by Melissa Good
Dar blinked, truly surprised. “I just do what he pays me to do, Beatrice.”
A door slammed and David Ankow walked swiftly by, not giving either of them so much as a glance. He exited the reception area and slammed that door too, making Dar jump a little. She turned her head and gave Beatrice an inquiring look. The secretary shook her head.
“Well,” Alastair appeared from his office, loosening his tie, “glad that’s over with.”
Dar gazed at him. “How’d we do?”
The CEO sighed. “He’s not happy. He’s not happy with me, with the board, with the company...and boy, oh boy, oh boy, Paladar, he’s really not happy with you.”
Dar shrugged.
“Fortunately, however, you nearly bludgeoned him to death with some very pointed logic and a very impressive set of statistics, by the 28 Melissa Good way, and he had to back off.”
Dar smirked.
“For now.” Alastair shook his head. “He’ll be back, though. He’s not nearly done.” He held a hand out. “C’mon inside, Dar. Let’s chat a bit. I know you must be ready to get going.”
Dar stood up, sorry to leave the comfortable couch, and followed her boss into his office, closing the door behind them. It was quiet, and Dar glanced around as she crossed the soft carpet, remembering the last time she’d been in the place. “Hasn’t changed.”
Alastair circled his fine mahogany desk and sat down, letting his hands drop onto his knees. “Not a whole lot, no.” He watched his CIO as she sauntered over, dropped into one of his visitor’s chairs and gazed at him with those incredibly blue eyes. “You’re looking good, Dar. You losing weight?”
“A couple of pounds, yeah,” Dar replied, with a shrug. “I started working out a little more…been pretty busy.”
Alastair nodded. “How’s Kerrison?”
Dar’s face relaxed briefly into a smile. “She’s fine. In Vermont, as a matter of fact, consolidating Allison Consulting.” She paused, fingering her sunglasses. “This jerk’s going to be real trouble, isn’t he?”
“Yeap.” Her boss pursed his lips. “If he gets enough support, he can force a stockholder vote and overturn the board. But you know that.”
“Yeah.”
Alastair shifted, looking a little uncomfortable. “Dar. The new network’s about ready isn’t it?”
Dar nodded. “First components start coming online next week.”
He sighed. “It’ll be six months before we see results. It’s going to be a very long, very tough six months.” Alastair leaned back in his leather chair and crossed a pinstriped leg over one knee. “Especially since the stockholders’ meeting is next month.”
“Yeah.”
“Dar,” Alastair looked down at his hands, “he’s going to be looking for any bit of ammunition he can get, and he’s the type to get personal.”
Dar went very still. “What do you mean?”
Her boss looked uneasy. “I mean, he’s going to go after anything that will make any of us look bad and...” He sighed and finally looked up.
“He’s not going to ignore the things that I do.”
Dar drew in a quiet breath. “Oh.”
“It’s pretty common knowledge, Dar.” Alastair cleared his throat.
“Not so much here, but certainly in Miami.”
It hit hard. Somehow Dar had managed to make herself forget just how out of bounds her relationship with Kerry was. She’d actually broken company rules by simply dating her assistant; now that they lived together… “Yeah. We don’t bring our personal lives to the office, but,”
Dar sighed, “it’s no secret, no.”
“And it’s in Personnel,” Alastair responded simply. “Autonomics flagged it when it discovered two employees in the direct chain with the Eye of the Storm 29
same address.” He paused. “I overrode it.”
They were silent for a long while. Dar lifted her head finally and looked him in the eye. “Do you want me to resign from the board?” she asked quietly. “Because if it’s a choice between the company and Kerry, you have no chance.”
Alastair rested his chin in his hands and gazed fondly at her. “If you think I’m so cowpoke dumb as to not know that, I might have to be insulted.” Then he exhaled. “No. I just want you to be aware of what might happen and make Kerry aware. This could get nasty.” He drummed his fingers on his cheek. “I have a mandate to do the best I can for this company, and losing two of my very top employees runs counter to that mandate.”
Dar nodded unhappily. “All right.” She paused. “Does that mean I can expect to see his ugly puss around my neck of the swamp?”
Alastair nodded. “He mentioned tonight he was planning a trip over the Gulf. Probably next week or so.” He made a face. “Maybe he won’t find out, Dar. He’s not likely to hang out in the lunch room collecting gossip and you two must be relatively old news by now.”
“True,” Dar acknowledged. “And it’s not like we...ahm...”
“Make out on your desk?” Her boss finally smiled, as he watched his normally icy CIO turn a deep crimson. “My god, Dar Roberts blushing.
Where’s my damn digital camera?” He laughed in genuine delight.
Dar rubbed her face and tried to get her rebellious body back under control. “Glad you’re amused,” she muttered, standing up and putting on her jacket. “I gotta get out of here.”
Alastair let his chuckles run down. “All right. Have a good flight, Dar...and thanks.” He stood and held out a hand. “You really made the difference today.”
“Glad I could help.” Dar returned his grip. “See ya.”
“See ya, Dar.” Alastair lifted a hand towards her. “Good luck.”
Yeah. Dar shoved her sunglasses on as she headed back through the reception area. “Nice seeing you, Beatrice.”
“Same to you, Dar.” The secretary smiled at her. “Safe flight.”
Dar closed the door behind her and headed for the elevator.
The airport had just passed its evening rush, and Dar only had to dodge several dozen hurrying businessmen as she made her way through the concourse to her assigned gate. She sat down and leaned back, her mind still churning over Alastair’s warning.
And it was, she knew, very clearly a warning.
Damn. Dar folded her arms over her chest and exhaled. Just when things were settling down and really starting to work out. Kerry had been in her position long enough to really make an impact and they’d started to achieve a real balance at home too.
A fact that had slammed itself into her conscious awareness over the past two weeks, when she found herself missing Kerry more than she could have possibly imagined. This was by far the longest they’d been apart since they’d met and when she wasn’t careful her mind had chewed 30 Melissa Good over the question of whether things would be different when Kerry got back.
Dar had no reason to think it would, but… She sighed and allowed herself the moment of insecurity. Things had been going along so well, it almost seemed logical to wonder when the other shoe was going to drop.
She didn’t want anything to change. Dar gazed sullenly out from behind her glasses. She really didn’t want anything to change because of an uptight pinhead who couldn’t find his butt with both hands and a flashlight.
Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast on the plane. She glanced around and spotted a small food court nearby. Ah. She perked up a little. Ice cream. Dar got up, walked over, and studied her choices with only a twinge of guilt at deciding on dessert before dinner. “Double scoop of chocolate mousse fudge, please.”
She accepted the cone and nibbled a little off the top as she handed over a five dollar bill. Then she turned and wandered back towards her gate, stopping to lean against the post outside it and watch the sun slowly sinking to the west. Three college age women crossed in front of her, clad in flannel shirts and carrying backpacks. Her eyes idly followed them as they moved into the waiting area of the next gate.
Her eyes flicked up to the destination.
KERRY SHOVED THE hotel room door open and trudged inside letting it close behind her. She dropped her briefcase by the small desk and sat down on the desk chair, as her head fell with a small groan into her hands.
What a mess.
She rubbed her eyes tiredly. That was the trouble when you suspected something was going on–you started looking. When you started looking, very often, you found, not necessarily what you were looking for, but things that got out of place very fast.
They’d run those reports. She’d taken the soft copies and dumped them into the twelve gigabyte storage of her laptop. But then she’d scanned the printed versions, and to her statistics trained mind, numbers jumped out at her, making her look deeper and deeper into the decep-tively docile black and white printouts.
Questions. Lots of them, and the answers were either a little too pat, or a little too vague. Yet they’d passed due diligence. Kerry shook her head. How? Something wasn’t right. She hadn’t had time, really, to analyze it. That would be up to Duk’s auditors, who would be getting her files tomorrow and, armed with her preliminary report, would start hunting.
She wondered if Allison’s staff suspected. She’d tried to be noncommittal, but the fact that she’d kept them there until after nine at night should have told them something. The atmosphere had grown steadily more hostile as the day went on, and Kerry had to force her body not to hunch up defensively as she brought yet another question to the table.
Eye of the Storm 31
It had made her sort of nervous and she’d had trouble not watching the lights behind her as she drove to the hotel, half convinced she was being followed. That was the kind of paranoia, she realized, that could easily make you nuts pretty fast.
And yet. Kerry eyed the window speculatively, conscious of the silence around the small cabin and just how dark it was outside, and the fact that the hotel was isolated by the woods around it for some distance around.
Her heartbeat picked up a little. Did she hear footsteps outside? She concentrated, and the soft crunching of boots on gravel came to her again.
The sound moved closer, then stopped and Kerry’s eyes widened as she stood up.
A soft knock came at the door and her pulse shot up, a chill running up and down her spine. She stared at the door in a half panic, her mind momentarily blanking on what to do.
The knock came again, a little louder, and she exhaled, getting a hold of herself. “All right. Just relax, calm down, and answer it.” She walked over on unsteady feet and put her hand on the knob, taking a deep breath. “Yes?”
“Hey.”
Kerry stared at the door in total, numb shock, then yanked the handle down and pulled it back so fast she almost knocked herself down. An incoherent sound gurgled from her throat as her eyes confirmed her hearing and she drank in the tall, dark haired form leaning casually in her doorway. “Urk.”
Dar’s eyebrows shot up. “Interesting reaction. Can I come in?”
Kerry reached out and grabbed handfuls of Dar and pulled her inside, hardly waiting for the door to close before throwing herself at her lover, tiny, incoherent sounds of delight coming from her throat. “Dar!”
She wrapped her arms around the taller woman’s body and squeezed as hard as she could. “Eurrgghhh!”
“That would be me, yeah.” Dar leaned back against the wall, afraid her knees were going to collapse on her as she hugged Kerry, basking in the obvious welcoming joy the blonde woman displayed.
The reaction was everything she’d hoped it would be. Dar let a breath out slowly and rested her cheek against Kerry’s soft hair, absorbing it, and feeling like a dried sponge tossed into a pond.
Kerry buried her face into Dar’s shoulder, scarcely able to believe what her senses were telling her. But it was her lover’s sturdy body she held and she could hear Dar’s heart pounding under her ear, a rapid pattern that slowed as fingertips rubbed lightly up and down her back.
She finally turned her head to one side, and reveled in the sight of her lover’s angular profile just above her. “Wow.”
Dar smiled in pure reflex. “Wow?”
Kerry exhaled, and nuzzled her. “Wow. As in, wow, that was one of the neatest surprises I’ve ever gotten.” She squeezed Dar’s ribs. “Wow, as in wow, you have no idea how glad I am to see you. And wow, as in wow, 32 Melissa Good you just made a really cruddy day absolutely perfect.”
Dar blushed at the effusiveness. “Hmm.”
Kerry laughed in delight. “Oh, my god. It is so darn good to see you, Dar.”
The blue eyes twinkled happily. “Same here.” She hugged the smaller woman. “I was in the Houston airport, and the gate for my flight back to Miami was right next to the gate for a plane coming here. I just ended up on the wrong one.”
“Uh uh. Right one,” Kerry mumbled contentedly. “I was just about to call you. This thing blew up on me today.”
“Yeah?” Dar asked, surprised. “Thought it was pretty straightforward.” Impulsively she scooped Kerry up, getting a startled squawk from her lover, then dropped them both onto the bed. “But that’s all right. I had a pretty lousy day myself.”
Kerry sprawled lazily over her and rested her chin on Dar’s collarbone. “Somehow, it’s really hard for me to give a raccoon’s butt about that stuff right now.”
Hmm. Dar had been having the same thought, as the aggravation of the day evaporated effortlessly. “You can fill me in tomorrow. And I booked myself back to Miami on the same flight as you have.”
“Awesome.” Kerry chuckled. “They all wanted to meet my boss. Just goes to show you, be careful what you ask for in life, huh?” She spared a moment to indulge in the guilty pleasure of imagining walking into Allison Consulting tomorrow with the ultimate in attitude with her. “Heh.”
She studied Dar. “Do you have any luggage with you, or did you just...”
“I just.” Dar grinned. “So I’ve gotta wash this stuff out tonight and wear it again. Guess I’ll have to buff it tonight.” They grinned and chuckled.
Kerry plucked at her jeans button. “You went to HQ in this?”
“Yup. I woke up late this morning and I didn’t have time for anything else. Figured Alastair would rather me there in this, than not there.”
“Were you right?”
“Oh yeah. We managed to get the pinhead to back down, but it’s gonna get ugly.” Dar sighed. “He’s gonna tour Miami.” She combed her fingers through Kerry’s pale hair. “Alastair warned me he likes to get personal.” She hesitated, worried about her lover’s reaction. “And that he’d make us an issue.”
A blonde eyebrow lifted. “My job performance stands for itself,”
Kerry answered proudly. “As for anything else, he can kiss my butt.”
Dar grinned. “That’s my girl.” She half sat up, leaning closer to whisper. “And if he comes within a foot of your butt, I’m going to remove his testicles.” She paused. “Got me?”
Kerry held it in for a moment, then she laughed helplessly. Dar joined in, then they let that wind down. Kerry sighed. “Is Alastair really worried?”
Dar nodded. “Yeah. But I had time to think about it on the flight up Eye of the Storm 33
here. Unless he can prove it’s affecting the company in a negative way, there’s not much he can do.” She paused. “I mean, yeah, we broke the rules. But it’s not like it’s the first time it’s happened at ILS. He can make it pretty public, though, and damned uncomfortable for us.”
“Everyone knows anyway, Dar. We get invitations addressed to both of us all the time,” Kerry reminded her, with a smile. “And being publicly linked with you doesn’t bother me.” She paused. “I’ve had a lot of time to myself to think about that the last couple of weeks.”
Dar studied the determined look on her lover’s face and a sense of relief flooded through her. “Guess we’ll take it as it comes, then.” She traced Kerry’s jaw-line with a finger. “I told Alastair if I had to choose, th
ere wasn’t any contest.”
“He knew that,” Kerry replied quietly. “He’s not stupid.”
Dar laughed. “Funny. That’s exactly what he said.” She lifted her body up and leaned over, finding Kerry waiting for her. Their lips touched and a shudder of pure reaction swept through her body. Fingers started exploring her, then Kerry paused and nudged her with her head.
“Mmm?”
“Let’s get your clothes taken care of. ’Cause you certainly can’t borrow mine.”
Obligingly, Dar rolled up off the bed and pulled Kerry up with her.
The smaller woman immediately unbuckled her belt, then slid fingers under Dar’s waistband and unbuttoned them.
Dar reciprocated by tugging Kerry’s shirt free and unfastening it, unable to prevent her hands from slipping beneath the fabric and starting a teasing exploration of the familiar body pressed lightly against hers.
The cool air of the room hit her shoulders as Kerry pulled her shirt off and she reluctantly relinquished first one hand, then the other to remove it entirely, managing to do the same for her without totally tangling them both up in fabric.
“Sometimes,” Kerry breathed against her skin, as she nibbled a path up her breastbone and reached around to unhook her bra, “it’s very nice being shorter than you.”
“Oh really?” Dar purred, working on her lover’s jeans, then running light fingers over her back as Kerry kicked her pants free. “Mmm. Red hearts, huh?” she teased gently, pulling at the waistband of Kerry’s underwear.
“Look who’s taking.” Kerry moved down and kissed her navel, then bit at the sedate, white briefs covered with a plethora of Dogberts.
“Nerd.”
Dar slid her arms around Kerry and picked her up, then fell sideways onto the bed, rolled over and settled her lover’s bare body on top of her, welcoming the explosion in her senses as Kerry’s touch claimed her.
Guess I’m wearing wet clothes tomorrow, she remembered thinking, just before a low, breathy growl in her ear made tomorrow, and clothing, and everything else...
Irrelevant.
34 Melissa Good WAKING UP NAKED in bed with Dar Roberts was about the nicest thing Kerry could readily conceive of, she decided, having done just that.