Blue eyes flicked to her face. “It’s been a long week, yes.” Dar guided the Lexus into the parking lot of the corporate headquarters and parked under the entrance overhang, ignoring the No Parking signs. She got out and waved at the security guard as he emerged. “Just me, Jack.” The man waved back and tucked himself back into his guard station, out of the rain. Dar waited for Kerry to join her, then led the way into the building, swiping her security card at the entrance in a smooth, graceful motion.
Kerry tipped her head back as they entered the lobby, looking up through the atrium which rose the entire length of the building. “Whoa.” She hugged the sweatshirt to her, glad of its warmth as the cold air flowed around them.
“This is, um…” She tried to find a politically correct term. “Um, it’s…”
Tropical Storm 57
“Pretentious,” Dar commented wryly, as she keyed the elevator. “It’s supposed to be.” She held the door for her smaller companion, then let it close and punched the fourteenth floor, slipping her keycard in when the elevator beeped a complaint. “Lesser mortals are supposed to stand in awe in the lobby.”
Kerry leaned against the wall and stifled a yawn. “Be careful, Ms.
Roberts,” she warned. “If you keep that up, I might get the idea you have a sense of humor.”
Dar looked at her, then, slowly, the faintest hint of a grin twitched her lips. “Sorry, they make you leave that as a deposit when you get issued your keycard.” She held up the item, then gestured for Kerry to precede her out of the elevator as it reached its destination.
Dar’s office was dimly lit by her twenty-one-inch monitor, and the small desk lamp she usually worked by at night. Her screensaver was on, jungle animals prowling across the dark surface accompanied by soft sounds. As they approached the desk, a macaw cried softly, and Dar reached over and gave her trackball a spin, bringing up the worksheet she’d been looking at before she’d left earlier. “Take a look,” she offered. “I’ll get some Band-Aids.
You mentioned coffee?”
Kerry perched on the edge of Dar’s very comfortable leather desk chair and looked around. “So, this is how the other half lives, huh?” she murmured, then turned her attention to the executive. “Um…where are you going to get coffee at this hour?”
Dar looked at her. “The kitchen. Yes or no?”
A blonde brow lifted. “You have a kitchen in here? Let me guess, it comes with a microprocessor that cooks things for you, right?” She saw Dar’s lips twitch again and smiled herself. “Okay, okay. Sure. I’d love some coffee.”
“Cream and sugar?”
Kerry sighed. “If I’m being good, I should say no and no, but I hate the taste of coffee, so yes and yes.”
Dar snorted softly and disappeared.
The blonde turned her attention to the monitor, but not before she looked around, taking in the huge office with wondering eyes. The desk was smooth wood, its surface covered with reports as her own had been. The carpet was a thick burgundy, and there was a long, low-slung couch to the right. The entire back wall was glass, and looked out over the bay to the ocean, right now showing the brilliant flashes of lightning and the thick swaths of rain that lashed against the clear surface.
It smelled of wood polish and wool from the carpet, with a faint hint of the perfume she’d noticed that Dar wore. That the shirt wrapped around her body also bore. She decided she liked it.
Dar came back a moment later, bearing two steaming cups and a small kit tucked under her arm. She put one of the cups down in front of Kerry and perched on the edge of her desk, tucking one leg up under her and leaning forward to point at the monitor. “That’s the problem right there.” She traced a column. “Watch what happens when I plug in your scenario.” She did so, and the numbers changed. “I can’t have…” a fingertip pointed at the last field,
“…that.”
58 Melissa Good Kerry took a sip of the coffee, then peered at it. “What is this?” She licked her lips. “Mmm.”
“Café con leche,” Dar answered absently. “Cuban coffee with milk and sugar.”
“Hell.” Kerry laughed. “If they’d served it to me like this, I’d have drunk it more often.”
They spent an hour going over the various approaches, and Kerry got a much better understanding of what it was Dar was trying to do. “Oh, god, you have to show this all as an expense?” She pointed at her section. “But you can’t show any of this as a profit, because it’s past date?”
“Right.” Dar sighed, biting on the edge of her cup.
Kerry sat back, stunned. “But that’s not fair!” she protested.
Dar closed her eyes momentarily and rubbed them. “I know,” she agreed wearily. “But it’s the law.”
“What happens if you don’t make that number?” Kerry pointed at the last field.
Dar peered at the screen, blinking. “Well, we don’t show consistent growth, and the stockholders go ballistic. That means we have to show austerity measures, and that…usually means a minimum level layoff.”
Kerry thought about that. “How many people is that?”
“Between five to seven thousand,” the executive replied quietly.
Green eyes lifted to hers. “Just like that?” Dar nodded. Kerry absorbed that. “So I guess my piddly little two hundred and thirty people are kind of a minor thing,” she commented softly, as she looked up at Dar. “Nothing personal, right?”
Dar’s lips tensed, and she looked down. “Usually, yes,” she admitted.
“You don’t like to waste resources, but,” one bare shoulder lifted in a shrug,
“sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.”
Kerry studied the screen, flipping through the twelve different scenarios Dar had been working with. All save one included her solution. She let her hand rest on Dar’s knee, searching her face intently. “I didn’t understand,”
she stated quietly. “And I still don’t, not really, but thanks for trying.”
Dar glanced at her watch. “Eleven thirty. I’ve got to update this before midnight.” She stared at the screen. “Damn, I just wish I could…” She traced a column with one finger. “Some way to put a plus there.”
“Mmmm.” Kerry examined the fields. “Like you can with that Miami group—because they take on outside stuff, so you can offset their expenses.”
Dar froze, only her pale blue eyes darting across the wide screen.
“Mierda,” she whispered. “Can your people do internet support? TCP/IP?”
“Uh…um, what? Yeah, of course.” Kerry stared at her. “The entire support group runs on an intranet. We’ve got three resident webmasters. But what…” She yelped, and hurriedly got out of the way as Dar dove into her seat, her fingers racing across the keyboard in a rattle of keys.
“Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch…” the executive cursed softly. “Where are you… Ah!” She requested a screen and scanned its contents. “Gotcha.” One hand reached over and punched a series of numbers into the phone pad. It rang three times, then a voice answered. “Hello, Peter.”
Frozen silence preceded, “What the hell do you want?”
Tropical Storm 59
“I’m taking those two extra contracts,” Dar informed him. “Don’t bother protesting. Goodnight.” She hung up and hummed under her breath as she recoded the projects, giving them a new classification. A few clicks, then she drummed her fingers, waiting for the mainframe to redraw the columns.
“Ahhh…” One hand snaked out, cutting a range out and clicking over to her spreadsheet, then pasting. She recalced the document, then sat back and smiled in triumph.