Dragon and the Dove Read Online Free

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,