Danielle Steel - Heartbeat

She appeared in his studio on Monday just before noon, with a broad grin on her face and a look of victory as he was coping with last-minute changes.

“I can come! They gave me two weeks off!” she announced with glee in a stage whisper that everyone heard, and then she laughed, and two of the actresses giggled. Bill looked at her with awe and delight and then asked her to stay while he finished what he had to do before they went on the air, and then he invited her to watch the show with him from the control booth.

It was an action-packed episode, filled with conflict and emotion. Helen had admitted that she was pregnant by then, but she wasn't telling anyone whose baby it was. John was in jail and the trial was coming up soon. And on the show, Helen made a call to an unknown man, threatening to kill herself if he told anyone that she was carrying his baby. The script was emotionally charged, and the woman who played Helen was an excellent actress. She'd been on the show for years, and she was one of A Life's mainstays. But as Bill watched them perform, he turned to Adrian, pleased with the day's show and he was pleased to see the excitement in her eyes. She loved being around his show and everything about it.

“It's just a great show, Bill.” It meant a lot to him that she liked it. And they were still talking about the show when they left the control booth. He introduced her to the actors she hadn't met yet, and she complimented “Helen” for a job well done, and then she went back to her office.

She had the trip to look forward to, and she could hardly wait to meet his kids. She just hoped, she thought with trepidation as she went back to work, that she would fit into her jeans until early August.

THE BOYS ARRIVED TWO DAYS LATER, ON A WEDNES-day afternoon, and Bill went to pick them up at the airport. He had asked Adrian to come along, but she didn't want to crowd them. They didn't have any idea who she was, and they hadn't seen their father since Easter vacation. She had a doctor's appointment that day anyway. And it was the first time that she heard the baby's heartbeat. The doctor put the stethoscope to her ears, and there was a small device like a microphone attached to the other end which he slid across her stomach. The first loud thumping she heard was her own, it was actually the placenta pumping blood to the baby. But beyond that, much more softly, and beating much faster than her own heart, was a smaller one, the tiny pat-pat-pat of the baby. She listened to it with a look of astonishment, and tears came to her eyes when she first heard it.

“Everything sounds fine to me,” the doctor told her as she sat up. Her blood pressure was fine, her weight was okay, too, though she had already gained quite a bit, and there was no denying now that her body was changing. There was an Scurve to her suddenly, when she turned sideways in the mirror, and she was starting to wear her dresses a little looser, but so far, unless they knew, no one would have noticed that she was three and a half months pregnant. “Any problems, Adrian?” he asked. She hadn't seen him in a month, not since just before Steven had taken everything he owned out of the apartment and served her with papers.

“Nothing I've noticed,” she said quietly. “I feel fine.” She did most of the time, too, except now and then when she had a really long day at work, or a late night, then she felt absolutely exhausted.

“How's your husband adjusting to it now?” he inquired as he washed his hands. He fully expected Steven to come around and was sure he had by then. He had no idea what had happened in the last month, and Adrian didn't want to tell him. It was too embarrassing, and admitting that he was gone still gave her an overwhelming feeling of failure. She still hadn't told anyone at work, and the only one she had told, and sworn to secrecy, was Zelda. She insisted that Adrian was foolish not to tell people openly, that she had done nothing wrong, it was Steven who should be embarrassed, not Adrian. But Adrian still pretended to everyone that everything was fine, and claimed that he was doing a lot of traveling. She told her mother that, too, on the rare occasions when they spoke. And other than Zelda, she had told not a living soul about the baby.

“He's fine,” Adrian said innocently. “He's away right now.” As though the doctor would know he was gone. She stood up and pulled her dress down after the examination. All he did now was weigh her once a month, take her blood pressure; and listen to the baby's heartbeat. He had listened for it the previous month, but it had still been too early for him to hear it.

“Are you going away this summer at all?” he chatted pleasantly, and she was embarrassed about lying to him about Steven.

“We're going away in a few days. Camping at Lake Tahoe.”

“Sounds like fun. Don't overdo in the altitude, take it easy a little bit. And if you drive there, stop every couple of hours and walk around, stretch your legs. You'll feel better.” But so far she had had an uneventful pregnancy. Uneventful except for the fact that her husband was going to divorce her.

She went back to the office afterward, and as usual, there was a mountain of work for her to do. And she didn't hear from Bill, but she assumed that the boys had arrived safely. He called her in the newsroom late that night, just before the eleven o'clock news, the boys were in bed, and he sounded happy and exhausted.

“It's like having a whirlwind hit this place,” he sighed happily, but they both knew he loved it.

“I'll bet they're happy to be here.”

“I hope so. I sure am happy to have them. I'm bringing them to work tomorrow for a while, till they destroy the place. Adam is always fascinated by it, he thinks he wants to be a director when he grows up, but Tommy gets a little antsy. I thought maybe we could stop by and say hi, or take you to lunch if you have time. Depending on how your day runs. The boys would like to meet you.”

“I can hardly wait to meet them.” She smiled, but she was nervous about it too. The boys were so important to him that she was worried about what would happen if they didn't like her. Admittedly, she and Bill weren't deeply involved with each other, but she liked him a great deal, and she sensed that he liked her too. If nothing else, she hoped it was the start of a serious friendship. And there were overtones of something more, but something that, for the moment, due to her circumstances, neither of them had figured out how to handle. Too much had happened to her recently. Too much had gone on. Between the baby and Steven filing for divorce, she wasn't ready for a relationship. And yet, she was growing used to him. And she found that she needed him at unexpected times, and in some ways, she was afraid to need him as much as she might, if she let herself go completely.

“Do you want to come to the set after we air tomorrow, or should we just stop by at the newsroom?” he asked. He had told them about her, and they hadn't seemed surprised. They had met ladyfriends of his before, and they were used to it. They usually told him what they thought of them, and a couple of them had joined them on trips. But it was hard for him to explain to them that this one was different. This was a woman he respected and liked, someone he suspected he could love, but he didn't tell them any of that. He didn't want to scare them.

“I'll drop by the show. I want to see what you're doing to those poor people anyway. How's the one with the illegitimate baby?”

“Drinking too much, understandably. Everyone wants to know who the baby's father is. We've never gotten so much mail. It's amazing how that kind of thing fascinates the viewers. Dubious paternity seems to be an issue of interest to most of us. Or maybe it's just babies.” He was hitting close to home again, and just hearing about it made her nervous. Her own baby's paternity was a cause of great concern to her, and she sighed as she realized that she had to get to the control booth.