Duks leaned back, biting a pencil to keep from laughing. “Dar, I heard it was a fiber cut. What happened?”
The tall woman also leaned back, crossing her legs at the ankles under the table. “Truck cut the cable. We rerouted through the regular airport T1s and shunted that traffic to a backup.”
“Oh.” Duks nodded as though he had any clue as to what she was talking Tropical Storm 151
about. “Can I have an egg roll with that?”
A nervous laugh went around the table, breaking the tension. “All right, all right, I’m the chair this week. Let’s see what’s on the agenda.” Mariana chuckled from her place next to Duks as she pulled out the previous meeting’s minutes. “Now that we have the morning crisis out of the way, thanks to Dar, we can go over more insignificant things.” She cleared her throat. “Global Volunteer day—it’s next Saturday, up in North Miami at the proposed Alternative School there. We need people to go down and clean the place up, do some painting, that kind of thing.”
“How many volunteers do we have from the field?” Evan Maitsen asked.
His department was in charge of most of the data entry, and traditionally provided a lot of volunteers for charity work.
“Um, as of today, two hundred and six,” Mariana reported. “Quite a group from Associated is coming over. Guess they want to impress the corporate types.” A laugh went around the table.
“Whose turn is it from us this year?” José asked, propping his chin up on a big fist. “I did it last year, remember?”
Dar considered a moment. “Mine, I think.” She was recalling having heard Kerry talk about her recruitment efforts earlier for the clean-up. They all looked at her in mild disbelief. She shrugged. “I haven’t done it, so it must be my turn.”
Mariana stared hard at her for a long moment, then shook her head and scribbled Dar’s name down on her sheet. “All right.” She cleared her throat, and went on to the next subject. “Remember this Friday is Boss’s Day.” She glanced around the table. “I know most you know the drill, but once again, please be careful—some people do take this opportunity to offer inappropriate gifts.”
A chuckle lifted into the air. “Yeah, I remember when someone sent Dar a set of freeze-dried bull’s cojones.” José snickered, giving Dar a sweet smile.
“What did you do with them, eh?”
Dar, who had been doodling, looked up. “Co-mailed them to Alastair,”
she replied in a deadpan voice.
Duks almost fell off his chair laughing, and the others joined in, save José and a few of his cronies. “
“Well, not all of us have to worry about our employees sending pipe bombs,” he insinuated. “Some of ours actually like us.”
Mariana glanced at him. “Fortunately for us, Dar pays people to do a job, not be her buddy,” she responded mildly. “Or we’d all be in big trouble.” She shuffled a page. “Speaking of which, let’s get onto performance reviews, shall we?”
Dar went back to her sketching, listening with half an ear to the Personnel executive’s carefully drawn-out plans. She’d spent the previous day catching up on e-mail and relaxing, sprawled out across the couch in the blessedly restored air conditioning, surprised at how unwound she’d gotten after just one day on the water. She glanced up as Duks leaned close.
“You’re in a good mood today,” he murmured in a low voice.
“Am I?” Dar inquired. “I guess I am. I had a fairly laid-back weekend.”
Duks eyed her pad, which had small pictures of fish all over it. “Did you 152 Melissa Good go fishing?”
She chuckled. “Not really. Did a little diving, though, after the storm cleared.”
He clucked at her. “Dar, you should know better than to go diving solo. I don’t want to be processing your life insurance claim, thanks.”
Blue eyes lifted mildly to his. “I wasn’t alone.”
He blinked at her in surprise, then laughed softly and shook a finger at her. “I should have guessed. No wonder you look so relaxed.”
Dar’s brow lifted. “It’s not…” She hesitated. “Not what you’re thinking.”
He just smiled at her and tapped her arm with his pencil. “Say no more.”
Silly Duks. He thinks everything has to do with people sleeping together, doesn’t he? Dar smiled to herself. It would never occur to him that two virtual strangers could get stuck together by circumstance and end up becoming friends.
That was a very satisfying thought, and Dar reflected on it a moment as a faint smile touched her face. It had been a very long time since she’d added one of those to her life. Beyond Duks, of course, and Mariana, with whom she would sometimes do occasional things—dinner, lunches, and whatnot. She’d known them for years, and they’d been out to the island a few times, but…
She sighed. An ill wind blew nobody good.
“Dar?”
By the tone, it was not the first time her name was being called, and she glanced up with a start. “Sorry, what?” All eyes were on her, curious and doubtful. “Sorry, I was going over something in my head.” She folded her arms across her chest. “What?”
“Right, well…” Mariana glanced back down at her agenda. “Now that we’ve closed the third quarter and are starting into fourth, we’ve got a couple of weeks to decide what to do with Christmas.”
“I think we should give it up and become Hindus,” Duks stated with a sniff. “Much easier. We can give everyone white rice for presents.” He waggled his pencil. “Seventeen cents a pound, remember.”
José threw a wadded-up piece of paper at him. “Godless heathen.” He snorted. Duks was well-known for his atheist leanings. “Remind me not to ever vote to put you in charge of holiday arrangements.”
“Do we have a budget this year or are we going to have to go out and sell embroidered toilet paper for funds again?” Dar drawled, sketching a lobster.
“It’s fourth quarter, what do you think?” Duks laughed. “Ah, I suppose I can squeeze some cash out of somewhere. What is it—a tree, some stuffed pigs or something, and yucca? Is that it?”
Mariana sighed. “Never mind, I’ll take care of planning it. Maybe we’ll get something other than picadillo and ropa vieja this time.” She shot a glance at José, who shrugged and lifted his hands. “Don’t worry, I’ll get at least one stuffed pig for you.”
They finished the meeting and Duks walked Dar to the door. “You open for lunch, DR?”
Dar took a breath. “Probably not, Dukky, I’ve got meetings. I don’t know when they’ll be done.” She gave him a smile. “Raincheck.” She folded her pad under her arm and headed for the stairwell, a faster way down to the tenth Tropical Storm 153
floor, where the operations center was.
“SO I FOUND three people who’ll go through certification.” Kerry took a bite of her chicken salad sandwich and chewed it. “They all live near me, so we called this place in Kendall and got a deal for four Saturdays with classroom sessions, two pool sessions, four open water dives, and one night dive.” She took a sip of ice tea. “Does that sound good?”
Dar nodded, busy with her own plate. Lunch had been much later than usual, and she was squeezing it in between meetings. “Yeah. They include equipment rental?”
“Yes, though, I was thinking of getting a piece or two of my own,” Kerry replied hesitantly. “The regulator, at least.”
“Good idea.” The executive nodded in agreement. “Mine’s a Dacor. You can get them with or without dive computers, like mine has, and with or without an octopus.”
Green eyes blinked at her in confusion. “I’m sorry? They give you octopus with your scuba gear? Uck. That’s disgusting.” She took another bite of the croissant, vainly trying to catch the flakes as they fell.