by Melissa Good
They sat down, one on each side of the table, and settled into the cushions. Dar found it surprisingly relaxing. She spread her arms out on the cushions, and gazed back. “So, hell of a day, huh?”
Duks looked up from his menu and cracked a sardonic grin. He had a powerfully built face, with a square jaw and a thick neck that disappeared into heavy shoulders that betrayed a youth spent doing something other than running a calculator. “If I believed in Hell, I’d agree with you.”
Kerry leaned forward, curiously. “Are you an atheist, Mr. Draefus?”
He turned his grin on her. “Duks, please, Kerry. And yes, I am.” He selected what he wanted, then put the menu down. “I find it makes my life so much simpler.”
“Simpler? How?” Kerry inquired. “I would think having to find explanations for everything would make it more complicated. It’s so easy just to say ‘because God said so.’ ”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Duks agreed softly. “Simpler because I have no expectations. I have nothing to live up to, nothing to spend my life striving for, because at the end, it’s just…the end,” he told her. “You stop and feed the worms. And so life becomes more precious, and you enjoy it more, knowing it’s the only chance you’ll get.”
Kerry cupped her chin in her hand. “You don’t believe in souls, then, right?’
A smile. “No. I think what we have in here…” He thumped his chest.
“…is blood and muscles, and nothing more.” A pause. “Do you believe in a god, Kerry?”
“Yes, I do. In that I believe there’s a higher power who directs things in our lives, and I think we all have an immortal soul,” Kerry answered seriously. “And that soul continues from life to life.”
“Ah, not a conventional Christian, I see,” Mariana murmured, fascinated.
“I had an orthodox Catholic upbringing…and it stuck, along with all the glorious pageantry and mysticism that goes with it. I still shiver during the Mass.” She glanced at Duks. “We have a long-standing argument over that.
He thinks I’d get over it if I’d just go and see a good opera.” Kerry let out a surprised laugh.
“What about you, my friend?” Duks turned to the silently watching Dar.
“I don’t think we’ve ever discussed the big R. And I don’t recall you ever saying you’d been in church, so…”
Pale blue eyes flicked over their faces, then Dar shrugged a little. “My mother is a pagan.” She smiled wryly at the surprised looks. “My father was as much of a Southern Baptist as you can get and not be a snake handler.” She regarded the table for a moment. “We didn’t have anything organized when I was growing up, I just knew they both believed in something, not necessarily Tropical Storm 347
the same something, but something.”
“What a mix!” Mariana said in a surprised voice.
“True, I picked up on that. I believe in something, but I never got around to defining what that something was,” Dar finished. “So I celebrate what I want, when I want.”
The waiter came back, and they ordered, with Mariana getting conflicting advice from Dar and Duks. “Shush,” she finally said, then turned to Kerry in appeal. “Which is it?”
The blonde woman laughed a bit. “The massaman is a sweet curry, with meat and potatoes in it. Then you have the green curry which is very sharp.
Finally, the red curry is milder and usually has coconut milk in it.”
“Ah, so you’re an expert.” The Personnel VP gave her an approving nod.
Kerry just grinned and watched as they completed the order. Then she half turned her head to glance at Dar and blinked at the suddenly frozen expression on her companion’s face. Her eyes flicked to where Dar was looking, and she spotted a tall, willowy brunette in an impeccably cut suit entering with two other women. When she looked back at Dar, the dark-haired woman’s face was carefully controlled, but she could see the faint bunching of her jaw muscles and she leaned over. “Dar?”
Ice blue eyes pinned her, then gentled. “Remember when I told you it would be unlikely for you to meet certain people?” the taller woman commented with forced casualness.
What? Oh, her former lovers. Right. “Yes.” Kerry darted a glance to Duks and Mariana, who were busy with the waiter.
“I should have kept my mouth shut,” Dar replied softly. “Jinx.”
Kerry’s eyes flicked away, then back. “Oh.” She slid a hand around the edge of the low table and patted Dar’s ankle. “Let me go get my boots.”
That got a smile from Dar, who leaned her forearms on the table and considered her options. Given where she was seated, and where Elana was going to sit, there was no way in Hell the bitch couldn’t just look over and see her. Sure enough, after glancing at the menu, Elana looked up right at her.
Dar half turned her head as though she was listening to Duks and Mari bicker, and watched as a slow, malicious smirk made its way across the aristocratic face. Damn. She reached over and touched Duk’s arm. “We’re going to have a nasty scene here in a minute,” she advised him in a low tone, letting her eyes move across the room and back.
Duks glanced up, then bit his lip. “Aw, crap.”
Mari also looked. “Well, well. Think she’s got enough makeup on? She looks like Tammy Faye Baker.” Her voice was sharp, though, and held little humor. “You know, there aren’t many people that I can say I totally enjoyed processing termination papers on, but by god, she’s one of them.”
Elana crossed the floor, zeroing in on them with hazel eyes that kept steady on Dar’s face. “Look what we have here. Hello, Lou, Mariana.” A pause and a faint smile. “Dar.” Her eyes went to Kerry. “I’m sorry, I don’t know you.”
Dar let her wait a moment, then leaned back, circling one knee with both arms. “Hello, Elana, haven’t seen you in a while. Been out of town?”
“No, I just don’t get outside much.” The slim woman smirked. “We just 348 Melissa Good took over another two hospitals, neither of them your accounts, unfortunately.”
“I’d heard you got those. You might want to be careful, though,” Dar commented. “Word has it they just changed vendors because they’re going bankrupt, and you’ll give them a 120-day grace on the billing. IBM was about to cut them off.”
“Don’t bother with that, Dar.” Elana laughed. “Your tricks don’t work with me, remember?”
Dar shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Her eyes wandered. “So what have you been doing with yourself? Same old, same old?” She chuckled. “I love telling people about you at cocktail parties. It makes a great story, by the way.” She smiled sweetly. “And who is this?” Her eyes went to Kerry.
“Kerry Stuart.” The blonde woman extended a friendly hand. “I work for Dar.”
“I bet you do, honey.” Elana laughed. “You must be new around here.”
“Oh, I am,” Kerry replied, focusing sharp, green eyes on her. “New to the area, too. Say, Dar, is that one of those palmetto bugs you keep describing to me? Oh my god, they’re ugly.” She let her eyes widen and fasten on Elana’s shoulder.
The woman jumped. “Where?” She caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye and slapped at it, then screamed. “Oh my god!” She stumbled backwards, hands flailing at her head in panic. “Oh, help, get it off!”
Kerry jumped to her feet and ran to help, colliding with a rushing waiter just as she reached the frantic woman. The tray he was carrying launched itself up into the air and came down, splattering the floor, the tables, and Elana with a conglomeration of food.
“Oh shit!” Elana slipped in the mess and collapsed, still pawing at her hair. “Oh god, is it gone?” She glanced around at the avidly watching restaurant patrons, who were starting to laugh. Her face reddened, and a blob of curried sauce ran down her cheek.
Kerry stepped forward and crouched, getting to eye level with the woman and catching her attention. “You’re lucky I didn’t have time to go change into my boots.” She handed the woman a napkin. “Have a nice day.”
Then she stood up and walked back over to the table, careful not to slip in the piles of noodles and sauce that dotted the floor.
Dar’s blue eyes captured her as she came closer, and she walked the last few steps gazing into them, lucky she didn’t end up plowing right into the table. She settled herself in her place, as the crowd continued its laughter and picked up her napkin again as she looked up at the faces watching her. “Okay, so it was her epaulet. It was brown, I’m from Michigan, how was I supposed to know?”
It broke them all up, and Dar ended up gasping for breath, holding onto the table for dear life as she reached out and circled Kerry’s wrist, squeezing it. “That was priceless.”
“Bitch,” Kerry muttered under her breath, her still-angry green eyes glaring at the sodden mess on the floor, now being helped up by her two friends. “I’ll give her a cocktail party story all right, I’ll send out a mail to Tropical Storm 349
Users All so that whenever anyone sees her from now on they’ll do this.” She waggled her fingers near her head like a pair of antennae. Then she realized what she was saying, and how it must sound to the watching Duks and Mari, and she bit her lip, glancing at Dar in apologetic appeal. The taller woman’s face was an interesting study, a cross between chagrin, amusement, and embarrassment, with a good strong dose of warm affection thrown in. A wry smile crossed her face and she let out a tiny chuckle. “I just blew it, didn’t I?”
Kerry murmured.
Dar couldn’t help it, the look of dismay on Kerry’s face was so comical, she had to laugh. “Yeah, I think you did,” she admitted, exhaling, and looking over at Mariana to meet expectant, knowing hazel eyes. “Looks like you’ve got a personnel issue on your hands, Mari.” She kept her voice even and managed, somehow, not to blush. “Sorry.”
“Are you?” Mari asked with a wry expression. “I’m not. That was hilarious.”
Kerry sat there, unsure of what to say or do. She watched Dar’s face, the angular planes shifting with barely veiled emotion. Had they fooled Mariana, even for a second?
“Sorry I didn’t level with you earlier today,” Dar conceded. “I didn’t want you to get in the middle of this.”
“I see,” the shorter woman commented quietly. “Fortunately, I’m off the clock,” she added, with a gentle smile. “I meant what I said today, Dar.” She met her friend’s eyes squarely. “It really doesn’t matter if it’s an issue for me.”
Kerry cleared her throat gently. “I know it’s not exactly…um…”
Mari leaned over and touched her hand. “Kerry, those rules, they’re there to protect you. Not so much Dar,” she said. “It’s too easy to use power over our employees to make them do things…that they wouldn’t otherwise.”
“That is not what happened,” Kerry’s voice sharpened. “Dar didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do.”
“No.” The HR VP smiled. “I understand that.” Her eyes shifted to the quietly watching Dar. “Despite her somewhat outrageous reputation, that’s not her style.”
Dar smiled briefly.
“People will talk,” Duks said, twiddling his thumbs. “It could make things difficult, you know.”
“I know,” Dar spoke up suddenly. “I don’t give a damn. I spend most of my time saving people’s asses, so they can just kiss mine if they want to talk about me.”
After that, a little silence fell over the table. Before it could get really uncomfortable, Kerry turned and looked at Dar. “I don’t think I want people kissing your ass,” she said in a very serious tone. Both Duks and Mari started chuckling. “Way not cool.” Dar blinked, then managed an embarrassed grin.
Mari nodded quietly to herself. “Well, officially what happens off-hours is none of anyone’s business.” She patted Duks’ hand with an impish grin.
“Isn’t that right?”
Duks chuckled and blushed a little. “That is so.” He glanced at Dar and Kerry. “And, my friend, you did not fool us for a moment, you understand.”
Dar sighed. “I don’t think I fooled Maria either.”
350 Melissa Good The HR VP snickered. “I do wish I’d gotten pictures of that rampaging hormone-induced witch on wheels, though.” Mari sighed regretfully.
“Wouldn’t I love to put that shot in the next company newsletter.”
Duks cleared his throat and held up a tiny digital camera, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. “And what would you be willing to pay for that, madam?”
They all laughed, and Mariana let a sigh of relief trickle out of her lungs.
She peered over at Dar, who was studying the tablecloth with a quiet expression, then she let her eyes flick over to Kerry.
Caught unguarded, Kerry had her attention focused on Dar, a gently affectionate look on her face as she regarded her companion’s profile. This was not another Elana, Mari realized with relief. Dar was more vulnerable than anyone realized, and she was one of the few who knew that, but maybe this time it would be different. Kerry felt herself being watched and returned the gaze, her shoulders moving as she took in a deep breath. Mariana let a reassuring smile cross her face as she returned the look. “Kerry, that really was absolutely brilliant. Congratulations.” She tacitly changed the subject. “A palmetto bug? Too funny.”
A shy smile. “It wasn’t planned, it just sort of happened,” she admitted.
“I got so mad it was either that or hit her. And I don’t think that would have been a good idea.”
“Probably not,” Dar finally said, adjusting herself to the situation. Aw, Hell. Mariana knew anyway, and her statement that she was off duty means she’s not going to do anything about it. As long as Kerry and I keep it out of the office. Okay, fine, I’ve been rehearsing a speech to the personnel director anyway. And besides, seeing Elana with pickled squid hanging over her ear was worth every single minute of it.
“Dar, was that true about IBM?” Duks drew attention away from her gracefully. “About the hospitals?”
Dar nodded. “Yep, it sure was. I was talking to one of their account reps, who was telling me it was a good thing we did a no-bid on them.” She glanced up as their appetizers arrived, suddenly finding herself starving. “Sorry about that accident before,” she told the waiter.
“No problem, no problem, lady always comes in, cause fuss, no tip,” the waiter confided. “Worth spoiled fish.” He put a plate down before Kerry, containing a beautiful piece of fried wonton skin shaped into a swan. The swan’s body held a delicious-smelling mixture of chicken, peanuts and spices.
“Chef make special for you.”
Kerry looked up at him and smiled, a blush coloring her face. “Thank you.” She tasted it, then grinned. “This is really good.”
Dar sniffed at interestedly. “Looks like it.”
“Uh uh.” Kerry cupped her hand around the swan teasingly. “Mine.”
Dar raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t say I wanted any,” she retorted, returning her attention to her plate.
A moment’s silence, then blue and green eyes looked up at the same time and met, and they both started laughing.
“This is so cute, it makes me want to sing,” Duks announced, swallowing a mouthful.
Tropical Storm 351
“Oh god, cut it out, Kerry,” Dar said instantly. “You don’t want him to start that.”
“No?” Kerry inquired curiously.
“He thinks he’s Placido Domingo.” The dark-haired woman waved her fork at him. “Wait till he gets a few beers in.”
Another laugh, which Duks cheerfully joined in on as he raised his wine glass to the table. “To palmetto bugs. Long may they wander.”
THEY PARTED IN the parking lot some time later, under the bright stars of a cool night. Even from here, Kerry realized she could smell the sea, and she took a large breath of air as she and Dar strolled back towards where they’d parked. “Well…” She cleared her throat and glanced at her taller companion.
“That…didn’t quite go as expected.”
Dar laughed. “No, it sure didn’t,” she agreed. “But it’s all right, I was thinking about what you said. You know, about telling Mari what was going on, and I’d halfway decided to do it. Maybe it was fate.”
“So, you’re not mad at me?” Kerry asked quietly. “I didn’t… Jesus, Dar, that wasn’t planned. I don’t know what came over me.”
Dar glanced at her. “Mad at you?” she asked incredulously. “Nah, I’m not mad at you. I just wish I’d had a movie camera.” She glanced down and shook her head. “That certainly changes the scene I always picture when I think of her.”
They reached their cars and turned to face each other. “Thanks,” Dar said simply.
“You’re welcome,” came the simple response. “After all, that’s what friends are for, right?”
Dar cupped her cheek and smiled. “You bet.” A soft beep startled both of them and Dar reached for her cell phone, only to find it silent. “It’s not mine.”
“Mine.” Kerry pulled hers out and opened it. “Hello?” Her face tensed, then took on a shocked look. “Okay, okay, I’m on my way back there now. Be about…forty minutes or so. All right. Bye.” She folded the phone closed and looked up at Dar grimly. “My place was broken into.”
Dar’s eyes narrowed. “Let’s go.”
Kerry kept her hands clenched on the steering wheel the entire way home, aware of the comforting presence of Dar’s Lexus right behind her. She pulled into a parking lot full of police cars and spotted Colleen’s agitated figure near the door to her apartment. “Shit.” She wasn’t sure whether to be upset, angry, frightened, or all three, but she got out of the car and hadn’t taken two steps before Dar was right there, with a hand on her shoulder.
Colleen spotted them, and ran over immediately. “Thank god you’re here. I just got home, and I went to see if you were back yet. When I found your door wide open, I called the cops.”
Too late to do anything about that now. Kerry sighed inwardly. “Great, just great.” She shook her head. “Thanks, Col.”
“No problem. They won’t let me in there, but I poked my head in and the place looks pretty trashed.” She paused for breath. “Hi, Dar.”
