Alone.

“No. My ship’s in port.” A faint smile. “If I painted that today, there would be a break in the clouds, and the sun would be lighting up everything in sight.” Ceci exhaled in wonder. “What a difference a week makes.”

Yeah. “Wonder how big they make the engines for them things?”

Ceci looked up at him. Uh oh.

Forgot about the boy and his toys. “Um, honey?”

“Heh, heh. Yeah?”

“Don’t forget the seatbelts in the head.”

THE PHONE BUZZED. “Dar?”

The voice almost made her jump, so intently had she been concentrating on the network layout on her screen. “Yes?”

“I have Mr. Alastair on line uno.”

Shit. Dar glanced at her watch. Bastard works fast. “Go ahead.” She listened for the click. “Morning, Alastair.”

“Morning, Dar.” Her boss sounded upset. “I’d catch you on the vid phone, but I’m on the way into the office.”

“Really? How’s the weather there in Houston?” Dar morbidly tried to delay the inevitable. “It’s raining here.”

“Nice.” Alastair sighed. “I guess you know why I’m calling.”

She toyed with the notion of denying it. “I’ve got a good idea, sure.”

She put a bit of disgust into her tone. “David Asshole got home and decided to go ahead with his lawsuit.”

Alastair was silent for a moment. “I got a voice mail from him.

You’re about right, Dar. He’s filing suit against you, personally, today for a list of things, most of which I’d just laugh at, but the last thing on the list is the fact that you made decisions intended to bring you personal profit.”

“Yeah? Like what?” Dar clicked on a router and checked its configuration. “Point of fact, Alastair, since I’m a stockholder just about every decision I make is calculated to make me and all the other stockholders personal profit.”

“Meaning, you hired Kerry because you two are lovers.”


Eye of the Storm 255

“I hired Kerry before we were lovers,” Dar replied. “I hired Kerry before we were even friends.”

“You broke company rules.”

“Not then, I didn’t.”

“Sure you did, Dar. You hired her without benefit of the interview process and bypassed twenty other more qualified candidates.”

Dar was quiet for a few heartbeats. “She was qualified.”

“I’m not disputing that, I didn’t then and I don’t now, Dar, especially since she’s turned in a sterling performance the last six months. Kerry is a good employee, a great manager, and a very good choice for the position she’s in.”

“But?”

Alastair sighed. “But the point is, you did break the rules then.”

“And?”

“And the board came down on my ass like a ton of bricks after they had a session with your personnel file.”

“When was this?” Dar’s whole body tensed, but she kept her tone light. “Don’t tell me they worked over the weekend.”

“Yesterday.”

“What’s their beef? Since when do they care who sleeps with who, Alastair? You know Harby is having a public affair with that country western singer and Allan Jacobs got busted last month for soliciting underage sex on the Internet.”

Alastair sighed audibly. “Their beef is, Ankow wants to make this a very public trial, exposing what happens when you let ‘one of those people’ be in the kind of position you are.”

“He’ll lose the suit.”

“It doesn’t matter. The exposure will be there, regardless, and it’s not like we can sweep you under the carpet, Dar.”

Dar folded her hands on her desk blotter, her screen forgotten.

“What does he want?”

Another long sigh. “You, out. Me, resigning in a reasonable time period. The chairmanship up for a vote of the general stockholders.”

She leaned forward. “And?”

“And what?”

“And, what are you going to do?” A sick feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. “You firing me?”

“I’d rather cut my own left nut off,” Alastair replied crisply, dropping into an unusual earthiness. “The board is meeting Thursday night.

You need to be there. What’ll happen after that, I don’t know, Dar.” He went awkwardly silent then drew breath. “This doesn’t help you, I know, but my personal position has been, and will be on Thursday, that before, during, and now I trust your judgement implicitly, and of all the decisions I’ve seen you make, there aren’t any I regret.”

Dar’s eyes closed. “It does help, Alastair. He’s as much after you, as me. He tried to force me into trying to oust you. I said no. That’s where the lawsuit comes in.”


256 Melissa Good There was a long silence, enough for her to clearly hear the sound of the AC unit in her office cycling off and on. “Alastair?”

“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.