by Janzen, Tara
Jessica walked across the carpet to his desk, deliberately skirting the golden dragon writhing in flight over most of the floor. Her foot did squash down on the tip of the dragon’s nose, but it was an accident.
He’d only kissed her. He’d only made it explicitly clear that he intended to do it again. He had said he wasn’t interested in other women, that he was only interested in her, but men said the most self-serving things at times.
Of course, he had given her the key to his private office, which worked so much better than her bobby pins ever had. He’d also given her his on-line passwords, and while they’d been in the air over the Atlantic, he had spent an extensive amount of time explaining the use of international public-forum bulletin boards for exchanging information and holding cryptic computer conversations with his network of informants. Crime, he’d assured her, was as computerized as the next business.
She moved behind Cooper’s desk and checked his fax machine. It was empty of a change in itinerary, as was the answering machine for the telephone. Her next step was to call his hotel; she was told he’d already checked out.
Jessica hung up the phone and tapped her fingers on the desk top. She wasn’t at all sure she wanted him to kiss her again. She didn’t think she had the strength for it. She also didn’t think she had the strength to refuse him. Physically, he had a startling effect on her. When he’d been kissing her, she hadn’t wanted it to end. His kiss had set off sensory fireworks, and he’d tasted good. So good, she’d spent too much of the last two nights wondering how the rest of him would taste, and wondering just how far she’d go to find out.
She knew she was heading for trouble, and now she had Ms. Cao Bo to worry about.
Unfortunately, neither of those problems was big enough to outweigh her worrying over Cooper. She simultaneously prayed for the week to end and dreaded the termination of her contract. She had nothing to offer a man like him, but she didn’t completely trust herself to remember that. Her security lay in believing he was as certain as she that they were mismatched. He’d been way out of line with his kiss, and she’d been way out of line returning it with an eagerness that still astonished her. They needed to get a few things straight, and she wouldn’t be able to do that if he got hurt.
If he came home injured, she’d worry and be angry, and she’d wonder how in the hell she’d gotten her hormones and her heart all tangled up with his. Being attracted to him was bad, but it was containable, controllable. Caring about him, though, would mean she was up to her ears in trouble.
* * *
At noon, Jessica sent out for two lunches to be delivered. She and Cao Bo ate in relative silence punctuated by smiles and small gestures of politeness—“Did Ms. Cao want more chips? Coleslaw? Tea?”
All offers were declined, and all told, Ms. Cao ate barely more than a nibble. Jessica’s maternal instincts had been buzzing throughout the morning, noting the younger woman’s unease that seemed a mixture of fear and nervousness, the almost unnatural brightness of her eyes, and her refusal to release her hold on the padded folder she held even while she played at eating. The lack of appetite was a final clue Jessica couldn’t ignore.
“Are you sick?” she asked, leaning across the small table they shared in the reception area and lightly touching Ms. Cao’s arm. Her hand immediately tightened. The young woman was burning up.
Jessica rephrased her question, putting even more concern in her voice. “How sick are you? Do you need a doctor?”
The woman shook her head in the negative, but her eyes told a different story.
“I think I should take you to the emergency room,” Jessica said, realizing she’d let her other worries occupy her to the point of negligence. What she’d interpreted as nervousness was at least partially fever and physical discomfort, maybe even pain.
“No,” the woman said, her voice tinged with desperation. “No hospitals, no doctors, please. I am only tired.”
Jessica gave her an inquisitive look, her hand still gentle on the woman’s arm. Either Cao Bo’s pronunciation was improving with the increase in her temperature, or she spoke better English than she’d led Jessica to believe.
“To a hotel, then. You need bed rest and probably a couple of aspirin every four hours. And liquids. Lots of liquids.”
“No hotel. I will wait here for the Dragon,” Ms. Cao insisted.
“The Dragon—” Jessica caught herself and made the correction. “I mean, Mr. Daniels, might not be here until very late. You can’t stay here for the rest of the day, not in your condition.”
“I will wait.”
“But I won’t, and you can’t stay here without me. That is against the Dragon’s very strict rules.” Jessica was making up the rules as she went, but that was what she got paid for—thinking on her feet. “I can take you over to a hotel very near here and leave a message for the Dragon. He can contact you when he arrives.”
“No.” Ms. Cao shook her head again, her eyes downcast. “No hotel. I have no papers.”
Actually, she had lots of papers, right there in her folder, but Jessica understood what she meant, much to her chagrin.
“You don’t need a passport to get a hotel room,” she said, then wondered if she had just broken an immigration law by aiding and abetting an illegal alien. Cooper Daniels was going to be the death of her reputation, and she doubted if it would take him all week to accomplish the deed.
“No,” the younger woman said again .
Jessica had to admit that Ms. Cao had that particular word down pat, with just the right amount of stubbornness to give it validity. “Okay,” she said, continuing to think on her feet. Cooper wouldn’t be too pleased if she let his “information” deteriorate into life-threatening illness, so she did the reasonable thing. “I’ll take you home with me for a few hours, and when the Dragon arrives, he can come and get you.”
When Cao Bo nodded in agreement, Jessica took the victory with a sigh of relief and went back into Cooper’s office to leave a message.
As a matter of course, she checked the fax and Cooper’s E-mail. Nothing had come in, but as she turned to leave, the phone rang. She’d had a few calls during the day, so it didn’t seem unusual, until she answered it and heard the hoarsely spoken words. “Help. Coop . . .”
The line went dead before any more words could be spoken. Her first thought was that it was Cooper, and her heart plummeted.
* * *
Cooper found Jessica’s message in his office a little after midnight, and within five minutes he was back in his car and heading for her house in the suburbs. He’d called first to tell her he was coming, but had deliberately kept the conversation short. She’d taken an operative into her home, and he was torn between blaming himself for the screw-up or blaming fate. He knew there wasn’t anybody else.
The first thing Leeds had told him on the phone last Friday morning in London was to get rid of Jessie Langston. She didn’t belong in his game, George had said. George had been right. There was no way for Cooper to warn her about every possible danger, not in the short time they had, and not considering the job they had to do in that short time.
The yard was dark when he arrived, but as he got out of his car the front porch lights came on, a beacon at the end of a long tunnel of night-darkened greenery.
She was waiting for him at the door, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. Her hand was raised to her chest, her gaze searching him from head to toe, looking for the damage her note had said she feared had befallen him. He didn’t miss the close scrutiny she gave his bad leg, as if she thought the weakest part of him would be the first to go.
Once on her porch, he stood closer to her than was necessary, looking down at her in silence, forcing her to meet his gaze. She looked up, flustered.
“Mr. Dani—” He lowered his mouth to cover hers before she could finish saying his name.
“Cooper,” he said roughly when he lifted his head to look into her startled eyes. After the concern he’d read in her message, he figure
d they were solidly on a first-name basis. She drew in a small breath, her hands pressing against his chest, and he took the opportunity to kiss her again, warming her mouth with his until she opened for him.
The gentle, insistent stroking of his tongue along hers had an immediate effect on him and a desirable effect on her. The pressure of her palms lessened, and her hands slowly slid up over his collarbone, then his shoulders, and finally around his neck. She was softer and sweeter than he remembered. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight.
“I thought you were hurt, maybe captured,” she murmured when he kissed her cheek. “I’m so relieved you’re okay. It’s been hell since lunch, and I want you to know you—”
Jessica pulled herself up short when she realized she was babbling. When the first tear spilled over, she got angry and pushed herself away from him. “Damn you.”
“Yeah. I’ve had days like that too. But I didn’t have enough balls to cry about them. Where’s the woman?”
He could make a life out of shocking her, Jessica decided. “She’s in Tony’s room.”
“Alone, I hope.” He gave her a wry glance.
She ignored him. “She’s ill, feverish. It could just be exhaustion. I wanted to call a doctor and have her looked at, but the idea upset her so badly, I decided against it.”
“Good. She’s justifiably paranoid if she’s fresh off the boat. If she’s been in Chinatown long enough to meet the kind of people who usually feed me information, she’s got even more reason to remain as anonymous as possible.”
Cooper followed Jessica up the stairs to her brother’s room. He didn’t tell her he wished like hell she hadn’t brought the woman home. No matter where Cao Bo came from, someone was bound to have followed her, making sure she did her job, and that someone had been led to Jessica’s house. It was all he could do to keep from hitting the wall with his fist.
They looked in on the young woman, keeping their voices low and their intrusion short. She was sleeping peacefully, and Jessica wouldn’t allow him to wake her for questioning. A few more hours, she told him, wouldn’t make any difference.
Cooper knew she was wrong, but he let her have her way, because he wanted to talk to her more than he wanted to talk to the mysterious Cao Bo.
“Can I use your phone?” he asked, following Jessica back downstairs to the living room. He had noticed the first time he was there that Paul Signorelli had a preference for animalistic furniture and accessories. One wooden table looked like a cheetah, a wrought-iron chair resembled a sleeping flamingo, and they both resided in a jungle of greenery that was not outdone by the landscaping of the yard. Cooper wouldn’t have been surprised if it had started raining in the living room.
“The phone’s in the kitchen,” she said, and led the way.
“I know it’s late, but would it be too much to ask for a cup of coffee?”
“No. Are you hungry?” she asked.
“Yes, but I don’t expect you to cook.”
“Tony’s the cook,” she informed him, walking over to the refrigerator. “And you’re in luck. We’ve got an incredible pasta salad, cold crab, sourdough bread, and some indecent chocolate thing Alaina made for dessert.”
“That would be great,” he said. “But if it’s too much trouble, I can have something brought over.”
His wording was deliberate, and it didn’t slip by her.
She looked over her shoulder at him, her hand on the refrigerator door. “You make it sound like you’re not leaving for a while.”
“I’m not.”
“If it’s the kiss, you misunderstood,” she said calmly, but he noticed her grip tighten on the door.
“I wish it was the kiss, but it’s not. You’ve got a woman upstairs who you shouldn’t have brought home, and I can’t leave until I know there aren’t going to be any consequences.”
“Consequences.” She repeated the word dully, and he could see the full impact of the situation register on her face. She was frozen in place for a heartbeat before she half walked, half ran toward another part of the house.
When she returned a few minutes later, the panic was erased from her face, replaced by a steely determination.
“How are the kids?” he asked, guessing where she’d gone.
“Fine. Help yourself to dinner. I’ll be back.”
He watched her take a ring of keys from her purse and head for the basement. He could tell by the faint jingle and clanging noise coming up the stairs that she was opening a metal cabinet. Having a pretty good idea of what was probably in a locked metal cabinet in a basement—namely guns—he decided right then and there to call Elise Crabb in the morning and apologize for his doubts about the angelfish in silk.
After relocking the gun cabinet, Jessica came upstairs in time to catch the tail end of Cooper’s telephone conversation.
“ . . . for tonight at least. Bring what you need and call your cousin Yuxi. I want two men here.”
She set a handgun on the kitchen counter, within easy reach, and started to make a pot of coffee. The .357-caliber Magnum had been the ninth and last wedding anniversary present from her ex-husband. She’d thought it was an odd present, and had only realized later that it had been a big clue that he wasn’t going to be around much from then on, especially at night. He’d replaced the security of his presence with the security of a gun so he could go his roving way with a clear conscience. She’d been furious with herself for being so blind back then, and she was furious with herself now, though for a different reason.
“I don’t really think it’s as bad as I made it sound,” Cooper said behind her after he’d hung up the phone. “I just don’t want to take any chances.”
“I don’t either,” she said, tight-lipped. She finished pouring water into the coffee machine, and when it spilled, she swore softly and grabbed a towel to mop up. “Who did you call?”
“My houseboy, John Liu, Dr. Liu’s brother.”
“Your houseboy does double duty as a security guard?” She hated the tremor in her voice. Dammit, she wasn’t naive. She knew the score when it came to the good guys and the bad guys. It was a game she’d grown up in, and one she’d married into.
“It’s more like my security guard doing double duty as a houseboy.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “Good Lord, Cooper. What kind of life do you lead?”
He was silent for a small eternity before he said, “Not an easy one since Jackson died.”
The edge in his voice caused her to turn around and look at him, the damp towel still in her hand. He was rumpled, and tired, and gorgeous. She shouldn’t care, she told herself. There was nothing in him except trouble and danger—and an anger born of pain.
“You can blame me for this problem,” he said, running his hand through his hair, his eyes closing out of sheer weariness.
“I could,” she agreed, setting the towel aside and wiping her hands on the front of her jeans. “But then I’d only be half-right.”
His eyes opened, capturing her gaze. “If I’d been straight with you from the beginning, you would have made a different decision.”
“Probably.”
“There’s no reason to blame yourself,” he said, seeming determined to give her an out.
She didn’t need him handing her absolution, and it was time she told him. “Yes, there is,” she said, turning aside and punching the brew button. “If I had been thinking with my head instead of my ego, I would have walked out the first time you fired me. And for the record, I won’t relinquish the responsibility for my decisions to anybody.”
“I can respect that.”
“You’d better.”
They were at a Mexican standoff, and Cooper was too tired not to blink.
“I think I already know the answer,” he said, “but just in case I’m wrong, do you know how to use that gun on the counter?”
“My dad was a cop for thirty years,” she answered. “My ex-husband is a PI and I have two uncles and two brothers currently
employed by the San Francisco Police Department, one as a martial-arts instructor. There isn’t a Signorelli in a two-hundred-mile radius who doesn’t know how to break down, clean, put back together, safely store, and fire that gun on the counter.”
That’s what Cooper had thought.
Eight
Jessica woke with a start, her heart pounding, her senses alert in the darkness.
“Shh.” The comforting sound was whispered close to her ear. “It’s just John making tea in the kitchen.”
John, Jessica repeated in her mind. John was Dr. Liu’s brother, Cooper’s security guard and houseboy. He was also a warrior. She had felt the power of his body in his handshake and in the finely focused energy of his dark gaze.
The voice whispering to her was equally easy to identify and recall. Cooper was a warrior too. He was also incredibly close, lying behind her on the couch, his body pressed against the length of hers. His hand moved on her waist, caressing her through the light cotton of her T-shirt. With effort, she resisted the impulse to lift into his touch.
“You haven’t been asleep very long,” he murmured, his breath warm and soft on the back of her neck. “Why don’t you try to get more rest. Your brothers have gone to bed. John and Yuxi have everything under control.”
Everything except you, she thought, and wondered how they had gotten into such a compromising position. She remembered meeting the other two men and settling on the couch to wait out the dawn. She didn’t remember Cooper joining her.
He should have had more sense.
“Yuxi is checking the outside perimeters of the house and yard, and I just checked the children.” His hand stroked over her hip and back down to her waist. The movement was gentle and caring, intimate and sensual.
She groaned to herself and covered her face with one hand. He wasn’t the only one who needed more sense. She’d been divorced for three years, and her sex life had disappeared long before the divorce. She had missed sex, but she hadn’t been compelled to search it out at any and all costs, not by any stretch of the imagination. She was a mother, a woman with responsibilities.
