Hurricane Watch - DK2 (41 page)

Melissa Good

The silky strands crackled with the dry air, and clung to the brush, winding themselves around her hands as well. ”Ack, one nice thing about Miami, you don’t get this much.” She patiently untangled herself, meeting the watching blue eyes with a grin as she fluffed the usually disheveled bangs. ”Your hair would look pretty in braids. Want to try them tomorrow?”

Dar blinked at her, obviously surprised at the question. ”Um, sure.” She straightened as Kerry finished. ”If I can do yours.” She gently tucked the blonde hair back into a tail, studying the effect.

Kerry smiled, loving the feel of Dar’s fingers in her hair, as they brushed against her sensitive scalp. ”You’re on,” she agreed happily.

”It’s a vacation, right? We can do whatever we want.”

”Yep.” Dar put an arm over her shoulder, and nudged her towards the door. ”C’mon, they’ve got some really good roast beef.”

”Oh yeah?” Kerry obligingly slipped an arm around her waist.

”With gravy?”

”Uh huh, and killer mashed potatoes,” Dar promised. ”And homemade ice cream for dessert.”

Kerry let out a little moan. ”Uh oh. I’m in trouble,” she lamented.

”I’m a sucker for homemade ice cream.”

”Yeah, me too,” Dar agreed sheepishly. ”But it’s vacation, remember?”

”Mm, good point. How much trouble can we get into in two days, anyway?”

“DAR?” KERRY’S VOICE floated out of the darkness, as they made their way back after dinner. It had gotten colder, and the sky seemed razor sharp, the inky blackness drenched in pinpoints of light so numerous you could hardly see the constellations.

”Yeah?” The taller woman ambled along contentedly, sucking on a mint.”If I explode, is that covered under worker’s comp?” Kerry asked idly. ”God, that was good. That chef is positively dangerous.”

”Don’t explode,” Dar objected. ”Do you have any idea the amount of paperwork I’d have to fill out if I had an employee explode on a business trip? I’d have to spend hours and hours in CAS.” She paused, and moved her mint from one side of her mouth to the other. ”Not to mention having to explain to Mari how I, a responsible corporate officer, allowed such a thing to happen.”

”Allowed?” Kerry snorted. ”You were feeding me maraschino cherries, you fink. You aided and abetted.”

A soft chuckle. ”Hmm, that’s true. Maybe I could claim I was performing research and development.” She slipped an arm around Kerry and ducked her head, kissing her gently. ”So, we’ve got a couple of choices. We can take a run up the mountain for some skiing, or hike,
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or go out on the lake, or do a little riding. What’s your poison?”

”Well.” Kerry steered her up the steps to their cabin. ”I think we’d better give your knee a rest from skiing.” She patted the body part in question. ”And that kinda goes for hiking too. So maybe we can ride in the morning, and go out on the lake in the afternoon?”

That would work. Dar opened the door and exhaled. ”Sounds good to me.” She’d always mostly gone on solitary hikes up here to small caves just up range for some pensive solitude. It would be strange to have Kerry along.

They went inside and Dar spent a few minutes in the bathroom before coming out to find Kerry efficiently stacking wood in the fireplace. ”Whatcha doing?”

On one knee, Kerry turned and regarded her. ”Making a fire.” She put another log in place, then tucked some tinder inside it. ”I know that’s an alien concept for you, Dar, but it can be very cozy.”

”It’s not alien,” Dar protested. ”I’ve been outside Miami, remember?” She studied what Kerry was doing. ”I’ve just never had to actually, um...” She waved her hands a bit descriptively. ”Make one.”

She knelt. ”What’s that?”

”Moss.” Kerry packed it between the logs. ”It makes the logs burn.”

She looked around. ”Do you see any matches?”

”Um, no, but I think you use this.” Dar took down a flint and striker from over the mantel, and offered it to her. ”Right?”

Kerry giggled. ”Not in this century, Dar.” She stood, and put her hands on her hips. ”I think I’ve got some, hey!”

Dar had studied the items, then cocked her head, and positioned the striker, smacking the flint against it with devastating efficiency, and sending a shower of sparks down onto the neatly packed tinder. It obligingly caught fire, and started to burn, little tendrils of smoke wafting up. Dar spread her hands out, and looked insufferably pleased with herself. ”Like that?”

”Son of a bitch.” Kerry marveled. ”I’ve never seen a twentieth century human being actually do that before.” She regarded her boss.

”What other hidden skills do you have?”

Dar chuckled, returning the tools to their place, and getting out of the way as Kerry gently blew on the flames, and shepherded them into a crackling blaze. It was nice, she decided, regarding the flickering light and holding her hands out to the warmth as it grew. Behind her there was a low couch, covered in colorful throws, and she settled into one corner. She wriggled into a comfortable spot and looked up as Kerry joined her, the blonde woman tucking one leg under her as she seated herself.

They both watched the fire grow, in a friendly silence that was broken when Kerry shifted, taking a breath and studying her hands, before she looked up at Dar. ”I think we’re going to have fun this weekend,” she started, tentatively, planning her words with care.

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A smile pulled Dar’s lips. ”I hope so. It’s been a long week, huh?”

”Yes, yes it has,” her lover agreed quietly. ”A lot’s happened.”

”Mm,” a very soft murmur.

”I want to have a fun weekend. I think we both need it.” Kerry felt the words getting out of her control a little. ”I mean, well. I’ve got something I wanted to talk to you about before we... I...” She stopped, sensing something, and looked up, seeing an unguarded look of quickly veiled fear in Dar’s eyes. Her train of thought derailed in reflex. ”Why do you do that?” she asked, instead.

”Do what?” Dar replied, with forced nonchalance.

”Expect the worst all the time?” Kerry asked.

A quick head shake. ”I don’t. What do you mean?”

”You do. I saw it in your face just then. You don’t know what I’m going to tell you, but you think it’s something bad. Why, Dar?” Kerry asked, very gently. ”Have I done something that makes you worry about that?”

Dar looked trapped. She turned her head and knitted her fingers, long digits twisting around each other in upset. She hadn’t expected Kerry to ask. Not like this, not...

Not so soon.
”I...you didn’t do anything, Kerry,” she finally muttered. ”It’s my hang-up. It has nothing to do with you.”

”Of course it does.” Kerry felt her way gingerly, putting a casual hand on Dar’s knee. ”If it’s part of you, it has everything to do with me.” She could sense Dar withdrawing and the dark haired woman exhaled unhappily, and folded her arms, tucking her hands against her sides. ”Please talk to me,” she asked, simply. ”I want to understand. I don’t want to hurt you.”

It took a long

moment, as Dar stared into the flames, their flickering light outlining her sharply planed features in exotic detail.

Then she apparently made a decision, as she nodded slightly. Her head turned, and the ambered blue eyes regarded Kerry seriously. ”There’s no really simple answer to that, I guess.” She sighed. ”I’m not very good at discussing myself. I try not to think about why I do what I do most of the time, it just gets too strange.”

”Mm,” Kerry murmured encouragingly, hoping by the time Dar finished telling her whatever it was, she’d have the guts to go ahead with her own issue.

”I guess you know I haven’t been really successful in relationships,” Dar continued, awkwardly. ”I don’t know, it’s probably my fault. I get so driven. I get so caught up in work, and...” She stopped, and shrugged a little. ”Anyway, I was in my senior year at college. I’d just figured out my orientation. That was a shock.” She exchanged grim little smiles with Kerry. ”At any rate, I don’t know, I guess I must have been a dreamer when I was a kid, always expecting things to be like the books. I guess I...” She stopped, trying to find words.

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Kerry just stroked her leg, gently.

”I, um, I guess I fell in love.” Dar said it as thought she wasn’t sure.

”And, I was this idealistic kid, and I’d read about fairy tales. Mostly, I guess I thought that’s what it was going to be like. I threw everything I had into it. I figured I’d found my future.” She thought back to that golden fall wistfully. ”I remember being deliriously happy.” A pause.

”Stupid. I know.”

Kerry’s eyes closed in empathic understanding.

”Anyway, I um, it went along great for a while. She was older than I was, really pretty successful in school. I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I belonged to something, to someone for the first time ever.” Dar’s voice was gentle, almost abstract. ”I figured she felt the same way I did, so one day, I remember it was a Saturday, we were supposed to go to the movies.”

Kerry picked up a walnut from the dish, and fingered it, her body tensing against what she knew was coming. ”Yeah?”

Dar shrugged. ”I told her how I felt, how I wanted to spend my life with her.”

Kerry looked up, reading a long lost pain in her lover’s face.

”And?”

The answer was almost spoken casually. ”She laughed.”

The sharp crack startled them both, making Dar jump a little. She stared at Kerry, who blinked, and looked at her hand, where shards of walnut were tumbling down. She opened her clenched fist to reveal the cracked nut and sighed. ”Sorry.”

A tense little smile caught Dar’s lips. ”Anyway, she proceeded to tell me just how deficient I was in all aspects, and how she wouldn’t have been caught dead with me at any place other than one of our local pool halls.” Dar looked down at her hands. ”She said I was

unsophisticated, which I was, and uncultured, which was also true, and that I’d never have a relationship based on anything other than mutual bed sports because I just wasn’t emotionally capable of it.” This last with a wry grimace. ”And she was right.”

”She was not,” Kerry shot back angrily. ”She was a stuck up piece of horse’s ass without the sense that god gave a dead hedgehog, Dar.”

The taller woman laughed gently. ”I know that, now,” Dar stated softly. ”But the kid I was then didn’t.” She looked lost, and very bleak.

”And I believed her. I think some parts of me still do,” She admitted lowly. ”So that’s where that reaction comes from, Kerry. There is a part of me that remembers what she said, and what she told me about nothing being permanent, and how people really just use each other until they’re ready to move on.”

A pause. ”I guess intellectually I know better, but emotionally, I’m still waiting for the other shoe to fall,” she finished, regarding the flames quietly. She decided she wouldn’t tell Kerry about the little prayer she said every night, as they were falling asleep. ”So, what’s 224

Melissa Good

bugging you?”she asked, quietly.

At least she talks about it,
Dar mused.
At least she’ll give me a
chance to try and fix things, if that’s what’s wrong. She watched Kerry
pluck at her sleeve, and noticed the slight tremor in her hands. If it’s
that simple.

”Dar.” Kerry picked up her hand, feeling the chill in it, and kissed it gently. ”I guess that brings me to my little problem.” She cleared her throat nervously. ”I, um, I’ve been really thinking about things, and about what I, about what I need in order for me to live my life, I guess.”

Dar gazed at her, with an open, haunted expression. ”Yeah?” Her voice cracked, and she wondered what was coming.

”And, see, I’ve got this—I’m not really sure what you would call it—maybe it was the way I was brought up. I dont really know.” She sucked in a breath again. ”God, I’m having such a problem with this. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. You’d think I could just spit it out.”

She stood, and paced back and forth, visibly trying to relax. ”Okay.”

She turned and saw blue eyes round with apprehension. ”Oh Dar, don'’t look at me like that. You’d think I was going to tell you I was a cross dresser, or something.”

It broke the tension, and Dar muffled a relieved laugh. ”Sorry, but the way you’re pacing, Jesus, Kerry, you’re putting me all in knots just watching you. What is it?” She swallowed once. ”I thought maybe, I thought you were maybe still mad about last week, or—”

”Last we...oh.” Kerry exhaled, thinking about that. ”Do you know what I was upset about?” she asked, seriously. ”You didn’t ask me.”

Dar blinked. ”Didn’t ask you. About what?”

”You quit. You just quit, and you did it because of me, and you didn’t ask me about that,” Kerry told her, poking her in the chest with each word. ”That pissed me off.”

”It did?”

”Yeah, it sure did,” Kerry assured her. ”We’re partners, right?”

A nod.

”Stuff you do affects me, Dar, and that surely affected me. I should have had a part in the decision,” Kerry told her. ”Or, at least you could have given me a chance to try and talk you out of it.”

Dar remained silent, thinking about her lover’s words. Bringing Kerry into the decision had truthfully never even crossed her mind.

She’d considered it hers to make, just like it had always been every time before. It was her job, and her career, after all, right? She couldn’t be expected to make decisions by committee, even by as close, and as intimate a committee between herself and Kerry.

That would be unthinkable. She looked up at the serious green eyes regarding her. ”It was a spur of the moment decision, Kerry. I had the facts, I knew my options, and I made it.” She watched the hint of disappointment color Kerry’s gaze. ”I can’t guarantee I won’t do the same thing again, given the same circumstances.” She paused a
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moment, then exhaled. ”But I’ll try to keep in mind that I have a responsibility to you, and that you’ve got a right to a say in what happens to me.” Another pause. ”To us.”

I can live with that, for now.
Kerry decided. ”Okay.” She rearranged the unruly hair scattered over Dar’s forehead. ”That’s hard for you, isn’t it?”