Dragon and the Dove (3 page)

He was going up against the she-devil of the
South China Sea, a woman without shame or fear. He needed somebody
by his side who could hold her own in bad company, somebody who
didn’t hesitate to win at any cost.

He’d asked for a female shark with a finely
honed instinct for the jugular, and the most renowned headhunter on
the West Coast had sent him an angelfish in silk. The pricey
material draped Jessica Langston’s breasts, caressing their
fullness. Her thick auburn hair was cut short in front, but hugged
the back of her neck almost to her shoulders. The softness he
refused to be responsible for appeared not in the set of her mouth,
but in its generous shape.

She looked kissable, a thought so untenable
that it made him smile. Cooper needed an assistant. For reasons
that had everything to do with mental acuity and nothing to do with
physical attributes, he wanted a woman. He did not have to hire one
with great legs, pale, pretty skin, and auburn hair. He would not
hire one who even remotely made him think of sex, and when he
looked at Jessica Langston, the thought was far from remote.

“Ten days,” he agreed, meeting her
cinnamon-colored eyes, his decision made. “You’ll spend five of
them in London. Take the green folder, leave the red. It’s a long
flight, Ms. Langston, and it leaves at six o’clock tomorrow
morning. I suggest you go home and pack.”

Jessica nodded slightly, hoping to hide her
shock. Her mind raced ahead to the hundred and one details she
would have needed to take care of before she could go out to dinner
and a movie, let alone cross a continent and an ocean. She was a
mother, for crying out loud. A fact he would know, if he’d taken
the time to check her file.

Damn the man.

She turned on her heel and picked up the
green folder. She had no idea what awaited her in London, and she
wasn’t about to ask Cooper Daniels. He’d never seen “think on your
feet” the way she was going to deliver it. So help her, when she
got back, he’d be begging her to stay—which would give her the
ultimate satisfaction of saying no. She’d bet everything she owned
that he didn’t hear that word nearly often enough from the female
of the species.

* * *

After she’d gone, Cooper reached over to the
desk and picked up the phone. He punched in a call to London
without bothering to check the time. George Leeds would talk to him
no matter what time it was.

Jessica Langston wouldn’t last ten days. She
wouldn’t last the five on her round-trip ticket to

London. Cooper figured she would last
exactly as long as it took her to study the green folder, deplane
at Heathrow, take one look at George Leeds, and get back on a plane
to the States with her resignation in hand. He was sure the finer
points of negotiating bounty on maritime pirates with men like
Leeds hadn’t been covered in the curriculum at Stanford.

“Leeds,” he said when a man answered the
phone. After receiving confirmation, he continued. “I’m sending
someone in my place. Her name is Jessica Langston. Any offer you
wanted to take up with me, you can discuss with her, if she sticks
around long enough to hear it. And, Leeds—” He paused until the man
responded again. “Spread the word that she’s under my protection.
No interference will be tolerated. She’s a business associate and I
want her back looking as fresh and wide-eyed as she did when she
walked out of here. When she leaves, I’ll come and we’ll
finish.”

He hung up and stretched again under the
soothing magic of Sharon’s hands. She was working on his left leg,
his bad leg.

“You’re healing nicely,” she said.

“It hurts like hell.”

“Would you like me to prescribe something?”
she asked, her fingers gently probing the scar tissue that ran the
length of his thigh.

In answer, Cooper gave a short, sardonic
laugh. Sharon knew as well as he that there was nothing in her
magical bag of herbs and acupuncture needles to stop his pain.
There was only retaliation against the woman who’d had him maimed
and left him to die. There was only revenge against the woman who
had killed his brother.

He lowered his head and closed his eyes.
He’d relived the scene a thousand times, and every time Jackson
fell, Cooper found himself turning too slowly to protect his
brother, or to protect himself from his brother’s murderer. An
explosion of gunfire sounded and a cutlass slashed him open from
hip to knee before the dragon lady’s henchman fell under his knife.
All of it too damn late to save Jackson.

Jessica Langston didn’t belong in his world.
George Leeds was a peach compared with most of the people Cooper
dealt with. He only hoped Leeds was enough of his usual self to
offend her lovely sensibilities. Cooper didn’t have time for a
lawsuit, and he didn’t have time for her, and he was surprised that
he wished he did.

Damn surprised.

In Jessica’s book, jet-propelled takeoffs
before dawn could only be rivaled by the first trimester of
pregnancy for nausea potential. The added smell of congealed
omelets should have had her stumbling toward the bathroom.
Something more compelling, however, than both kept her glued to her
first class seat—the surprising contents of the green folder.

She’d meant to look the folder over the
previous night. She’d even cracked it open once or twice, in
between wrestling with school schedules, transportation schedules,
and baby-sitting schedules. The children’s schedules and the
children themselves, however, had kept demanding and winning her
attention. She’d also assumed the green folder would hold
information similar to the Jakarta stock offering in the red
folder. If she’d had any idea of what Cooper Daniels expected of
her, any inkling of what a low-down, conniving heel he really was,
she would have made darn sure to take the time to study the
contents of the green folder. She could have saved herself a plane
trip.

As it was, the only thing that galled her
more than what she’d been reading for the last fifteen minutes was
the smirk that must be on Cooper Daniels’s face as he lay in his
warm bed, looking out at the fog-filled skies above the Bay,
knowing he’d set her up.

The man was no world-class, upper-crust San
Francisco nabob and financier. He was a bounty hunter, and he’d
taken one of Stanford’s finest and sent her to negotiate the price
on a pirate’s head, a Mr. Pablo Lopez from the Philippines, who had
a penchant for ships of the Somerset Shipping Federation.

Jessica could hardly believe her situation
or the nerve of the man who’d put her in it.

With a muttered curse, she flipped through
the green folder again. Ship’s manifests, oceanographical maps,
sworn statements, and pages of handwritten notes all testified to
large-scale acts of piracy on the high seas. Cooper Daniels was no
run-of-the-mill bounty hunter. He went after men who stole the
cargoes from hundred-thousand-ton oil tankers and
eighty-thousand-ton container ships. The information explained a
lot about the man himself. He didn’t look like he belonged in a
boardroom, because he didn’t.

The question, though, was if she belonged on
a plane bound for London and a man named George Leeds, the
representative for the Somerset Shipping Federation. It was obvious
that Cooper Daniels had hoped to get rid of her by putting her in
over her head and letting her sink like lead weight.

He was mistaken in his assumptions, of
course, as mistaken as she had been in hers. Given enough facts,
she could negotiate the lease on a quarter section of an aircraft
carrier’s landing deck. Business ran on the laws of supply and
demand. All she had to do was determine the tangible and intangible
costs involved and set a fair price for the services offered.

That was all.

Damn him. She ought to get off the plane in
Newark and take the first flight back to California. She should not
let the problem intrigue her. She should not take up his
challenge.

“Pirates,” she muttered. Who
would have thought there were men like Cooper Daniels out tracking
down
pirates
and
bringing them in?

She cast her eyes heavenward and blew out a
sigh. Who would have thought there were men like Cooper Daniels,
period? She certainly hadn’t.

With an absent gesture, she turned one page,
then another, stopping when she came to his handwritten notes. He
had a strong style, bold and none too neat. He also had a very high
opinion of his services, if the figures at the bottom of the page
were any indication.

If she didn’t want to be taken for a fool,
she needed to do some research when she reached London. She could
check the magazine and newspaper data bases on a couple of industry
supported
on-line services
for anything that had been written about
piracy in the last few years. Also, she could use her connections
in the insurance industry to get actual figures on claims, losses,
and premiums.

A small smirk curved her lips. She was
perfect for the job, more perfect than Cooper Daniels realized or
expected. By the time she returned from London, she would probably
be able to teach him a few things about negotiating bounty. If she
was going to London.

The decision to show him up couldn’t be
based on pride alone. She was too mature to let her ego rule her
rationality. Well, almost too mature. There were other things to
consider, like her wonderfully outrageous salary, her résumé, and
that damned niggling issue of her self-esteem. She hated to admit
it, even to herself, but she could more easily handle being
dismissed as a business associate by Cooper Daniels than she could
handle being dismissed as a woman.

It wasn’t like her to want a man to notice
her, but Cooper had noticed her. The way he’d looked at her, and
where he’d looked at her, hadn’t left room for doubts on that
score. His heated gaze had sparked to life a purely feminine
reaction, a reaction she thought had died with her divorce.

Logically, but against her better judgment,
she had to admit to being intrigued by the man. Given the nature of
their one and only meeting, with him being gloriously naked,
stretched out like some sacrificial offering to Eros, it wasn’t
surprising that her mind tended to wander into forbidden territory
when she thought of him.

The practical thing to do, of course, was to
continue on to London and do the job she was being paid to do. Now
that the initial shock had worn thin, if not entirely off; now that
she’d looked things over and given the information some thought,
she knew she
could
do the job, which left her little
choice in the matter. That’s what she told herself. Her ego, her
pride, and her feminine responses had nothing to do with it.

She reached for her carry-on bag and
unzipped the side pocket. After a quick search, she found a credit
card and her address book. She used both to place a phone call to
her old boss in New York. By the time she landed in Heathrow, she
should be on her way to understanding the financial loss caused by
modern-day pirates, the relative worth of maritime bounty hunters,
and the needs of the shipping companies they both preyed on.

While she was waiting for her connection the
flight attendant approached her with a tidily wrapped, congealed
omelet in hand. Jessica blanched, but managed a wan smile before
waving her on. Once the attendant had the offensive meal out of
view, Jessica settled back into the comfort of her seat. Now that
she knew what she needed to accomplish, the London trip should go
smoothly, if not exactly pleasantly. There shouldn’t be any more
surprises.

* * *

Cooper stood outside the Boarshead Tavern,
looking up at the signboard swinging in the wild English wind. Rain
had soaked him near through, and he still had not found Jessica
Langston and George Leeds. Ms. Langston had not taken one look at
the green folder and his London associate and turned tail as she
was supposed to have. Leeds had not taken one look at the woman and
sent her packing. Rather, the two of them had hit it off and,
according to Leeds’s associate, Mr. Zhao, were even now carousing
around the seedier dockside pubs of London.

The Boarshead was the worst of the lot.
Cooper had saved it for last because it was the last place he would
have expected to find his Ms. MBA-from-Stanford assistant. If she
didn’t belong in his San Francisco office, she most certainly did
not belong in the Boarshead with the likes of George Leeds.

A fresh gust of wind blew up the river,
snapping his coat around his legs, and Cooper pushed on into the
familiar pub. He wasn’t known for misjudging people. He found it
particularly hard to believe he’d misjudged Ms. Langston. But her
surprising affinity for pints and Leeds wasn’t what had made him
pay Concorde prices to get to England before the dawn of another
day.

The Boarshead was dimly lit inside, with a
few men leaning against the bar. The tavern’s other patrons were
scattered about a maze of booths and tables. Cooper’s gaze skimmed
over the seamen and bawds, looking for a woman who didn’t fit in
with the rest of the clientele. She should have stuck out like a
sore thumb or, more accurately, like a hothouse hybrid in an
untended garden. She didn’t.

“Damn,” he muttered. He was about to admit
that sending her to London had been a bad idea when a woman’s
laughter captured his attention. He needed no other clue to locate
the reason for his inopportune international flight. He turned
toward the clear, fresh sound and began walking down the length of
the pub to its farthest, darkest corner. He hadn’t heard her
laughter before, but he recognized it with the same certainty that
he’d have recognized his own heartbeat. He wasn’t pleased with the
knowledge.

He’d waited two days for her to do her
transatlantic flip-flop and show up with her resignation. The least
he’d expected was the courtesy of an irate phone call. All he’d
gotten was a fax Wednesday afternoon:
Negotiations with Mr.
George Leeds, representing the Somerset Shipping Federation, will
extend beyond the projected date. We are awaiting the arrival of
Mr. Andrew Strachan from the North Star Line
.