Tropical Storm

Chapter Two

“MORNING.” DAR NODDED at her companions on the elevator as the doors slid shut and it started on its way up. She got polite murmurs back from the mostly junior staff who came in at this time of the morning. Eight AM was the start time for most of the data entry clerks and the administrative staff, and they all were somewhat in awe of her and not inclined to chatter in her presence.

She left them at lower levels and proceeded up to the fourteenth floor in solitude, waiting for the doors to open, then stepping out onto the executive level. Her office was on one corner, the windows wrapping around to give her a view of both the ocean and the skyline, and she pushed her way through the door to the outer office with a sigh. “Morning, Maria.”

Her secretary turned and smiled. “Good morning, Dar. It is much nicer in here today, let me tell you. I don’t know what miracle from Our Lady happened last night, but it is good.” She finished sprinkling a little water on the plant near her desk, then went to the small counter nearby. “I’ll get you some coffee. I’m glad you weren’t here yesterday.”

Dar smiled quietly and went into her inner office, setting her briefcase down and powering up her desk system. After three hours of sleep, coffee is definitely a good idea, she decided, sitting down with a sigh and running her fingers through her hair. The machine beeped, then requested her logon, which she provided impatiently, pressing the keys with a smooth motion. Her mail came up, and she scrolled through the morning’s messages, stopping when she saw a response from a name that was almost familiar by now.

She read it, then smiled. “Short but sweet.” And the kid has a sense of humor too, she noted, seeing the boldface. She was still smiling when Maria walked in, carrying a small tray and putting it down on Dar’s desk. “Ooo…what do we have here?” She arched an eyebrow at the secretary.

Maria looked at her with a severe frown. “Carisita is telling me Gerardo in the cleaning staff is getting these for you special, because you stay here all last night to fix everything. Is that true, Dar?”

Dar deftly snagged one of the brown, layered pastries on the tray and bit into it. “Mmm.” She loved pastelitos, the Cuban specialties that could contain almost anything, but usually featured flaky layers stuffed with cheese, or meat, or minced ham. These were the latter, but Dar had also spotted some guava and cheese, which were her second favorites.

“Dar?” Maria tapped her neatly manicured and painted a startling shade of red fingernails on the desktop.

26 Melissa Good

“Someone had to, Maria.” The executive shrugged, finishing one treat and selecting another. “Besides, these made it worth it. Where does he get them? They’re great.”

The Spanish woman sighed. “You are too much, I think.” She pushed the tray over. “Here, I have to type up those letters about the service changes.”

She bustled towards the door, closing it behind her and leaving her boss in private with her treats.

Dar read the rest of her mail while finishing the pastries and draining the large coffee Maria had brought with them. She muttered as she answered most of it, sending back terse replies, and one instance of just a single word,

“Bullshit.”

The phone buzzed. “Dar, I have Alastair on numero uno for you.” There was a slight pause, “Oh. Numero dos.”

The tall woman rolled her eyes. “All right.” She punched the button.

“How’s things in Houston, Alastair?”

“I have no idea,” the cheerful voice answered. “I’m in Troy. I hope they’re sweating their asses off down there. How’s it going with Associated?”

“Not bad. I broke the news to them yesterday, and I’m waiting for the fallout,” Dar replied. “I figure a quarter of them will just take off voluntarily and solve half my problem for me.”

A low chuckle emerged from the phone. “That’s my Dar.” He coughed slightly. “I hear we had a problem down there?”

“Minor.” Dar shrugged it off. “Some idiot backed a fork loader into the switchroom back entrance and took out six punch-down panels, along with the hardware for controlling the air conditioning.” She leaned back, crossing her arms. “I had to raise a little hell.”

“I heard,” Alastair replied. “I had the president of the building association on my line this morning. He’s an old classmate of mine.”

Connections. Dar sighed. They never ended. Whatever you did, you eventually had to hear about it somewhere down the line. “And?” She waited for the reprimand.

“And I told him he was lucky you didn’t personally come and get him and kick his ass,” the CEO told her cheerfully. “You did the right thing, Dar, good work.”

Dar absorbed the compliment with a quiet smile. “Thanks.” It didn’t happen often. In fact, she could remember hearing those words exactly six times in as many years from this man. Alastair was a pain in the ass, but he’d stuck by her all these years, and she felt more than a little quiet affection for him. “I had to do it,” she added. “Damn com center doesn’t have an AC

backup, and it’s my budget that wouldn’t let that squeak through this year.”

“Ah.” Alastair grunted. “Well, you’ve got those diesels on steroids down there, Dar. Reasonable to think that’s all you’d need.”

“Don’t make excuses for me,” Dar said. “I fire people for smaller goofs than that.”

“Sorry, Dar. Not going to fire you today. I’ve got enough problems on my plate already,” her boss replied. “Go buy yourself a chiller. Put it on my discretionary account, and tell Bea I said so. Okay?”

“Mmm.” Dar leaned back in her chair and regarded the phone with a Tropical Storm 27

faint smile. “All right.”

“Now, I got a little problem.” Alastair’s voice dropped a little. “I need you to go to the DC office, shake them up a little. Peter Weyhousen is botching the contract talks with the Pentagon. Can you take them up for him?”

Damn. “I thought you wanted me to concentrate on Associated?” she objected. “Can’t do that from DC.”

“Sure you can. You’ve got the most testosterone-laden laptop in the entire corporation, Dar,” Alastair chided her. “National’s a great place to get work done while you’re waiting…I should know.” He shifted the phone, causing it to crackle. “He’s going to lose that account, Dar, and we need it. A few days away will give Associated a chance to settle down, anyway.”

True. “I’ve got someone working on a budget plan for them. Might be good to give them a few days to work things out,” she conceded. “When are the talks?”

“Can you fly out tonight? They’re scheduled for tomorrow early. I’ll mail over the pertinent account facts and where I think Weyhousen is screwing up.

He doesn’t know you’re coming, by the way.”

Great. “All right.” A bag was already packed and kept in the Lexus for just this purpose. Peter Weyhousen was no friend of hers. It would be a wild meeting, that was for sure. “You owe me one for this, Alastair.”

The CEO chuckled. “Honey, see me at bonus time, all right?” He sighed.

“Gotta go. I’m speaking at the engineers’ conference in five minutes.”

“Good luck,” Dar told him.

“You too,” came the reply, before a click indicated the CEO had hung up.

Dar put her arms on the desk and blew out a breath. She pressed the intercom button. “Maria, I need a flight to DC late afternoon today, coming back open.”

“Dios mío,” the secretary replied. “He doesn’t let you live.” A rustle of paper. “I will take care of things, Dar.”

“Thanks.” Dar released the intercom and sat back, nibbling a fingernail.

Then she pulled her keyboard over and typed in a request to the database lying open on her desktop. A moment later it came back with a reply, and she picked up the phone again, dialing a number.

“Kerry Stuart.”

The voice on the other end of the phone sounded harassed and upset.

“Well. Good morning, Ms. Stuart. It was nice exchanging mail with you,” Dar replied evenly.

“Oh.” After a momentary pause, Kerry cleared her throat. “Hello. I, um…thank you for answering; the information was very helpful.” Her tone was guarded and borderline hostile.

Dar’s brow furrowed. “No problem. What I called for was to tell you I’m going out of town for a few days. If you have any more questions, you can go ahead and mail them, but it might be a few hours before I pick them up and address anything.”

There was a long silence and then an explosion. “Why don’t you address the bastard you sent over here?” The frustration evident in the woman’s voice spilled over into anger. “You know, I don’t know who you people think you are, treating human beings as some kind of dirt you can rub under your heels.”

28 Melissa Good

“Whoa.” Dar’s tone was stronger than she’d intended. “Hold on.” A ragged breath whispered through the receiver, and Dar could almost feel the emotion. “What’s going on?”

There was another silence. “What’s going on? What do you think is going on? Your goons are going through here ripping the place apart and disrupting everything. If you wanted to just trash the company, why didn’t you just do it?”

“Ms. Stuart…”

“Opening people’s personal possessions, locking my network people out of their offices…”

“Ms. Stuart…”

“Telling me I can’t have access to my own payroll records?”

“Kerry.” Dar spoke forcefully, almost a bark.

There was a breathless pause before Kerry snapped, “Only my friends call me that. And you are definitely not one of them.”

It was, Dar realized, ridiculous. She was the vice president of operations for a worldwide major corporation, and here was this two-bit manager of a half-rate single-city service provider telling her off.

What was really surprising, though, she admitted, was how much it hurt.

“Let me talk to Brady Evens.”

The phone was thrown down on the desk, and she had to wait, counting to a hundred under her breath before she heard two sets of footsteps coming back, and the receiver was picked up. “Here,” she heard Kerry’s voice snap, then the phone rustled.

“Brady?”

“Yeah.”

“Velvet glove.”

“Aw shit! You’re kidding my ass.”

The growly voice of her security team leader tickled her eardrums.

“Nope. I mean it,” she stated flatly. “Stuart gets VIP.”

“Dar, you don’t know what…there’s holes in here as big as my butt, and Mark’s already put a link in, for god’s sake.”

“I. Don’t. Care.” Dar barked. Her voice dropped to a deep snarl. “Just do it!”

“All…all right, okay,” Brady answered in a chastened voice. “Okay.

Sorry. I didn’t know. My papers said a regular sweep.”

“Change the papers,” Dar replied, her voice still furious.

“Yes, ma’am,” the team leader quietly replied. “Hold on.” Through the speaker of the phone, Dar heard as he clicked something. “Team lead to crew.” A splurt of static answered, along with a soft, muffled clamor of voices.

“Stop what you’re doing. We need to go to gold mode, over.”

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.

Tropical Storm 29

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 30 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 Tropical Storm 31

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?