“To All Corporate HQ Miami Employees—you are please to read your handbooks in the section twelve, page 23. This page is saying that you may not say to everyone bad things about the officers of the company that are not true, or we can make you the termination. There is someone who is doing this, and when this is found out, this person I will myself see the termination if these bad things do not stop. Gracias.

María.”

Dar’s intercom buzzed and she slapped at it absently. “Yeah?”

“Did you see that message?” Kerry’s voice floated into the office.

“What the heck is she talking about?”

“I haven’t a quarter clue,” Dar murmured, shaking her head.

“Whatever it is, sure pissed her off though. I’d better find her and figure out what’s going on.” She shook her head. “I’ll call you back.”

“Okay.” Kerry released the intercom button and opened her mail.

“Weird...very weird way to start the day, that’s for sure.” There was a knock on her door, and she realized Mayte must have stepped away from her desk. “C’mon in.”

Clarice entered, giving Kerry a very sweet smile before she closed the door behind her and crossed the floor to settle in one of Kerry’s visitor chairs. “Good morning.”

“Good morning.” Kerry folded her hands on her desk. “What can I do for you?”

MARK LEANED BACK in his chair, unconsciously putting distance between himself and the dangerously glaring ice blue eyes boring into his. “Hey, boss...um...”

Dar rested her hands on Mark’s desk and leaned forward, lowering her voice to a mere raspy growl. “I want to know who it was that started that story.”

Mark took a breath. “Dar, you know how hard it is to track shit like that down.” He tried to keep his tone even and calm, his mind casting for the last time he’d seen Dar this mad. Ah. That would be never. “I bet María’s message stopped it.”

Dar could feel her body shaking with rage. She knew that lack of Red Sky At Morning 137

sleep was making her hold on her temper very tenuous and that she should go back to her office and calm down before she did something extremely stupid. “I want to know who it was,” she repeated softly.

“Don’t you tell me you can’t track it down, Mark. There was X number of people in this building, X number of people on this floor, and X

number of people in the operations suite between the hours of X and X, which you know from the security log.”

Mark took his courage in both hands and leaned toward his boss, reaching out one hand and covering the fist Dar had planted on his desk.

“Okay, boss. I’ll find that out for you, if you sit down and take it easy for a minute.” There was no response in the stern mask looking at him.

He tried again, lowering his voice. “Dar, please, go get a drink of water, huh? You’re scaring the shit out of me, and I just dry-cleaned these pants.”

Nothing for a few seconds, then Dar’s eyelashes fluttered closed briefly and her body relinquished some of its tension. “Sorry,” she murmured. “But God damn it, Mark, of all the people in the company to be targeted by that crap, why her?”

Mark winced at the pain in his boss’s voice.

“Me, I’m used to it,” Dar went on softly. “I’ve given so many people so many reasons to hate me, I don’t even think about it anymore.” She took a breath. “But what has Kerry done to deserve that?”

Picked you? Mark wisely decided to not voice the obvious response.

“You know how people are, boss. They get jealous and all that crap.

And you’ve got to admit, there’s a hell of a lot for people to be jealous of Kerry for.”

Dar sighed. “Find out who it was,” she replied. “I’ll be in my office.”

Mark watched her leave, the heavy door swinging shut behind her tall form. “Sonofabitch.” He cradled his head in his hands. “Why the fuck do I always get this shit to deal with?”

“’Cause you, like, can?” his assistant Shaun ventured. “You gonna tell her who it was?”

Good question. Mark leaned back and considered. “I’m gonna let her chill for a little while first,” he decided. “Because otherwise she’s gonna haul back and take the jerk’s head off.”

Shaun pondered that. “She can kick some ass,” he eventually offered. “You think she’d just do it for real?”

Mark thought about those icy, dangerous eyes. He’d known Dar for a long time, and he’d heard the stories about her younger years. “Yeah,”

he said. “She’d drop kick him off the balcony for sure,” he added. “And I’m not into losing my bosses today. So let her chill.”

“EXCUSE ME?” KERRY felt her voice sharpen.

“I said,” Clarice drawled, “you lasted longer than any of the rest of 138 Melissa Good them, honey. Was it a getting bored thing?”

Kerry wondered if she looked as bewildered as she felt. “Clarice, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Maybe you should just cut to the chase and be specific.”

Clarice leaned closer. “Look, in this place, you can’t keep anything secret.”

“Right.” Kerry nodded faintly. “And?”

“And everyone’s talking about last night.”

She felt like she was in a dinghy, floating further and further away from the shore. “Last night?” Her mind went to her unexpected waking up, and she felt a blush color her skin. “What about last night?”

Clarice chuckled. “You obviously know. Look, they saw you meet that guy here in the office.”

The shoreline receded further. “Yeah, so?” Kerry’s brow knit in perplexity. “What about it?”

“What about it?” Clarice repeated. “Honey, do you two have, like, an open relationship? I had no idea.”

“Huh?” Kerry felt like grabbing her own head and shaking it.

“Excuse me, what in the hell does me getting picked up here last night have to do with my relationship? Which, by the way, is personal and my business, and not any of yours.”

Now it was Clarice’s turn to look a little uncertain. “Are you saying that wasn’t your lover?”

“What wasn’t?” Kerry asked.

“The man who picked you up here last night, who you had your hands all over, who you told Dar abandoned you?” Clarice almost shouted. “What the hell did you think we were talking about here?”

It was like being trapped inside a cartoon. Kerry fully expected a clown to pop out of her desk and start laughing at the absurdity of it all.

“My lover?” She enunciated the word carefully. “That guy who picked me up here last night?”

“Yes.” Clarice nodded, relieved they were finally communicating.

“Then he was.”

“No.” Kerry covered her eyes with one hand. “He was not.” She got up and went to the small bookshelf in her office, selecting a framed photo and bringing it back with her. “I think this is who you mean.”

Clarice took the picture and studied it. Kerry was standing near a wooden pylon, apparently at some dock, dressed in a pair of water shorts and a bathing suit. She had one arm wrapped around a very tall, powerfully built man, who had an arm draped over her shoulders, and she was pointing to a dangerous-looking lobster clutched in the man’s other hand.

“That’s my father-in-law,” Kerry supplied. “Andrew Roberts.”

Clarice peered at the picture, then up at her. “Honey, that’s kinky.”

Oh no... She was at sea again. “What’s kinky? The lobster? We ate it,” she told Clarice in exasperation. “He’s not my lover, okay? Would Red Sky At Morning 139

you get that idea out of your head? Yes, he picked me up, yes, I hugged him, like I usually do. Why the hell am I standing here explaining this to you?” Kerry’s voice rose. “As a matter of fact, get the hell out of my office before I throw your ass out!”

Clarice jumped up and laid the picture on the desk before ducking behind the chair. “Hey, look, I was just trying to warn you—”

“Out!” Kerry yelled at the top of her voice. “Tell all the jerks who want to know that we pay you people to provide information services, not come up with internal freaking company Soap Operas!”

Clarice fled. She turned and scuttled across the floor as fast as her heels would allow, getting around the door and shutting it securely behind her before Kerry could find something else to verbally pound her with.

For a second, all Kerry could hear was her own labored breathing.

Then she sat down in her chair with a thump. “Jesus.” She expelled her breath explosively. “What in the hell is wrong with these people?”

A soft creak alerted her, and she swiveled in her chair to face her inside door as it opened and a disheveled, aggravated, stormy head poked itself inside her office. “Have you heard the total idiocy going around here?”

Dar slid inside and walked over, taking a seat on Kerry’s desk.

“Yes.”

“Is that not the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard?” Kerry went on.

“What a bunch of total bonehead losers we have around here sometimes.” She stood up and started ordering Dar’s unruly locks with her fingers. “Honey, what did you do here, stick your head out your window or something?”

“I was outside on the balcony down the hall,” Dar admitted.

“Drinking half a gallon of milk and trying to calm down enough not to fire the entire fourteenth floor just to get rid of the jackass who started the whole thing.”

Kerry rubbed a bit of white off her partner’s lip. “Ah, so that’s what that is.” She let her hands rest on Dar’s shoulders. “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay?” Dar managed a smile. “I think so. I was more worried about you.”

“Me?” Kerry chuckled. “Dar, you forget I grew up in a very public household. I’ve had stories told about me since I was seven and got bitten by a duck while I tried to steal her chicks.” She patted her lover’s side. “Your poor father. That’s twice in one night. The lady at the car dealership mistook us for husband and wife when he dropped me by there.”

Dar blinked. “So you’re okay with this?”

“Well, I don’t like it, but I’ll live. Why, you weren’t really going to fire the entire floor, were you?” Kerry asked. “Dar?” She traced the flutter of nervous motion under the skin of her lover’s cheek. “Hey?”

A sigh. “No, I wasn’t.”


140 Melissa Good

“You okay?”

Dar gave her an unhappy look. “I have a stomachache from drinking too much cold milk, I’m tired, and I’m cranky, and I want to take a baseball bat to the person who thought you were making out with my dad.”

“Oh.”

“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, I enjoyed the play.”

Kerry touched her forehead to Dar’s. “With a start like this, the day can only get better.”

As if on some evil signal, both of their pagers went off and Kerry’s main line lit up.

THE PHONE BEEPED twice, softly, before Dar lifted her head from her hands and touched the response key. “Yes?”

“Dar, it is Mark here to see you,” María stated quietly. “Do you have a minute for him?”

“Sure.” Dar returned her chin to its resting spot on her fists and exhaled. “Send him in.” She’d given up trying to focus her overtired vision on her monitor a short time before and had merely been sitting there, waiting for time to pass and bring her to the end of a very long day.

The door opened and Mark entered, moving quickly across the floor and taking a seat across from her.

For a moment they studied each other, then Mark shifted. “You look like shit, boss.”

For some reason, that brought a smile to Dar’s face. “Thanks. It’s been a suck-filled day.”

“Yeah.” Mark nodded. “I know. Listen, that T1 you ordered for the base is in. I had them terminate it and did a loopback to make sure it’s solid. The Telco tech confirmed your hub’s onsite, and everything looks okay.”

“Good.” One thing off her mind, at least. “I’ll connect everything tomorrow morning, then I’ll need you to give me space on the big boxes to suck everything up.”

“No problem,” Mark assured her. “We’ve got the slots already allocated for you. Just let me know when you’re ready, and we’ll open the pipe.”

Dar nodded. “I will. Did Houston get their data center back up? If the payroll computer doesn’t come back online before tonight, we’re all in deep shit; you know that, right?”

Mark felt a prickle of surprise at the unusual use of an expletive, which Dar tended to avoid in her normal workplace speech. “I can’t believe the power block blew up in there,” he said. “American UPS sent a team in and they’re working on it, but so far it looks like they’re going to have to run an emergency three phase panel in just to fire the main Red Sky At Morning 141