Another flick brought the volume up.

“A winter storm warning has been raised for the Northeast,” the man on the screen was saying. “New York is expecting snow and freezing rain, so tonight’s a good night to be staying inside.”

Dar snorted. “Thanks, buddy. Now I don’t even have to make up an excuse.” She glanced at her mail. “Glad your flights going the other direction after all.” She finished typing and hit send. “No sense in both of us getting dumped on, huh?”


Chapter

Two

KERRY SETTLED BACK in her seat and debated whether or not to take out her laptop. When she traveled alone, she was always conscious of who was sitting next to her—idle eyes that might take in whatever her laptop screen had on display—and while the chances of her being seated next to a competitor were fairly slim, she never knew.

Her seatmate this trip was a bookish-looking young man with heavy glasses and an academic air about him. She spared a moment to imagine what his profession might be, a game she often played with herself while traveling. Professor? Probably not old enough. Research scientist? Maybe. The man solved her musings a moment later, when he tugged a pad from a notebook and started scribing lines on it in a familiar programming language.

Kerry smiled and leaned back. Figures. Another nerd. She lazily eyed the dark window, observing the clearly not twinkling stars outside. She leaned a hand against the glass to shade the light and peered out, amazed as always at the complete explosion of lights spread so thickly across the sky. Below her stretched only dark land, an occasional brief island of light indicating a city. Far off in the horizon they were traveling toward, she could see a line of darkness shot through with lightning that had to be the storm front the Weather Channel had promised.

A slight clank caught her attention, and she turned her head to see the stewardess standing there, waiting to take her dinner order. “I’ll take the filet, thanks.” Kerry gave the woman a brief smile. “And if you have a beer?”

“Heineken all right?” The woman wrote down the order. “Be right back. And you, sir?” Kerry’s seatmate ordered the filet as well, with a whiskey and soda. That was interesting, Kerry thought, as she folded her hands over her stomach and stretched her legs out, crossing them at the ankles. Whiskey and soda always sounded like something her father would order, not someone of her own generation or younger.

“Do...you fly much?” the young man asked diffidently.

“Unfortunately, more than I’d like to,” Kerry replied politely. “It’s not for pleasure.”

“Oh.” The man wiped his hand off on his neatly pressed wool pants Red Sky At Morning 21

leg and held it out. “Josh Abbot. I just started working for Intelsat, and this is my second trip in a week. I’m not sure I like it.”

Kerry took his hand and returned the grip. “Kerry Stuart. I work for ILS.”

He brightened. “Really? Wow! So you’re headed to Chicago for the snafu with that new data center, huh?”

Blonde eyebrows shot up past Kerry’s hairline. “I wasn’t aware we’d released that to the press,” she commented.

Josh at least had the grace to blush. “No, well, I...um...” He looked up in startlement as the stewardess offered him a hot towel, taking it mechanically and looking at it as if it was a small dead white animal. “I heard my boss talking about it. I’m sorry; I should have watched my mouth.”

Kerry took her towel and carefully washed each finger with it, considering her options. “Well, it’s a small industry, right?” She gave the man a reassuring smile. “Who’s your boss?”

Josh chewed his lower lip unhappily. “Is he going to get in trouble?”

The green eyes facing him twinkled a little. “How intimidating do I look?” Kerry chuckled. “No. He won’t get in trouble.”

With a sigh of relief, Josh glibly coughed up the name of his boss, his boss’s boss—who’d told his boss—and the secretary who worked for the boss’s boss who was married to an ILS admin fairly high up in their sales department. Jose, you are so dead meat. Kerry decided, handing her now cooled towel back to the stewardess. “It’s not as bad as it sounds, really...just some incompatibility with infrastructure.”

“Oh.” Josh nodded. “So, you’re going to go fix that?” He gazed at Kerry with new interest. “You one of their tech people?”

“Something like that,” Kerry agreed solemnly. “You’re a programmer?”

He nodded again. “Yeah. I just graduated from Georgia Tech. I’m working on this neat new application for the control of our sats, so they can squeeze more bandwidth out of them.” He held up his pad. “I kinda hit a snag, though. I’m not really sure how to write this one little routine.”

Kerry gave him a suggestion. “Try that. It’s what we use on our big routers.” She sat back as her dinner was delivered, opening her lap tray and spreading the provided linen napkin neatly across her thighs. Hmm.

She reviewed the tray the stewardess set down. It contained a plate with a petit filet mignon on it in some kind of nice smelling burgundy sauce, and what looked very much like a decent sized blob of whipped mashed potatoes. And a broccoli floret, for those who had inescapable attacks of food guilt. Kerry solemnly consumed the broccoli, then turned her attention to the steaming beef.

“Wow, that works. Cool.” Josh laughed. “Hey, Ms. Stuart, are you married?”


22 Melissa Good Kerry’s hands stopped in mid-cut. “Why?” She gave him a look.

“You wanna be? I think I love you,” Josh burbled contentedly, making scratch marks on his pad.

A sigh slipped out. “Sorry, I’m taken.” Kerry resumed cutting her meat and took a bite.

“Yeah, yeah, but do they appreciate you for your mind, like I would?” Josh seemed totally absorbed in his program now, hardly aware of what he was saying. “Or are they just out after that pretty face?” His tie drooped into his burgundy sauce, but the sartorial accessory could have been a cobra for all he’d noticed.

“Well...” Kerry drawled, taking a swig of her beer, “my girlfriend thinks I’m sexy, but says she married me for my brains.”

“Damn. Just my luck.” Josh scribbled a few more symbols, then stopped cold, blinked, and turned his head slowly to look over at her.

“Did you just say what I think you just said?”

Kerry nodded and smiled, curious to see what his reaction would be. She wasn’t generally so out there about her relationship, but since they were 35,000 feet up, and he was proposing...

“Ever consider a threesome?”

Ooh. It was Kerry’s turn to be surprised. Imagine that. I thought he was a pinhead. “No,” she laughed, “but that’s a great answer.” They grinned at each other, and Josh sat back, putting his pad away and starting in on his food. After the stewardess removed their trays, they talked about programming, comparing techniques until Kerry was suddenly distracted by a flash just outside.

“Whoa.” She had turned to peer out the window when the plane dropped out from under her and rocked to one side, sending people and crockery flying. Kerry felt her stomach flip as the craft leveled, then a scary vibration started, and the plane rocked from side to side as lightning flashed past the window.

Oh boy.

“Hang on, everyone!” the lead stewardess yelled. “Hang on!”

“SO,” BOB STROLLED along next to Dar, having coaxed her out for a short walk near the hotel, “you don’t like cities, huh?”

Dar dodged a stumbling man who was singing to himself and moved smoothly up onto the sidewalk. “Not particularly. We don’t have a city in Miami, just a banking and government center surrounded by suburbs.”

“Ah.” Bob spread his arms out. “C’mon, you can’t beat this atmosphere. This is the most exciting, most vibrant city on earth.” He pointed. “Look at that building. Isn’t it incredible?”

Dar obediently tilted her head and reviewed the building in question. It was large, yes, and the twenties architecture was eye-catching, but... “You know what I hate about cities, Bob?”


Red Sky At Morning 23

“What?”

“They smell.” Dar rubbed her nose. “And as big as these damn buildings are, all the rooms in them are smaller than my bathroom at home.”

Bob put his hands on his hips and regarded her. “Boy, you really know how to take the wind out of a guy’s sails, you know that, Dar Roberts?” His face curled into a rueful smile. “Here I am, trying to paint a lovely, romantic vision of my favorite place, and all you can think of is a few measly scents and floor space?”

Dar shrugged one leather-covered shoulder. “I’m not really the romantic type,” she drawled. “Will you settle for dinner and a drink with a nice view?” She pointed to a second-floor dining room that overlooked the busy street.

“Oh, that place?” Bob waved her off. “C’mon, you’re more adventurous than that, I bet. Here’s where I was going to take you. It’s a great little place. Fantastic food.” He pointed her toward a tiny stairwell in a dark corner that led below street level. Dar stopped cold and felt him run into her back. “Hey!” Bob bounced off, surprised. “What’s wrong?”

“That goes underground,” Dar stated flatly.

Bob glanced at it, nonplussed. “Well, sure. It’s in the basement.”

“I don’t do basements.” Cool blue eyes flicked to his face.

“What do you mean, you don’t do basements? What the heck do you do at home when you have to go below the bottom floor, Dar?” Bob seemed thunderstruck.

“I swim. We have no basements in Miami,” Dar told him crisply. “If you think you’re gonna get me to go down those stairs, think again.”

There was a pause. “And before you think again, I bet Alastair never mentioned my interest in martial arts.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, take it easy, lady.” Bob held up both hands and laughed. “Okay, I got the message. C’mon...I know a good hot dog stand out on Fifth Avenue that’s got a great view and no enclosed walls.” He put a careful hand on Dar’s back and guided her back toward the street. “And no, he never did mention that, as a matter of fact.”

Dar relaxed a little and spared him a half grin.

“He never says much about you at all, you know...just that you have more brains than is really safe for one person, and you take the word ‘attitude’ to a new level of meaning.” Bob chuckled. “You willing to be more forthcoming than that?”

“No,” Dar replied coolly. “When I talk about my personal life, I usually get the specifics thrown back in my face at a staff meeting sometime. No, thanks.”

Bob sighed. “All business. Your reputation’s completely intact on that front.” He gave her a resigned grin. “How about a burger and fries?”

“Lead on.” Satisfied with the acceptance of her ground rules, Dar 24 Melissa Good put her hands behind her back and strolled after the sales executive, watching the stream of people crowding the street.

They walked down a set of shallow stairs and ended up in an outdoor café, small tables on a patio that faced Rockefeller Center.

Dar eyed the handwritten menu and chose a sandwich and French fries, giving Bob an agreeable nod when he suggested a bottle of wine to go with it. She let her eyes drift across the scene, taking in the noise and the lights and the people going by. Now they, she acknowledged frankly, were interesting, and very different from what she was used to in Miami. The voices around her were different as well, sharper and more staccato.

“Dar?”

Dar turned and graciously bestowed her attention on her host.

“Sorry, did you ask me something?”

They talked about business for a while as they munched their way through the very good sandwiches and half of the wine. Dar managed to relax a little, aware that the almost overwhelming intensity she’d felt from her co-worker the previous night was muted, and he was, to her surprise, on his very best behavior.

She remembered Alastair’s warning and wondered. Her hand shifted, swirling the sweet, heavy white wine in its glass, and she took a sip, enjoying the taste she seldom indulged in. “Did you see the presentation today?”

Bob laughed, leaning back and crossing an ankle over his knee.

“Definitely unconventional, I’ll give you that, Dar. Most of the time, I sleep through three-quarters of Al’s speeches. I know them by heart. We did this for the quarter, we were supposed to do that, we took this charge, made that bonus...” Bob swallowed a mouthful of wine. “Not like he comes in and says, well folks, this quarter we lost the farm, don’cha know.”