Outlaw Carson (23 page)

“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.

And that, she realized, was why most of her
classmates at Stanford had opted for jobs with Fortune 500
companies or on Wall Street. At certain levels of success, people
tended to take a bit more care with their appearance, most of them
being dressed to impress—the operative word being “dressed.”

Dr. Liu ignored her presence and continued
working her hands down the warmly bronzed expanse of back bared to
the California sunshine. The man was lying on a massage table that
had been set up beneath the windows. His head was buried in his
arms with nothing showing except an unruly mop of sun-streaked
light brown hair. A discreetly placed sheet covered him from waist
to thigh, but Jessica didn’t have any doubts that he was naked
underneath it—and she was mesmerized despite herself.

“There are two leather folders on my desk,
Ms. Langston,” the man said without lifting his head, confirming
his identity as Cooper Daniels. His voice was unmistakably the one
she’d just heard on her intercom. “The green one is mine. The red
one is yours. Please familiarize yourself with the information in
the red folder.”

Jessica nodded in agreement, but made no
move to comply, her gaze fixed on the sleek, powerful lines of his
body. He was beautiful, like a sated animal in repose, oblivious to
watching eyes and social decorum.

The curves of muscle in his arms flowed down
from strong, broad shoulders to square, masculine hands. Dr. Liu
moved to massage his legs, and Jessica’s gaze followed as the other
woman’s long, slender fingers kneaded and soothed his well-muscled
thighs.

Jessica swallowed softly, suddenly feeling
overly warm. The Cooper Daniels in the painting was obviously a
much older relative of the man in Dr. Sharon Liu’s inestimable
care.

“There is a stock offering on a company in
Jakarta,” her employer said. “They’re trying to buy themselves into
a major building project, a resort. I want you to find out the
names of everyone involved in the project and then get me a rundown
of their other financial investments.”

She nodded again, embarrassingly dumbstruck,
but able to rouse herself enough to step over to the desk. For
reasons she couldn’t explain, she became immediately aware that she
was walking on the dragon. She made an unconscious move to keep
from putting her foot into its fiery mouth. Another sidestep kept
her from pressing into the iron-gray band around its neck. It was
then that she noticed the words inscribed on the collar. Still
heading toward the desk, she turned in a half circle to get the
golden letters upright in her line of vision.

By Love Alone
, she read, her eyebrows
drawing together in disbelief as she came to a stop beside the
desk. She read the words again to make sure she’d gotten them
right. Then her gaze moved onward, to the golden chain attached to
the collar. The gilt links wound their way through silver-lined
clouds, until they broke free and found the dragon’s master.

Her first thought was that not even love
would enable such a delicate creature to hold the beast at the
other end of the chain.

Behind her, Cooper Daniels groaned, a soft
sound rumbling up from deep in his chest, and Jessica felt a
disconcerting flush of heat sweep through her body.
By Love
Alone
. She looked away from the white dove holding the chain in
its beak and returned her gaze to the man stretched out on the
table. He changed positions with languorous grace, drawing one knee
up and turning his head to the other side with a deep sigh. Using a
subtle move, Dr. Liu unfolded another length of the sheet before
any really interesting part of him could be exposed. When he was
covered, she continued to work her magic down his thighs to the
backs of his knees.

“You have my most humble gratitude,
lao
pengyou
,” he said to the doctor. His voice had grown gravelly
with pleasure, sparking another wave of heat through Jessica’s
midsection. The impropriety of him having a massage in her presence
was nothing compared with the wild imaginings filling her mind.

He was the dragon—she had no doubts—but who
was the dove? Not Dr. Liu, she knew. Despite the physical intimacy
of the massage, Sharon Liu appeared to be professionally detached.
She worked Cooper Daniels’s body with skill and care, but not with
love or tenderness. Not with the uncomfortable awareness Jessica
felt while watching him.

She was out of line, way out of line, and
for the life of her, she couldn’t understand why he was having such
a
sexual
effect on her. She had four brothers, an
ex-husband, and a son. The male anatomy held no mysteries for her.
The possibility of attraction was ludicrous. She’d been harboring a
grudge against him for weeks, and she hadn’t even seen his
face.

He lifted his head then, and Jessica
realized she was in deep trouble.

Cooper Daniels ran a hand back through his
silky fine hair and narrowed his drowsy gaze on her. “Who are you?”
he asked, the sultry pitch of pleasure in his voice replaced by a
hint of confusion.

“Jessica Langston.” She barely got the words
out around the lump growing in her throat. She felt foolishly
uninformed. Throughout her application and interviewing process,
she’d never been led to expect anything like Cooper Daniels in the
flesh.

The uncompromising angles and hard
sensuality of his face emanated a wildness she’d never seen in any
boardroom, a raw combination of threat and promise underscored by
the greenest eyes she’d ever seen, eyes the color of emeralds, the
color of the dragon’s. His hair was longer than she’d thought, the
straight fall of it brushed haphazardly off his face. He was
unshaven, with beard stubble darkening his jaw.

“Try again.” The words were delivered as a
command, with all the confusion erased from his tone.

“Jessica Langston,” she repeated, holding
her ground and wondering if the line of questioning was another
sign of his unorthodox behavior, or another test of her nerves. She
didn’t appreciate either, but knew now was not the time to call his
bluff, not unless she was ready to lose. Her employer looked more
than capable of eating her for lunch and needing seconds.

“I was very explicit about what I required
in an assistant,” he said coldly. “You are not it. Elise Crabb
assured me Jessica Langston was.”

She sensed his arrogance was as much a part
of him as his breath, but he was in error. According to what Mrs.
Crabb had told her, she met all of his requirements. If anything,
she was overqualified for the job.

“If you will check my resume and personnel
file, Mr. Daniels, you will find I am more than capable of handling
the job.” She was also capable of her own arrogance, though she
preferred to think of it as well-placed confidence. He wouldn’t
find many Stanford MBAs with four years of experience in the Far
Eastern real estate division of a major insurance company. That her
experience had been gained as a glorified secretary was irrelevant
given her new degree.

“No, Ms. Langston,” he said, acknowledging
only her identity. “You are not capable of handling the job. What
you are is a fatal error in judgment that Elise Crabb will find
quite costly.”

Jessica blanched, but managed to keep her
gaze steady. A fatal error in judgment? She’d never been so
insulted in her life.

She was the cream of the crop, the best. The
only reason she’d accepted the Daniels, Ltd. offer was because of
the salary and the location. A compelling combination, she
admitted, but he was still lucky to have her, and if this was a
test, she’d be damned if she failed, especially in front of an
audience. Dr. Liu had stepped away from the table at the first sign
of dissension and was looking out the window, but there was no way
for her not to hear the argument in progress.

“You are dismissed,” Cooper Daniels said
after a tense silence.

“On what grounds, may I ask?” With effort,
Jessica held her rising anger in check and maintained at least a
veneer of professionalism. If this was a game to him, he’d gone too
far. If it wasn’t, she deserved a full explanation before she threw
his job back in his face.

He once again took his time in answering.
But this wait was accompanied by a slow, scorching perusal of her
body, from the toes of her black pumps, up the length of her black
suit, to the V-neck of her cream-colored silk blouse. His gaze
deliberately lingered there until she blushed. She felt touched,
indecently so, which she knew beyond doubt had been his
intention.

“Innocence,” he finally said, his impossibly
green eyes meeting hers with all the force of a head-on
collision.

The last of Jessica’s composure crumbled
under the impact.

“I beg your pardon?” she finally managed to
say.

“Innocence,” he repeated. “You’ve got it,
and I don’t want it.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said, surprised
into candor.

“It’s also the truth,” he said without
apology. “You are dismissed.” He settled himself back down on the
table, turning his head away from her and cradling it in his arms.
Dr. Liu returned to his side and began massaging the soles of his
feet.

The hell she was dismissed, Jessica thought.
She’d never heard such drivel. Innocent? Her? She was the single
mother of two children, who had been dumped by her husband when he
had needed to “find himself,” apparently in the arms of another
woman.

“As your assistant, Mr. Daniels,” she said
firmly, refusing to concede anything at this point, “I have to
counsel against such an unfounded, judgmental, highly subjective
statement. It could cost you millions in court.”

“Not if you want a reference,” he said, then
muttered a curse when Dr. Liu moved away again.

“I think you’ve underestimated my
integrity.”

“And I think you’ve underestimated my
authority.”

Since there was no reasonable way to counter
his statement, she let it slide and chose an alternate
approach.

“We have a legally binding contract, which
promises a twenty-day grace period from any decision of termination
unless agreed to by both parties.” She’d been tossed out on her
backside once, and the experience had taught her the necessity of
working with a net. The special clause was her version of a
parachute. It was far from golden, but it was there.

“You’ve had your twenty days,” was his
reply.

“The contract states twenty working days,”
she said without hesitation, sensing victory. So help her, she
would have the satisfaction of quitting. “You owe me nine days, ten
if you include the rest of today.”

“I’ll give you a hundred dollars for each of
them.”

She stiffened her shoulders and glared at
the unseeing man who was treating her future and her integrity with
such nonchalance. She couldn’t be bought off, and certainly not for
a measly thousand dollars.

“Five hundred,” he said when she didn’t
answer. After another long silence, he swore softly and raised
himself to his elbows. He cast a long-suffering look in her
direction. “Ten thousand dollars, flat severance with excellent
reference.” An arrogant smile graced his mouth. “Take it, Ms.
Langston. It is my final offer.”

She had not graduated at the top of her
class by being either passive or pliable—or innocent, for that
matter.

“I want my ten days,” she said, fully aware
that she’d just had a cataclysmic change of mind. She would walk
out in ten days, gladly, but she’d be damned if she let him throw
her out.

Cooper respected tenacity and stubbornness.
One or the other, and sometimes both, had been the only things
between him and death at times. There was something to be said for
being too damn stubborn to let go of a job . . . or to let go of
life. He respected integrity, too, though by necessity it was
usually one of the first things to go in his business, right after
innocence.

He let his gaze travel the length of Jessica
Langston again. She was attractive, decidedly so, but not beautiful
in a classically California way. Her curves were too rounded, her
mouth too determined, her posture too severe, yet there was a
dangerous softness about her. She was not what he’d been led to
expect. She was not what he wanted.

He was going up against the she-devil of the
South China Sea, a woman without shame or fear. He needed somebody
by his side who could hold her own in bad company, somebody who
didn’t hesitate to win at any cost.

He’d asked for a female shark with a finely
honed instinct for the jugular, and the most renowned headhunter on
the West Coast had sent him an angelfish in silk. The pricey
material draped Jessica Langston’s breasts, caressing their
fullness. Her thick auburn hair was cut short in front, but hugged
the back of her neck almost to her shoulders. The softness he
refused to be responsible for appeared not in the set of her mouth,
but in its generous shape.