Dragon and the Dove (14 page)

By the time Jessica got herself to work, it
was well after noon. She closed the Daniels, Ltd. door behind her
and was immediately aware of the sound of the shower running in
Cooper’s private office. Calming herself with a deep breath, she
walked over to turn on her desk lamp. The morning’s sunshine had
been consumed by a heavy bank of fog rolling in from the Pacific.
She had been the last one out of the house, and was apparently the
last one to arrive at the office.

Cooper was in there naked again. She set her
purse on the floor and lowered her face into her hands, shaking her
head. What was she going to do with him?

Hand him a towel?

Offer to soap his back?

Beg him to please not take his clothes off
in the office anymore, because her heart couldn’t take it? She was
overreacting. She always overreacted when he was naked, or when he
kissed her. She needed to get a grip.

Dragging her head up with a sigh, she walked
to the dragon doors and closed them in the name of discretion and
normal blood pressure. He could come out when he was decent.

When she turned back to her desk, she
realized she wasn’t alone.

“Hello.” A man was sitting in the wingback
chair by the window, his voice deep and calm, with a faint Scottish
burr.

Startled by his presence, she barely managed
a reply. “Hello.”

“George didn’t do you justice,” the man
said, rising from the chair. He was dressed in an impeccable gray
suit, which he wore with the air of a man whose clothes were always
tailored to perfection and of the highest quality. His dark blond
hair was neatly trimmed. His demeanor was one of perfect
control.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Forgive me,” he said with a half smile of
apology. “I’m Andrew Strachan. We were supposed to have met in
London, and no doubt would have if Cooper hadn’t gotten overly
possessive.”

“Oh, Mr. Strachan, of course.” She stepped
forward and offered her hand.

“Cooper and I have some unfinished business
related to the Hawaiian fiasco. I hope he’s not planning on bathing
the rest of the afternoon.”

Andrew Strachan was very smooth and
self-assured, but underneath his calm exterior and easy smile, she
sensed a wealth of displeasure.

“Fiasco?”

“Pablo Lopez,” he said. “The deal you
contracted with George. Cooper didn’t come through. I’m here to
find out why.”

She was stymied for an answer. When she’d
asked Cooper about Hawaii, he’d told her everything had gone
according to plan. Obviously, his plan had been different from the
one he’d asked her to negotiate.

It would have been nice if he’d told her the
truth, she thought. Then she wouldn’t look like such a fool to
Andrew Strachan.

“I’m sure Mr. Daniels will have an
explanation. If you would care to be seated, I’ll let him know
you’re here.”

“Don’t bother. Cooper has a sixth sense when
it comes to me and his women.” Strachan’s smile curled higher.
“Believe me, he’s probably already figured out that I’m here.”

Stymied again, and flustered at being
referred to as Cooper’s woman, she did the one thing she’d sworn
she would never do again the rest of her life: She asked a
professional equal if she could get him a cup of coffee.

“That won’t be necessary,” a familiar voice
said behind her, before Mr. Strachan could decide for himself.

“Cooper.” Strachan gave a short nod.

Jessica half turned, not knowing what to
expect, and found her boss practically dressed. His plaid shirt was
still mostly open while he worked the buttons, but his jeans were
zipped, and he was wearing shoes.

“Andrew.” Cooper finished with the buttons
and began tucking the tails of his shirt into his pants. That’s
when she noticed the jeans weren’t snapped, and that his belt
wasn’t buckled. With his hair wet and slicked back off his face, he
made an enticingly provocative picture of a man fresh from his
shower. She couldn’t look at him without remembering how close
they’d been and what they’d done on her couch. Color rose in her
cheeks, embarrassing her even further.

“My men told me Lopez wasn’t where he was
supposed to be yesterday,” Strachan said. “Did we have a
misunderstanding? Or did he make you a better deal?”

“He got away.” Cooper shrugged, finishing
with his pants, and walked over to the coffee machine set up on an
antique credenza next to Jessica’s desk. “You got some of your
merchandise back. That’s more than you usually get.”

“Not much merchandise,” Strachan countered,
then added, “I’ll take mine black.”

Cooper poured three cups and offered them
all around. “I looked in the warehouse where Lopez had it all
stockpiled. There must have been at least fifty tons of the
Callander’s
cargo still in salable condition.”

“Minus your commission, of course.”

“Of course.”

Strachan sighed and pulled a thin cigar out
of the breast pocket of his suit. “Do you mind?” he asked Jessica.
When she shook her head, he turned back to Cooper. “What am I going
to do with you, Cooper?” His tone made his disappointment
clear.

“Pay me.”

Glancing at Cooper, Jessica saw he wasn’t
the least bit concerned with Andrew Strachan’s disappointments.

“It’s a possibility,” Strachan said, then
bent his head and lit the cigar he’d put in his mouth. After
drawing deeply and exhaling a cloud of smoke, the Scots wolf met
her boss’s unwavering gaze.

“‘Possibility’ covers too many options,
Andrew,” Cooper said. “You only have one. Eight percent.”

Strachan smiled, a wolfish grin conceding
defeat. “Three percent.”

“Five.”

“That’s only a fraction of what Somerset
agreed to pay you for Lopez,” Strachan pointed out. “Why did you
let him go?”

When her boss didn’t reply, Strachan spoke
again. “I’m worried about you, Cooper. I think you’re going to get
yourself hurt, and Jackson wouldn’t have wanted that to
happen.”

“Your bank knows where to send the money.
I’ll give you a week to make the deposit.”

“Whatever Lopez traded you for his life is
going to be what gets you killed.”

“You should have more faith in me,
Andrew.”

Jessica felt the confrontation come to an
uncomfortable draw, with Strachan being the first to lose control
of his temper.

“Baolian isn’t some simple bitch with
nothing better to do than kill off bounty hunters.” The cigar left
a trail of smoke in the air from Strachan’s abrupt hand gesture.
“The word out says she wants the Daniels name wiped off the face of
the earth. Why? What did you do to her, Cooper?”

“That’s between me and Baolian,” he
said.

“I warned you not to get
personally
involved,” Strachan said, his voice low and serious. “I warned you
what she was like.”

“We were never personally involved.”
Cooper’s jaw grew tight with anger. “She wanted Jackson, and when
Jackson didn’t want her, she wanted him dead. Well, she got what
she wanted, and it’s going to cost her more than she’s willing to
pay.”

With a disgusted snort, Strachan stepped
forward to the desk and crushed his cigar into a pristine cloisonné
ashtray. “You’ll never hurt her badly enough to make up for what
she did.” He lifted his head and looked directly at Jessica.
“Reason with him. I’d rather not lose two close friends in the same
year.”

* * *

“Crown jewel,” Jessica muttered, flipping
through the computer printouts and notes she’d been compiling for
three days. With Cooper’s weeks of intensive research and years of
knowledge, and Cao Bo’s new information—which included all of
Fang’s Western Hemisphere properties, businesses that were so
deeply hidden, it would have taken Jessica two years to find
them—Jessica had an extensive list of Fang Baolian’s holdings. But
she had not been able to find anything even remotely resembling a
crown jewel.

Neither had she been able to reason with
Cooper. Strachan’s warnings had not fallen completely on deaf ears.
She’d heard every word and taken them to heart. But nothing was
going to stop Cooper in his quest for revenge.

She had discovered that Baolian’s favorite
port was Manila, but the pirate actually did more business out of
Hong Kong. She knew the Dragon Lady lived on a phantom ship now
named
Sea Cloud
, a floating palace that plowed the waters
of the South China Sea. She did not know what it would take to
entice the pirate off her ill-gotten home and into Cooper Daniels’s
clutches, or what he would do to Baolian once he had her. She
didn’t want to know.

Laughter from Cooper’s office stopped her in
the middle of flipping a page. Cao Bo had not gone away, or home,
or back to whatever boat had brought her to California’s shores.
She had gone to Cooper’s house.

Straightening her shoulders, Jessica forced
her thoughts back to the work at hand. Cao Bo wasn’t her concern.
Lots of people lived at Cooper’s house, John Liu for one, Yuxi for
another.

And Cooper.

And Cao Bo.

“Damn,” she whispered, turning back a page
to pick up where her thoughts had trailed off.

He was being nice. The same way she had been
nice to the young woman. It was the least Ms. Cao deserved. Without
her information, Jessica wouldn’t have half of the facts she’d been
working with all morning. Without Cao Bo, she wouldn’t have known
of Baolian’s connections to a small herb shop in San Francisco’s
Chinatown. With assets well under ten thousand dollars, it was a
virtual nonentity in the pirate’s portfolio, which only increased
its importance.

What was a multimillionaire doing with a
tiny herb shop in the States? That was the question Jessica was
trying to answer. That and what in the world did she think she was
doing hunting pirates. She liked to tell herself it was a
good-paying job, but her conscience wouldn’t accept the lie. She
was in up to her ears with tankers, freighters, and merchant
vessels, because Cooper Daniels had kissed her.

The deep laughter came again, and she gave
up the pretense of work. She couldn’t concentrate with the two of
them in there laughing. Cooper had never laughed with her about
anything.

Standing, she smoothed her skirt and checked
her watch. It was lunchtime, the perfect excuse for finding out
what was going on in his office.

There were a few things she questioned about
Ms. Cao, not the least of which was her most opportune appearance.
Luke had yet to come up with anything suspicious beyond Bo’s
illegal status, but Jessica still felt uncomfortable with the
younger woman. She wasn’t alone in her feelings; Bo herself was
uneasy with everyone. Her discomfort showed in her silent alertness
and the way she always kept a certain distance between herself and
other people in a room, as if she was afraid someone might try to
grab her.

They didn’t know where she’d come from or
who had sent her, or what her motives were for giving them so much
information. That she was in someone’s employ was a reasonable
assumption. That her employer continued to remain anonymous was
unsettling. A loose end of such profound proportions could prove to
be dangerous. They had expected Bo’s employer to show his hand by
now, to request a favor in payment for the information. Jessica
hoped granting that favor wouldn’t be the final burden to crush
Daniels, Ltd., or get Cooper killed.

She knew Cooper also felt the inherent,
blind obligation in accepting Bo’s help, but he was more than
willing to take a risk if it could get him what he wanted.

She stood before the closed office doors,
suddenly reluctant to open them and face Cooper. He should never
have kissed her, especially to the point of combustion. And he most
certainly should never have stopped kissing her. For the first two
weeks she’d worked there, nary a soul had shown up at Daniels, Ltd.
Since the dragon had taken up residence, the office had turned into
Grand Central Station. They hadn’t had one quiet moment together
since Sunday night on her couch. Even those rare times when the
stars had aligned to give them quiet and a moment, Bo was always
there, or John, or Yuxi, or any number of other less savory
characters who came in to sell information.

He was driving her crazy. Her situation was
untenable. She didn’t know how she was going to walk away from him,
and the mess he was in, on Friday, but she had to find
a way.

Until then, she had a responsibility to do
her job, and her job included finding out what in the hell they
were giggling about in the next room.

After a perfunctory knock, she opened the
dragon doors, hardly giving the fierce beasts a second glance.
Cooper and Bo were not alone as she’d thought, and it wasn’t Cooper
laughing with the young woman. John and Yuxi must have arrived via
the private elevator, because they were in the room, setting out
lunch and talking to each other in what Jessica now recognized as
Cantonese. Both men were laughing, but John was looking at Bo with
a teasing expression. He spoke again, his voice soft and imploring,
and his effort elicited a shy response.

Jessica could tell by the color blooming on
Bo’s cheeks that she thought Chinese-American men were very
forward.

“Ms. Langston,” John greeted her as she
entered. “Your and Cooper’s lunch will be ready in a moment. Yuxi
and I will be taking Ms. Cao out to eat.”

The man knew how to get a startling amount
of information across in very few words. She and Cooper were having
a private lunch together, an important lunch if he was
relinquishing the responsibility for Ms. Cao’s safety. Not that
John Liu didn’t look more than capable of handling anyone who tried
to grab the woman.

She looked over at Cooper and caught his eye
just as he turned away. He was standing by the large window
overlooking Powell Street and the Bay beyond. Sunlight illuminated
his profile and cast golden highlights in his hair and along the
curve of his cheekbone. His mouth was grim, his jaw tight, and
Jessica suddenly felt selfish for resenting the thought of his
laughing with another woman. If she was smart, and she was
beginning to have her doubts that she was, he’d be doing a lot more
than laughing with another woman. He needed some sort of comfort,
some easing away of the stress drawing lines in his face. He needed
a soothing touch, and more and more, she wanted to be the one to
give it.