Henry lied to Jenna Bradshaw (Fiona Hutchison) and told her she was his daughter.  The hardened jewel thief turned vulnerable in his fatherly embrace, and brightened with his love.  But now she's suing his corporate empire for all it's worth, motivated by betrayal.

    How could such a likable fellow as Henry do such a thing?  "Saving [Spaulding] and seeing that his family is provided for is his primary obligation, "Roerick explains, "But he keeps saying, 'I wish she could understand how sorry I am,,'" referring to his character.

    Spaulding Enterprises stands to lose big this time, and all because years ago Brandon Spaulding stole a patent from Jenna's inventor father, leaving him penniless and thereby unable to claim his illegitimate daughter.  Growing up fatherless, Jenna turned to a life of crime.  Meanwhile, Spaulding made big bucks of her father's invention.  Now, spurred by her paramour Roger Thorpe (Michael Zaslow), Jenna is suing for her rightful due.

    But the real damage has been to her heart.  Rarely has the romance of the lost-daughter and found-father been  so poignantly played out -- especially by two characters who are actually not related at all.  Roerick feels their platonic passion can engage an audience as intensely as a sexual love affair, because "if left to themselves -- if they weren't prodded by romantic notions and scandal sheets and whatever -- you would find quite a few people who are immensely drawn to physical nonsexual relationships.  And Fiona and I have that."

    The same sparks that dance between them on-screen were kindled in their first meeting. "Jenna had been on the show a whole without my ever getting to know Fiona, because we had no scenes together," says Roerick.  "Although I'd see this overdressed attractive kid walking around."  When they started working together, "What we found in each other was strong feeling."

    "The same thing happened when I met Maeve [Kinkead, who plays his on screen daughter Vanessa] 14 years ago," Roerick recalls.  "I went the first day and was introduced to this beauty, and then they started blocking and arranging the rehearsal chairs and telling us where to move.  And when we got through, one of the actors said to us, 'Is this supposed to be an incestual relationship?'  And Maeve and I looked at each other and both said, "Yes, yes!'"

    Of course, it's not literally incestuous, but there's an emotionally intense, even passionate, male-female attraction between Jenna and Henry. "Fiona and I work similarly, and we have about the same relationship on as well as off the set," Roerick says.  "In fact, the day we had the big blowup and I had to admit I'd been lying, afterward Fiona came up to me and hugged me and said, 'Oh, it's the end of us, we won't have each other anymore.'"

    But despite the friction, the chemistry "still goes on.  No matter what they give me to say, I cannot say it an unloving way, "Roerick says.  "We taped a scene wherein Jenna made some sardonic comment about my warning her about Roger, when look what I did to her, and I said in front of Vanessa and Ross, 'I'm very fond of that girl.'  And the ironic thing was that here she's about to ruin us."

    Both actors hope for a resolution that will reunite them.  "henry's hoping Jenna will forgive him, and Bill Roerick and Fiona are thinking in terms of this, too, because we enjoy working together.  And having these little passing spats isn't as much fun."

    But how can Jenna forgive him?  "As Henry, when I got myself into this impossible situation I was trying to protect the family and the Spaulding empire," Roerick offers.  "And then I kept finding Jenna more and more entertaining; her outrageous carrying on amused me.  She was so unlike my real daughter.  I came to care for that girl, and I truly care for her still."  Also years ago Henry did try to track down Jenna's real father but fund he was dead.  "I also tried to find the illegitimate child's mother and the child but I couldn't," says Roerick.  "So I have done everything I could.  Roger keeps telling Jenna that I'm responsible for her father's death, but I'm not."

    Even if the whole truth does come out, the fact remains that henry, "the benevolent industrialist who means well and has good intentions," according to Roerick, did a dastardly deed in lying to her.  has the storyline changed Roerick's idea of his character?  "No. The only thing is it makes me think that he's dumber than he's supposed to be."

     Often an actor is called upon to play things that seem out of character.  "An actor has to be ready to justify what the writer gives his character," says Roerick, primarily a stage actor since 1935. "Luckily performing George Bernard Shaw's works taught me a great deal about this.  You try, when analyzing a character, to figure out, 'Who am I, what are my relationships, why do I do all this, what's my drive?'  Shaw's people are very complicated, but he has an immense shrewdness as a theatrical writer.  So if you can figure out what the theatricality is in each of his scenes and play that for the maximum you bring to it, by the end of the evening you're going to have the tenuous cohesion of George Bernard Shaw -- you'll have facets, instead of being beautifully polished cabochon stone.  So when it comes to a soap, "which has the added complication of not knowing what's going to happen next, 'I do something similar.  I try to see what it is they're after in a given scene, figuring that it'll all come out in the wash eventually." *