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"I promised I wouldn't ditch him, so you might as well introduce yourself to him."

Yesterday she had ducked the bodyguard to slip out to take a walk with Will. After working around each other for seven years, they had only recently begun to look at each other in a decidedly different way. As potential lovers. The feeling was strong, surprising and mutual, and both of them were excited and nervous about what the future might hold, since both had learned some pretty hard lessons in the past. ;

"Jessica, this is very serious," he said, gently touching her hand.

"Remember what happened to Alexan-i dra." I ^ Will Rafferty wasn't the best-looking man she hacf ever been attracted to. In fact, if she took his feature^ one by one--average brown hair, light brown eyes, am large nose, slightly uneven front teeth (otherwise un-H heard of in TV)--he should have appeared nondescript^ if not plain. But he wasn't. There was a kind of gentler energy and youthful enthusiasm that coursed through Will to say nothing of considerable intellect and though he tended to be unobtrusive, that life force made him very attractive. And then there were those eyes, the eyes in which Jessica saw a quiet sadness, the kind of sadness of someone who had seen perhaps a little too much too soon.

"Don't worry, it's nothing. Will," Jessica murmured.

"I've got more whacked-out fans these days than " The X-Files. "" His gaze lowered to her mouth and stayed there a moment before he looked back into her eyes.

"But you've got to be careful."

"Somehow I think you pose a far greater threat of distraction than anything or anybody else possibly could," she said, leaning to kiss him lightly on the mouth.

It had started a couple of months ago at the DBS affiliates convention in Palm Springs. The talent and producers were all shipped out there to schmooze with the management of the affiliates who were signed with DBS. Jessica had been talked into playing golf with the station owner from a key market, San Francisco, since his station was being seriously wooed by Fox to drop DBS and join them. Will had been playing in the four some ahead with a group of affiliate news directors, and when that group reached the green, Jessica's impatient station owner told her to go ahead and tee off.

"Go on," he said.

"It's over two hundred yards. Just hit it."

Jessica dutifully stepped up and ran through her checklist from her twice-a-year lessons she always took before her twice-a-year golf ventures at convention time. This past year, however, her personal trainer had increased her weight training and these days she was amazingly strong and coordinated. So she stepped up to place her ball on the ladies' tee, took measure of the hole, addressed the ball, wound up and then gave the ball a great big wallop with her number-two driver. The ball soared, straight and true (for a change), and came down near the green, hitting Will on the back of the head.

"Holy crow, girl!" the station owner declared.

"You're good!"

"Oh, no!" Jessica cried, running up the course with the murderous driver still in hand.

The group had gathered around Will, who had, by this time, slowly gotten up and was holding his hand over the back of his head where, Jessica could see, he already had a bump welling up.

"And people wonder why they called her the Terror of Tucson," Will joked to the news producers, referring to Jessica's nickname in her less stable days.

Jessica had insisted on driving Will to the clubhouse for first aid.

Of course, since she had kept talking and looking at him, worried that she had seriously injured him, the golf cart had veered rather wildly this way and that, so that by the time they reached the clubhouse Will had been pretty much a basket case.

"I've killed him," Jessica confessed to the club pro.

"Why didn't you tell me I could hit the ball two hundred yards?"

"I didn't know you could," the pro said honestly, looking at the back of Will's head.

"Ouch. Yeah, that hurts, I bet. Lie down here a minute, Mr."

"Rafferty," Jessica said, hovering.

"Oh, Will, I'm so sorry."

"It's all right, Jessica," Will had said for the nineteenth time.

And thus had begun the first conversation the two had held by themselves in over seven years. Not since the time when Jessica, shortly after her arrival at West End, had been drunk one night after a company party and nearly had sex with an equally inebriated Will on a bunch of deflated cardboard boxes in the corner of Studio B, before Studio B was even finished.

Truth was, Jessica would have had sex with Will that night, had Will not--after some decidedly passionate foreplay--suddenly stopped and pulled away from her. In response to Jessica's drunken demands and ensuing tantrum, he had absolutely refused to touch her again, saying it wasn't right, she wouldn't feel the same way about it sober. And the next morning, of course, Jessica had found this to be absolutely true. In fact, she hadn't even remembered the incident until Will had come to her office to apologize. With a sickening thump of realization, Jessica had realized how close she had come to already dirtying her new nest at DBS.

The most painful irony of the incident had been Jessica's hunch that Will Rafferty was one of the few genuinely eligible men in New York.

Certainly as Alexandra's longtime friend and right-hand producer he came with the kind of credentials no sane woman would dismiss.

But Jessica couldn't get past that night in Studio B and what she had done. And when Will had asked her a couple of months later, shortly after she had stopped drinking, to go out of the city for the weekend, to swim and play tennis with him and some friends, she had said no so quickly, she knew she had hurt his feelings. Later she realized he might have misinterpreted her refusal, believing that she thought he was good enough to sleep with, but not good enough to date. To the contrary! It was because she was so bitterly ashamed and embarrassed, and all she wanted to do was forget her drunken behavior. And on top of that. Will was so close to her new friend Alexandra that she dared not mess up with him. And so, Jessica had just stayed away.

And then later, Alexandra had told her that Will had a new girlfriend and that was that. A year later Will had another new girlfriend, another gorgeous young thing, and by that time, anyway, Jessica had gotten herself mixed up with Matthew, aka the Doc. The fact that the Doc turned out not to be the love of her life, but one of the more painful lessons of her life, made it all the more sad and embarrassing to look at Will walking around at West End and wonder what might have happened if only she had gone to swim and play tennis with him that weekend so long ago.

There had been at least two more knockout girlfriends for Will since that time. Alexandra told her once that if, after dating a while. Will didn't want to marry the woman, he only thought it fair to break it off then and there.

Yeah, well, Jessica had thought at the time, that was some men all over, wasn't it? Once they had slept out their passion with one woman, it was time to move on with the next.

But then, she didn't think so. Certainly Alexandra would have conveyed some kind of personal opinion along with her comment had she thought it was the case with Will. In fact, the more Jessica thought it over, and the better she got to know Alexandra, the more she sensed that Alexandra had been the one to ingrain the if you don't want to marry her let her go so she can find someone who does doctrine in him in the first place.

At any rate, the Palm Springs convention had set something in motion and Jessica and Will had been circling one another ever since. They had been taking their time, wary, at first merely making a point of chatting with each other a bit each day at West End. Soon they were rather like kids, when schoolkids were still innocent and optimistic. Will symbolically carrying her books and Jessica rewarding him with special smiles. They started having coffee, and then lunch, and then they were always having lunch. They felt as though they knew each other well and, indeed, perhaps they did. It was true, Jessica had found, that when two close friends of one person got together, there was usually a transfer of affection, and this they had already shared for years through Alexandra.

Only last week they had ventured to the occasional dry kiss. This should have seemed extraordinary for two people who had maintained only God knew how many lovers between them. Interestingly, for Jessica, it did not seem extraordinary; it seemed inordinately right.

There were three rapid knocks on the dressing-room door before Bea came bursting in.

"Jessica " She stopped when she saw Will down on his knee.

"Yes?" Jessica asked.

"Um " She was looking at Will's hand on Jessica's.

"They've sealed off West End and Dirk's going to frisk the audience or something."

"He's going to do what?"

Bea tore her eyes away from Will's hand to look at her.

"Yeah. He says he's going to keep them in the cafeteria and screen them one by one."

"I'm beginning to think Dirk's a little whacked," Jessica muttered.

"Okay. Let me hop in the shower and then I'll be up to see what's going on."

Bea backed out and closed the door.

Jessica smiled and looked into Will's eyes.

"You realize that tongues are going to start wagging now. And we were doing so well."

He smiled back.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

She nodded.

"Jess?"

"Hmm?"

"What's with your secretary's hair?"

She threw her head back and laughed. When she finished she looked back down at him, shaking her head and still chuckling.

"I have no idea.

When I first hired her, I thought she was pretty normal, but lately' He was kissing her.

Will was thirty-eight years old and had never been married. She was thirty-four and had been married once, disastrously and years ago. The kiss was wonderful, but what were the chances of this ever working out?

"What do you mean we can't get on the bus?" the old lady wanted to know. Jessica's studio audience had been ushered upstairs to the company cafeteria for the traditional buffet following the taping

(Jessica always preferred that her audience come hungry; she said it made them more alert. ) "Last time I came to the show, you wouldn't let me finish my dessert before shoving me on the bus and shipping us out.

Now I've had two desserts and I want to go home and you won't let me get on the bus! "

"I apologize for the delay, madam," the security guard blocking the door said.

"If you'll just take a seat, I'm sure the buses will be ready soon."

"What's going on?" a man came up to ask. He looked at his watch.

"It's getting late and I've got to drive back to Philly. And where did those other people go? Did they get to leave?"

"The president of the network is coming right up to explain the delay," another guard said, walking over.

"If you will just take a seat" -- "I've been sitting for days!" complained a young woman.

"I came here from Australia!"

"Jessica, damn it, come back here!" Dirk Lawson barked down the hall.

"If you're going to hold my audience captive," Jessica said as she followed Cassy toward the cafeteria, "then the least I can do is wait with them."

Cassy stopped and turned around.

"Jessica, you can't."

"Why not?"

"Because your stalker's probably in there!" Dirk said, striding over to take hold of Jessica's arm.

"You put them through metal detectors when they got here," Jessica said, exasperated.

"What's he going to do, stab me with a plastic knife?" She shook Dirk's hand off and pushed past Cassy.

"These people are my guests." And she banged her way through the doors-scaring the heck out of the security guys--and entered the cafeteria. The audience members looked up with interest. Jessica stepped on a chair to climb up on a table. She had showered, washing off all the gook on her face and in her hair, and then had hastily blow-dried her hair. She was in well-fitting jeans, blouse, hoop earrings and loafers and looked fantastic.

"Hi, everybody, I'm so sorry about the delay. I was downstairs taking a shower and I didn't hear about the bus problem until just now. So I wanted to tell you it won't be long, we're trying to board people one by one, r and I'll be waiting right here with you until each and every one of you is on his or her way." She pointed across the cafeteria to Denny and Alicia, who had just come in carrying large cardboard boxes.

"We've brought up some bound galleys of my book I thought you might find interesting. I'll sign them for you. It's not the finished book, but it is, technically, the first printing, and it just might be worth something someday. And of course you know there's lots of food and fruit and cheese and desserts and coffee and tea and juice and water and stuff over there, you are to just help yourselves."

People roared their approval.

"While we're trying to sort out the bus problem," she continued, having decided there was no need for her fans to know that they were being considered potential psycho stalkers, "we'll be taking your picture, and taking down your name and address, and we'll be asking you a few questions. This is so we can contact you about future shows that might be of interest to you."

An hour later, Cassy leaned heavily into Denny in the corner of the cafeteria.

"Before, they were breaking the doors down to get out and now they won't leave," she groaned. The crowd was laughing and chatting with Jessica, who was still signing bound galleys of her book, publicity photos and DBS T-shirts, and handing out water bottles and coffee mugs and baseball hats and whatever old promotional goodies they had been able to find downstairs.

Finally, at almost midnight, every audience member had been screened and bused off. No stalker found. Jessica left West End for home, bodyguard in tow.

Cassy stood by the elevator, wearily preparing for the next phase. The West End Broadcasting Center was still sealed off and there was a lot more screening to do. There was the whole news group in Studio A and then the evening shift in the Darenbrook research group in another part of the complex.