Stormy Waters: Book 10 in The Dar & Kerry Series (21 page)

"Mmm hmm." Dar nuzzled her hair a little. "And it's perfect now."

Aww. Kerry figured if she had a tail, it'd be wiggling big time. Ridiculous really, since they were sitting on a dirty concrete floor surrounded by humming network gear in a room that stunk of damp stone and electrons.

But who cared. "So, what's next?"

Dar left her program running while she called up her coding screen and made a few corrections. "Take another baby step, that's what." She cleared her throat a little, and continued pecking away.

"Mm." Kerry shifted and set her laptop aside. "I'm going to get a soda. Interested?" She waited for Dar to nod, and then she got up and stretched, reaching down to ruffle her partner's dark hair. "Be right back." She stepped carefully over the cables on the floor and pulled the door open, escaping from the small room into the hallway that led to the lobby.

It was after five, and the building was quieting down. The café on the ground floor was closed, and the cleaning people were beginning to pop out like night owls, starting the task of cleaning the place. Kerry walked across the mostly empty lobby toward the ground floor break room, giving the guard a wave as she passed his desk.

"Hey, Ms. Stuart." The man waved back. "You still here? Thought you were gone for the day. Michael passed by your office and said it was closed up."

"Nope." Kerry shook her head. "I'm working on a project in the main telco room." She pointed back the way she'd come from. "Probably be there a while yet. Was someone looking for me?"

"Yeah. Matter of fact a lady came to the front guard desk over there and wanted to talk to you. That's why Michael went up." He got up and met Kerry as she slowed down. "Here. She left a card."

Kerry took it, cocking her head a little puzzled over the name. It wasn't one she recognized, and she certainly had no idea what a real estate agent would want with her. "Um...okay." She half shrugged, and stuck the cardboard slip into her back pocket. "Thanks. I don't think I'm in the market for what she's selling, but who knows?"

The guard shrugged also. "Have no idea, ma'am." He cleared his throat. "Ah, do you know if Ms. Roberts is here too? I saw her car still outside, but her office is closed up."

"She's here." Kerry turned to continue her task. "We're working together on this project. You need her?"

"No ma'am." The man shook his head. "Is that the security zone in the inside corridor?"

"Yep." Kerry started to walk off. "We'll be there if you need us." She continued across the marble tile floor and into the inner hallway, pushing open the non-descript door and crossing from public splendor to linoleum tiled plainness in the space of a step.

It reminded her of the ship, a little--the difference between the passenger areas and the crew. Kerry stopped in front of the big soda machine, reviewing her choices. "Ah." She popped some coins in and selected a button, waiting for the bottle to drop before she added more coins, and made a second choice.

The bottle rattled down, and she opened the bottom flap to retrieve Dar's YooHoo and her own root beer. Whistling softly under her breath, she headed back out to the lobby.

DAR HAD SET her laptop down and now she was walking around, stretching her body out and easing the stiffness from sitting on the ground for so long. Above her head, the cable ladders stretched to either side, bearing their bundles of multicolor strands.

Experimentally, Dar reached up and grasped the ladder bars, pulling her body up and letting the metal take the weight of her body for a short time.

Satisfied the structure wasn't going to collapse, she took a better hold, then lifted herself up again and got her legs up over the top of the ladder, hooking them securely through the rungs.

Then she released her arms and hung down, letting her spine relax. "Ahh." She let her hands dangle as she flexed them, feeling the soft pops as her vertebra eased into place. It felt good, and was something she hadn't done in a long, long time.

Since the weekend she'd spent in this very room upgrading every piece of equipment in it, in fact. Dar swung back and forth a little, enjoying the motion and the memories. She'd just been a tech then, before she'd decided to move into management.

Looking back along that curve now, Dar found herself wondering a little if that move had been the right one after all. Here she was, years later, right back in this closet doing something she could have easily paid an entire roomful of programmers to do instead of getting involved.

So why was she doing it? Just to have something to do and stay out of Kerry's way? Dar grimaced. Oh that was an attractive thought. Maybe she'd let herself be promoted past her competency, like she was always accusing Jose of.

Ah, Dar. She sighed at herself. You can't really complain, can you? After all, if you'd stayed a grunt, chances are you'd never have met Kerry, right?

No, probably not. Dar swung back and forth a little more, and thought about how much more she'd gotten done after Kerry had joined her today. She'd been less restless, and more focused, and suddenly it occurred to her that the more she separated herself from her partner and her projects, the more antsy she tended to be.

It was so obvious, once she'd thought of it, that she almost slapped herself on the head. "Damn." In her efforts to distance herself from Kerry's efforts, and let her partner fly on her own--was she sending herself down the stupid path?

Didn't they really work better as a team?

Didn't they?

The outer door opened, and she was graced with the sight of her lover from an interesting perspective. "Hi."

"What are you doing?" Kerry walked in and set the sodas down before she came over to where Dar was hanging like a bat. "You have no idea how funny you look."

"Just stretching." Dar said. "It's good for your back." She reached out and gave Kerry a poke in the belly. "Join me?"

Kerry studied her, and grinned. "If you say so, honey. I'll take your word for it. Last time I did that I fell out of a tree and my mother nearly had me hogtied for a month. Wasn't a pretty sight."

Dar reached up and caught hold of the bars, reversing her position and letting herself down onto the ground again. She reached around Kerry to pick up her Yoohoo bottle, ending up in an intentional hug as Kerry bumped up against her. "You're always a pretty sight."

Kerry wrapped her arms around Dar and gave her a powerful squeeze. "And you're the best thing my ego's ever, ever had." She sighed. "Dear god, you make me feel ten feet tall sometimes, Dar."

Dar nodded a little to herself, and accepted the fact that her judgment had been off. It happened sometimes, but in this case, she had an idea of what to do to correct it.

"Mm." Kerry hesitated. "Dar..."

"I think I like it when we work together." Dar commented casually. "Even when we're not on the same project I like having you here."

Unexpected, but startlingly identical to the words running through Kerry's mind as well. "Wow." She murmured. "I was about to say the same thing." She let her hands rest on Dar's waist. "You know something? I think that's why I've been so rattled over this ship project." She looked up. "Dar, I don't need you holding my hand on it." A sigh. "But I want you there. I want us to beat them. Not just me."

"All right." Dar leaned her forearms on Kerry's shoulders and touched her forehead to Kerry's. "And I want you guiding me on this security package. I need your judgment."

The concrete and steel suddenly became magic, framing the moment indelibly. Kerry felt an impish grin forming on her lips, smothered a moment later when Dar kissed them.

She sincerely hoped there weren't any cameras.

"URGF." Kerry took a breath and continued her sit ups, the roll of thunder percolating into the island's gym. Behind her, she could hear the soft clank as Dar did leg presses. She resisted the temptation to move from her current exercise to that one.

Sit ups were definitely not her favorite things. They made her back ache, for one thing, and since she was now using an incline board, they were just plain hard to do.

Still, she kept them up, resolutely closing her eyes and concentrating on the positive results she knew she'd get by completing her self-imposed sets.

The rain outside had canceled their morning run, and they'd decided on a work out to replace it--possibly suffering from some mutual guilt brought on by consuming an entire baking pan full of rice crispy treats the night before.

With fudge. Kerry blinked her eyes open, scattering a fine mist of sweat as she regarded the stolidly boring ceiling. She let her back rest against the padded surface, breathing deeply as she waited for the burning ache to dissipate from the muscles that lined the front of her stomach.

"Ker?"

"Uh?" She grunted.

"You okay?"

"Just resting." Kerry extended her arms over her head and stretched her body out. Her bare legs were hooked around supports at the end of the board holding her in place, and she flexed her thighs a little, watching the skin tighten and relax.

"Thought you didn't like doing those." Dar commented.

"I don't. But I do like having a six pack." She patted her belly. "Do you know how horrified my family would be if I told them I did?"

Dar merely chuckled.

"When I went home the first time," Kerry said, "I took my shirt off in front of my sister, and she started teasing me about being She Ra. You remember She Ra, Dar?"

"Bwahhahahaha."

"Uh huh. I used to have a plastic sword, and everything." Kerry chuckled. "Until my parents found it and threw it out."

They both stopped chuckling. Dar cleared her throat. "I think...I first started to be aware of the way I looked when I was around thirteen or fourteen or so."

"Mm?" Kerry took another breath, and started in on her sit ups again. "Puberty?' She grunted.

Dar got up and went to the free weights, picking up a triceps bar and starting some curls as she walked over to be nearer to Kerry. "Yeah. Killer growth spurt. I grew...almost five inches in a year and my whole metabolism went nuts."

"Uh huh." Kerry agreed in sympathy.

"I started eating like a horse, and figured if I didn't start working out, it was all gonna stay on me like it was on a lot of my classmates." Dar related. "So I did."

"Sensible decision."

"Yeah." Dar chuckled. "Except I went to the base gym, and worked out with all the guys. I didn't know I wasn't supposed to use the same weights they were using, and my mother walked in on me one day while I was dressing and nearly had a fit at what I looked like."

Kerry snickered, but kept crunching.

"Hey, I thought it looked good." Dar mused. "And the guys all sure respected me."

"I bet." Kerry finished her second set and pulled herself off the board, escaping gratefully to the lat pull down machine. It was angled perfectly so that she could see Dar while she was doing the exercise, and she studied her partner's body as she started the new routine.

Dar had definitely grown into her height. Her shoulders were broad, and rounded with muscle, and that extended down her arms to corded wrists that were currently tensed as she did her curls. Yet, her skin fitted over her body in supple curves, never giving the impression of a bodybuilder's starkly ripped muscularity at all.

Kerry liked that. She liked the impression of strength Dar had without looking at all masculine, and she'd consciously or unconsciously patterned her own aspirations in the same direction. She'd first started noticing a difference a few months into their relationship, before she'd moved in permanently with Dar.

It had all started with a shirt. She'd been dressing for work one day, half in the dark of a very early morning when she'd pulled on a silk blouse she hadn't worn in several weeks and found the sleeves binding uncomfortably around her upper arms and shoulders.

"Huh?" Kerry turned to the mirror in her bedroom and flipped the light on, giving herself a puzzled look in the reflection. Sure enough, the fabric was pulled taut over her upper body, the length draping down over her half bared torso still unbuttoned.

"Great." She sighed, apprehensively reaching for the lowest button, and matching it with its hole on the other side. To her mild surprise, it mated easily around her waist, easing her sudden fear that her recent change of habits had added more pounds to her frame than she'd realized. "So, what the heck?"

With a touch of impatience, she stripped the shirt off, and let it fall to the dresser, studying her body in the mirror with a very critical eye. What she saw surprised her, and she straightened up a little, squaring newly broadened shoulders and holding her arms out, turning them a little as she flexed her muscles.

Holy pooters. Kerry exhaled. Under her skin she could now see visible power, bunching and moving in the lamplight as she shifted. Her shoulders had gained a cap of sinew over them and she could see the beginning shadow of an arch that extended from the points of her shoulders to her neck.

It felt very strange, and for a moment, she felt a little scared of the changes. She'd kept an image of herself in her head for so long, hammered in by her parents that this shift was almost as intimidating as the twenty pounds she'd carried home after her first year in Miami.

That had merely ended up being embarrassing. Kerry spread her arms out fully, and almost shook her head at the new shape of her outline, the widened shoulders giving her body a very pleasing taper she hadn't really anticipated.

"Wow." She finally said, letting her hands drop to her sides. "You know, I think I like this." She met her own reflection's eyes and grinned. "Wonder if Dar's noticed?"

A wink of dawn light peeked through the blinds and she put her hands on her hips, turning her attention to the problem of dressing for work. She walked back to her closet and reviewed her options. The skirt she'd intended on wearing hung there, but she pondered now what top she would go with it.

Her eye fell on a simple, tailored linen shirt with crisp lines and a conservative cut right up to the point where it became sleeveless. "Hmm." Kerry removed it from its hanger and slipped it on, the whispered chill of the air conditioning feeling slightly illicit on her bare shoulders.