Tropical Storm - DK1 (7 page)

A soft cacophony of protest could be heard in the background. “Orders from the top,” Brady overrode them. “Just do it.” Then he exhaled and spoke into the phone again. “Done.”

“Thank you,” Dar growled.

The phone rustled softly. “Ms. Stuart, I apologize.” Brady’s voice had modulated from rough to cultured. “We’ll try to stay out of your way.” His footsteps receded and the phone jostled, a soft breathing becoming audible.

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Dar waited, slowly letting out a breath of air. She still felt the warm rush against her skin from the anger, and she closed her eyes, letting it seep out of her. Her mouth felt dry, and her fingers were twitching faintly on the desk’s surface.

Her temper was legendary, and Brady knew it, knew he could push only so far before she’d snap, and he’d be in more trouble than he was capable of dealing with. A story still circulated about a board meeting where a senior VP

had challenged her, pushing every one of her buttons at the end of a very long day, and found himself pressed up against the wall, pinned by Dar’s weight while she yelled at the top of her lungs.

It was the reason she spent most evenings at the Island’s well-stocked gym, working with the resident martial artist, Teddy, and perfecting several different flavors of black belts. Anger management, the VP of Personnel had called it. Dar sighed. “Hello?”

“Um…” Kerry’s voice came on, hesitantly. “Thank you.”

Dar took a breath. “Some places, when we come in, you have a lot of people trying to either destroy or make off with proprietary information,” she explained quietly. “I know it’s hard to think of your co-workers that way, but we do this from experience, not because we just decided to be hardasses.”

“I-I understand that,” Kerry replied. “It’s…it’s just so humiliating.”

Dar paused, disconcerted. She’d never thought of it that way. “I guess it is. I’m…sorry.” She remembered Kerry’s eyes, at first willing to trust, then so quickly disillusioned. “But it’s…”

“Nothing personal, I know,” Kerry replied flatly.

They were both silent for a moment. “Fifteen people gave notice today,”

Kerry finally said, not really sure why. “The rest said they were going to stick around and see what happens.”

Dar stared out her window, hardly seeing the clouds drifting by. “That’s pretty good,” she murmured. “You’ve got a loyal staff, there.”

“They’re depending on me,” Kerry said, “to keep you from screwing us all over.”

Aw, kid…
The tall, dark-haired woman slowly shook her head at the sky.

Don’t put that on your shoulders.
“All right,” she murmured. “Well…”

“I’m not going to let them down.” The voice was very steady. “No matter what you do or say.”

Dar sighed. “Ms. Stuart, I’m not your enemy.”

“You’re not my friend,” came the flat reply.

“No.” She paused. “I guess I’m not.”

Now it was Kerry’s turn to be silent. “Well, thank you for telling him to stop, I really appreciate that a lot.” She exhaled. “And, um…I’ll send any more questions.”

“All right.” Dar hesitated. “Listen, write this number down.” She waited until she got a soft “Go on” from the phone. “305-975-6647.”

“I have it,” Kerry said.

“If you have any problems with him, just call that number.”

“All right.” Kerry paused. “Have a…um, have a safe trip.” Wishing the corporate VP crashed would be politically incorrect, she supposed, and besides, she had just done Kerry a big favor.
No sense in alienating a woman who
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Melissa Good
could make a six-and-a-half-foot-tall, three-hundred-pound man turn white as
Casper’s Ghost and practically piddle on the carpet, right? Right.

Dar’s voice dropped a pitch as she replied, “Thanks.”

It was a warmer tone, that forced an unexpected smile to the younger woman’s face. “You’re welcome.” Kerry answered softly. “Goodbye.” She hung up the phone and remained there for a long moment, staring at the instrument and wondering what on earth was going on with her. Then she sighed and seated herself behind her desk again, rubbing her face wearily. She looked up as a knock on the doorframe alerted her to a new presence. “Come in, Ray.”

The support manager glided across the carpet and slipped into her visitor’s chair. “What happened?”

“What happened?” Kerry stared at him. “We got taken over by the Merry Mongols Megolithic marching band, remember?”

“
Ay
,
chica
, no. With the gorillas.” Ray looked around, then back at her.

“Who put on their leashes? They are being so nice now, it’s alarming.”

“Oh.” Kerry folded her hands. “Well, I kind of complained to, um…”

“To the Cruella?” Ray inquired.

“Yeah.” Kerry nodded. “So she talked to that head goon, and he told them to take it easy. I think it will be better now.”

“Our hero.” He grinned. “You go, girl.”

She looked down at her hands and smiled. “Yeah, that was pretty good. I don’t know what she said to him, but he looked like a puppy that had just been spanked.”

“Tch…he would probably like that.” Ray laughed. “Maybe she’s his…how you call them…his mistress. You know, with the whips and chains thing. She probably puts on him a collar, with a bell.”

Kerry covered her face with one hand and stifled a giggle. She was so tired from her late-night tasks, the picture of the burly, gruff Brady in a belled collar was almost too much for her. “God, Ray, don’t do that to me. What a picture.”

He stood up. “Teresita is going to Laurenzo’s. You want her to bring you back a
colada
?”

The woman blinked. She tended to view Cuban coffee with a wary eye, a cross between black goo and rocket fuel, but the way she felt today, maybe it was worth a try. “Okay, sure. That might be a good idea; I’m pretty tired.” She picked up the piece of paper with the phone number, and looked at it curiously, then folded it and tucked it away in her shirt pocket.

She turned back to her computer, rereading the dozen or so questions and clarifications she’d come up with for Cr…for Dar Roberts. “All right, you asked for them.” She sat back, reflecting on what had just happened, tapping her pencil on her lower lip. Dar had called, apparently to let her know she could keep sending things, and she’d ended up going off all over the executive. No way around it, that was exactly what she had done. And instead of telling her off, or firing her, which Dar certainly was capable of doing, the corporate VP had fixed her problem.

Weird. Very weird.
She certainly hadn’t given Dar any reason to be nice to her; in fact, she’d been rude to the point of insubordinate twice now, and the
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older woman had simply ignored her comments as though she hadn’t made them.

No, that wasn’t true.
That last time she’d said Dar wasn’t a friend of hers, she had answered, agreeing with that.
It has almost been…
Kerry drew her denim-covered knee up and circled it with one arm, and sighed. She didn’t know what it had almost been, but now she was feeling a little bad about being so rude. She wasn’t usually like that, and she had no idea what about Dar Roberts brought it out in her.

She turned to her screen, where a dozen or so more questions and clarifications were typed, and reviewed them. She’d left out the snide comments this time, since she’d gotten such reasonable answers the last time.

Now she hesitantly typed a final line on the bottom, then hit the Send key, doing so quickly before she could change her mind.

There. Not much of an apology, but…
After all, she was the one being screwed over here, her and the rest of her staff. Dar Roberts could just like it or not, she really didn’t care one way or the other.
Right?

“RIGHT THIS WAY, Ms. Roberts.” The concierge gave her a sketchy half bow and indicated that she follow him. They entered the elevator, and he pressed the button for the top floor, where the hotel maintained business suites for traveling executives. “Have you come far?” he inquired politely.

Dar tore her attention from the steadily creeping floor numbers. “Miami.”

She shifted her shoulders inside her brown leather jacket. “It’s a little cooler here.”

The man chuckled and held the door open as they reached the correct floor. “That it is.”

Dar suffered his inane comments for a few more minutes as he put down her small bag, then she gave him a tip and kicked him out. As the door closed behind him, she glanced around and exhaled. Not bad, really. The suite contained a bedroom with a large king-sized bed, a sitting room with a decent-sized TV, a cluster of chairs for guests, and a fully equipped desk with pens, pencils, a dataline hookup, and an electrical outlet conveniently at waist level. She wandered over to the desk and set down her laptop case, then flipped curiously through the room service menu. The Hyatt usually featured fairly decent food, and this one had a Mexican-themed restaurant downstairs, along with the usual coffee shop and bar. “So far, so good,” Dar commented to the empty room as she paged through the rest of the hotel directory.
Ah
. She tapped the plastic with one finger.
Health club, pool, movie, dinner.

That decided, she pulled open her bag and took out a pair of shorts, sneakers, and a cut-off sweatshirt, then flipped on the TV, checking out the movie selections. She chuckled. “Oh ho,
The Rock
. This is definitely looking up.”

A few minutes later, she’d changed and was back by the desk, lifting the phone and dialing room service. She scanned the menu as she waited for an answer. “Combination appetizer, steak fajitas, flan, and a coffee milkshake, please.”

“Yes ma’am,” the voice answered, after a period of scribbling noises.

“Can I have that at nine thirty, please?” Dar requested, glancing at her watch. An hour and a half should be enough to get through a decent workout and a quick swim. It would also allow her to shrug off her traveling fatigue and probably put her in a better frame of mind than when she’d left Miami.

Anything would be an improvement over that.
The rest of the morning and all of the afternoon until her flight left had been taken up with staff meetings,
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both with her own department and with her peers. It had not been a pleasant experience, and by the time she’d fought her way through Miami International Airport and onto her flight, she’d been about at the edge of her temper.

Fortunately, the flight had been quiet, a commuter with no children and quick service. Dar had relaxed in her first class seat and accepted a single glass of white wine, sipping it slowly as she watched the sun slide below the horizon. The first stars were just coming out as she landed at Washington National, and she’d felt herself unwind a little, knowing she had at least a whole evening before she had to rain on Peter’s parade.

An evening she didn’t intend to waste. Dar found the gym with little trouble, pushing the door open and getting the expected silence from within.

Hotels provided the workout space as an amenity, but she knew from long experience that most business travelers preferred to relax in other ways, most having to do with consuming alcohol and watching sports in the bar.

Dar preferred the solitude of the machines, and she attacked the small, but fairly well-equipped circuit with stolid purpose, setting the weights and performing the reps according to a long-established routine. It was a good workout, and she even surprised herself with a twenty-pound advance on her arm curls which left her shoulders burning. After an hour, she returned the last machine to its resting position and stood, wiping her face off with the small towel she’d tucked into he waistband.

Satisfied, she wandered over to the scale and stepped on it, pushing the weights over with a curious finger. “Mmm,” she mused, considering a surprising five-pound drop. “Maybe I’ll have two coffee milkshakes.” A rakish grin faced her in the mirror as she stepped off the scale, remembering the office Christmas party last year when a drunken contest had started to guess her weight.

No one came close to the actual hundred and sixty pounds. Most guessed twenty or so less, though she wasn’t sure if it was the fact that most of it was muscle, and therefore was denser than they thought, or if they were just trying not to piss her off by guessing too high.

“B, with an egg roll,” she informed her reflection, then she grabbed her towel and headed for the pool. Thirty minutes later, she was padding back to her room, the towel draped over her shoulders and her workout clothes tucked under one arm. She’d figured the hotel was mostly empty, and her one-piece bathing suit was not exactly an attention-getter; it seemed a reasonable conclusion until she got to the elevator.

Already waiting for the elevator were four guys who looked like lumberjacks. Dar sighed inwardly, as she bore the appreciative stares. They were medium height, Midwestern types, wearing buffalo plaid shirts and Dockers, most of them clean-shaven, but obviously a little drunk. They stared.

Dar stared back, leaning against the wall with an air of total nonchalance.

“Hey baby, wanna come party in our room?” the redhead finally asked, with a smirk.

“No,” the tall executive replied as she slipped past them into the elevator.

She knew it was a mistake moments later when they followed her, standing between her and the door, which slid closed with a thump. Her heart 34
Melissa Good
rate increased and she watched them carefully, shifting her balance so it was over the balls of her feet, putting on her most no-nonsense look.

The tallest of them, a bearded man about six feet tall, moved in. “Y’know, ya shouldn’t tease people like that.” He leered at her. “Pretty thing like you.

And then you go and tell us off. That’s not nice.”

Dar let the anger build and waited. “I was just using the amenities of the hotel. That’s not against the law,” she warned him, softly. She felt the jerk as the elevator stopped, and realized the man furthest from her had stopped it between floors. She dropped her clothing quietly onto the floor and let her hands curl into fists. “Don’t be stupid, boys.”