“No.” A low, sexy rumble tickled her ear.


438 Melissa Good Kerry peeked upward and grinned. “If we stay here long enough, I’ll be able to.” She waggled her fingers. “It feels a lot better. Honest.”

Dar’s half open eyes regarded her. “Hmm…maybe,” she replied thoughtfully. “If we went double I could sorta hang onto you.”

“Ooo.” Kerry’s eyes lit up. “Yeah!” She squirmed around and ended up half sprawled over Dar’s body. “I like that idea.”

“Really?” Dar tickled her sides and watched her squirm some more.

“Okay. Let’s give it a try tomorrow. Worst they can say is no.” She yawned and closed her eyes again, taking a breath of the salty air with a sense of decadent pleasure. “Mmm. I could so get used to this.”

Kerry stifled her own yawn. “Me too.” She gave Dar’s shirt an idle nibble. “How about we chuck ILS and open up an E-commerce consulting firm down here? Something we can run from a pair of cell phones and a laptop.”

“Okay.”

Kerry paused, then lifted her head and peered at her half dozing partner. “You’re not serious.”

Dar nodded.

“Really?”

A blue eye appeared. “In a frigging heartbeat.” It closed again.

“Hmm.” Kerry put her head back down. Dar had visibly unwound in the past couple of days, erasing, to Kerry’s eyes, years off her age. Even her speech had slowed down a little, taking on just a touch of her father’s distinctive drawl, and Kerry suspected her lover was going to have a tougher time than she was getting back into work mode come next Monday morning. “You like being a beach bum, don’t you?”

Dar opened her eyes and studied the wood ceiling as it swayed over head. “I guess,” she replied. “Yeah. Maybe I do, I mean…” She shifted a little. “I don’t mind working hard, but yeah, I’d like to do it in cutoffs and sneakers sometimes.”

“Well, you are the CIO and top honcho in Miami. Change the dress code,” Kerry replied practically. Then she paused and winced. “Oh. Wait.

No. José in shorts.” She buried her face in Dar’s shirt. “Never mind.”

Dar laughed. “I know, I know.” Her lips pursed slightly. “Besides, I’m pretty sure you don’t feel the same way. I think you like the snazzy office and it fits your style.”

Kerry glanced up, startled.

“That was a compliment,” Dar assured her.

“Mmm. You make me seem so preppy.” Kerry’s nose wrinkled. “But yeah, you’re right. I like dressing up. It makes dressing down on the weekends so much nicer.”

“Well,” Dar considered the issue, “how about I let you take over ILS

and I can run a consulting firm out of the condo in my jammies and we can get a place like this to bum around in on the weekend?”

Kerry’s brow contracted, as she tried to figure out if Dar was joking, or serious, or halfway between both of those things. Maybe it was just the general chaos they’d been through, which wasn’t over, either.


Eye of the Storm 439

Maybe Dar was only joking.

Kerry watched the pale eyes open and gaze dreamily up at a black-bird perched on the edge of the roof. “Is that what you really want to do?” she asked quietly. “Leave the company?”

Dar took a long time to answer, as though she were looking at the question from a number of different angles. “I’ve done a lot there,” she commented.

“Yes, you have. But there’s a lot more to do,” Kerry replied. “You’re changing the way the entire company does business, Dar, and you’re doing a hell of a job at it.”

“Thank you.” She paused. “Part of me wants to finish that.” She looked at Kerry. “But part of me wants to stay right here. The part of me that got the shit scared out of it in the building.”

Kerry stayed quiet.

“I don’t want to put so much energy into my job anymore, Kerry,”

Dar admitted. “I want to spend more time doing things like this. Enjoying the act of living. Enjoying being with you.” She shook her head. “It can go so fast.”

Kerry let out a little breath. “Well, if that’s what you want to do. Do it.”

“But that’s not what you want to do.” Dar touched her nose. “I don’t know. Maybe we can compromise or something.”

“Maybe.” She smiled. “We’ll work it out, Dar. But you know, a weekend place down here isn’t a bad start.”

Dar smiled back. “No? Hmm. Well, it’s further north, but I know of a little spot you might be interested in. It’d take a lot of work though. The place is pretty run down.”

Kerry lifted her head right up. “I get to see you use power tools?”

She watched the grin form. “Ooo, I’m not gonna pass that up. It’ll be fun.

I’d like to kinda start from scratch. See what we could make of a place.”

“We’ll go take a look, then,” Dar promised, then glanced at the sun.

“Hmm. I think we’ve got a date with a couple of bikes, don’t we?” She stretched her body out, yawning again. “And something spicy for dinner?”

“Sounds good to me,” Kerry agreed, sitting up and carefully getting out of the hammock, the wood floor warm under her bare feet. She walked over to the railing and leaned on it, then turned as Dar joined her and walked hand in hand with her partner inside the cottage.

THEY WATCHED THE sunset from the beach, the sky painted in so many shades of color Kerry lost count of them. She lifted her camera and took another shot, then lowered her hands, to wait a few minutes before her next exposure. Chino had tired herself out racing up and down the sand and was now curled at Kerry’s feet in a damp ball.

“That’s going to be a nice series,” Dar commented, leaning back against a piece of driftwood.


440 Melissa Good

“Sure is.” Kerry lifted her longneck beer bottle and took a swallow.

She was seated between Dar’s legs and now she leaned back against her, as Dar wound an arm around her waist. They were both barefoot and half covered in the grainy sand of the beach, and Kerry sighed as she finished off her beer.

Her third, as a matter of fact, since today was the first day she’d been able to drink, having stopped taking the pain medication for her shoulder. Her head buzzed gently and she could feel the faint displacement as the alcohol hit her system. “Think I better stop.”

Dar peered over her shoulder, then nibbled her ear. “Getting light-headed?”

“Mmm.” Kerry closed her eyes. “Yeah and I don’t feel like staggering back to the cottage.” Dar’s arms tightened around her. “It’s so beautiful here.”

“You’re not looking at anything.” Dar chuckled.

“Here.” Kerry put her hand over Dar’s and squeezed. “Right here, where I am.”

“Oh.”

“I’m really glad you thought of this, Dar. I’m having such a good time. Are you?” Kerry murmured.

Dar gazed out at the sunset, which washed them in golds and reds.

“Oh yeah,” she agreed, with a smile. “Best vacation I’ve ever had.”

“Like that’s saying much.” Kerry laughed. She opened her eyes and lazily lifted her camera, focused on the newly painted sky and snapped a frame. Then she shifted and turned around, rolled onto her back, and aimed the lens at her companion.

Oh. Kerry found that sharp profile softened and gilded in the crimson light, its dark frame of hair wind whipped, leaving a lock half obscuring one glistening eye. She closed her finger over the shutter and squeezed it with infinite care to protect the image gazing back at her with a gentle, loving expression. It was Dar’s soul showing, and Kerry captured it, knowing she had in her hands something very special. She lowered the camera and put the lens cap on.

“Needed to waste the last exposure?” Dar inquired, with an arched eyebrow.

Kerry moved the hair out of her eyes. “No.” She traced a lighter streak. “Stay here long enough, you’ll be as blonde as I am.”

Dar snorted. “I’ll have solid gray hair before that.” She fingered the sun-streaked mahogany bit. “Speaking of which…see any in there yet?”

With a feeling of vague familiarity, Kerry patted her lap, then bent over Dar’s head and ran her fingers through the dark strands. “There better be. I found two in mine the other day.” She riffled a thick patch over Dar’s ear, near her temples, then checked the other side. “Damn it, Dar.

Did you use hair color?”

The blue eyes looked up with a hurt expression. “It’s not my fault,”

she protested. “And no. I most certainly did not use anything of the kind.”


Eye of the Storm 441

“Lucky genes.” Kerry leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.

“You ready for Cajun shrimp?”

Chino heard her voice, got up, and shook herself vigorously, scattering sand all over them. “Oh, thanks, Chino.”

“Rowf.” Chino came over and licked her face. They got up and shook out the large towel they’d been sitting on, then walked up the beach towards the town, with Chino trotting at their heels.

“I DON’T THINK that’s going to work,” Dar said into her cell phone, her eyes on her laptop screen as she leaned back and propped her feet up on the small table. “We’re going to have to route around that section. It doesn’t have the bandwidth to keep up with the new net.”

“But that is where they are located, Dar. What are we supposed to tell them? To move?” José asked testily.

“No,” Dar replied in a mild tone. “Build a new drop point into the contract and tell them we’ll foot the front end cost of the installation, with the understanding that they’ll have to pay it out over the course of the five year pact.”

A momentary quiet. “All right. I can do that,” José answered slowly.

“That’s a workable idea.”

“Great,” Dar replied. “Anything else for me?”