Dragon and the Dove Read Online Free Page A

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