All thoughts of equality and WASP sensibilities flew out of Kerry's head. She took hold of her partner's arm and stopped pulling Dar to a halt as well. "Why do you keep saying stuff like that? Don't you want to be a part of this?"
They were only a few feet from their cars, Dar having parked right next to her in the now empty lot. It didn't seem to be a good place for a discussion, but going anywhere meant they'd have to separate, and Kerry really wanted to hear the answer to her question before they parted. "Dar?"
Dar twitched a half shrug that ended in her lifting her free hand and letting it fall. "Honestly? No."
Kerry exhaled, caught a bit by surprise. She thought a moment on the answer, and then decided maybe she wasn't surprised after all. "Because of how tough the job on the ship is going to be?'
"No." Dar turned and went over to Kerry's car, leaning against it and crossing her legs at the ankles. "I just don't want any part of Telegenics." She studied the tarmac, most of it cracked and weed ridden.
Kerry joined her, leaning on the car right next to her, their shoulders brushing. "Oh." She murmured. "I thought you were kinda past that."
Dar shrugged.
Kerry really couldn't think of much to say after that. She kicked herself a little for not spotting Dar's reluctance before and realized maybe she'd been deliberately ignoring those not so subtle hints.
Finally, she sighed again. "Guess we'd better go home." She pulled her keys out and chirped the door to her car open. "Anyway, thanks for coming out and giving me your insights. They really did help."
Dar remained leaning against Kerry's car, watching under half lowered eyelids as Kerry eased past.
Since the cars were parked next to each other it meant Kerry had to pick her way carefully, placing her feet down between Dar's extended ones. She brushed her lightly and put a hand on her stomach for balance as she scooted by.
Dar reached out and captured the hand holding it. She waited for Kerry to turn and face her, then blinked in surprise when she simply leaned against her, patting her side in silence. "I'm becoming a chickenshit," she murmured. "Sorry, Ker."
"It's all right." Kerry said, listening to the stuttering heartbeat under her ear. "Let's go home, and we can talk about it. I'm tired of the sauna, and my piggies hurt." She gave Dar a quick hug, and pushed back, glad to see a faint grin in all the shadows crossing her partner's face. "Race you?"
"You're on." Dar unlocked her car, and they parted to head out toward home.
Chapter Three
THERE WERE DISTINCT advantages to working from home. Kerry leaned back in her chair and put her feet on her desk, propping her keyboard on her lap at a comfortable angle. Wasn't something she could do at work, at least not during business hours and she appreciated the difference as she peered at her screen and continued typing.
"How's the line working?" Dar entered with her laptop. She took a seat on the small couch across from Kerry's desk and opened it. "I messed with it this morning." Chino ambled in after her and curled up on the carpet near Kerry's desk.
Kerry looked up. "Great. It's a heck of a lot faster since you put DSL in. I thought you had squirmies over the security with it though."
"Eh." Dar had focused on her own machine. "I tested it. It's all right, as much as any remote connection is." She replied. "And the surfing's a hell of a lot faster."
"That's for sure." Kerry watched Dar work for a moment, and then spared another thought wondering why she'd given up her comfortable sprawl on the couch downstairs for the smaller confines of Kerry's office. She really didn't think the need to ask about the circuit prompted it, since Dar seemed content now to sit quietly pecking at her keyboard.
Just wanted to be close? Kerry found herself smiling at the thought, since she'd been regretting the fact that her own laptop hadn't contained her needed files so she could move down into the living room.
They'd had a light dinner, and then gone to the gym together but the subject of Dar's working on her project hadn't come up even once since they'd gotten home. There was something left to be said about it, though and Kerry suspected that those words were behind this instinctive drive they both seemed to have to be in the same place at the same time so when the words came out, they'd be there to hear them.
Until then, though, she was happy just to continue working; typing out an initial assessment of the ship project for the team meeting she'd scheduled the next day while Dar persisted in her programming project. They worked together in a comfortable silence, broken only by the rattle of keystrokes and Chino's dreaming whines.
"Know what I wish?" Kerry asked idly, as she waited for the deck plans of the ship to insert into her document.
"Uh?" Dar grunted in question.
"Wish we were at the cabin. I feel like a midnight salt water swim."
Dar paused and looked up. "Hmm." She shifted the laptop a little.
"We could go in the pool." She offered. "Not as romantic, but there's no seaweed and sand either."
Kerry tapped the enter key and continued typing. "Eeeeehhh...it's not really private enough for what I had in mind." She heard Dar's keystrokes stop, and she waited a second before she looked over at her to find sharply raised eyebrows and a slight grin facing her. "Don't you give me that look. It's your fault. You turned me into a hedonist."
Dar pointed a thumb at her own chest, and widened her eyes.
Kerry stuck her tongue out.
They both went back to working, but the faint grin remained on Dar's lips as she typed. After a few minutes, she paused again. "Know what I wish?"
"Does it involve hot fudge?" Kerry murmured, erasing a sentence and drumming her fingers on her keyboard as she pondered a replacement.
"Heheh." Dar snickered softly. "Save that thought for later. No. What I was wishing for was that we could go back about three weeks and start over again."
Ah. Kerry wiggled her big toe. "Before Orlando?"
"Yeah."
Kerry added a paragraph, and then paused again. "What do you think you would have done different?" She asked. "I mean, about the show or dealing with them or..." She kept her voice casual and her eyes on the screen, not wanting to stifle any revelations.
Dar was a little funny that way. If she said something, and you came back with 'what did you mean by that?', she often stopped her train of thought and switched to something completely different. It was almost like on a personal level, she didn't deal with being challenged while she was trying to communicate something
Dar shifted her position, wiggling her shoulders into a more comfortable spot on the couch. "Keep my mouth shut a lot more, for starters." She scrolled her touchpad with one finger and put her other hand behind her neck, stretching the muscles out with a grimace. "Handled the two of them better, maybe."
"Ah." Kerry ran the spell checker on her document. "I don't know, honey. I don't think most of that was us. They came into this whole thing gunning dirty."
"Mm. Well, I don't think it's going to get any better," she replied. "One of the reasons I don't want to be involved."
Kerry thought about it as she watched the spell check end. She scrolled up for another view of the report, scanning it lightly with her eyes. "Maybe you're right," she finally said. "Why don't we just table it for a while, let me get the whole process started, then you can see what you think."
They both continued in silence for a little while. Dar reached down and scratched Chino's belly, then at last tipped her head back and raised her eyes from the screen. "What I think is...that sounds a hell of a lot like what I said to you when you didn't want to be the Vice President of Operations."