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  The Dragon and the Dove

  From the high seas to the dangers of Chinatown, their love is one wild ride.

  One

  It was a shame, really, Jessica Langston thought, that anyone besides herself had their days held hostage by her eccentric employer. She cast another surreptitious glance over her desk at the Oriental woman waiting in the reception area of Daniels, Ltd. Two hours earlier the woman had given her a card identifying herself as Dr. Sharon Liu and had said she was there to see Cooper Daniels. When Jessica politely explained the futility of such an endeavor, the woman had only smiled and sat down to wait in the richly appointed office, sinking her elegant form into a wingback chair and balancing her slippers on the cinnabar-colored carpet.

  Jessica could have told her again that she was wasting her time, but she had already implied as much twice since their initial conversation. Her employer did not see people without an appointment. For that matter, her employer did not see people with an appointment. Truly, she doubted if her employer saw people in any capacity. Jessica had worked for Cooper Daniels for two weeks and he had not seen her.

  She hadn’t seen him either—unless she counted the dusty oil painting stuck up on the wall in the darkest corner of the office.

  Crotchety old man, she thought, giving the picture a bored glance. The artist certainly hadn’t been paid to glamorize her employer. Cooper Daniels looked stern, unforgiving, wrinkled up, dried out, and like he could kick off at any moment.

  Squelching a sigh of irritation, she went back to flipping through The Wall Street Journal. She hadn’t gone for an MBA on top of an undergraduate degree in accounting and subjected herself to six weeks of intensive testing and interviewing by a gray-haired harridan of a headhunter named Mrs. Crabb to spend her days reading. She was supposed to be Cooper Daniels’s assistant, not his receptionist.

  She shouldn’t complain, Jessica told herself. She was certainly getting paid as if she were assisting the owner and founder of Daniels, Ltd. in his Pacific Rim wheeling and dealing, as if she were tracking high-end real estate investment opportunities, which she’d been educated to do.

  Dr. Liu rose from her chair and walked over to the large oak-framed windows overlooking Powell Street and the Bay, drawing Jessica’s attention away from her newspaper. An olive-colored silk pantsuit with designer origins hugged the woman’s slender figure; her hair was drawn back in a severe but regal chignon. Jessica wondered how long she would wait before she finally gave up and left. The other woman’s patience made her think Dr. Liu knew something she didn’t, and that unnerved her. Any normal person would have taken her hints and left an hour ago. But that was the pot calling the kettle black. Any normal person wouldn’t have spent the last two weeks working for a man whose very existence was becoming doubtful. Sometimes she wondered if he’d died and nobody had remembered to tell her.

  “Ms. Langston, Cooper Daniels here. Please send Dr. Liu in.”

  The blue band of light blinking on her intercom and the accompanying masculine voice catapulted Jessica’s pulse into overdrive and paralyzed her from the neck down. A barrage of questions spilled into her mind, adding to the general confusion: How had he gotten into his office without her seeing him? How long had he been in his office? What was she supposed to do?

  Respond, came the answer. Regrouping quickly, she leaned forward and pressed the response panel on the intercom.

  “Yes, Mr. Daniels. I’ll send her right in.” She turned to the woman standing at the window. “Dr. Liu? Mr. Daniels will see you now.”

  Jessica waited for Dr. Liu to retrieve her medical bag, then with as much grace as she could manage, considering her heart was pounding a mile a minute, she rose and stepped over to the ornate doors leading to Cooper Daniels’s private office. Dragons with fangs bared and claws showing, wings spread and flames rolling, faced each other in frozen flight on the carved wooden panels. Surprisingly, the doors opened when she turned the handles. They never had before when she’d tried them, and she’d tried them many, many times—even going so far as to put her shoulder to the job and wiggle a bobby pin or two in the lock.

  “Thank you.” The Oriental woman slipped by her with a small smile that suggested, “I told you so.”

  Jessica responded with a tight little smile of her own, conceding defeat. The woman had known something she hadn’t known. Dr. Liu had known Cooper Daniels was alive and well and in residence.

  Before closing the doors, Jessica glanced into the office, intending to give the old man a nod of acknowledgment. He wasn’t anywhere in sight. The only indication of his presence was the sound of running water coming from an open door off to the left, the sound of a lot of running water, as if someone was taking a shower.

  After spending so many days looking at Cooper Daniels’s portrait, she refused to dwell on the picture her last thought brought to mind, let alone take the time to imagine what Dr. Liu was doing there. Instead she made a quick study of the rest of the office, noting an ancient private elevator against the south wall—which answered one of her questions—the massive desk commandeering the north wall, and the elaborate arrangement of flowers and foliage cascading over a large, low table that anchored a circle of chairs.

  She had turned to leave when a glimmer of gold caught her eye. She looked down and her next heartbeat caught for a second, captured by the dragon woven into the carpet. A hundred shades of bronze, yellow, copper, and brown edged the scales that began at the tail, where she stood with her feet perfectly placed in the heart-shaped point. Startled, she moved off the creature and looked up toward its head. Fierce emerald-green eyes warmed in the late-afternoon sunshine. Blue smoke curled out of the winged beast’s nostrils. Flames of red and orange danced upon its tongue.

  Fascinated and strangely wary, she let her gaze travel up the reptilian profile and down the crested rows of gilt scales. The animal was the essence of power, a force to be reckoned with, snaking across the cinnabar carpet and through a bank of white clouds in all its golden glory. And it was chained, collared at the neck by a broad iron band.

  Dr. Liu discreetly cleared her throat, and Jessica’s eyes flicked up. She knew she either had to leave or have a reason to stay. With the other woman moving about the large room with more familiarity than Jessica could claim, leaving was the only sensible option. When the shower was turned off in the adjoining room, leaving became the preferable option.

  With one last intrigued look at the dragon, she closed the doors and walked back to her desk. She felt like she’d passed a horrendously complicated test of nerves and composure, something along the lines of “Can a person sit in a room by herself for two weeks and not have a heart attack when the intercom suddenly comes to life?”

  Her smile returned in triumph. She’d passed with flying colors. Her “Yes, Mr. Daniels. I’ll send her right in,” had been delivered with unruffled efficiency, despite sweating palms and a still-jumping pulse. As soon as Dr. Sharon Liu left, she and Mr. Daniels were going to have to straighten a few things out. Outrageous salary or not, she wasn’t going to spend her whole career waiting to say “Yes, Mr. Daniels” once a month.

  An hour later her pulse had slowed to a near-comatose rate, she’d memorized a full quarter page of stock prices, and she’d decided she was leaving Daniels, Ltd. no matter what Cooper Daniels came up with as an explanation for his unorthodox behavior. She’d earned the right to be more than some old man’s glorified secretary.

  Besides, there wasn’t any irreplaceable prestige in working for a company and a man no one had ever heard of, especially if the company was on the skids—which, given her work load and despite her salary, she was beginning to suspect. If Daniels was going to go bankrupt, he’d have to do it without her. She needed her outrageous paycheck, every penny of it.

  Her MBA from Stanford University had not come cheap, emotionally or financially, but it had been the best chance she’d had of getting off the bottom rung of the corporate ladder. Stanford had been a chance to pull her life to
gether after a dismal divorce, a chance to come home to San Francisco with her children.

  Now she owed a bundle to Stanford and the government, and to her family for all their help. She couldn’t afford to take a chance with Daniels, Ltd.

  Before she left, though, she was going to ask her employer about the chained dragon. A man didn’t have something like that splashed all over his carpet without its having some significance. What that significance might be, she couldn’t begin to guess. But it meant something, something powerful. She knew it. She’d felt it.

  “Ms. Langston? Cooper Daniels. I’d like to see you in my office.” His surprisingly strong voice sounded on the intercom again without warning, startling her into another minor stroke.

  Damn the man. She pressed a hand to her chest for a few seconds to calm her heart before pushing the response panel.

  “Yes, Mr. Daniels,” she said, silently swearing it would be the last time the words passed her lips. “I’ll be right in.”

  She didn’t know what to expect, but she knew what he expected. Mrs. Crabb had been very explicit about the high level of professionalism and creative intelligence required by Cooper Daniels, about the value of thinking on one’s feet and being able to roll with the punches. Jessica had never doubted her supply of any of those attributes—until she stood outside the dragon-carved doors and prepared to meet the man who had kept her cooling her heels for ten-and-three-quarters working days.

  The instant she stepped inside his office she realized she hadn’t done nearly enough preparation. On the other hand, she consoled herself, nothing could have prepared her for the sight of a man who was young, healthy . . . and naked.

  * * * * * *

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  Table of Contents

  Reader Letter

  Titles

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Excerpt: Avenging Angel

  Excerpt: The Dragon and the Dove

  Table of Contents

  Reader Letter

  Titles

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Excerpt: Avenging Angel

  Excerpt: The Dragon and the Dove