced before her confidence could waver. “Let’s give it a try.”
“Give what a try? The changes?”
“No. Living together.”
Michael practically choked, which was not exactly the delighted reaction she’d counted on to reassure her that she’d made the right decision. It was not particularly heartwarming, either. She’d envisioned his eyes darkening with passion as he murmured something like “Oh, darling, you’ll never regret this. We’ll be happy together. I promise.”
Instead he was saying lightly, “Excuse me, are you sure you have the right number? This is the office of Michael Compton, vice president for programming.”
She winced. “Don’t rub it in.”
The teasing didn’t let up. “Who is this?” he inquired, his voice filled with exaggerated puzzlement. “I recognize the voice, but the remark seems strangely out of character.”
“Cute.”
“Is this the woman who only a few short days ago told me to take a flying leap off a Malibu cliff when I suggested this very same thing?”
“I never said any such thing,” she retorted defensively, miffed by his thoroughly unromantic attitude. He was making fun of her, treating the most momentous decision of her life as a big joke.
“Maybe not precisely, but words to that effect.”
“So I’ve had a change of heart. I’m entitled,” she said stiffly, wondering why she was even bothering to try to convince him of her sincerity. If he weren’t interested any longer, her pride told her she ought to forget it, as well. But she couldn’t do that now. Not without a fight.
“And you think we should live together?” he was saying with slow deliberation, as though allowing her time to reconsider.
With her heart thundering against her ribs, Barrie ignored his skeptical response to her overture and replied firmly, “Yes.”
The word seemed to hang in the midst of a very deadly silence.
“Sorry, angel,” he said at last. “I don’t fool around.”
Suddenly the ground seemed to drop out from beneath her, and her resolve crumbled. This bland disinterest was the last thing she had anticipated. Where on earth had it come from? Only a few short days ago the man had been practically begging her to make a stronger commitment to him. Now, when she’d swallowed her pride, called him and announced that she had come around to his point of view, he was acting as though she were the one trying to convince him.
“What the hell do you mean?” she snapped with what she thought was perfectly justifiable anger. “Who’s playing games now? This was your idea.”
“True,” he admitted. “But just like you, I’ve had second thoughts.”
“Why?”
“Let’s just say your turnaround seems a bit too sudden. I’m not convinced it’s what you really want. I have a feeling you think it’s something you should do, just to prove a point.”
“And what point would that be?”
“That you’re as liberated as Karen.”
Barrie paled at the possibly accurate and distinctly uncomfortable charge but replied slowly, “I don’t have to prove a damn thing to you.”
“Certainly not that,” he agreed. “Maybe you’re trying to prove something to yourself. Why don’t we get together tonight and discuss this again when we have more time?”
“You know very well that I have a taping tonight.”
“Maybe I can get a ticket,” he suggested dryly. Barrie could just imagine the smug, teasing glint in his blue-green eyes. The image made her go weak in the knees. If the mere thought of him could do that, it was no wonder his real-life presence had made her abandon all good sense. Good Lord, had she actually considered moving in with the impossible man? Clearly her mind had been warped by the stress of getting her first series on the air. She should have thrown herself onto the couch of a shrink, instead of into the arms of a thoroughly egotistical network executive. She should be grateful that he’d dismissed her surrender so easily.
She sighed. So why didn’t she feel grateful? Why did she feel betrayed and lonely? She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to know the answer to those questions. Had she been counting on living with Michael even more than she’d realized?
Despite the perversity of those feelings, she mustered her most casual tone and replied, “Give it your best shot, Compton, but I hear we’re booked up.”
“No problem. I’ll stand backstage.”
“You do, and I’ll wrap an electrical cord around your neck.”
“Why?” he asked innocently. “Will my presence make you nervous?”
“Of course not,” she lied boldly. He was the last person on earth she wanted to see tonight, but she’d be damned if she’d admit that to him. “But we do have a rule about outsiders being backstage, and I don’t intend to break it for you.”
“I’m hardly an outsider,” he reminded her tartly. “I’ll see you tonight.”
* * *
Predictably enough, considering the way the day had started, the evening turned into an absolute disaster. Michael arrived just as they discovered that too many tickets had been given out for the taping. A crowd of angry tourists was lined up outside the studio. Barrie was afraid they’d storm the door right in the middle of the show.
To top it off, once the show began, the cast performed as though they’d never had a minute’s rehearsal. Melinda’s timing was awful. Some of the actors were forgetting their lines, leaving the others to flounder helplessly. As a result, the studio audience was not laughing in the right places, which had Heath pacing frantically around backstage, muttering dire threats against each and every member of the cast.
When the sound system broke down, delaying the taping for over an hour, Barrie felt like abandoning the entire production and hiding in her office. Instead, torn between humiliation that Michael had been a witness to all this chao
s and confusion and her very real need to have his admiration, she tried to maintain a cool, competent facade as she set out to deal with each crisis.
But before she could take control, in each instance Michael was one step ahead of her, promising the tourists tickets for another taping, calming the cast, bolstering Heath’s spirits, even rolling up his sleeves and working alongside the technicians on the sound system. Barrie began to feel helpless and unnecessary. The more useless she felt, the angrier she got.
“Damn it, Compton, get off my set,” she finally said in a low, measured tone that was filled with barely controlled fury. His eyes widened as he looked up at her in astonishment from his place amid the cables that crisscrossed the floor. A hush fell over the backstage area.
“What’s wrong?”
“You’re doing it again,” she snapped.
“Doing what again?” he said blankly.
“Taking over.”
“I’m just trying to help,” he protested.
“I don’t need your help, at least not this kind. I need you just to be nice to me, to be supportive. Can’t you pretend for a few minutes that you don’t know a damn thing about television? Just pat me on the head and tell me everything will be okay, that I can handle it, instead of treating me like some kind of incompetent imbecile who’s incapable of dealing with stress or running her own show.”
“Is that what I was doing?”
“Of course it is. The minute things started falling apart tonight, you didn’t wait to see if I could manage, you just jumped right in and started giving orders.”
Michael took a deep breath, his expression thoroughly abashed. “I thought I was pitching in to help, but I can see how it might not seem that way to you,” he said apologetically. “I’m sorry if you thought I was being patronizing.”
Barrie sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “No,” she said at last, “I’m the one who’s sorry. I know you’re just trying to help. I’m being overly sensitive. I didn’t want you to see things unless they were perfect. And tonight was far from perfect.”
Not at Eight, Darling Page 10