Danielle Steel: Heartbeat

She was tall and thin and shapely, with full high silicone breasts that just begged for men to reach out and touch them, and legs that seemed to start at her armpits. She was almost as tall as Bill, and she had cascades of thick black hair that hung to her waist, creamy white skin, and green eyes that were strikingly catlike. She was a girl who would have stopped traffic anywhere, even in L.A., where actresses and models and beautiful girls were commonplace. But Sylvia Stewart wasn't commonplace anywhere, and Bill was the first to say that she did wonderful, healthy things to their ratings.

“Good job, babe. You were great today. But you always are.” He stood up as she smiled, and he came around his desk to give her a half-serious kiss as she sat in a chair and crossed her legs, and looking down at her, he felt his heart beat a little faster. “God, you destroy me when you come in here looking like that.” She was wearing the sexy little black dress that she had worn in the last scene on the show, and it was clearly a knockout. Their costume department had gotten it on loan from Fred Heyman. “The least you could do is put a sweatshirt and some jeans on.” But the jeans weren't much better. She wore them skintight and all he could think of when he saw her in jeans was taking her clothes off.

“Costume said I could have the dress.” She managed somehow to look both innocent and sultry.

“That's nice.” He smiled at her again and settled back behind his desk. “It looks good on you. Maybe we can go out to dinner next week and you can wear it.”

“Next week?” She looked like a child who had just been told her favorite doll was in the shop for repairs until next Tuesday. “Why can't we go out tonight?” She was pouting at him, and he looked faintly amused by her. These were the scenes that Sylvia was singularly good at. They were the downside of her incredible good looks and irresistibly sexy body.

“You may have noticed on today's show that several new developments occurred, and your character just wound up in jail. There are a ton of new scenes for the writers to write and I want to be around to write some of it myself, or at least check on how they're doing.” Anyone who knew him knew he was going to be working eighteen- to twenty-hour days for the next few weeks, kibitzing and coaxing and rewriting it himself, but the material he would get out of it would be worth it.

“Can't we go away this weekend?” The incredible legs uncrossed and recrossed, causing a disturbance in Bill's jeans, but she still appeared not to have understood him.

“No, we can't. If I'm lucky and everything goes okay, maybe by Sunday we can play a little tennis.”

The pout deepened. Sylvia did not look pleased. “I wanted to go to Vegas. A whole bunch of the kids from My House are going to Vegas for the weekend.” My House was their stiffest competition.

“I can't help it, Sylvia. I've got to work.” And then, knowing that it would be easier if she went without him than if she stayed and complained, he suggested that she go to Vegas with the others. “Why don't you go with them? You're not on the show tomorrow, and it might be fun. And I'm going to be stuck here anyway all weekend.” He waved at the four walls of his office, and even though it was only Thursday then, he knew he had at least three or four more days of intense work overseeing the writers, but Sylvia looked cheered by the suggestion that she go without him.

“Will you come to Vegas when you finish?” She looked like a child again, and sometimes her ingenuousness touched him. In truth, her body appealed to him more and it had been an easy relationship for him for the past several months, although not one he was overly proud of. She was a decent person and he liked her, but she was less than challenging for him, and he knew he didn't always meet her needs either. She wanted someone who was free to run around and play with her, to go to openings and parties and ten o'clock dinners at Spago, and more often than not he was tied up with the show, or writing new scenes, or too tired to go anywhere, and Hollywood parties had never been his forte.

“I don't think I'll be finished in time to go anywhere. I'll see you Sunday night when you get home.” The timing was going to be perfect for him and it would keep her off his back, although he felt mean thinking of it that way. But it was easier knowing that she was happy somewhere else rather than calling him at the office every two hours to ask him when he'd be finished working.

“Okay.” She stood up, looking pleased. “You don't mind?” She felt a little guilty leaving him, but he only smiled and escorted her to the door of his office.

“No, I don't mind. Just don't let the 'kids' from My House try to sell you a new contract.” She laughed, and this time he kissed her hard on the mouth. “I'm going to miss you.”

“Me too.” But there was something wistful in her eyes as she looked at him and for the flash of an instant he wondered if something was wrong. It was something he had seen in other eyes before …starting with Leslie's. It was something that women said at times, without actually saying the words. It had to do with feeling alone and being lonely. And he knew it well, but there was nothing he was going to change now. He never had before, and at thirty-nine, he figured it was too late to do much changing.

Sylvia left his office, and Bill went back to work. He had a mountain of notes he wanted to make about the new scripts, and all the upcoming changes, and by the time he looked up from his typewriter again, it was dark outside, and he was startled to realize it was ten o'clock when he looked at his watch, and he suddenly realized tie was desperately thirsty. He got up from his desk, turned on some more lights, and helped himself to a soda water from the office. He knew Betsey would have left a bunch of sandwiches for him on her desk, but he wasn't even hungry. The work seemed to feed his spirit when it was going well, and he was pleased as he glanced over what he'd done, and leaned back in his desk chair, sipping the soda. There was just one more scene he wanted to change before giving it up for the night, and for the next two hours, he banged away on the old Royal, totally forgetting everything except what he was writing. And this time when he stopped, it was midnight. He had been at it for almost twenty hours and he was hardly even tired, he felt exhilarated by the changes he'd made and the way the work had been flowing. He took the sheaf of pages he'd been working on since that afternoon, locked them in a desk drawer, helped himself to another soda water on his way out, and left his cigarettes on the desk. He seldom smoked except when he was working.

He walked past his secretary's desk, with the sandwiches still sitting in a cardboard box, and walked out into the fluorescent-lit hall, past half a dozen studios that were closed down now. There was a late-night talk show in one, and a bunch of odd-looking kids in punk clothes had just arrived to make an appearance. He smiled at them, but they didn't smile back. They were all much too nervous, and he walked past the studio where they did the eleven o'clock news, but that was dark now, too, having already been readied for the morning broadcast.

The guard at the front desk handed Bill the sign-out sheet and he scrawled his name and made a comment about the most recent baseball game. He and the old guard shared a passion for the Dodgers. And then he walked out into the fresh air, and took a deep breath of the warm spring night. The smog didn't seem so bad at that hour, and it felt good just to be alive. He loved what he did, and it made it seem somehow worthwhile to work those ridiculous hours, making up stories about imaginary people. Somehow when he was doing it, it all made sense to him, and when he was finished, he was always glad he had done it. Now and then it was an agony, when a scene didn't go right or a character slipped out of control and became someone he had never intended, but most of the time doing it was something he loved, and there were times when he missed doing it full-time, and he envied the writers.