by Janzen, Tara
Three
Jessica sat stiffly in a high-backed chair, squinting against the early-morning light and watching Cooper Daniels prowl around the enormous sitting room of his suite. He was talking on the phone to George Leeds, his voice calm and low as they discussed the finer points of the deal she’d made for the capture of Pablo Lopez, the notorious Filipino pirate who was making a career out of stealing cargoes belonging to members of the Somerset Shipping Federation. Two weeks earlier Mr. Lopez had not bothered with unloading the cargo. He’d simply helped himself to the whole ship and put the Callander’s crew overboard. The Somerset people had decided to put a bounty on the brigand and to call in a bounty hunter. They had asked Leeds to contact the one bounty hunter they had all agreed could bring Mr. Lopez in alive—Cooper Daniels.
He was good. He was the best. One of the articles she’d printed off the data bases had mentioned an American company run by two brothers that was building a reputation for hunting down pirates. The article was five years old and had been published in a European shipping-trade magazine. A more recent article in an American business publication had referred to a West Coast company working with London’s International Maritime Bureau to clean up the coast off West Africa. Neither of the articles had mentioned Cooper or Daniels, Ltd. by name. They hadn’t needed to. If she’d had any doubts about whom they were talking about—and she hadn’t—George Leeds had made it clear why the bounty figures Cooper had scribbled in his notes were considered a fair price by the Somerset people.
Her employer walked toward the windows, and Jessica let him wander out of sight. Her pounding head wasn’t up to dealing with the rare London sunshine streaming through the glass. When he walked back into her line of vision, he turned and faced her, and her cheeks suffused with color. She lowered her gaze, intent on smoothing nonexistent wrinkles out of her skirt.
She had been ready to show him up all right, she thought, to show him “think on your feet” and “roll with the punches.” All she’d actually shown him was how well she could hold her liquor and how to execute a classic self-defense move. She was sure he hadn’t been impressed. Businessmen did not pay Stanford prices for skills easily mastered by an eighteen-year-old with a sturdy constitution.
On the other hand, her last lingering perception of Cooper Daniels as a businessman had vanished about five minutes after meeting George Leeds. She’d taken one look at the man’s salt-and-pepper ponytail, the multitude of earrings in his ear, and had thought she was dealing with an aging hippy. Then, as they had shaken hands, she noticed the snake head tattooed on the back of his wrist. When she’d looked farther, she’d seen where the snake’s tail came out of his collarless shirt and wrapped around his neck.
Despite her decision to handle these negotiations and figuratively wipe the smirk off Daniels’s face, she would have turned and run on the spot, but George had had too strong a grip on her. Spread sheets and bond yields, stock prices and bottom lines were her milieu, not dragons and snakes. When he’d released her, she still would have run, if her hand hadn’t immediately been taken up by another man. She’d been so overwhelmed by George Leeds, she hadn’t noticed his companion. When she’d turned to the quiet, impeccably dressed Oriental man, much of her initial panic had dissipated. Mr. Zhao Ping, as he had been introduced, was more the type of person she had expected to be dealing with—professional, polite, well-spoken, and without earrings and tattoos.
“Ms. Langston,” Cooper Daniels said, drawing her attention back to the present. He held the telephone receiver out to her. “George would like to speak with you . . . personally.”
The inflection he gave the last word wasn’t lost on her, and she wished George hadn’t asked to talk with her. The two of them had gotten into enough trouble.
She stood to take the phone. “Good morning, Mr. Leeds,” she said, maintaining a verbal distance and resisting the urge to turn her back on Cooper for added privacy.
“Good mornin’, Jessie. He weren’t too hard on you, was he? I never expected him to come after us in the Boarshead or we would’ve stayed someplace more respectable.”
“I appreciate your concern,” she said.
“Of course, if we’d only stayed in the respectable places, you wouldn’t have seen what you wanted to see.”
“Of course,” she said, uncomfortably aware of her employer’s nearness. She’d asked George to take her to the places Cooper usually went. It was professional curiosity, she’d told herself. The man was as inscrutable as they came, and she could do her job better if she understood him better, even if the job only lasted another six days. Her request, she’d assured herself, had nothing to do with green eyes, sex, or dragons. Mothers didn’t think about such things. She was simply curious.
“I heard you decked a sailor in the Boarshead,” George went on, a noticeable chuckle in his voice.
“Yes, well . . .” was all she could manage before George laughed out loud.
“You tell Coop he’s got himself one dandy little helper.”
“I’ll be sure and do that, George,” she said, her voice drier than day-old toast. Going from “a fatal error in judgment” to “a dandy little helper” wasn’t the sort of promotion she’d been aspiring for.
“Right, luv.” George laughed again, proving he was well aware of her sarcasm. After a short pause, he turned the conversation to a more serious vein. “There were a few things I didn’t get around to telling you last night. Things you ought to know.”
“Such as?” she prompted when he hesitated again. She hoped he wasn’t about to renege on the terms they’d hammered out over the last two days. The line she was treading between the law and criminality was already too damn thin to suit her. Despite her research, she wasn’t sure under what circumstances extradition might become kidnapping, or if either applied to the deal she’d struck. She wasn’t sure what the exact parameters were for the laws of bounty hunting, and the more information she got, the less sure she became. She did know that pirates were legally hostis humani generis—“enemies of all mankind”—and therefore under no nation’s protection, which precluded the legal climate necessary for extradition.
That seemed to leave only kidnapping, and only because the Somerset Shipping Federation had decided against simply having Mr. Lopez killed, a small consolation Jessica was holding on to for dear life. She couldn’t sanction murder. She could only do her damndest to prove to herself and Cooper Daniels that she was capable of handling any job anybody threw at her.
“Such as,” George said, “you ought to go home when you’re done here. You’re a sweet bird, Jessie. You don’t want to get messed up with Cooper and his like. I know the business don’t look too bad from London, and it probably looks real good from Coop’s San Francisco office, but just about the time you get into the middle of the Malacca or forty leagues south of Singapore, a lot of bad things can happen.”
Actually, Jessica thought the maritime bounty-hunting business was looking more appalling every day, even from the relatively safe environs of London. She had every intention of going home after this contract was signed. She had also had every intention of quitting Daniels, Ltd. when she got there, until those phone calls to her Stanford connections had given her reason to think otherwise. Besides checking up on Andrew Strachan, she’d discreetly checked out other employment opportunities. Her options weren’t as varied as she’d hoped. California’s economic slump was starting to reach even the upper echelons of the financial district, and Daniels was already paying her more than most of her colleagues were getting. Awful as it was, the pirate business was booming.
“Under normal circumstances, don’t you see, I’d say you’d be fine,” George went on. “But things ain’t been atall normal with Cooper the last couple of months. It was a bad business, Jackson getting killed like that—out and out murdered, really—and I think it kind of put Coop about half a bubble off. He ain’t been himself. I don’t think he could take care of a ship’s skillet right now, and I don’t think he ca
n take care of you, or that he’d even be inclined.”
“I see,” Jessica said, forcing her voice to a respectable blandness, working hard to hide her shock. Murder! George was right. The pirate business was no place for a sweet bird like her. Two days with the old man still hadn’t inured her to the bombshells of information he was given to dropping. She turned sideways, giving her back to Cooper before giving in to her curiosity and whispering, “Who was Jackson?”
The action didn’t do her any good. Even as she asked the question she felt the hairs rise on the nape of her neck. She was well aware of the cause. Knowing she couldn’t very well hide herself or her conversation from the man staring a hole through her back, she casually turned around to face him.
The look he was giving her was anything but casual, and it should have prepared her for George’s answer. It didn’t.
“Jackson were Coop’s younger brother,” George said. “But Coop don’t like to talk about him, so don’t go mentioning me mentioning him, if you please.”
Jessica blanched, her gaze instinctively dropping away from the anguish and anger reflected in Cooper Daniels’s eyes. His brother had been killed, and he knew she’d just been told that. She wished she’d done anything except ask her last question.
Regret washed through her and left an awful feeling in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t know where George thought Cooper might have gone that he wasn’t listening to every word she was saying. She silently damned the man for not giving her a warning before she’d spoken Jackson’s name.
“George, I—” She needed to get off the phone, but George didn’t give her a chance. He kept talking, burying her in information, none of it what she would have expected to hear about the enigmatic man she’d seen warming his body in a pool of sunlight half a world away.
“It’s a quid to a bloater that Coop will be dead before the New Year too. He’s takin’ chances, takin’ on bigger people than he can chew, if you know what I mean.”
She had an idea, a damn good idea. She swore under her breath. The conversation was quickly going from bad to worse.
She glanced at her employer, unable to stop herself, and found his anguish replaced by something less pained. In self-defense, she turned away, wishing George had told her these few things a damn sight earlier. If he had, she might have been long gone, instead of standing in a hotel suite, enduring the cold regard of a man whose reasons for disliking her were multiplying at an alarming rate. Enigmas never appreciated having their personal tragedies revealed to strangers.
“He was there when Jackson got it,” George continued, dragging her in deeper. Despite the lines of courtesy she was crossing, despite Cooper’s presence not ten feet from her, she didn’t even hint that he should stop. She was already accused and condemned. She wanted the whole story. “I think seeing his brother cut down in the prime of life loosened a few screws. Coop’s not playing smart like he used to. He’s sold a couple of properties he shouldn’t have at fire-sale prices when there weren’t no fire. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”
Jessica understood the last piece of information perfectly. For all the impression he gave of being a bum, George Leeds was the consummate businessman who knew within a centimeter on any deal where profit turned to loss. He’d obviously been the fire-sale buyer.
“And I’m not complaining about the twenty thousand pounds he’s borrowed either. It won’t be me who cuts his throat if he don’t pay up. But I’m not the only one he’s into, Jessie. If I was to give you any advice besides leaving, it would be not to hold on to your paycheck too long.”
Jessica swore silently again and closed her eyes, lifting her hand to rub her brow. She was beginning to get the picture George was laboring so hard to draw. She was working for a partially deranged, grief-stricken bounty hunter bent on revenge, who was willing to dismantle his whole company to accomplish a goal she did not even begin to comprehend, and her check was going to bounce.
“Who else and how much?” she asked.
The phone went dead before she got her answer. She opened her eyes to find Cooper standing next to her, his finger holding down the receiver button.
Her head barely reached his shoulder despite the heels she was wearing, but it wasn’t his towering, overwhelming nearness so much as his stillness that unsettled her to her core. She’d never heard him move. She felt like a mouse who was surprised to find her tail trapped under the cat’s paw.
Thick lashes shadowed his eyes as he took the phone out of her hand. The brief contact sent a slow wave of awareness up her arm, catching her off guard. Chagrined by her response, she admitted that his nearness had its disadvantages.
“Anything you want to know, ask me,” he said coolly.
There were a million things she wanted to know about him and not one she dared ask about. Because in a completely different way, she already knew too much. She knew that the slope of his nose with its slight tilt on the end intrigued her more than it should, as did the texture of his skin and the smile creases in his cheeks—though she’d never seen him smile. She knew the smudges of weariness beneath his eyes concerned her, when they were really none of her concern.
He was close enough for her to see the pulse in his neck, to detect the tightness in the muscles of his jaw. He’d swept back his silky sun-streaked hair as he’d paced the suite, but a swath insisted on falling forward across his brow. Tension and energy radiated off him. He was alive and dangerously male, a predator’s predator.
She knew enough about him to know she should stay away from him.
“Don’t worry about the severance offer,” she said, making her absolutely final decision before she could change her mind. There must be a hundred jobs in San Francisco that could meet her money requirements. She just needed to look for them. She took a step back. “My, uh, salary for the three weeks will be fine.”
He placed the receiver in the cradle of the phone and lifted his gaze to hers. She was struck once again by the color of his eyes. They were mesmerizingly green, the hue of a shallow, sunlit sea. But traces of pain lingered in their depths, pulling on parts of her that had no place in a business arrangement.
“I think we’re going to need more than three weeks,” he said, watching her with an intensity she felt to the marrow of her bones.
She backed off another step, hoping she had heard him wrong. He couldn’t possibly be asking her to stay on after she’d offered him an easy way out of their contract.
“We’ll leave for the airport in an hour,” he continued. “I’ll fill you in on the details of your new project during the flight.”
She stopped in her tracks, a sense of inevitable disaster coming over her. “What new project?”
“The one you were hired for.”
“I thought you wanted to fire me.” She was definitely getting in over her head this time. She could feel the water lapping at her chin. The job market might be tight, but Cooper Daniels’s past was shady, his present no less so, and his future was bleak. She was smarter than to get involved with him.
“I did want to fire you,” he said. “But last night you proved something to me I wouldn’t have believed three days ago.”
“What?” she asked incredulously. She couldn’t imagine that holding her beer had impressed him enough to change his mind. He did not appear to be a man who changed his mind or his opinions easily, and he’d made his opinion of her quite clear.
“Underneath all your innocence, you’ve got courage, integrity, and tenacity. I need all three.” He paused before adding in a quieter tone, “I need you.”
She barely heard his last words, but they echoed more resoundingly than any of the others he’d spoken.
Every brain cell she had told her to turn around and walk away, and every instinct she possessed told her to stay and help. She knew how good she was. She knew she was an unqualified asset no matter how many leagues south of Singapore he got.
. . . quid to a bloater Coop’ll be dead too . . . Maybe she was the edge
he needed.
Maybe he was more than she could handle.
Damn.
She looked up at him and forced herself to hold his gaze. He met her challenge head-on, one eyebrow raised in a silent dare, allowing her to see whatever she might. They both endured the probing intimacy of her visual search, until heat raced across her cheeks and she had to look away.
George had been right, she thought. Cooper Daniels was a man on the edge, willing to risk everything. He hadn’t hidden his pain or his desire; he not only needed her, he wanted her. The mixture was potent and devastating.
“I . . . uh, don’t think so, Mr. Daniels,” she stammered, turning to gather her briefcase off the hall table.
“You aren’t dismissed, Ms. Langston,” he said in a tone that stopped her in her tracks—for a nanosecond.
She picked up her briefcase in defiance.
“You owe me six days,” he said behind her, and her hand stilled in its movement. “I want them .”
Jessica knew she was caught. Her mouth tightened. Six days, she thought, mentally bracing herself. What could possibly happen in six days?
Nothing worth the cost of a lawyer, she decided. She would hang tough and wait it out. That left her with just one small problem to clear up with him.
She took her time, deliberately laying her briefcase back on the table before she faced him. She met his gaze straight on so there would be no misunderstanding. “No matter what you think, Mr. Daniels, I am not innocent, nor am I easily manipulated. It’s my job to know the score, and I am very good at my job.”
The smile she hadn’t seen before came in a wry curve, deepening the lines on either side of his mouth and putting a teasing light in his eyes. His brows shifted subtly upward.
Jessica belatedly realized they weren’t talking about the same kind of innocence. She also, on a deep instinctive level, realized that she’d been warned. She was playing with fire, the dragon’s fire, and even more than she, he understood the allure . . . and the danger.
