“You turned him down, hmm?” His voice held equal measures of wryness and wistful curiosity. “Let me guess. You told him…”

“To kiss my ass, yes.” Dar smiled a bit. “And regardless of what happens, I don’t regret that. The man makes me sick, Alastair.” She paused.

“The board’s spooked, huh?”

“Yes,” her boss replied. “But what worries me, Dar, is that he says he has proof your relationship has subverted your judgement and that both of you have taken advantage of the company and your positions to circumvent company rules.” He sounded troubled. “What’s that all about?”

Dar stood, went to her window, and leaned against the glass, peering out. “Stupidity,” she murmured. “I stayed home sick one day last week.

Kerry rearranged her schedule and took a half-day off.” She shook her head. “He followed her to the ferry.”

“Well, that’s not a big deal.”

“No.” It was embarrassing, now that she remembered it. “But we went to my high school reunion last Saturday and he got pictures of us both there.”

“So?”

“With our arms around each other.”

“Again, so?”

“Dressed like a pair of biker chicks.”

Dead silence. “Oh my fucking god,” Alastair cursed. “Tell me you’re pulling my leg, Dar. I can’t believe that.”

“Wish I could.” Dar crossed back to her desk and resumed her seat.

“It was a come as you were and I don’t remember if you remember how I was, but—”

“I remember.”

“Well, it made quite a picture.” Dar rested her chin on one hand.

“I…um…screwed up there, Alastair. I’m sorry.”

“Dar, you’re the Chief Information Officer of the largest IS company in the world. How could you do something that stupid?”

It had been a very long time since she’d had to accept that kind of rebuke. And she really had no good answer for it, either. “It was a damn party, Alastair,” she finally muttered. “I didn’t really think about it.”

“Jesus.” Alastair sounded disgusted.

Dar sighed. “Well, now that you know the worst, I’ve got to go, Alastair. We’re about to start bringing up the new network.” She paused.

“Guess I’ll see you on Thursday.” She felt the silence. “Unless you’d just like me to resign now and save us all the trouble and me a plane ticket.”

Her boss hesitated, then made a sound halfway between a sigh and a grunt. “Are you doing anything in this picture?”

“Walking.”

“It was a theme party?”

“Yes.”

“Please tell me neither of you are naked.”


Eye of the Storm 257

“We aren’t.”

“Or drunk.”

“Nope.”

“Just walking?”

“That’s it. We were in the parking lot. He was hanging out there waiting for us, which, now that I think about it, Alastair, is pretty damned strange, since the number of people who knew where I was that night was pretty damned limited.”

“Okay,” he replied, with more assurance. “At least I’ve got a heads up so when he pulls the damn thing out, I can laugh at it or find some way to defuse that part of the issue.” He sighed. “Least I can do for you putting yourself into the line of fire for me. But for God’s sake, Dar. Try to remember you’re not some spike haired punk anymore?”

“All right,” she answered, with admirable contriteness.

“I tried to call you last night. You didn’t answer your pager.”

Dar let out a held breath, but knew the reprieve was only very temporary. “We were out on the boat with some very special guests.” So strange to think of, much less say. “My parents.”

“B—” Alastair started, then stopped. “Wait. B…I tho…” He stopped again. “Didn’t um…I thought I remem…we sent…ah…”

“They made a mistake. He was MIA and he came home.” Dar smiled at the fighting fish, who blew bubbles at her.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me? Do we always have to talk only about disasters?” Alastair blurted, indignantly. “Dar, that’s wonderful. I only had the pleasure of meeting your father the once, but I thought he was a wonderful guy and I was really sorry to hear something had happened to him.” He paused. “That’s great news.”

“Thanks.” An alert went off on her monitor and she switched screens. “Whoops. Backbones are coming up. I’ve gotta run, Alastair. If I’ve only got a few days left, I want to make sure this damn network falls into place first.”

A soft sigh. “I’ll talk to you later, Dar.” The line went dead and Dar looked at the phone for a long moment, before she stood and picked up her jacket, then headed for the door.


Chapter

Twenty-eight

“HEY, KER!” COLLEEN’S voice rang across Bayside, and Kerry swerved around a clown blowing up balloons to find her. It was girl’s night out, and she was more than ready for it after a long, aggravating day and Dar’s grim news on top of it.

“Hey!” She greeted her friend with a hug. “We the first one’s here?”

“Yep. C’mon, let’s sit down and grab a drink before the crowd arrives.” Colleen took her elbow and steered her to a table by the bay. She took a seat and waved at a roller skating waiter. “Your usual?”

“Make it a double.” Kerry slid down and groaned. “What a bitch of a day.”

The waiter took down their order and skated off. “So. Like, what’s happening? Last time I saw you was at the bowling alley. Everything work out okay? I didn’t want to just call and ask.”

Kerry stifled a yawn. “Everything worked out great.” She rolled her head to one side and smiled. “Really great. Better than I could have imagined, in fact. Dar’s father went up there, they got together, and they came back here. We spent all day yesterday with them.”

“Really.” Colleen laughed. “That’s fabulous.” She leaned closer. “So.

When do I get to meet this mystery lady? I think Dar’s father’s a hoot, I can’t imagine what someone he’d marry would be like.”

Kerry sighed. “Well, we might be having more free time in the near future, so I’m sure we can arrange something.” Dar had tried to make light of the whole thing, but even in their brief hallway encounter, she’d picked up how upset her lover was. “Looks like that guy who was causing all that trouble may have really done it.”

Colleen gave her a shocked look. “Wait. He’s after both of you?”

“Me by association.” Kerry accepted her large, festive looking pina colada, then selected the huge chunk of pineapple and took a bite of it.

“Dar says he’s not really after her, either–he’s really after the company, but he knows he has to either have her on his side, or get rid of her to do that, and she told him to kiss her ass, so…”

“Ugh.” Colleen winced. “But where do you come in for all this?”

“Well.” Kerry sipped at the frozen drink, blinking at the kick of the rum. “Mmm. When they say a double, they mean it. Anyway,” she took Eye of the Storm 259

another sip, “he’s got this trumped up lawsuit about Dar making money off the company and taking advantage of her position. One of the things he points out is me.”

“You?”

“Me.” Kerry knew she should feel worse about the whole matter, but she didn’t. “Me, because I got my job the way I did, and the fact that we live together, and the fact that he’s got a picture of us half naked practically crawling all over each other.”

Colleen just stared at her.

“It was that party on Saturday. I told you about it.”

“The reunion?”

“Yeah. Dar dressed up like a punk and part of the deal was, I’d do the same, so I did. It was late, it wasn’t really any big deal, we were just walking out to the Harley together, and he took a picture of it. Slimebag must have been hanging out in the parking lot half the night.”

“The Harley?”

“Mmhm. Part of the costume, so to speak.”

“So…you’re not worried about all this?” Her friend leaned forward.

“Kerry, you guys could both get fired.”

“We know,” Kerry replied. “We were thinking of starting up our own company. You want a job?”

Russet eyelashes just blinked and blinked at her. “You’re joking, right?”

“No. Why should I be? Dar’s got a few bucks set aside. She knows her stuff, I know my stuff. We’ve both got a lot of good networking contacts. It’s not like systems design and support is rocket science, Col.”

Kerry sucked on her straw. “We’ve been talking about that for a while, as a matter of fact. Too much BS around ILS lately.”

“Huh.” Colleen sipped her own drink. “Wow. That’s so wild.”

“I know.” Kerry held up her glass and nodded at the waiter. “I mean, I’m not happy about it, Col. Don’t get the wrong idea. Neither is Dar.

She’s worked for them for fifteen years, for Christ’s sake.” She paused.

“And I won’t lie and say it doesn’t hurt, I mean, I’ve done a good job for them and I know it.”

“Kick ass, if you ask me.”

Kerry smiled. “And to make it worse, that new network Dar’s been busting her ass over for the last couple month’s about ready. The new servers came on line today and she couldn’t even enjoy it. It made me really mad. That system is killer, Col. Dar did such a fantastic job on the design and implementation. It’s got everything.”

“I heard my bosses talking about it.” The redhead nodded. “Clyde was saying he can’t wait to get switched over. It’s supposed to improve our processing speed by over forty percent. He was practically drooling right there in the elevator.” She exhaled. “That whole thing must sting like hell, then.”

“Yeah,” Kerry murmured sadly. “I feel so bad. She was so excited about the project and now she said today it’d at least be nice to see real 260 Melissa Good production data running on it before they lock her out of the systems.”