by Janzen, Tara
She was out of line, way out of line, and for the life of her, she couldn’t understand why he was having such a sexual effect on her. She had four brothers, an ex-husband, and a son. The male anatomy held no mysteries for her. The possibility of attraction was ludicrous. She’d been harboring a grudge against him for weeks, and she hadn’t even seen his face.
He lifted his head then, and Jessica realized she was in deep trouble.
Cooper Daniels ran a hand back through his silky fine hair and narrowed his drowsy gaze on her. “Who are you?” he asked, the sultry pitch of pleasure in his voice replaced by a hint of confusion.
“Jessica Langston.” She barely got the words out around the lump growing in her throat. She felt foolishly uninformed. Throughout her application and interviewing process, she’d never been led to expect anything like Cooper Daniels in the flesh.
The uncompromising angles and hard sensuality of his face emanated a wildness she’d never seen in any boardroom, a raw combination of threat and promise underscored by the greenest eyes she’d ever seen, eyes the color of emeralds, the color of the dragon’s. His hair was longer than she’d thought, the straight fall of it brushed haphazardly off his face. He was unshaven, with beard stubble darkening his jaw.
“Try again.” The words were delivered as a command, with all the confusion erased from his tone.
“Jessica Langston,” she repeated, holding her ground and wondering if the line of questioning was another sign of his unorthodox behavior, or another test of her nerves. She didn’t appreciate either, but knew now was not the time to call his bluff, not unless she was ready to lose. Her employer looked more than capable of eating her for lunch and needing seconds.
“I was very explicit about what I required in an assistant,” he said coldly. “You are not it. Elise Crabb assured me Jessica Langston was.”
She sensed his arrogance was as much a part of him as his breath, but he was in error. According to what Mrs. Crabb had told her, she met all of his requirements. If anything, she was overqualified for the job.
“If you will check my resume and personnel file, Mr. Daniels, you will find I am more than capable of handling the job.” She was also capable of her own arrogance, though she preferred to think of it as well-placed confidence. He wouldn’t find many Stanford MBAs with four years of experience in the Far Eastern real estate division of a major insurance company. That her experience had been gained as a glorified secretary was irrelevant given her new degree.
“No, Ms. Langston,” he said, acknowledging only her identity. “You are not capable of handling the job. What you are is a fatal error in judgment that Elise Crabb will find quite costly.”
Jessica blanched, but managed to keep her gaze steady. A fatal error in judgment? She’d never been so insulted in her life.
She was the cream of the crop, the best. The only reason she’d accepted the Daniels, Ltd. offer was because of the salary and the location. A compelling combination, she admitted, but he was still lucky to have her, and if this was a test, she’d be damned if she failed, especially in front of an audience. Dr. Liu had stepped away from the table at the first sign of dissension and was looking out the window, but there was no way for her not to hear the argument in progress.
“You are dismissed,” Cooper Daniels said after a tense silence.
“On what grounds, may I ask?” With effort, Jessica held her rising anger in check and maintained at least a veneer of professionalism. If this was a game to him, he’d gone too far. If it wasn’t, she deserved a full explanation before she threw his job back in his face.
He once again took his time in answering. But this wait was accompanied by a slow, scorching perusal of her body, from the toes of her black pumps, up the length of her black suit, to the V-neck of her cream-colored silk blouse. His gaze deliberately lingered there until she blushed. She felt touched, indecently so, which she knew beyond doubt had been his intention.
“Innocence,” he finally said, his impossibly green eyes meeting hers with all the force of a head-on collision.
The last of Jessica’s composure crumbled under the impact.
“I beg your pardon?” she finally managed to say.
“Innocence,” he repeated. “You’ve got it, and I don’t want it.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said, surprised into candor.
“It’s also the truth,” he said without apology. “You are dismissed.” He settled himself back down on the table, turning his head away from her and cradling it in his arms. Dr. Liu returned to his side and began massaging the soles of his feet.
The hell she was dismissed, Jessica thought. She’d never heard such drivel. Innocent? Her? She was the single mother of two children, who had been dumped by her husband when he had needed to “find himself,” apparently in the arms of another woman.
“As your assistant, Mr. Daniels,” she said firmly, refusing to concede anything at this point, “I have to counsel against such an unfounded, judgmental, highly subjective statement. It could cost you millions in court.”
“Not if you want a reference,” he said, then muttered a curse when Dr. Liu moved away again.
“I think you’ve underestimated my integrity.”
“And I think you’ve underestimated my authority.”
Since there was no reasonable way to counter his statement, she let it slide and chose an alternate approach.
“We have a legally binding contract, which promises a twenty-day grace period from any decision of termination unless agreed to by both parties.” She’d been tossed out on her backside once, and the experience had taught her the necessity of working with a net. The special clause was her version of a parachute. It was far from golden, but it was there.
“You’ve had your twenty days,” was his reply.
“The contract states twenty working days,” she said without hesitation, sensing victory. So help her, she would have the satisfaction of quitting. “You owe me nine days, ten if you include the rest of today.”
“I’ll give you a hundred dollars for each of them.”
She stiffened her shoulders and glared at the unseeing man who was treating her future and her integrity with such nonchalance. She couldn’t be bought off, and certainly not for a measly thousand dollars.
“Five hundred,” he said when she didn’t answer. After another long silence, he swore softly and raised himself to his elbows. He cast a long-suffering look in her direction. “Ten thousand dollars, flat severance with excellent reference.” An arrogant smile graced his mouth. “Take it, Ms. Langston. It is my final offer.”
She had not graduated at the top of her class by being either passive or pliable—or innocent, for that matter.
“I want my ten days,” she said, fully aware that she’d just had a cataclysmic change of mind. She would walk out in ten days, gladly, but she’d be damned if she let him throw her out.
Cooper respected tenacity and stubbornness. One or the other, and sometimes both, had been the only things between him and death at times. There was something to be said for being too damn stubborn to let go of a job . . . or to let go of life. He respected integrity, too, though by necessity it was usually one of the first things to go in his business, right after innocence.
He let his gaze travel the length of Jessica Langston again. She was attractive, decidedly so, but not beautiful in a classically California way. Her curves were too rounded, her mouth too determined, her posture too severe, yet there was a dangerous softness about her. She was not what he’d been led to expect. She was not what he wanted.
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, car
essing 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.
Two
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.
