I wrote this during the time period when Biz was working on Bethie's Day and
I was in a long-term stall on DYRW. Now that Bethie's Day has been posted,
I can share this with you while I put the last couple of touches on DYRW
Chapter 6. Thanks for letting me borrow Bethie, Twinsis, and thanks to
everyone else who betaread this.

Characters contained herein do not belong to me. With the exception of
Bethie Singer, they belong to Rupert Holmes. Bethie is Michele Savage's and
is borrowed with permission.

Dedicated to Aubrey, who, although she will probably never read this, was
largely responsible for its inspiration. She's a little bit older than
Bethie, but not so much so that we couldn't have a rousing Sock War of our
own...

Sock Wars
by Jennifer Feith

Scott Sherwood leaned back and put his feet up on his desk.
"That's very generous of you, Mr. Medwick," he grinned into
the phone. Betty Roberts stood in the doorway, one hand on
her hip and an expression on her face that suggested she
was wondering what he was up to now. "Yes, sir. Thank
you, sir."

He shifted his grin to Betty as he hung up the phone.
"Well, Medwick wasn't too happy about the new advertising
rates, but he agreed to renew his contract for the next six
months anyway. Said to consider it a wedding present."

"Mr. Ingram said basically the same thing this morning,"
Betty said, taking a seat.

"Yeah, but Medwick threw in three cases of Cup of Comfort."
Scott looked smug. "This getting married thing is great.
I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner."

Betty shot him what he'd come to think of as her "Behave!"
look. "Please tell me you didn't decide to raise our rates
just because you can get away with it now that our sponsors
are starting to hear that we're engaged."

"Of course not!" Scott looked injured. Turning serious,
he added, "WENN's audience has gotten larger over the last
few years, and our advertising rates have stayed the same.
Our sponsors' ads are reaching more and more people, and
we're still hovering somewhere between bankruptcy and
breaking even. The station deserves better." His grin
returned, with an extra sparkle in his eye as he gazed
across the desk at her. "And I don't need to tell you,
Betty Roberts, why our audiences have expanded. Our
listeners recognize quality programming when they hear it."

Betty raised her eyebrows. "And here I thought you
couldn't tell quality programming from the commercials."

"Ah, Betty, I like to think I've learned a little bit from
you since then." He glanced at his watch. "Oh, would you
look at the time...and I've still got a bunch of sponsors
to call."

"And I've got scripts to write." Betty stood reluctantly.

"Wanna have lunch at the Buttery?"

Betty's answering smile was warm. "After 'The Hands of
Time.'" It hadn't been that long ago that she had
considered herself too busy to take lunch breaks. The
workload hadn't lightened--if anything, she and Scott were
more swamped than ever since Mr. Pruitt had been arrested--
but they had somehow managed to juggle their schedules to
make time for each other.

Scott watched her walk out, leaving the door slightly ajar.
One more month, Sherwood, he told himself. One more month,
and she's all yours. Meanwhile...there was work to be done.
He shook himself out of the blissful haze that had been
following him around lately and picked up the phone.
"Gertie, get me Mr. Acton."

Halfway through the conversation, the door swung wide.
When no one appeared in the doorway, Scott frowned. "Mr.
Acton, could you hold on for just one second?"

He stood up and walked around his desk, then smiled. An
eight-month-old bundle of mischief had just crawled into
his office. "Well, hello, LizzyB," he said, picking her
up. "Who's supposed to be watching you?"

"You are." A harried-looking Hilary followed her daughter
from the hallway. "Maple suddenly remembered a dentist's
appointment, and Gertie flat out refuses. So you're
elected. I have a show to perform." Without waiting for
any objection, she turned on her heel and fled to the
studio.

Scott looked at the wriggling bundle in his arms. "Have
you been giving your mama a hard time?" He grinned as he
kicked the door shut. "Good for you."

He set Bethie down to play next to his chair as he picked
up the phone. "Sorry about that, Mr. Acton. Now, where
were we?"

As he'd anticipated, Acton was a bit harder to convince
than Medwick or Ingram had been. Scott was in the middle
of his best argument when Bethie pulled out the bottom
drawer of his desk. He hadn't kept anything dangerous in
there since the time Hilary had found Bethie playing with
the shaving kit he'd stored there. She hadn't gotten the
box open, but it had given them all a fright.

Scott had immediately emptied his lower drawers of anything
that could conceivably be a danger to a curious child, but
that didn't prevent fingers from getting smashed. Once,
Bethie had even gotten a nasty bump on her head when the
drawer fell out of the desk entirely as she tried to climb
into it. Even so, the drawer apparently still held some
fascination for her.

Hoping to avert another disaster, Scott leaned down and
picked her up. Bethie in his lap, he did his best to
continue the phone conversation as if nothing unusual was
going on at his end. Which, in truth, it wasn't.
Disasters and near misses of a Bethie Singer variety were
becoming a matter of course.

"You see, Mr. Acton," Scott shifted the phone from one hand
to the other as Bethie squirmed in his lap, "we feel that
due to the increased quality of our broadcasts--" Bethie
found a pencil, and began scribbling on the surface of the
desk. "--and the resulting increase in our listening
audience--" He took the pencil away from her, regretting it
immediately as she let out a piercing wail. "--it's only
fair to our hardworking cast and crew that--"

"Sherwood, what's going on over there?" Acton interrupted.

Scott would have explained, but Bethie--caught up in her
indignation--had gone from squirming to thrashing about in
his lap. It was all he could do to keep her from pitching
herself to the floor. "Mr. Acton, maybe I'd better--" he
broke off with a grunt as a well-placed elbow hit him in
the stomach with surprising force, considering the size of
its owner.

"I don't have time for this," Acton grumbled. "Sounds to
me like you people are out of control again. I don't know
why I pay you anything." He hung up with a loud click.

The minute Scott put down the phone with a sigh, Bethie
quieted. She looked up at him, an angelic smile on her
face.

Scott couldn't help laughing. "You monster," he said
affectionately. "You just wanted some attention, didn't
you?" He stood and moved to the other side of the desk,
settling them both down on the floor. "I guess I can play
for a little while."

He crawled around the corner of the desk, popping out on
the other side with a not-too-loud "Boo!" Bethie giggled
and clapped her hands; this brand of Peekaboo was her
favorite game at the moment. Scott simply hoped that no
one walked in any time soon to see him on his hands and
knees for the amusement of a child.

Not that he wasn't having just as much fun as she was.
"C'mere, you." He grabbed her and tickled her stomach.
Bethie wriggled gleefully, somehow managing to grab hold of
his tie and pull. Scott disengaged himself quickly.

"Betty won't be too happy if you strangle me before the
wedding, Shortstuff," he informed her, taking off the tie
and depositing it on his desk. "And as long as it took to
get her to agree to marry me, I don't think now is the time
to take chances."

Bethie laughed. "Now, LizzyB, don't you laugh at me."
Scott made an exaggeratedly pouty face at her, which made
her giggle harder. "I'll show you a thing or two...don't
forget, I know your weakness." Pulling off her shoes, he
tickled the bottoms of her feet through her socks.

The phone rang amid Bethie's peals of laughter. Still
sitting on the floor, Scott reached up and grabbed the
receiver. "Yes, Gertie?"

"Mr. Acton is on the line."

"Put him through," Scott said. "And, Gertie--can't you
take LizzyB for a little while? We're having fun--" he
paused to grin at her as she started to pull one of her
socks off, "--but I can't get anything done with the
sponsors while she's in here."

"I would, Scott," Gertie said, not sounding all that
regretful, "but you know what happened the last time.
Elizabeth and my switchboard simply don't get along. I
don't think the sponsors would be any happier if they kept
getting disconnected because she was pulling the plugs as
fast as I could connect them."

Scott sighed. She had a point. "All right. Just...put
Acton through, will you?"

"Look, Sherwood," Acton began immediately, "I may have been
a little abrupt before. Acton Anthracite Coal has had a
long-standing relationship with you people, so I'm sure you
can understand--"

"That, like us, you have nothing but the best for your
product in mind, Mr. Acton," Scott interrupted smoothly,
keeping one eye on Bethie. "WENN can give you the best.
Our listeners have come to expect quality, from us and from
the products we advertise. Now, isn't that worth a little
bit more than we've asked from you in the past?"

"I don't know," Acton said dubiously. "Sounds to me like
you're trying to sell me another load of hogwash."

"Not hogwash...coal. Acton Anthracite Coal, just as we've
sold it to our listeners over the airwaves for more than
three years." Scott had always enjoyed this--the chase.
Working his way around a target, confident that he'd get
his way in the end. "All I'm asking is that you let WENN
continue to do the fine job that it has always done for
you." Next to him, Bethie had finally succeeded in getting
one sock off and was working on its mate.

"I've still got three months on our current contract,"
Acton said. "I'm not paying any more than we agreed on for
those."

Scott grinned; he knew he'd won. "I'm not asking you to.
We'll honor the rest of our contract to you. The new rates
won't go into effect until it's time to renew our
agreement."

"All right," Acton gave in. "We have been doing better in
the last year or so. I suppose Acton Anthracite can afford
to pay a little bit more."

"I'm very glad to hear that, sir," Scott said. He reached
over and tickled the tiny bare foot that lay just within
reach. Bethie giggled and pulled away.

"And Sherwood--congratulations," Acton added. "I always
liked that Miss Roberts of yours."

Scott smiled. "Thank you, Mr. Acton," he said sincerely.

Bethie regarded him carefully as he hung up the phone. One
sock lay forgotten on the floor, the other in her hand.
Evidently deciding that she didn't want it anymore, she
threw it in Scott's general direction.

The missile fell short of its intended target, landing next
to his leg. "I see your dad's been teaching you how to
throw," he joked, remembering the baseball game he, Mackie,
and Mr. Foley had persuaded Jeff to participate in. Jeff
had never struck Scott as being the athletic type, but he
hadn't expected the game to be the utter disaster it turned
out to be. The other team--a group of guys from another
radio station, one of whom happened to live in Mr. Foley's
apartment building and had challenged WENN to the game in
the first place--had quickly discovered the WENN weakness
and took a particular pleasure in hitting balls in Jeff's
direction. Even if he managed to get hold of the ball,
they knew he'd never be able to throw it accurately enough
to get anyone out.

Bethie, it seemed, didn't like the comparison. She seized
upon the sock Scott tossed back to her and hurled it
directly into his face.

He laughed. "And your mother's been teaching you the art
of the return volley." He aimed the sock so that it
skimmed lightly across the top of her head before landing
behind her.

Bethie squealed with delight; she liked this new game.
Turning around to find the sock, she discovered its
abandoned match by her side as well. She threw them both
in the air at once, clapping her hands as one landed in
Scott's lap and the other flew backwards over her head.

"All right, Miss Elizabeth," Scott said. "You asked for
it." Grabbing both socks, he rolled them together and then
turned the end of one inside out around the roll so that
they formed a ball. Tossing it up in the air and catching
it, he grinned. "You ready to play with the big kids?"

He tossed the socks into her lap. Giggling, she threw the
sock-ball up in the air again. This time, it landed quite
a bit behind her, and she crawled after it.

By the time the ball was in her possession again, Scott was
ready for her. Stripping off his own shoes and socks, he
had come up with a second, larger sock-ball. Weighing the
force of his throw carefully, he bounced it lightly off the
top of her head.

Bethie, it would seem, couldn't have been happier. As the
Sock War progressed, she laughed and screeched and clapped
her hands. For his part, Scott was thoroughly enjoying
himself as well. They threw the sock-balls back and forth,
then raced to collect ammunition for the next volley.
Scott's deliberately elaborate efforts to get to the socks
before Bethie--often purposefully unsuccessful--seemed to
entertain Bethie more than any other aspect of the game.

The door opened just as Scott's socks hit Bethie in the
face and landed in her lap. Scott had dived for the
smaller pair of socks a split second after getting his
throw off, and so was caught in a most undignified position
by an amused Betty and an indignant Hilary. Lying on his
stomach, bare feet in the air, one arm stretched past his
head to grab Bethie's balled-up socks, he looked up at
them. "Hi."

"What the blazes are you doing, Scott?" Hilary glared at
him as she swooped down protectively to pick up Bethie, who
still clutched Scott's socks. She plucked the sock-ball
from her daughter's grasp and held it out by her thumb and
forefinger, finding it distasteful.

Scott stood up quickly and reclaimed his socks,
surrendering Bethie's pair to her mother. "We're just
playing around, Hildy."

"It's Hilary," Hilary seethed. "As you know perfectly
well. And only you, Scott Sherwood, would think of making
a *child's toy* out of your filthy...smelly...socks!"

"They're not that bad, actually," Scott said easily.
"LizzyB certainly seemed to enjoy it."

Betty decided to step in then. Despite the threats she had
heard voiced over the years, she had never believed Hilary
capable of murder...but it wasn't wise to tempt fate or a
protective mother, and she had gotten rather fond of Scott.
"I don't think there was any harm done, Hilary," she said
reassuringly. "Why don't you take Elizabeth into the green
room and put her shoes and socks back on?" Scott quickly
picked the tiny shoes up off the floor and held them out.

Letting out an audible sniff of disgust, Hilary took the
shoes and walked out of the room. Scott shut the door
behind her and sat down on the floor to unball his socks
and put them back on.

Betty leaned against the desk and watched him. Before
long, she couldn't contain herself and started laughing.

Scott looked up. "I hope you're not laughing at me," he
said with mock seriousness.

"Oh, but I am," she smiled. "I haven't been this amused in
a long time." The truth was, she had found the scene not
just entertaining, but adorable as well. There was
something about the entirely free way that Scott interacted
with Bethie when he thought no one was watching that she
couldn't help but find endearing.

"In that case..." Socks but not shoes back on, Scott leapt
to his feet and made a playful lunge in Betty's direction.
She darted around his desk, eluding his grasp. When he
moved to pursue, she made a dash for the door.

"Put your shoes on, Scott," she said from the doorway. "We
have a lunch date, remember?" And with that, she shut the
door behind her.

Scott looked ruefully at the door. "One more month, Betty
Roberts," he muttered. One thing was sure--despite
everything he had once believed, married life was not going
to be dull.

END

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