by Melissa Good
“Your equipment, sir? Are you saying this is something ILS did?”
The reporter leaned forward.
“No.” Alastair shook his head gravely. “This was done at the national carrier level, although we were made aware of the fact that it was in process.” He shifted. “They’ve been working throughout the night to correct the problem, but it’s very complex.”
“Mr. McLean, I don’t think I need to tell you what kind of impact this is having. Is this what we can expect? Is this an early example of what the year 2000 is going to be like?” the reporter asked. “We have several representatives on the line with us who would like to discuss this with you.
People who have some very serious concerns.”
“Well, certainly, we can discuss the issues.” Alastair looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I can’t say I can answer for an entire industry, however, and an isolated incident like this shouldn’t be taken as—”
“But you are the largest provider of interbanking services, are you not?”
“Yes, that’s true, but—”
“Then, Mr. McLean, effectively you can speak for the industry, because you’re being paid to make sure Americans aren’t impacted by the changes, aren’t you?”
“I can speak for ILS, yes.” Alastair sighed. “And review what we are doing towards that end, while we work on getting further status on the problem at hand.”
Dar smiled, flipped her phone open, and dialed her boss’s cell number by memory.
Alastair looked down, then interrupted the reporter in mid-word.
“Excuse me a minute, David. This might be the information I requested for you.”
Then she heard the phone answer. “Good morning,” Dar drawled softly into the phone. “Nice tie.”
“Dar, I’m on the air and this guy’s about to nail me,” her boss whispered.
“I know. We’re up. I moved them over to the new network.”
Silence. She watched the smile spread across the face on the screen, which was half turned to hear her conversation. Alastair closed the phone without a further word, then straightened, and tightened his tie a bit, the twinkle back in his eyes. Dar turned the sound up, wondering what he was going to say.
“As I was asking, Mr. McLean, what exactly does ILS intend to do about this crisis?” the reporter asked. “Hundreds of thousands of paychecks are on the line and citizens up and down the East Coast are unable to access their own money.”
Eye of the Storm 335
“Well, David,” Alastair responded. “Fortunately, we are lucky to have one of the most talented minds in the business as our CIO, and that phone call was just informing me ILS has rerouted around the problem and brought everything up on our own, brand new, internal network.” If he’d had suspenders, Dar was sure, he’d have stuck his thumbs in them and smirked. As it was, he gave a good impression of doing that anyway.
The reporter was definitely taken aback. He shuffled a few papers.
“That’s great news,” he temporized, then read something off a nearby prompter. “Yes, as a matter of fact, we just got word from Interbank that they’ve started restoring service.” He looked down at a slip of paper handed to him. “And that would be your CIO, Dar Roberts, is that right?”
“Hey. He’s talking about you?” Andrew was leaning against the wall, watching in fascination.
“He’s talking about me.” Dar slumped in her chair and exchanged a high five with Kerry. “We tried a dozen things with the company that ran that switch, but nothing worked. We had to end up rewiring everything and putting it on our network. We must have breached ten contracts in the process.”
Cheering was heard from the screen as people were shown clustering eagerly around the cash machines.
“Sad commentary on society,” Ceci murmured. “Almost Pavlovian, really.”
“You know,” Kerry got up and collapsed on the couch, “I don’t get to see the results of my labors quite so graphically most of the time.”
“No,” Dar agreed, standing up and stretching her body out, wincing at a painful knot on her back. “Want me to get more coffee?”
Kerry stuck her tongue out. “Any more of that and it’s going to come out my ears.” She peered at the screen as she heard the senate hearings mentioned. “Oh…hot dog. Yes!” She wriggled on her back and kicked her feet out.
“Postponed?” Ceci smiled at the blonde woman’s unrestrained joy.
“Only until this afternoon,” Dar grumbled.
“I don’t care. I get to take a nap.” Kerry stifled a yawn. “I’m so tired, I’d take an hour if I could get it.” The phone rang, and she moaned.
“No…no…go away.”
Dar reached over and picked it up. “Hello?”
“Looking for Kerry Stuart,” the voice came back, brisk and businesslike.
“She’s sleeping,” Dar replied.
“Well, we’ve got a breakfast date.”
“Not today.”
“Okay, look here Ms.—”
“Roberts. Dar Roberts. I’m Kerry’s boss and I’m telling you she’s not available to meet this morning,” Dar told him crisply, then hung up.
“Who the hell was that?”
“A member of the press,” her mother told her. “Kerry fascinated them, for some reason.”
336 Melissa Good Dar walked to the window and peered out. “She makes good press.”
She leaned against the glass. “She’s bright, good looking, and articulate—
of course she fascinated them.”
“Hey.” Kerry felt the blood heat her face. “Can we not talk about me like I’m not here?”
Dar chuckled, then looked down as her cell phone rang. “Hello?”
“I love you.”
Dar chuckled again. “Well, thank you Alastair, but it was a group effort.”
“No, really, Dar. That was the most exquisite timing and it was much appreciated.” Alastair sounded profoundly relieved. “I don’t care how many contracts you busted, it was worth it to see the smug look slide right off that pig bastard’s face.” He cleared his throat. “Ah. I’ve had a request to get you on for an interview.”
“Now?”
“Well, timing is everything, Dar,” her boss coaxed. “The positive press is a good thing, especially right now.” He left the thought hanging.
Dar sighed. “Between the press wanting to talk to me and the press wanting to talk to Kerry, we’re liable to get more publicity this week than we can handle.”
There was a moment’s quiet. “Ah…hmm,” the CEO murmured. “I forgot she was testifying this week. Her father’s no friend of ours.”
And if they tie it all together, it’ll be tabloid heaven. “Yeah.” Dar exhaled.
“This could get tricky.”
A drumming of fingers. “All right. Let me get Andrea in on it. I’ll have her give you a call to coordinate, Dar. I don’t think we can avoid the interview, and it’s a good moment for it, but we have to be aware of what might fall out if the press starts sniffing around.” His voice became brisk.
“And if it does, it does. Our public policy is written clearly enough.
Andrea can spin it positive, us being so progressive and all that.”
Dar snorted.
“Yes, well, you can’t turn a pig into silk lingerie overnight, my friend.”
“You better warn the board,” Dar responded quietly. “The very issue we talked about yesterday might be moot.”
Alastair sighed. “Think positive, willya, Dar? At least we can see this coming.”
“Yeah,” Dar acknowledged. “Well, have Andi call me, all right?” She hung up and let the phone drop to her thigh, then she turned to face the three pairs of curious eyes on her. “Ker, I think we need to talk.”
Green eyes peered at her over the couch back in apprehension.
“We’re about to become poster children, aren’t we?”
Thunder rolled for an answer.
Chapter
Thirty-six
DAR GLANCED AT herself in the mirror, adjusting the collar of her silk shirt and brushing a speck of dust from the shoulder of her jacket.
The interview had been set up faster than she’d expected, and she’d just had time to take a quick nap and get a shower before she had to get ready for it.
Kerry was on her way to the Senate chambers already, with Andrew as an escort. Dar hoped her father would behave himself and not do something irreversible.
Like slug Senator Stuart, for instance, something Dar herself dearly wished she could do. She wished the hearings were over, or at least Kerry’s part in them, so they could go home and regroup and get things back into a more normal order.
Maybe we could take a few days off. Dar regarded the tired blue eyes looking back at her. Long weekend? Maybe take a Friday, and a Monday, and drive down to the Keys, stay at one of the little places out near the beach…hey.
Dar blinked. Yeah. Maybe for Kerry’s birthday, which was coming up.
Which reminded her. Presents were in order, if she could shake Kerry off long enough to go shopping on her own.
Or figure out what to get. With a sigh, she looked at her reflection one more time, then turned as she caught her mother’s image in the glass watching her. They looked at each other for a moment in awkward silence. “Thought you went with Dad,” Dar finally said, turning and folding her arms over her chest self-consciously.
Cecilia looked like she wished that were the case. “He thought I should stay here, and um…help out if you needed anything.”
Dar’s brow arched. “He did, did he?” She sensed an ulterior motive.
“Mmm.” Her mother folded her arms. “So. What do you do in a news interview?”
“I have no idea,” Dar replied honestly. “I generally work behind the scenes. This’ll be a first.” She glanced around the room, which had been tidied by the housekeeping staff. “Guess they’ll have to make do with the space in here.” She straightened her sleeve cuff nervously.
Ceci regarded her, approving of the creamy silk shirt against Dar’s tan, and the trim cut of the suit that outlined her athletic body. “You look 338 Melissa Good very nice,” she offered with hesitant sincerity, catching Dar by surprise.
The blue eyes lifted and met hers uncertainly. “That must sound pretty strange coming from me, huh?”
Dar nodded. She let the silence go for a minute, then scratched her eyebrow. “I think the best you could have managed before was ‘gee, that’s a nice new spiked collar,’” she admitted. “Looking nice wasn’t a priority of mine.”
Hey, she’s talking. Encouraged, Ceci perched on the arm of the couch and leaned on its back. “Oh, I don’t know. Some of those vests and things were sort of cute.” She smiled a little. “And I wasn’t a very good example.” Sweatpants and painter’s overalls, to be exact. “I always did sort of want to borrow that leather jacket of yours, though.”
Dar relaxed slightly. “Sleeves would have been a little long.” She took a seat opposite her mother and extended her legs, crossing them at the ankles. “Thanks for sticking by Kerry yesterday, incidentally.”
“It was no problem.”
“I know she really appreciated it,” Dar went on. “Being there with her family is tough on her.”
“Mmm. I know. Almost as hard as you and I being here.” Ceci managed a wry smile, which her daughter mirrored. Now, I guess we start the tough stuff. She took a breath. “For some of the same reasons.”
Dar focused inward for a bit, then laced her fingers together. “Not really.” She hadn’t been ready for this talk, but here they were. She collected herself and sorted her thoughts. “I know you like Kerry. Everyone does. She’s sweet, honest, smart, loyal. A dozen other things besides that.”
“That’s true,” Ceci murmured. “She’s a remarkable person.”
“Most of the things I’m not,” Dar continued. “I didn’t give you any reason to like me.” She gazed evenly at her mother. “Her parents turned their backs on her because of something she did. Not for who she was.”
Ceci exhaled. “That’s not entirely true.” She considered her words carefully. “There were times I didn’t much like you, Dar.”
Even knowing, even after all this time, it stung. Dar glanced away, refusing to even swallow. “No news there,” she enunciated precisely.
Ceci felt like crying, wanting to take the conversation back, and go down another path, but knowing it was too late. She took a careful breath. “But there never was a time I didn’t love you.” Dar went very still, her eyes widening, suddenly vulnerable. Ceci felt her way carefully.
“When…I lost Andrew, all that I could feel was pain, Dar. I couldn’t take it. I wasn’t strong enough.” She met the quiet gaze across from her. “I’m sorry.”
Dar slowly shook her head. “I wish…” She closed her eyes. “You’d have told me that before now.”
Ceci felt the pain all the way down to the bottom of her soul. “Me too,” she whispered.
Dar remained still, and Ceci rose slowly and moved the short distance over the thick rug, knelt in front of her daughter and put a hesitant Eye of the Storm 339
hand on her leg. “What I did to you was wrong, Dar.” She could feel the muscles under her fingers move slightly, then go still. “If I could take it back, I would.”
“I wanted to help you.” It was hard to talk. “I wanted to do the right thing.”
“I know,” Ceci acknowledged. “I drove you away.” Her eyes dropped. “And you repaid that by giving me my life back.”
“I did it for Daddy,” Dar uttered. “Not for you.”
“I know.” Ceci felt a bittersweet twinge. “But you also did it because it was the right thing to do.” She paused. “I felt, when I saw you, there was something you wanted to say to me, but you didn’t. Now I know what that was.”
Dar closed her eyes again, her way of gaining space to think in.
Finally she sighed. “I had to make sure it would be all right for him. I didn’t want him to get hurt any more.”
“Did you think it wouldn’t be?”
She shook her head. “No. But he did, and I had to be sure.” The blue eyes appeared, a sparkle of anger in them. “How could you tell him you wouldn’t be there?” Now there was true pain in Dar’s voice, but not on her behalf.
So typical. Ceci’s jaw tensed and she took a breath. “I made a mistake,” she replied honestly. “And I paid for it, believe me, Dar.” Her lips trembled a little. “For every minute of those seven years, knowing we parted with…angry words between us and I’d never had a chance to…”
She had to stop and take several deep breaths. “I was just so desperate not to lose him.”
The anger eased and gentled. “I told him that,” Dar murmured.
“Because if there was one thing I believed in, it was the two of you.”
Ceci had no idea what to say to that. After a moment’s reflection, she let out a held breath. “I wish you’d told me that before.” She breathed. “I thought you just resented our being so close.”
“I envied you,” Dar replied, in a low, but precise voice. “I tried to find that for myself and I failed so miserably, I just finally gave up on it.”
Incredible. She’d learned more about her child in the past thirty seconds than in the past thirty years. “Until it found you.” Dar considered that, then nodded slightly. Ceci sighed. “I’m sorry, Dar. I didn’t know. I don’t think I ever really understood where you were coming from.”
Dar felt the truth of that, as she looked into the eyes of someone she hardly knew.
Someone, if she was honest with herself, that she had never had much desire to know, who had mainly been viewed as either an obstacle or an annoyance to her for a very long time.
Now it was different. She wasn’t sure she wanted or needed a mother back, but another friend was something she could consider having, especially one who was willing to accept Kerry and who Kerry liked.
So. They’d both made a
lifetime’s worth of mistakes, and she could either let that poison their relationship now or put that behind her and just go 340 Melissa Good forward.
Who knew? Maybe they’d even end up liking each other after a while. Stranger things had happened. Dar gave her nerves a moment to settle and forced herself to cover her mother’s hand with her own. “I don’t think I much understood you either.” She kept her voice low. “But I’m glad we’re getting a second chance at this.”
It was far and away more than she expected. Ceci smiled in surprise and relief and seeing a twinkle of that reflected in the blue eyes watching her. Dar’s fingers were warm and strong and she felt the gentle pressure as her daughter squeezed, then released her hand. It made her feel twenty pounds lighter, almost dizzy, and she was glad she was still holding on to Dar to steady herself. “I am too,” she finally answered.
Dar exhaled in relief. She’d been half anticipating and half dreading this conversation and now that it was over, she felt little giddy. Her father would be pleased, though. He’d nudged her again gently this morning to try and spend a few minutes talking with her mom.
Hey. Dar’s brows knitted. Wait a minute. She looked up at her mother, who cocked her head in puzzled inquiry. “Did Kerry say anything to you this morning?”
Ceci was taken aback at the question. She eased up off her knees and sat down on the couch next to Dar, lacing her fingers together. “Well, sort of, I suppose,” she murmured. “She did happen to mention—why, did she say something to you?”
“No. Daddy did.” Dar folded her arms and gave her mother a wry look.
“Ah.” Ceci almost laughed. “Sneaky little schemers, aren’t they?”
“Mmm.” Dar smiled, then glanced up as a knock came at the door.
“Guess it’s showtime.” And if nothing else, talking to her mother had taken her mind right off the impending interview, though scenes of frying pans and hot flames seemed to circle that notion.
“Right. I’ll duck on out of here.” Ceci rose.
“No. Stay.” Dar got up and went for the door, not giving her a chance to answer.
Ceci selected a corner of the couch and curled up in it, tucking her feet up and resting her arm along the back. She watched Dar pause just before she opened the door and straighten her shoulders, pulling the jacket taut over bone and muscle and adjusting the drape over her trimly muscular form.
