“Oh. Oh, Dar. Yes. Thanks.” The man’s voice sounded harried. “I was just putting the last bit of a new proposal together. Listen, I’m glad you’re here.”
That’s new.
“What’s up?”
“They’ve asked us to come in with a bid tomorrow, but they’re bringing us and the team from IBM in at the same time. Kind of like a face-off.”
“Oh, really.” Dar pulled off her other sneaker and rubbed her toes.
“That’s different. They expected us to arm-wrestle it out or something?”
“I don’t know,” John answered with a sigh. “But I’ve been getting my tail kicked by their team leader. I understand you know him?”
“Oh yeah.” Dar chuckled. “You could say that. He certainly won’t be glad to see me, let’s just put it that way.” She unbuttoned her vest and stood up.
“Listen, mail the proposal over to me, and I’ll take a look at it. What time’s the meeting tomorrow?”
“It’s at ten, at the admin center,” he answered with audible relief.
“Michelle Graver’s in charge of their negotiating group. Dar, she’s vicious.”
He cleared his throat. “In today’s session, she brought up every major failure we’ve had in the last ten years. Not sure where she got the info from.”
“Probably from Jerry Andrews,” Dar replied as she pulled off the vest, and then unzipped her briefcase. “So it’s that kind of dirty pool, eh? All right.
I’ll give the office a call and see what reciprocal dirt I can dig up. They’ll be loaded for bear tomorrow.” She paused. “Do they know I’m here?”
“Not that I know of. Unless they track our corporate bookings in their central res system,” John replied, sounding a good deal more cheerful.
“Damn, I’m glad you’re here, Dar. Tomorrow it’ll be like walking in with an 178
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Uzi under my arm.”
Dar snorted. “Thanks.” She plugged in the laptop and connected the modem cord to the spare jack on the side of the phone. “Actually, make sure there’s room for two more. I have my new assistant with me as an observer.”
“Oh? Great!” John replied. “Even better, we’ll outnumber them, then.”
He hesitated. “And it’ll make a better mix on the team. I’ve only got guys on this one, I think that’s annoying Michelle.”
“What about them?”
“Are you kidding? At this level bid? All guys, all blue suits, all white shirts, black ties, black shoes, and IBM tie tacks.” The account rep chuckled.
“At least we’re wearing different colored underwear.”
“Should be fun.” Dar sighed. “Send it over. I’ll be dialed in.” She waited for him to hang up, then replaced the receiver and instructed her laptop to complete a connection.
“Problems?” a soft voice asked, and she looked up to see Kerry in the adjoining doorway, dressed in an overlong T-shirt with a large, obnoxious Tweety Bird on it and not much else. “I heard that start to connect.” She pointed at the laptop.
Dar got over her gut-level response at seeing her assistant in her underwear and shrugged. “Could be. Apparently the IBM team is playing dirty pool. Not that we wouldn’t if we could, of course, but they’ve given the people here some inside info about us, and John’s having a rough time of it.”
She glanced at the screen, and then waved Kerry inside the room. “Sit down, he’s sending me over his new bid to look at.”
Kerry willingly did so, curling up on her side on the bed and handing Dar a piece of the fudge she’d been nibbling on. “What kind of inside info?”
Dar checked the download indicator. “Damn, I must have a meg of mail.
We’ve only been gone for seven hours, what’s going on down there?” She ate the fudge, then licked her fingers. “Mmm, that’s pretty good.”
“I don’t know, I left my laptop picking up. I had a bunch too,” Kerry advised her, as she handed over another piece.
“Hey, that’s yours,” Dar protested, but took the fudge anyway. “The inside info was screw-ups of ours—times when we promised something we couldn’t deliver, or had to void out of a contract due to non-performance, that kind of thing.” She started a terminal session and typed in a request. “C’mon, c’mon. Goddamn analog piece of shit lines.”
Kerry muffled a grin. Dar had taken off her sneakers and vest and tugged her shirt out, and it was appealingly rumpled-looking. “What are you going to do?”
“Get some dirt on them,” Dar replied absently, sending a bot out searching the huge database Programming had custom written for them. “Fire with fire, and all that.”
Golden lashes fluttered. “Why not just put in the best bid?” she inquired.
“Or is that an incredibly naïve question?”
Dar’s blue eyes lifted and twinkled. “Well, not naïve, just a little too, um…optimistic.” She placed the laptop on the bed and stood, stripping out of her shirt and reaching for her bag. “In an ideal world, we’d all be judged on our merits. This isn’t an ideal world.” She glanced at Kerry, who was
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studiously looking elsewhere, and managed a wry grin.
“And?” Kerry seemed to find the bedside clock fascinating.
“And I know that.” She got into her baseball shirt and pulled off her jeans, folding them neatly and tucking them inside the bag. “So you take any advantage you can find, including knocking down the other guy any way you can.”
“Hmm.” Kerry gave a small nod. “It sounds very antagonistic.” She finally looked up and pushed a bit of hair behind one ear.
“It can be,” Dar agreed, relaxing onto her side and extending her legs across the bed, while she checked the progress of the bot. She thought a minute, then started another bot, this time searching for information on Michelle Graver. She’d vaguely heard of the woman in passing. Was it with Merrill Lynch? But they’d never met, and she knew nothing about her. Not a good way to go into a bid meeting. “The IBM lead negotiator almost came over the table at me the last time we met.”
Kerry’s eyes widened. “Really? God, Dar…that’s terrible.”
“No.” Her boss looked up with a devilish grin. “It was hilarious. He couldn’t do it because when he stood up, he split his pants, and he had to sit right back down or flash the client with his big white butt.” She chuckled at the memory. “I almost hurt myself laughing.”
Kerry bit back a laugh. “I would have died. Is he going to be surprised to see you?”
“Ooo, yes.” Dar chuckled again, not a nice sound. “It also helps the makeup of the team. John thinks Michelle Graver, the lead rep for Disney, is ticked off because both we and IBM brought in all male groups.” She glanced up at Kerry. “She’s been giving John a hard time.”
“You think she’ll give you a hard time?”
Dar studied the results of the second bot. “Hmm. She might.” Her brows rose. “She’s pretty formidable on paper. She’s got a doctorate in psychology in addition to a masters in business. She’s been with them for ten years and is viewed as one of their top talents.” She turned her laptop around for Kerry to view. “Here, take a look.” She watched Kerry read, her eyes flicking back and forth rapidly. “See anything interesting?” A little test, one she suspected her intelligent young friend would pass.
“She’s a skydiver,” Kerry murmured, touching the screen with a fingertip. “That shows a certain kind of personality, doesn’t it? Someone who looks for adrenaline highs?” She said, “A risk taker.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Dar gave her an approving smile. “Good catch.”
“So, that means she probably thrives on conflict, which is why she’s staging the meeting like that tomorrow, right?” She glanced up. “It gives her a thrill to watch you guys go at each other.”
“Could be,” her boss admitted.
“So, your best bet is to stay cool, right?”
Dar chuckled. “Exactly. She’s depending on one or the other of us to lose it and give in to our tempers. And that, my friend, is not going to be me.”
My friend.
Kerry liked the sound of that. “I just sit quiet and take notes, I assume?”
“If you’ve got something to say, Kerry, you say it,” Dar answered 180
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seriously. “But think of these people as sharks. They’re looking for tidbits.
And bear in mind, no matter how civilized they seem, that there are no friends in there.”
She smiled. “Except us.”
Dar looked up from her screen and smiled back. “Yeah.”
Kerry glanced down to the bedspread, then back up. “Thanks for doing the park with me tonight, Dar. I know this is a business trip, but I had a great time.”
Dar let her head rest on her hand. “I had a good time too. Tell you what, if these damn meetings let out at a decent time tomorrow, we’ll do Epcot, and I’ll treat you to dinner in Mongolia or someplace. How about it?”
A quiet smile edged her lips. “You don’t have to do that, I can always come up here another time.”
Dar drew a pattern on the fabric, then looked up at her through dark eyelashes. “I know you can, but I also know that I won’t, so let me have my little self-delusional excuse for a quasi-vacation, okay?” she replied wryly.
“Oh, oh, sorry. Okay, I get it.” Kerry gave her a sweet smile. “Don’t worry. I promise I’ll never tell anyone you actually have fun sometimes.”
“Thanks.” Dar chuckled. “And, um, listen, thanks for going with me this morning. I really appreciated having a friendly face there.”
“No problem, I’m just glad everything turned out okay,” Kerry replied honestly.
“Me too.” Dar rolled over onto her back, but kept her head turned towards Kerry. “Feels good not to have to worry about that. I’ve always been half scared that valve would blow out on me underwater or something.”
Kerry squirmed a bit closer. “Why didn’t you have it checked out before, then?”
Dar shrugged. “Didn’t want to know, I guess.” She laid a hand on her stomach, tapping idly with the edge of her thumb. “Stupid.”
“Human,” Kerry disagreed. “No one likes to hear bad news.” She paused, then sighed. “Well, if tomorrow’s going to be a big battle, I’d better get some sleep.” She stood up and raised a hand. “ ’Night, Dar.”
Thoughtful blue eyes regarded her. “ ’Night.”
After Kerry left, a silence settled over the room and Dar was conscious of the soft hum of her disk drive as it accepted the downloads, and the gentle clicking as the air conditioning cycled on and off. Her brow creased in mild confusion. The room seemed so empty now with the kid gone. She found herself wanting Kerry back near her, even if it were only to be studying the files quietly in the corner, or standing around just talking, or… Or just being close by.
She thought hard about that.
Okay.
She took a deep breath and released it.
I’m attracted to Kerry.
That wasn’t any big deal. It happened often enough, and Kerry was as safe as a baby in a crib from any hint of impropriety from her or anything like that. Company rules were company rules and that was one line Dar Roberts never, ever crossed. She’d had relationships inside the building, sure, most of them embarrassing failures, but none in her own space.
No way.
No way, not with Kerry.
Dar found herself looking at the door between their rooms.
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And, after all, her new assistant was good looking, smart, had a great sense of humor, nice eyes, and nice body…who wouldn’t be attracted to her?
So that was normal. No problem. She could deal with that, it would disappear in time, and Kerry would never know the difference.
Dar thought about that for a long moment. It was true, she’d be able to dismiss the attraction, but there was something else there going on she wasn’t sure she could set aside so easily, not and keep working like she’d have to with Kerry. Something was pulling them together on a much deeper level. She could feel it, and she suspected Kerry could too. It had nothing to do with carnal desires, and everything to do with the peaceful, contented feeling she’d gotten on that very brief ride, with Kerry’s body snuggled against hers as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
She ached to feel it again. And that…that was scaring her. Physical attraction she could deal with. This was something else entirely. She just wished she knew what it was.
“I’M SURPRISED A meeting like this doesn’t specify armor as a requirement,” Kerry mentioned, fiddling with her cuff. “The way you made it sound.”
Dar was still in her pajamas, her head propped up on one hand, studying her laptop screen. “Okay, I think I’ve got enough dirt.” She scanned the items into her memory and nodded, then pushed away from the table and stood up, lifting her arms overhead and cracking her back audibly.
Kerry winced. “Ow.”
The executive chuckled wryly. “That’s what I get from years over a keyboard.” She went to the valet bag and removed her suit, tossing it gently on the bed and glancing at her watch. “At least we had time for a decent breakfast. That French toast is pretty good, eh?”
“Pretty good?” Kerry laughed “I could eat that every morning.”
“Ah hah, and you tease
me
about Frosted Flakes.” Dar shook a shoe at her and grinned.
Kerry grinned back, then shook her head as she ducked back inside her room to finish dressing. She looked at herself in the mirror as she slipped on her jacket and adjusted the collar, smoothing down the maroon fabric with faintly nervous fingers. It matched her slim, knee-length skirt and the comfortable shoes and contrasted with the pale gray shirt. She dusted on a little makeup, not too much, as she took her cue from Dar’s usual appearance.
Just a touch of lip gloss, a little color on her cheeks, and a tiny bit of eye shadow. “All right,” she told the reflection, who was looking expectantly back at her. “Are we ready for war?”
She poked her lower lip out and had to restrain a giggle. “You know, I’m just not the warrior type, I don’t think.” She turned her head at a slight cough and saw Dar in the doorway, dressed in a gunmetal-gray blazer and skirt, with her black Mickey shirt underneath. Her boss looked sleek and, well, dangerous in her monochrome, especially since it matched her dark hair. Only the pale, incredibly blue eyes added even a touch of color to her. “Oh, hi. You look…nice.”
“No, I don’t,” Dar replied cheerfully. “I look like a corporate shark.
Which is what I am. Shall we?”