Kerry sipped her chocolate as they listened to the waves for a bit, then she turned to Dar. "You know, I was just thinking-it's really funny."

Dar eyed her. "Yeah?" She waited for the punchline.

"We never really talk to each other." Kerry watched the expressive face across from her. When Dar blinked and put down her cup, her eyebrows contracting, Kerry nodded. "See?"

"Huh?" Both eyebrows went up and Dar gave her an unfeigned look of bewilderment. "Are you saying we have trouble communicating?"

Kerry shook her head. "No. We communicate perfectly; we just never talk." She suppressed a grin. "What I mean is, like when I just said that: you didn't have to say anything to me, I knew what you were thinking."

Dar relaxed. "You did?"

"Sure." Kerry pitched her voice a little lower in mimicry of Dar's. "'What the h.e.l.l is she talking about?' I can tell by your face, by how you move, almost, what you're feeling."*29 Dar considered that thoughtfully. "Well, we do spend a lot of time with each other," she allowed.

"True. And it's hard to have good, vigorous debates with someone you agree with most of the time," Kerry said. "We haven't had a fight in a long time."

A dark eyebrow crawled up Dar's forehead. "You want to have a fight?"

"Actually, I was listening to a radio program the other day on the way to the Kendall office. This guy was saying how it is a sign of a healthy relationship when you have fights, because you aren't repressing anything."

Dar's other eyebrow joined its mate. "Are you repressing something?"

Kerry pointed at herself. "Me?"

"Yeah."

"No. Are you?"

Dar frowned. "Not that I know of." She suddenly became aware of the humor in the situation. "If you really want to test the theory, we could invent something to repress, then have a fight about it."

"We could do that. Or we could just do this." Kerry leaned over and kissed Dar. "Which is a heck of a lot more fun."

Dar chuckled, and cupped Kerry's cheek as she removed the chocolate from her lips. Then she rested her forehead against Kerry's, and her face grew thoughtful. "I think people start fighting when they stop communicating," she said. "Or if they never could to begin with."

"Is that what happened to you before?" Kerry asked.

Dar nodded silently.

"I was thinking about that when I was listening to that guy."

Kerry took a sip of her cocoa and offered her cup to Dar. "He said it's easy to fall in love with someone, but it's a lot harder to learn to like and live with them." She reached over and brushed a lock of hair out of Dar's face.

Dar licked her lips. "I like you." She smiled. "I think I said that the first time we had dinner together."

Kerry smiled back. "Yes, you did, and so did I." She studied Dar's face. "I really liked you, and I wanted to be friends with you long before I figured out I was head over heels in love."

They looked into each other's eyes for a long moment. Finally, Dar took a breath. "Kerry?"

"Yes?"

A pucker appeared between Dar's eyebrows. "Why are we having this conversation?"

"Well," Kerry squiggled closer, "I didn't want to save it for a dusty hospital stairwell, and it's late, and I'm wasted, and it beats 30*

me reciting my brother's latest attempt at poetry." She kissed Dar gently. "We have to have these angsty, soulful, heart to heart talks sometimes, Dar, else we'll get cootie points in Love Court or something."

Dar grinned. "Wanna hear a secret?"

"Sure."

"I have been repressing something."

Green eyes opened wider. "Really?"

"Yeah." Dar took the mostly empty cup from Kerry and set it down. "The desire to take you off to bed. C'mon." She held out her hands and when the blonde took them, pulled Kerry to her feet and into her arms. "Ker?"

"Mm?" Kerry murmured.

"If you ever think we're not communicating," Dar looked at her seriously, "talk to me."

Kerry blinked, then nodded. "Ditto," she replied.

Dar carried the cups to the sink and ran water into them, then accompanied Kerry to the bedroom. Kerry pulled back the down comforter and they crawled into bed, snuggling together as Dar put out the bedside lamp. With the hatches open, they could hear the sea, and a nice breeze puffed around the cabin, reducing the feeling of being enclosed.

The boat creaked a little, and the rocking motion soothed her.

The sounds are different from the ones at home, or even in the cabin, Kerry thought. She felt her eyes closing and let the wave of sleepiness in, already looking forward to the morning. Stifling a yawn, she drew in a breath of warm, Dar scented air, and dropped off to sleep.

Chapter.

Four.

IT WAS MID-AFTERNOON already, and they'd been making good time. After an early morning romp in the sea, Dar fired up the boat's engines and headed southeast, crossing the ruffled blue- green Caribbean as the sun tracked steadily overhead.

Dar pored over the chart clipped to the console in front of her, marking out a route on the plastic sheet with a big purple marker.

She checked the GPS against the chart and grunted, satisfied with their progress and with her navigating skills. She nudged the throttles forward a little and rested her elbows on either side of them, gazing out at the horizon with a slight grin.

Hands-on had always been something she'd enjoyed, right from the very start of her career. It was one thing to sit in some boardroom with a pad of paper and argue about how to do things, but a very different thing to be able to put your hands on the technology and actually do it yourself. It's what had set her apart from the rest of the management at ILS. Dar had worked very hard to keep her skills current, and she was very, very proud of the fact that she could go into their state-of-the-art ops center and run every piece of technology inside it. It wasn't always easy. Her position kept her very busy and the tech changed every day, it seemed. But Dar had decided she never wanted to be in a place where her staff knew more about what they were doing than she did, so she put in the long nights, bought the new manuals, and occasionally even took things home so she could take them apart and play with them.

Being able to captain her ship across the sea had been just another challenge, and again she'd put in the time to brush up on her charting and diesel skills. Her peripheral vision caught a change in the depth meter and she studied it, then altered their course just a little, steering the Dixieland Yankee into a deeper channel.

With no other immediate piloting needs to see to, Dar picked up the pencil next to the notepad and started idly sketching. At first she doodled in the horizon and the boat's bow, but that got boring, so she started looking around for something else to draw. She 32*

leaned back and looked down, then grinned. Ah. Her pencil moved against the paper as she focused on her new inspiration.

KERRY PUT HER pen down for the nth time and let her head rest against the chair. She was ostensibly working on poetry, but the sun, the mild drone of the engines, and the sweet sea air were combining to subvert her creative intentions in favor of some lazy daydreaming.

She wiggled her bare toes contentedly. Dar had promised a twilight dive when they neared the Virgin Islands, then dinner at a small place she'd last visited just before they'd met. "Fresh conch chowder." Kerry licked her lips thoughtfully. "Sounds great, just so long as you don't think too much about what a conch actually looks like."

"You say something?" Dar called down from the bridge.

"No, sweetie," Kerry replied. "Just mumbling to myself." She worried a grape off its stem from the bowl next to her and popped it into her mouth. "Whatcha doing?"

"Driving the boat."

"That all?" Kerry asked, tipping her head back and looking up, one hand shading her eyes.

"Doodling."

"Yeah? What this time?"

"Nothing you'd wanna see," Dar remarked with an easy grin.

"How's the writing coming?"

Intrigued, Kerry tucked her book into the side pocket of the deck chair and put down her fruit bowl. "It's not," she admitted, getting up and walking to the ladder, stretching out her body as she did. "Sad to say, I'm too lazy to even write today." She climbed up onto the bridge and put her arms around Dar, gazing down at the pad in front of her. Then she blinked. "Yikes."

Dar snickered. "Toldja."

"That's me."

"Sort of, yeah," Dar agreed.

Kerry eyed the sketch, which showed a reasonable rendering of the boat's stern, with her sprawled in the chair. "You're getting pretty good at this, you know that?"

"Depends on what I'm drawing," Dar said with a shrug.

Kerry gave her a kiss on the top of her head. "I'll take that as a compliment," she told Dar, as a memory floated into her mind's eye.

Another day, another meeting. Kerry carried her notes into the big conference room and paused; most of the table was already full up. That left the end seat, which was always Dar's, and an empty one on either side*33 of it. Hm . Kerry walked around to the left hand side and sat down in the chair beside Dar's. I should come late more often . Then she had an excuse to sit next to her boss and not have anyone think it was strange.

Dar entered, and as she circled the table, she raised her eyebrow just a trifle at Kerry's choice of seats, but her lips quirked into a tiny grin at the same time, making Kerry's insides warm as their eyes met.

Kerry felt herself blush and she studied her notes, trying not to show the unsteady confusion pulsing through her body, reacting to Dar's very near presence as the woman sat down and their forearms brushed.

Dar leaned back in her chair and balanced her pad on her denim clad knee as she asked for the weekly report.

They were in casual wear, and Kerry found herself wanting to reach over and touch the soft cotton Dar was wearing. She folded her hands together and sternly told her body to behave, hardly believing how out of control she felt around her new lover. Especially since the more experienced Dar was seemingly quite unaffected by it all, breezing through their workday as though nothing at all had changed between them.

Kerry, on the other hand, felt like she had "I'm with her" tattooed on her forehead. She sighed and picked up her water gla.s.s, taking a long sip as the operations staff started their recitations. The water didn't help much. She was almost hyper sensitively aware of Dar's every motion, every sound- from the faint shifts of her clothing on the leather chair when she moved, to the light sc.r.a.pe of the pencil lead with which she was doodling.

Lucky Dar . Kerry snuck a look at her boss, who looked relaxed as she glanced up from her doodling as each staff member spoke. Dar seemed almost bored, or a least borderline inattentive, giving the speakers a brief nod as she accepted their reports.

"Next." Dar kept her eyes on her pad. "Did you get those servers?"

Mark had to report in the negative. "Not yet, boss. Two more days."

Kerry looked at him, seeing the wince as he waited for Dar's reaction, along with the rest of the staff.

"Okay." Dar nodded. "What else?"

Everyone around the table looked at one another in surprise.

"Um." Mark wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"We've...uh...got some problems in Canada two big pipes down and they're complaining."

"And?" Dar continued her sketching, c.o.c.king her head to one side.

"Can we fix them?"

"Not without digging up some fiber."

"Guess they'll have to wait then," Dar replied. "Tell our fiber contractor up there to call me with an estimate when he gets a chance."

Another round of puzzled looks circled the table.

"Uh...okay," Mark said. "That's all for me."

"Anyone else?" Dar's gaze sharpened and she scoured the group with 34*

ice blue eyes. "No? Good." She stood up, casually ripped off the top sheet of her pad, and tossed it over to Kerry before she picked up her coffee cup and headed for the door. "Budgets are due next week. Don't be late."

The door closed behind her, and everyone relaxed. "Whoo." Mark wiped his brow in exaggerated relief. "Got off lucky this week!"

"Yeah. I thought she was going to roast your b.u.t.t. How'd you do that, Mark?"

"Right time, right place. Caught her in a good mood."

"The one time this year. Go figure." Charlene rolled her eyes. "What caused that, I wonder? She get to fire someone this week?"

Kerry didn't hear any of it. Her eyes were on the casually tossed sheet in her hands as she stared at the neatly shaded sketch in the center of it. Her own image looked back at her, a very creditable rendering outlined in a roughly shaped heart, with Dar's initials on the bottom.

"Maybe it was because she got to cancel that planning contract.

She's always hated that guy's guts. "

"Nah. I bet she denied that Sales request again."