”Awww...” Kerry bit her lip, giving her companion a delighted look. ”That is sooo sweet, Dar. I told you he was proud of you.” She examined the huge bouquet and smiled a touch wistfully. “What a nice thought.”

Dar leaned back in her chair, bracing one foot against her desk and fiddling with her pencil, looking oddly adolescent. ”Guess so,” she replied gruffly, almost but not quite masking the little grin that trembled around her lips.

Kerry leaned over and kissed her on the head. ”You’re daddy’s little 286

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girl, all right.” She watched as Dar struggled with what was evidently an overload of emotion, then finally sighed, and gave into a broad grin.

”Here.” She handed over the coffee, then gently cupped a rose in her hand and sniffed it. ”Oh god, these are incredible. I love that smell.”

”Mm.” Dar buried her muzzle in the cup and regained her composure. ”Guess we can take them home and put them on the dining room table for a few days, hmm?”

Kerry giggled.” Thank god you’re driving, not me. I can’t imagine trying to get us and these flowers into the Mustang.” She looked past Dar to the monitor, and laughed. ”Oh wow. He did a great job with that!”Dar sighed, peeking at the screen. Mark had taken the shot from the newspaper, and scanned it in, then composed a nice looking scroll background, with little dancing Dogberts all over it. ”I’m gonna kill him for this,” she groused, then sighed. ”I have thirty two pages of mail to get through, six inches of inbox, three meetings, and I can’t even get to my desk because there’s a jungle on it. ” She paused melodramatically.

”Can’t I just go home?”

Kerry divided her inbox stack. ”I’ll take half.” She carefully moved the floral arrangement, carrying it over to the side credenza, where she set it down and arranged the flowers carefully. ”There.” Then she crossed back over and headed towards the door to her office. ”Forward me any stuff you don’t want to deal with. I’m going to get started on my own avalanche.” She looked back over her shoulder, regarding a happily munching Dar. ”Dar, at least save a few for after lunch. You’re going to get sick if you eat all of those.”

Dar licked a flake of pastry off her lips, and took a sip of coffee, then poked her tongue out at her lover.

Kerry sighed, and shook her head. ”What a little punk.” She opened the door and slipped through it, heading for her own office.

DAR RECKONED SHE would not have drawn more attention walking down the hall into Personnel if she’d been stark naked. She could feel the eyeballs following her, and if she’d wanted to, heard the comments that followed.

Deliberately she ignored them, rapping lightly on Mariana’s door.

“Come.”

She unlatched the lock and walked inside, closing the door behind her as she faced the woman behind the desk. “Morning.”

Mari leaned back. “Morning” she replied wryly. “How’s it feel to be queen?”

Dar chuckled and took a seat facing her across the desk. “Thanks for the warning.”

Mariana threw up her hands. “You don’t think we all tried to call you? What did you think those pages were, us asking what to order you Hurricane Watch

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for lunch or something? Good grief, Dar!”

“I know.” Dar leaned on the chair arm. “We turned everything off for a few days. Serves me right.”

The Personnel VP pulled a packet from her desk and tossed it across to her visitor. “That’s for you,” she advised. “Explains your new benefits, and obligations being a member of the board, and so on.”

“Mm.” Dar observed the packet but didn’t reach for it. “Keys to the private baths in there too?”

Mari chuckled. “The keycodes. We are a technology company, after all,” she said. “It really was unexpected, Dar. We were all thrilled when everything started working again—I mean... “ She gave a self-deprecating hand wave. “Most of us really didn’t understand what was going on but hearing the ops people cheering was great.”

“Long night,” Dar agreed. “Lot of hard work for a lot of people.”

“A lot of brilliant improvisation, from what we heard,” Mariana said. “From both of you.”

Dar nodded. “Couldn’t have done it without Kerry,” she said. “She definintely proved why she’s where she is.”

They both were quiet for a minute, as the multiple level of meanings filtered through.

“Alastair sent me a policy memo,” Mari went on. “You have hire/

fire for the whole operation here, complete.” She picked up a folder from her inbox and dropped it on top of Dar’s packet. “Want that to be the first one? I’ve got enough sworn statements of pretty much everything that if he sues, we’ll win.”

Dar leaned over and picked the folder up, opening it to find Fabracini’s personnel records inside. She glanced up. “José should fire him,” she said. “He hasn’t done anything but screw him over too.”

“He should,” Mari agreed. “But he won’t.” She leaned back. “He had the afternoon to spread his poison around before you saved the day. Damage was done.”

Dar shrugged. “You mean about me and Kerry?”

“That too.”

“I don’t care. Kerry doesn’t care. Alastair doesn’t care. Everyone else doesn’t matter.” Dar stood up. “I’ll take a look at this and let you know what I decide to do.” She picked up the other packet. “See you at the staff meeting.”

“That should be fun.”

Dar paused at the door and peered back at her. “For me.” Finally, she grinned, and winked at Mari, before she left and let the door close behind her.

Mariana gazed at the door, then she sighed and leaned back again.

“This is either going to be the best or the worst decision he’s ever made,” she mused. “Talk about no guts, no glory. Alastair McLean, I hope you end up swimming in glory because otherwise I’m going to find someone else’s nightmare to be part of.”


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”I’LL BE RIGHT IN.” Dar gave Mariana a wave, as she ducked into the bathroom. Fortunately, it was empty, so she spent a moment just twitching at her clothes, and giving herself dire looks in the mirror. She was wearing the gunmetal gray suit today, with a black silk shirt, the only splash of color the pin Kerry had gotten her down on the boardwalk.

Okay, Paladar. Her jaw muscle twitched. They're all in there, waiting on you. This isn't an executive committee meeting anymore.

This is a staff meeting. They're your staff now.

You are their leader.

Dar winced, and her face wrinkled up into a grimace. Ugh. The slightly widened blue eyes gazed back at her mournfully. I'm too young for this. With a sigh, she reached up and ran her fingers through her dark hair, arranging it in some kind of order, then she took a deep breath, and let it out, settling the neatly pressed fabric over her broad shoulders. Okay. How do we do the ‘tude.

Grumpy? Casual? Bitchy? Annoyed? Hey… I could say I was PMSing. She considered that for a moment, then discarded the idea.

Nah. They'd never be able to tell the difference.

She lifted a brow experimentally. How about... She let a sardonic grin edge across her face, to join the brow. Amused. Okay, I can do amused. I'll just think of them all in their underwear.

The grin widened. And I've seen some of them like that, too. With one last look, she left the bathroom and headed into the executive conference center, where the rest of the upper management staff was waiting.

”Where in the hell is she?” Duks whispered, nudging Mariana with one knee.

The Personnel VP glanced at him. ”She’ll be here in a minute.

Would you calm down?” she whispered back, eyeing the restless group.

José and Eleanor were seated next to each other, with frosty looks on, and the rest of the staff was a mixture of excited, annoyed, scared, or just plain bored.

The door opened, and everyone stopped talking, as Dar let herself in. All eyes fastened on their new CIO, who strode across the room with a smooth, powerful stride, and took her end chair in a blizzard of self-confidence that simply rolled down the table at them.

In silence, Dar let her icy blue gaze go from face to face, then a slow, lazy, amused grin pulled her lips upward just slightly.

”Morning.” Her low, richly toned voice echoed slightly in the silence.

”Let’s get started, shall we?”

Everyone swallowed, Mariana noted, astounded at the amount and quality of sheer presence Dar could produce when she was in the mood to. ”For...obvious...reasons we didn’t have a meeting last week.” Dar put her fingertips on the table, and leaned on them slightly, the fabric of Hurricane Watch

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her jacket tensing across her shoulders. ”And since I’ve got crap piled up on my desk six feet tall, this is going to be a short one.”

Silence.

”First item on the agenda.” The tall, dark haired woman gazed down the table at them. ”Every department gets a fifteen percent operating budget cut. Effective today.”

Jaws dropped.

Dar waited.

”Hold on a goddamned minute.” José stood up. ”What in the hell, Dar?”A chorus of protest rose after him, belatedly courageous once the Sales VP had broken ice, so to speak.

Dar waited. Silently. Blue eyes roving from face to face, her attitude one of quiet menace.

The voices trailed off, until they were left again in uneasy silence.

”I’m going to take that budget, and duplicate the networking hub,”

Dar continued, as if nothing had been said. ”Because, let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I am not spending another night out freezing my ass off in North Carolina jury rigging some goddamned patch panel to run this company off of.”