Tropical Storm - DK1 (12 page)

Now, Dar entered behind her, and Kerry noticed for the first time that she certainly wasn’t in one of her power suits. Water-stained jeans and hightop sneakers, along with a hooded sweatshirt minus its sleeves, painted a very different picture than the one her mind remembered from their previous encounter.

She looks a lot younger, for one thing.
Kerry suddenly realized the executive wasn’t much older than she was. Her tanned skin seemed to absorb the light, and the pitiless fluorescents revealed nicely toned muscles in her arms and shoulders which rippled softly as she moved around the office.

Dar’s eyes stopped as she reached the desk, and she studied the piles of paperwork strewn forlornly across it. A look of regret crossed her face, and she lifted her gaze to meet Kerry’s. “I know you did a lot of work on this.”

Kerry perched on the edge of her desk, and thumbed through a printout.

“I almost wish I hadn’t. I felt like I was coming so close…” She let the papers fall and looked up. “Why did you let me do that?”

“You were close.” Dar sat down on the chair next to Kerry’s and let her forearms rest on her thighs. “It’s complicated,” she replied quietly. “A lot of things just wouldn’t fall into place, and I needed numbers.” She shifted. “It was the last thing I threw out.” She reached over and nudged the report. “One last set of reports came in, and I just couldn’t do it.”

Kerry circled her desk and sat in her chair, pushing the overlong sleeves back on the sweatshirt. “So, we just become numbers,” she commented softly.

“I don’t think I understand that very well.”

A shrug. “It’s what we all are.”

“Mmm,” Kerry murmured. “Even you?”

Dar nodded wearily. “If it’s any consolation, I’m very sorry.”

Tropical Storm
55

Kerry looked at her pensively. Dar had changed in her eyes. She no longer appeared to be the icy cold, practical executive. This was a person. One who under other circumstances she might have liked. “Me too,” she replied.

“I’ll probably end up going home to Michigan. I’ll miss a lot of things here.”

Dar looked up. “There are other jobs out there. We might even have something you might…”

Kerry shook her head. “No.” She took in Dar’s puzzled expression. “It’s complicated.” She played with a pencil on her desk, turning it over and over.

“You know, it’s really too bad, Ms. Roberts, because in another place…another time, I think you and I might have been friends.” She glanced up regretfully, and was captured in blue eyes that unexpectedly swallowed her whole.

But it only lasted an instant, and then Dar was sighing and standing up.

“Maybe.” She ran a hand through her dark hair. “But right now, we should get you home,” the executive stated. “I have to run back by my office and finalize things.”

Kerry played with her pencil, biting on the eraser for a moment before looking up. “Can I come look at your numbers?” Her eyes fastened on Dar’s face, knowing she’d caught Dar by surprise. “I’m sorry.” She managed a half grin. “I don’t give up easily.”

Dar inhaled sharply at the sudden and unexpected challenge. She was exhausted, they were both drenched, Kerry was injured. It was late. It was insanity to even consider, insanity even for Kerry to have asked, or more like, presumed. She found those intense green eyes watching her intently and saw those lips twitch into a friendlier shape and…
What the hell.

“Sure.” Dar wasn’t sure that voice was even hers.
What the hell am I doing?

Then she thought about it.
Well, what could it hurt? The kid’s sharp, and maybe a
fresh set of eyes…
“I’ve got some first aid stuff there for those cuts.”

The hint of a smile turned into a full one, if only for a brief moment, and it transformed Kerry’s face. “You wouldn’t happen to have some coffee there too, would you?”

Dar relaxed a little. “We do.” She indicated the door. “I think it may even stop raining.” She paused, as thunder rolled overhead. “Okay, maybe not.”

Kerry flipped off the lights as they left, and she limped after Dar with her briefcase slung over her shoulder. “How much wetter and more miserable can I possibly get?”

Dar almost chuckled as she shook her head. “Guess we’ll find out.”

KERRY SETTLED BACK into the leather seat, refusing to think about what she was doing. That left her mind free to watch the rain lash against the windshield during the drive cross-town, as she listened to the soft music Dar had chosen. Her cuts hurt, but they weren’t that bad, and her knee seemed only to be twisted. It wasn’t giving her much trouble while she was sitting, though she suspected she’d be limping for a few days. Things could definitely have been a lot worse.

Dar shifted her grip on the wheel, glancing right as she changed lanes, and Kerry noticed an ugly bruise that covered her knuckles. One was even scraped, and a stain of dried blood was visible in the low light from the dashboard. “What happened to your hand?”

Dar glanced down, then returned her eyes to the road. “I banged it into something,” she answered absently.

Kerry looked down at her own hand, bruised from her earlier impact with the wall and raised an eyebrow at the similar markings.
Hmm.
She pondered that a moment, then shifted her attention to the weather again.

Waves of rain were rippling across the street, moving in and out of the lights and reminding her vaguely of snowstorms back home.

She was running on pure adrenaline, though, and she knew it, and she hoped she was home in her own bed when everything came crashing down on top of her. Because she’d been working on the report, she’d only slept a few hours the previous night, and the long hours were beginning to wear on her.

Another look at Dar’s profile made her wonder if Dar wasn’t having the same problem. There were shadows under her eyes that the dim light revealed, and she was blinking a lot, which was something Kerry did when she was very tired. “Guess you’ve been working pretty hard on this thing too, huh?”

Blue eyes flicked to her face. “It’s been a long week, yes.” Dar guided the Lexus into the parking lot of the corporate headquarters and parked under the entrance overhang, ignoring the No Parking signs. She got out and waved at the security guard as he emerged. “Just me, Jack.” The man waved back and tucked himself back into his guard station, out of the rain. Dar waited for Kerry to join her, then led the way into the building, swiping her security card at the entrance in a smooth, graceful motion.

Kerry tipped her head back as they entered the lobby, looking up through the atrium which rose the entire length of the building. “Whoa.” She hugged the sweatshirt to her, glad of its warmth as the cold air flowed around them.

“This is, um…” She tried to find a politically correct term. “Um, it’s…”

Tropical Storm
57

“Pretentious,” Dar commented wryly, as she keyed the elevator. “It’s supposed to be.” She held the door for her smaller companion, then let it close and punched the fourteenth floor, slipping her keycard in when the elevator beeped a complaint. “Lesser mortals are supposed to stand in awe in the lobby.”

Kerry leaned against the wall and stifled a yawn. “Be careful, Ms.

Roberts,” she warned. “If you keep that up, I might get the idea you have a sense of humor.”

Dar looked at her, then, slowly, the faintest hint of a grin twitched her lips. “Sorry, they make you leave that as a deposit when you get issued your keycard.” She held up the item, then gestured for Kerry to precede her out of the elevator as it reached its destination.

Dar’s office was dimly lit by her twenty-one-inch monitor, and the small desk lamp she usually worked by at night. Her screensaver was on, jungle animals prowling across the dark surface accompanied by soft sounds. As they approached the desk, a macaw cried softly, and Dar reached over and gave her trackball a spin, bringing up the worksheet she’d been looking at before she’d left earlier. “Take a look,” she offered. “I’ll get some Band-Aids.

You mentioned coffee?”

Kerry perched on the edge of Dar’s very comfortable leather desk chair and looked around. “So, this is how the other half lives, huh?” she murmured, then turned her attention to the executive. “Um…where are you going to get coffee at this hour?”

Dar looked at her. “The kitchen. Yes or no?”

A blonde brow lifted. “You have a kitchen in here? Let me guess, it comes with a microprocessor that cooks things for you, right?” She saw Dar’s lips twitch again and smiled herself. “Okay, okay. Sure. I’d love some coffee.”

“Cream and sugar?”

Kerry sighed. “If I’m being good, I should say no and no, but I hate the taste of coffee, so yes and yes.”

Dar snorted softly and disappeared.

The blonde turned her attention to the monitor, but not before she looked around, taking in the huge office with wondering eyes. The desk was smooth wood, its surface covered with reports as her own had been. The carpet was a thick burgundy, and there was a long, low-slung couch to the right. The entire back wall was glass, and looked out over the bay to the ocean, right now showing the brilliant flashes of lightning and the thick swaths of rain that lashed against the clear surface.

It smelled of wood polish and wool from the carpet, with a faint hint of the perfume she’d noticed that Dar wore. That the shirt wrapped around her body also bore. She decided she liked it.

Dar came back a moment later, bearing two steaming cups and a small kit tucked under her arm. She put one of the cups down in front of Kerry and perched on the edge of her desk, tucking one leg up under her and leaning forward to point at the monitor. “That’s the problem right there.” She traced a column. “Watch what happens when I plug in your scenario.” She did so, and the numbers changed. “I can’t have…” a fingertip pointed at the last field,

“…that.”

58
Melissa Good
Kerry took a sip of the coffee, then peered at it. “What is this?” She licked her lips. “Mmm.”

“Café con leche,” Dar answered absently. “Cuban coffee with milk and sugar.”

“Hell.” Kerry laughed. “If they’d served it to me like this, I’d have drunk it more often.”

They spent an hour going over the various approaches, and Kerry got a much better understanding of what it was Dar was trying to do. “Oh, god, you have to show this all as an expense?” She pointed at her section. “But you can’t show any of this as a profit, because it’s past date?”

“Right.” Dar sighed, biting on the edge of her cup.

Kerry sat back, stunned. “But that’s not fair!” she protested.

Dar closed her eyes momentarily and rubbed them. “I know,” she agreed wearily. “But it’s the law.”

“What happens if you don’t make that number?” Kerry pointed at the last field.

Dar peered at the screen, blinking. “Well, we don’t show consistent growth, and the stockholders go ballistic. That means we have to show austerity measures, and that…usually means a minimum level layoff.”

Kerry thought about that. “How many people is that?”

“Between five to seven thousand,” the executive replied quietly.

Green eyes lifted to hers. “Just like that?” Dar nodded. Kerry absorbed that. “So I guess my piddly little two hundred and thirty people are kind of a minor thing,” she commented softly, as she looked up at Dar. “Nothing personal, right?”

Dar’s lips tensed, and she looked down. “Usually, yes,” she admitted.

“You don’t like to waste resources, but,” one bare shoulder lifted in a shrug,

“sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.”

Kerry studied the screen, flipping through the twelve different scenarios Dar had been working with. All save one included her solution. She let her hand rest on Dar’s knee, searching her face intently. “I didn’t understand,”

she stated quietly. “And I still don’t, not really, but thanks for trying.”

Dar glanced at her watch. “Eleven thirty. I’ve got to update this before midnight.” She stared at the screen. “Damn, I just wish I could…” She traced a column with one finger. “Some way to put a plus there.”

“Mmmm.” Kerry examined the fields. “Like you can with that Miami group—because they take on outside stuff, so you can offset their expenses.”

Dar froze, only her pale blue eyes darting across the wide screen.

“
Mierda
,” she whispered. “Can your people do internet support? TCP/IP?”

“Uh…um, what? Yeah, of course.” Kerry stared at her. “The entire support group runs on an intranet. We’ve got three resident webmasters. But what…” She yelped, and hurriedly got out of the way as Dar dove into her seat, her fingers racing across the keyboard in a rattle of keys.

“Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch…” the executive cursed softly. “Where are you… Ah!” She requested a screen and scanned its contents. “Gotcha.” One hand reached over and punched a series of numbers into the phone pad. It rang three times, then a voice answered. “Hello, Peter.”

Frozen silence preceded, “What the hell do you want?”

Tropical Storm
59

“I’m taking those two extra contracts,” Dar informed him. “Don’t bother protesting. Goodnight.” She hung up and hummed under her breath as she recoded the projects, giving them a new classification. A few clicks, then she drummed her fingers, waiting for the mainframe to redraw the columns.

“Ahhh…” One hand snaked out, cutting a range out and clicking over to her spreadsheet, then pasting. She recalced the document, then sat back and smiled in triumph.

Kerry just watched her, confused.

Dar pointed at the last field. “I got my number.”

The blonde woman studied the sheet. “But that’s got our stuff in it.”

“Uh hum,” Dar agreed. “It sure does.”

“How did you do that?” Kerry asked, entranced by the smile that now transformed the executive’s face, the smile which now grew broader.

“I made fifty percent of your staff a profit center and awarded them two major government support contracts.” Dar folded her arms over her chest in visible satisfaction.

“Really?” Kerry blinked in surprise. “Can you do that?”

A dark brow edged up. “I just did it.” Dar grinned, then she sobered.