by Melissa Good
But now, softly, gently, someone was scratching at the door. Someone who was as different from her as anyone she’d ever met. Her mind told her she was crazy to let it happen. Her heart knew she was helpless to prevent it.
The wind rattled against the shutters, sounding like dried bones clattering together. Dar nodded quietly to herself, and this time, read the e-mail.
126 Melissa Good KERRY TOOK A last taste, then gave her creation a satisfied look. She’d managed to find some frozen chicken strips, frozen shrimp, and two packages of frozen snow peas, all of which she stir-fried, adding spices whose seals she had to break. Then she made a sauce with peanut butter, milk, a little sugar, more spices, and some ginger. She’d steamed a pot of rice from the bag in the cupboard and found Dar’s stash of plum wine. “All right…” She took out two plates and washed the dust off them, then went to the study door and peered in.
Dar was studying the screen, the light from it washing her tanned complexion and sparkling off her pale eyes. After a moment, those eyes turned and met hers, and a dark brow edged up in question.
“Dinner’s ready,” Kerry stated.
She got a genuine smile back. “Smells interesting.” Dar stood and stretched, then moved around the desk and followed Kerry into the kitchen like a curious puppy dog. She peered over Kerry’s shoulder at the pot and sniffed appreciatively. “Mmm.”
They carried their plates into the living room and rather than use the big table, settled on the couch in front of the television. Just for the hell of it, Dar had lit a candle and put it in the center of the coffee table, and they ate by the flickering light in addition to the TV screen, which Dar flicked on. Quickdraw McGraw was just winning another battle, and she blushed. “Um…”
Kerry chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. I like Space Ghost.” She watched as Dar moved through to the Weather Channel, and left it there as warnings and other information scrolled across the screen. She watched it for a moment, making a mental note to call Colleen and make sure her apartment door was closed tight. “Wow.”
“They make it sound worse than it is.” Dar commented, watching the screen. “See that guy? Idiot. Showing us what the storm’s like. Hope it blows his damn toupee off.” She accepted the plate Kerry handed her, piled with a nice mound of rice covered in stir-fry. “Thanks.”
“Hope you really like spicy.” Kerry bit into a piece.
Dar took a bite and chewed, amazed at the result of what appeared to her to be magic from the ingredients Kerry had found. “Wow.” She eyed her companion. “Anything you can’t do?”
Kerry’s blush was readily visible against her fair hair and lashes. “I really suck at bowling,” she finally said, with a chuckle. “Glad you like it.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes. “Migraines really are the worst,”
Kerry commented, after taking a sip of wine to clear her mouth. “Last time I had one, I was in college and it was right before finals. I thought I was going to blow an entire semester.”
“Well.” Dar frowned briefly. “I can live the rest of my life without having another one, that’s for sure.”
“Do you know what triggered it?” Kerry asked. “Mine were usually some food or drink—smoked ham once, in fact.”
Dar didn’t answer, her expression growing thoughtful and a little grim.
“I don’t think it was that,” she remarked finally. “I g…” She hesitated. “I don’t know what it was.”
Kerry watched her from the corner of her eye, a little surprised at the Tropical Storm 127
sudden change of mood. Okay, so we’re stuck here with each other, for I don’t know how long. Something’s bugging her, and she’s a very private person. I should keep my nose out of her business. Right? Right. She ate a few more bites, then eyed Dar’s silent profile. And bowed to the inevitable. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Startled, Dar paused in mid chew and looked up at her. “Talk about what?”
“About whatever it is that’s bothering you,” Kerry replied softly. “Look, I know it’s none of my business, but here we are, and I’m a pretty good listener.” She paused, then went on. “Sometimes it’s easier to talk to someone you don’t know that well.”
Dar chewed slowly and swallowed, considering the offer. Then she took a breath and released it. “It actually is your business,” she said evenly.
“I...won’t be at work on Tuesday. You’ll need to attend the staff meeting for me at ten.” She ate another piece of chicken. Thinking about it for a moment, she finally admitted, “I have to check in to the Miami Heart Institute, they’re running a bunch of tests on me.”
Kerry was at a loss for words. She hadn’t expected this at all.
“Well…they’re just tests. Maybe they won’t find anything, you know?”
“I know what they’re going to find,” Dar replied quietly. “They’re going to find that I have a…malfunctioning valve.” She kept her eyes on her hands, which rested together. “My father had it.” She picked up her fork and took another bite, outwardly very composed.
Kerry took her cue from that. “They can do something about that, right? I know I heard about some stuff they’ve been doing lately; it’s incredible.”
Dar pressed her lips together and nodded an acknowledgment.
“Probably.”
Kerry looked at her. “How can you be so calm? I’d be a nervous wreck.”
A slight shrug. “Nothing I can do about it. I’m going to drive down there early on Tuesday, probably have to stay overnight.”
Good grief! Kerry felt like the world had just upended itself into her lap.
She hardly knew Dar, and yet she was suddenly as concerned for her as she would have been for her own family. Maybe even more so. “Dar?”
“Mmm?”
“I don’t want to go to that staff meeting,” Kerry said. “I’d rather take the day off and go down there with you.”
Dar stared at her in honest surprise. “Why?”
“No one should have to go through that alone,” the blonde replied. “Was that what you found out this morning? You looked like you’d gotten bad news. I thought I screwed something up again.”
With a sputter, the lights went out. They were left staring at each other in the low, golden light of the candle, which painted them in tones of ochre and black. Dar finally dropped her gaze to her plate. “All right,” she agreed softly.
“It’s a long day of mostly waiting. I’d appreciate someone intelligent to talk to.”
Kerry felt a sense of relief. “Sounds like a plan,” she began, then her eyes widened as a gust of wind shook the condo. “Whoa! Dar, are we safe in here?”
“Huh? Oh, sure. I went through Andrew in this place.” Dar waved her fork, her mood improving markedly. “This is just a little tropical storm.”
128 Melissa Good Something slammed against the shutters, and Kerry jumped. “Yow!”
Dar chuckled softly. “Here, come over on this side of me, okay?” They switched places, putting Dar closer to the window. “Better?”
Another bang, and Kerry jumped again, this time right up against her taller companion. “Sorry,” she muttered, drawing away. “I hate storms. We were snowed in for two weeks, once, and I…” She hesitated. “I just don’t like them,” she finished awkwardly.
Dar leaned over and nudged the smaller woman with an elbow. “Don’t worry about it.”
Kerry eyed her and timidly nudged her back. “Easy for you to say.”
They smiled at each other and returned to their plates. Dar was right, Kerry realized. The condo certainly did seem to be getting pretty warm, pretty quickly now that the air conditioning was off. At least she was starting to feel really warm. Maybe it was the chicken.
After they finished, Dar suggested they go into the study, where she’d left the shutters off the north-facing window, a small one, and could open it to get some air in the place. She put a large, faintly cinnamon-scented candle on the desk and sat behind it, while K
erry settled on the small couch against the wall. Dar opened the window and a cool, humid breeze blew in, ruffling her dark hair and stirring the papers on the desk.
It was very quiet, only the wind’s howling and the rattle of the shutters coming through over the ceaseless pounding of the surf outside.
“I guess it was a lot worse during Andrew, huh?” Kerry asked quietly, tucking her legs up under her and leaning on the arm of the couch.
Dar nodded. “Oh yeah. They evacuated the island, but a few of us stayed, along with a few security people. They’d always told us how sturdy these places were, so we stupidly believed them. Surprisingly, it was true. We had very little damage—mostly surf damage to the seawalls, and some boats that got slammed up against the dock because their owners were either too stupid or too lazy to secure them.”
“Mmm.” Kerry put her chin down on her arm. “Do you have a boat here?”
“Yeah. It was my aunt’s; it kind of came with this place.” Dar leaned back in her chair and put her bare feet up on the desk. “Every once in a long while I take it out, just cruise around the artificial reefs a little, do some shallow diving, that kind of thing.”
Kerry nodded slowly. “I like boating. We used to take sailboats, the really big ones, out on Lake Michigan in the summer. I learned to run one of the racing kind. That was a lot of fun.” She considered. “You don’t do much swimming, though, it’s kinda cold up there.” She looked up. “Do you enjoy the diving and stuff?”
“I do. Very much so, in fact.” Dar fiddled with a pencil that had been on the desktop. “It’s not smart to go out by yourself, though, and I…” She hesitated. “I don’t have much time nowadays.”
Kerry soaked it all in, the spoken words and the unspoken ones. “I’ve always wanted to see what that was like. I used to watch the Jacques Cousteau specials all the time and wonder.”
A quick smile chased itself on and off Dar’s face. “We can probably Tropical Storm 129
arrange that,” she commented offhandedly. “It’s beautiful out there, on a nice, sunny day. When it’s calm, the sun filters down through the water, and you can see all kinds of fish, in every color.” She leaned down and pulled open a desk drawer, tugging out a folder and leafing through its contents, then handing it over to Kerry. “Here, see for yourself.”
Kerry got up and perched on the desk, tilting the folder towards the candle to get the light. She poured slowly through the pictures, examining them in fascination. Most were of fantastically shaped coral formations, with clouds of fish over them. Kerry wished it was daylight, so she could see the colors better, but one picture was a huge, flat, striped fish that seemed to be staring right into the camera lens. “Oh, wow!” She looked up at the quietly watching Dar. “Did you take these?”
“Mmm-hmm. Most of them at John Pennekamp Park down in the Keys, but this one…and these two were off Bermuda.” Dar put a fingertip on the striped fish. “He didn’t like me taking his picture. Right after I snapped this, he got right in my face and whacked me with his tail.”
Leaning closer to the light, Kerry peered at the fish. “Mmm. I bet that hurt.”
A hand lifted and gently pushed the blonde hair back. “Careful, don’t want you catching on fire. You can’t imagine the paperwork I’d have to fill out.” “Yikes, you’re right.” Kerry put the endangered locks back behind her ear and smiled. She turned to the next picture, this one of Dar, in a sleek black one-piece swimsuit, a scuba tank propping up one elbow and a huge lobster in her other hand. “Good grief, how much did that thing weigh?”
Dar peered over her arm. “Me or the lobster?” She chuckled. “Ten pounds. It was huge. The damn thing dragged me half across the reef before he tired out and I could bag him.”
“Mmm.” Kerry studied the picture, a faint, curious smile twitching her lips. “Did you have him for dinner?”
“Nah,” Dar cheerfully told her. “That big…well, after four pounds or so, the taste starts to go down. No, I took the picture, then let him go.”
“Oh, I did that too when we went fishing,” Kerry admitted. “It got everyone so mad at me. I’d catch these nice big fish, and the guys would fight them for an hour, finally drag them onboard, and I’d let them go.” She lingered over the photo for a moment more, then went on to the next.
“You have a big family?” Dar asked gently.
Kerry kept her focus on the pictures. “Oh well, not really. My mother and father, of course, and I have a younger brother, Michael, he’s in law school, and a younger sister Angela, who’s married and has one child and another on the way.”
“What’s it like having siblings?”
Kerry felt her chest tighten. “It’s…all right, I guess. There’s always some competition.” She glanced aside. “You don’t have any?”
“No, I always wondered what it would be like. Thought it would be nice to have a sister, or something.” She paused. “Is it?”
Kerry pondered the question. “I can’t really remember not having any,”
she confessed, “so it’s hard to say. We fought like kids do, but I love my 130 Melissa Good brother and sister.” She frowned. “I miss seeing them.”
Dar studied her profile. “Your father’s a senator, huh?”
The blonde head inclined once. “Yes.” Kerry’s jaw almost clicked shut audibly.
Hmm. Dar’s curiosity was sparked. “That must be a little strange.
Everything’s kind of public record, huh?”
Kerry’s eyes fastened on her hands, clenched lightly around the folder.
“More or less, yeah.”
A silence fell, lasting until Dar cleared her throat. “You…want to talk about it?”
Green eyes jerked up and met hers, startled, and a little afraid. The flickering candlelight threw her shadow against the far wall with menacing size, and she studied Dar’s face for an endless moment, before letting her gaze drop to the desk. “Not really, no.”
A little stung, Dar shrugged quietly. “All right.”
Kerry dragged her eyes back up at the words, her jaw working a little. “I, um, I guess that sounds harsh, coming from someone who was asking you to do the same thing just a little while ago, huh?”
“It’s your life,” Dar replied evenly. “You have the right to keep it to yourself.”
The silence settled again, and went on longer. Kerry closed her eyes, and listened to the wind whipping the surf outside, and the trees which slapped against the outer wall. “My parents are very…they have very high expectations of us.” She slipped off the desk and went back to the couch, curling up into a ball against one end of it “They want a certain life for me.”
Dar remained silent, keeping her opinion of both the policy and Kerry’s father to herself. ILS had run headlong into the senator more than once, and he was currently trying to oust them from several government contracts in favor of his own choice, a competitor who was, in all likelihood, paying him off. “That’s a tough thing to deal with,” she said very quietly. “But surely he shouldn’t have any complaint about you.”
A short, bitter laugh. “I’m not married and barefoot in the kitchen with two kids.” Kerry stared at the wall. “I had to pretend to be majoring in something…‘fit for me’ in college. They didn’t want to hear the word ‘career’
at all.”
A realization clicked. “So that explains the English double major,” Dar commented softly.
Kerry glanced at her, surprised, then she rubbed her temples. “I forgot you had my résumé.” She managed a thin smile. “Yes, by the time I graduated, it was too late for them to protest, and I had my degree.” She took a breath. “I took an entry level job with Sperry. God, how they hated that. It was a fight just about every day. The only thing that saved me was that Brian was still going to school.”
Knowing that Kerry had spent some years in the IS field, Dar was puzzled. “What happened?”
A wry, cynical smile crossed the younger woman’s face. “Bill Clinton happened. Or,
more specifically, Al Gore happened.” She lifted her chin. “All of a sudden, it was a ‘prudent precaution’ to have someone in the family who Tropical Storm 131
‘knew how those people thought’ and was into the technology end.”
“Ah.” Dar digested that. “But they still give you a hard time,” she hazarded.
“Yeah.” Kerry sighed, resting her chin on her arm.
“Who’s Brian?”
Green eyes lifted to hers. “My theoretical fiancé.”
Both of Dar’s dark brows shot up to her hairline, giving the taller woman almost a comical air of astonishment. After a moment, she schooled her face into a more casual expression. “I…um…huh?”
Kerry sighed. “We grew up together. We’ve been friends forever, since we were in strollers, practically. He’s a really sweet guy, nice looking, just graduating from law school. He likes me…”
“But?”
“But when I look at him, he’s just a friend,” Kerry replied ruefully.
“Ah, no skipping of the heart?” Dar joked gently. “No getting swallowed up in his eyes. That kind of thing?”
Kerry stared at her in silence for a few heartbeats. “N-no,” she finally stammered. “Not… It’s not like that with him…at…at all.” She paused. “What do you mean, skipping of the heart?”
Dar examined her interlaced fingers. “I wouldn’t know personally,” she glanced up with a wry grin, “but I’m told that when you meet your true love, something like that happens.” She chuckled. “You know, um, all that romantic stuff.”
“Mmm. Oh, yeah, right. I’ve heard of that.” Kerry pushed her hair back behind an ear. “God, you were right. It is getting pretty warm in here, isn’t it?” She glanced up to find hooded blue eyes watching her and a slight, almost puzzled little smile on Dar’s face. “So, that’s my story I guess. My folks give me a hard time over living down here. They think it’s decadent and licentious.” She sighed. “When I go home for Christmas, all I hear is plans for the wedding, and where I’ll live, and…”
