Melissa Good - Tropical Storm

“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?

“RIGHT THIS WAY, Ms. Roberts.” The concierge gave her a sketchy half bow and indicated that she follow him. They entered the elevator, and he pressed the button for the top floor, where the hotel maintained business suites for traveling executives. “Have you come far?” he inquired politely.

Dar tore her attention from the steadily creeping floor numbers. “Miami.”

She shifted her shoulders inside her brown leather jacket. “It’s a little cooler here.”

The man chuckled and held the door open as they reached the correct floor. “That it is.”

Dar suffered his inane comments for a few more minutes as he put down her small bag, then she gave him a tip and kicked him out. As the door closed behind him, she glanced around and exhaled. Not bad, really. The suite contained a bedroom with a large king-sized bed, a sitting room with a decent-sized TV, a cluster of chairs for guests, and a fully equipped desk with pens, pencils, a dataline hookup, and an electrical outlet conveniently at waist level. She wandered over to the desk and set down her laptop case, then flipped curiously through the room service menu. The Hyatt usually featured fairly decent food, and this one had a Mexican-themed restaurant downstairs, along with the usual coffee shop and bar. “So far, so good,” Dar commented to the empty room as she paged through the rest of the hotel directory. Ah. She tapped the plastic with one finger. Health club, pool, movie, dinner.

That decided, she pulled open her bag and took out a pair of shorts, sneakers, and a cut-off sweatshirt, then flipped on the TV, checking out the movie selections. She chuckled. “Oh ho, The Rock. This is definitely looking up.”

A few minutes later, she’d changed and was back by the desk, lifting the phone and dialing room service. She scanned the menu as she waited for an answer. “Combination appetizer, steak fajitas, flan, and a coffee milkshake, please.”

“Yes ma’am,” the voice answered, after a period of scribbling noises.

“Can I have that at nine thirty, please?” Dar requested, glancing at her watch. An hour and a half should be enough to get through a decent workout and a quick swim. It would also allow her to shrug off her traveling fatigue and probably put her in a better frame of mind than when she’d left Miami.

Anything would be an improvement over that. The rest of the morning and all of the afternoon until her flight left had been taken up with staff meetings, Tropical Storm 33

both with her own department and with her peers. It had not been a pleasant experience, and by the time she’d fought her way through Miami International Airport and onto her flight, she’d been about at the edge of her temper.

Fortunately, the flight had been quiet, a commuter with no children and quick service. Dar had relaxed in her first class seat and accepted a single glass of white wine, sipping it slowly as she watched the sun slide below the horizon. The first stars were just coming out as she landed at Washington National, and she’d felt herself unwind a little, knowing she had at least a whole evening before she had to rain on Peter’s parade.

An evening she didn’t intend to waste. Dar found the gym with little trouble, pushing the door open and getting the expected silence from within.

Hotels provided the workout space as an amenity, but she knew from long experience that most business travelers preferred to relax in other ways, most having to do with consuming alcohol and watching sports in the bar.

Dar preferred the solitude of the machines, and she attacked the small, but fairly well-equipped circuit with stolid purpose, setting the weights and performing the reps according to a long-established routine. It was a good workout, and she even surprised herself with a twenty-pound advance on her arm curls which left her shoulders burning. After an hour, she returned the last machine to its resting position and stood, wiping her face off with the small towel she’d tucked into he waistband.

Satisfied, she wandered over to the scale and stepped on it, pushing the weights over with a curious finger. “Mmm,” she mused, considering a surprising five-pound drop. “Maybe I’ll have two coffee milkshakes.” A rakish grin faced her in the mirror as she stepped off the scale, remembering the office Christmas party last year when a drunken contest had started to guess her weight.

No one came close to the actual hundred and sixty pounds. Most guessed twenty or so less, though she wasn’t sure if it was the fact that most of it was muscle, and therefore was denser than they thought, or if they were just trying not to piss her off by guessing too high.

“B, with an egg roll,” she informed her reflection, then she grabbed her towel and headed for the pool. Thirty minutes later, she was padding back to her room, the towel draped over her shoulders and her workout clothes tucked under one arm. She’d figured the hotel was mostly empty, and her one-piece bathing suit was not exactly an attention-getter; it seemed a reasonable conclusion until she got to the elevator.

Already waiting for the elevator were four guys who looked like lumberjacks. Dar sighed inwardly, as she bore the appreciative stares. They were medium height, Midwestern types, wearing buffalo plaid shirts and Dockers, most of them clean-shaven, but obviously a little drunk. They stared.

Dar stared back, leaning against the wall with an air of total nonchalance.

“Hey baby, wanna come party in our room?” the redhead finally asked, with a smirk.

“No,” the tall executive replied as she slipped past them into the elevator.

She knew it was a mistake moments later when they followed her, standing between her and the door, which slid closed with a thump. Her heart 34 Melissa Good rate increased and she watched them carefully, shifting her balance so it was over the balls of her feet, putting on her most no-nonsense look.

The tallest of them, a bearded man about six feet tall, moved in. “Y’know, ya shouldn’t tease people like that.” He leered at her. “Pretty thing like you.

And then you go and tell us off. That’s not nice.”

Dar let the anger build and waited. “I was just using the amenities of the hotel. That’s not against the law,” she warned him, softly. She felt the jerk as the elevator stopped, and realized the man furthest from her had stopped it between floors. She dropped her clothing quietly onto the floor and let her hands curl into fists. “Don’t be stupid, boys.”

A hand reached for her neck, and the first man closed in, his alcoholic breath blasting her as he pushed her back against the wall.

She grabbed his hand and twisted, then nailed him in the nose with an elbow that caused blood to spurt all over both of them. A savage side kick slammed the second man against the opposite wall, and then she was by the door, ducking under the arm of the third and shoving him headfirst against the railing that lined the elevator car.

The fourth man was eye to eye with her and she snarled at him, grabbing the front of his shirt and lifting as she pushed backwards, throwing him back and away from her. Her hand slammed down on the elevator control, and the car lurched into action. They all stared at her, confused and hurting.

She arched her neck and stared back at them, then grabbed the nearest one and plucked his hotel room key from his pocket, folding her fingers around it. “I want to make sure I know who I’m going to report to the police.”

“W-we…” the tall man wiped his nose, staring at the blood in bewilderment, “didn’t mean nothing.”

“You meant to take out your horny fantasies on some poor, helpless woman,” Dar spat. “You picked a bad choice of victims this time.”

The elevator stopped on her floor, and she crossed briefly to the other side of the car, watching the men scramble away from her. She snorted as she picked up her workout clothes, then exited into the carpeted hallway, letting the door slide shut behind her.

Then she slowly let out a shaky breath and lifted a trembling hand to her eyes. She waited a minute to make sure her legs weren’t going to collapse, then headed toward her room, getting the door open and slipping inside with a sense of utter relief. She sat down in the nearest chair and let her head rest against the back of it, staring up at the white popcorn ceiling until her heart rate began to resemble something more normal. “Bastards.”

She got up and ran her fingers through her dark hair, then walked to the desk and pulled out her laptop, plugging it into power and the phone line as she picked up the regular phone and dialed with her free hand. A moment later the front desk clerk picked up. “This is Dar Roberts in 1430. I was just attacked on the elevator by four drunken idiots from room…” She paused and glanced at the key in her hand. “Room 209. I want their names.”

There was dead silence for a moment, then, “My god! I’ll call the police.”

The girl’s voice was clearly shaken.

“No,” Dar spoke slowly and clearly, “I don’t want you to do that; I want you to give me their names, and the company they work for.”

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It took about twenty minutes and two front desk managers, but she got what she wanted. In the middle of it, dinner showed up. She motioned for the tall, slim blonde who delivered it to put the tray down on the table near the bed, and waved the girl over for her signature. A brief glance at the bill, then she scribbled her name, with the appropriate tip on the bottom. “Thanks.”