Dragon and the Dove (24 page)

“Ms. Langston. May I see you in my office,
please?”

Jessica leaned forward and pressed the
response panel on the intercom. “Yes, Mr. Daniels. I’ll be right in
.”

She stopped and poured them both a cup of
coffee before she breezed through the dragon doors and walked
straight over the top of the dragon on the floor to his desk. The
fierce beast with emerald eyes and fire dancing on its tongue had
been tamed.

“Thanks, Jessie.” Cooper took the coffee
from her and handed her the morning paper. “It’s been a week. I’m
surprised we’re still making the front page.”

Jessica skimmed the Chronicle, finally
finding an article toward the bottom with the dubious headline of
PIRATE BUSTERS SHUT DOWN HERB SHOP. That’s what she’d been reduced
to, a pirate buster, she who had graduated at the top of her
class.

“I think you’re pretty well all washed up as
far as the financial district goes, honey,” Cooper said, not doing
a very good job of hiding his grin.

He was right. She’d become notorious
practically overnight, when she’d dragged herself out of that
Chinatown sewer and into the
bright lights of a television crew filming the biggest traffic jam
to hit Grant Street since the Chinese New Year. Four squad cars had
been on the scene, with Luke Signorelli in the lead of a small
platoon of cops looking for the lady who had locked her
double-parked car and left it running.

When Cooper had hauled himself out behind
her, he, too, had become an instant, if fleeting, celebrity. The
media were more interested in a woman bounty hunter than a man.
They especially liked that she was a single mother, a super mom,
the woman who could do it all—work her sedate job as an investment
counselor during the day, bust pirates by night, and tuck the
children into bed in between.

They were wrong, of course. She had a
brother who did kitchen work for a living. Her children never went
hungry or had to settle for fish sticks, because they had an Uncle
Tony whose idea of fast food was angelhair pasta. She had another
brother who spent all of his free time at home, where he was always
available to watch the kids, because the love of his life was
finding the bifurcation points of the indigenous species in the
yard.

She also had a boss who understood that
after nearly a month of working for him, she needed an extended
vacation. For a week now she’d come into the office just before
lunch, allowed Mr. Daniels to wine her and dine her through the
noontime meal, then had gone home to burn cookies for the kids
after school.

She got to the end of the article and tossed
the paper aside. “So the feds have closed down the shop pending
further investigation, and they’re tracing a lead to Grand Cayman.
Baolian never surfaced, and we’re assuming she sailed out the
Golden Gate with her recalcitrant daughter in tow. Where does that
leave us, Cooper? Did we win?”

“There was no way to win, Jess,” he said,
his smile fading into an expression that was part resignation, part
acceptance. “But we did damn good.”

“Where are we having lunch?” she asked,
changing the subject. He was right. There had been no way to win,
not from the moment his brother had died on a beach in the South
China Sea. She was grateful he’d finally come to that
understanding.

“Your choice,” he said. “Better make it
someplace nice. I think Daniels, Ltd. is going to be belly-up by
the end of the year.” He didn’t sound too distressed by the
possibility.

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” she said,
hiding her own grin. “I heard Mr. Daniels hired himself a really
hot MBA out of Stanford who can make money just by reading the
stock pages. With a little capital investment, the MBA could save
the company.”

“Maybe Mr. Daniels ought to take the MBA to
lunch instead of the sweet lady he’s been spending so much time
with lately.”

“Maybe.” She smiled at him, and was
surprised to see him blush. Damn surprised. “Cooper?”

He lowered his lashes, averting his gaze,
and began fumbling through his leather coat pockets. “You saved my
life, Jessie, and you know what they say, if somebody saves your
life, you owe them a life.”

“I’ve heard the expression, but really,
Cooper, I’m not planning on getting into any more trouble.”

“Yeah, well, none of us plans on getting
into trouble. It just happens.” He finally pulled a small box free
of his coat. His blush deepened, fascinating her. “I’ve had to do a
lot of thinking these last few days, and a lot of what I’ve been
thinking about is you.” He looked up at her. He was very beautiful,
her dragon, with his emerald eyes and his sun-streaked hair. “Life
is pretty damn tenuous, Jessie. I want you to have whatever is left
of mine.”

She accepted the box with trembling hands.
“Better be careful, Cooper. A woman could take a statement like
that a lot of different ways.”

She opened the velvet-lined box and gasped.
The ring inside was gaudy and outrageous. It was gold and big, with
a dragon with emerald eyes and a dove with diamonds, locked in
either mortal combat or a tender embrace. It said
By Love
Alone
on the inside in a delicately engraved script.

“Take it however you want,” he said.
“Indecent proposal, or marriage proposal. For the kids’ sake and
mine, though, I’d rather you went for the legally binding
contract.”

Jessica brushed at the tears in her eyes,
wondering what always made women cry when they were happy. “I’m
going for the legal partnership.”

He slipped the ring on her finger, and she
couldn’t believe how wild it looked, or how much she loved it. Her
conservative image was in serious danger.

“I love you, Jessie,” he said, taking her
hand in his and pulling her down onto his lap. “I’m giving you the
ring to be my wife. I want you to know your love is safe with
me.”

Another wave of tears ran down her cheeks,
and she brushed those away too.

“Is there a reason you’re crying that I need
to know about?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’m crying because I’m
so happy.”

“Ah,” he said, not sounding the least bit
enlightened.

“I think you’re going to have to kiss me,
Cooper, to take my mind off how happy I am.”

He didn’t need a second request, but pulled
her mouth down to his to softly plunder, taste, and tease, until
her tears were replaced by passion.

* * *

Six months later

“Cooper?” Jessica came up beside him on the
deck of his house and put her arm around his waist. In front of
them, the Pacific Ocean stretched all the way to the South China
Sea and beyond.

Cooper pulled her to his side and bent down
to kiss her lips. Some hurts might never heal, he mused, some
people would never be replaced, but the awful emptiness he’d felt
since Jackson’s death was slowly being filled with love—Jessie’s
love with her motherly quirks, and all the wanton love she gave him
in bed. The children liked him enough for a good relationship to
grow, and he was fascinated by them. Christina was so delicate and
strong, so like her mother. Eric’s biggest disappointment was that
the Dragon didn’t have an actual dragon tattooed on his body
somewhere. Cooper had told them there had once been a dragon with a
tattoo. That dragon had been Jackson, and it was time to put his
memory in a place of rest instead of a place of pain.

“This just arrived by courier,” she said
when the sweet kiss was over, holding up an ancient-looking
envelope.

The chop set in wax on the back made his
spine stiffen.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Baolian. It’s her chop.” He took the
envelope and broke the seal, his moment of contentment gone. With
quick movements, he snapped open the letter, not knowing what to
expect, but somehow expecting something different than the few
words she’d written.

He swore softly and handed the letter to
Jessica. She read it aloud. “Shulan tells me I must tell you I am
most sorry for Jack Sun. She says this will help us, all of
us.”

She folded the letter back into its envelope
and set it on a deck chair. Then she took his hand in hers. “Come
on.” She pulled him toward the bedroom.

“Are the kids asleep?” For her sake he
forced a smile.

“Like a couple of rocks.”

He wanted her, he always wanted her, but he
couldn’t hold the smile in place. “Jessie, I know what you’re
doing, but you can’t make all the hurt go away with love.”

She looked up at him, and what he saw in her
eyes made a liar out of him.

“Oh, yes you can, Cooper. Love is an amazing
thing.”

He believed her enough to go with her, and
it didn’t take much faith to continue believing her while she was
in his arms. By the time the deepest part of the night had fallen,
he was a convert.

He woke later, restless, and eased out of
bed, careful not to wake her. Fog had slipped in over the coast
while they’d slept. The deck was a netherworld of muted sounds and
skyless night. With a soft tread, he went back to where they’d
stood and bent to pick the letter up off the chair where they’d
left it. His fingers encountered only the wooden slats of the
chair. The letter was gone, blown by the wind into the sea, where
all earthly life had been created.

Cooper waited for the sense of loss to come,
but the only thing that came to him was Jessie, to wrap her warmth
around him.

Sun Shulan stood in her house on the Peak,
looking out a window that framed Victoria Harbor and the Hong Kong
skyline. She’d done her best, and her best had not been good
enough. Her mother still ruled the South China Sea, unchecked and
unreformed; the half brother she’d risked her life to save was
still in danger.

With a heavy sigh, she turned and forced
herself to
meet the
fiery emerald eyes of the man being held in the
foyer by her guards. His hair flowed to his waist like a river of
black silk. Powerful muscles strained beneath the coolie clothes
she’d bought for him to wear.

Holding him captive was like trying to cage
a wildcat . . . or a dragon. She couldn’t do it forever, couldn’t
hide him forever, and yet his only protection was that Baolian
thought Jackson Daniels, Sun Yi’s bastard son, was dead.

Another sigh escaped her as she turned back
toward the window. Someday she would have to let him go. Someday
soon.

* * * * * * * * *

Thank you for reading
The Dragon and
the Dove
. For more information on my writing and my books
please visit me on my website
www.tarajanzen.com
; on Facebook
http://on.fb.me/mSstpd
; and
Twitter @tara_janzen
http://twitter.com/#!/tara_janzen
.

Don’t miss Jackson’s story in DRAGON’S EDEN
!

Please read on for excerpts from
Dragon’s
Eden
and
Stevie Lee

Prologue

The island floated on the horizon in a
darkly azure sea, its windward edge painted into visibility by the
rising sun. Jackson Daniels leaned closer to the seaplane’s window,
watching the blush of dawn spread up the eastern flank of a tall,
jagged mountain. Morning mists wreathed the peak with gossamer
clouds and liquid sunshine, making the island look like paradise, a
tropical heaven on earth.

He turned away from the window, letting out
a short sound of disgust. Given the way his luck had been running
lately, his money was on the island being just a new version of
hell.

He looked down at the shackles on his
ankles, the handcuffs on his wrists, and the chain running between
the two inconveniences. It didn’t matter what the island turned out
to be, he wasn’t going anywhere, neither to heaven nor hell without
his jailer’s permission. That was for damn sure.

The plane banked, and Sher Chang, the
brutish behemoth sitting next to him, jerked him back from the
window, grabbing him by his wounded shoulder and digging his
fingers in hard. A curse lodged against Jackson’s teeth. From the
seat in front of him, he heard a woman’s murmured command to
release him. Sher Chang complied, and Jackson slumped forward into
a silent ball of pain.

He knew from experience that any show of
weakness on his part would be met with a generous dose of injected
painkillers, just as any show of strength was met with an added
shackle and chain. He couldn’t win. He’d been at the mercy of the
woman and her gang of Chinese pirates since . . . since forever, it
seemed.

A wry
grin curved his mouth.
The situation could have been worse. Instead of the young woman
named Sun Shulan sitting in the front seat of the seaplane, his
jailer could have been her mother, Fang Baolian, dreaded pirate
queen of the South China Sea and the lady who’d had him shot for
refusing her sexual favors.