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was no probably
about it, a fact quickly proved when a sailor still smelling of the
sea stepped in front of them. The man was big and barrel-chested,
with short-cropped hair. He wore a tight T-shirt that showed off a
pair of sizable biceps.
    “No need to call it a night, luv.” He spoke
directly to Jessica, ignoring Cooper. “Just because the old man
weren’t up to snuff don’t mean you have to leave. Billy Ellen’ll be
glad to see you home, after we finish a couple more of the
Boarshead’s own.”
    “No, thank you,” Jessica said with all
politeness, giving Cooper a discreet push to direct him around the
man. Cooper leveled a scowl at her. He didn’t need her telling him
what to do. Drunken sailors were his specialty.
    “Forget the gimp, luv,” the sailor said,
moving in front of them again. “Stay and have a good time with
Billy boy.”
    “Billy boy” was a wall of immovable chest
and palpable aggression standing in Cooper’s way and silently
daring him to fight.
    Cooper didn’t need the added incentive of
the dare. He was only too happy to oblige the oaf who had called
him a gimp. In his present mood, he had neither the time nor the
patience to suffer fools, so he flexed the muscles in his left hand
and took a deep breath. The giant fell while he was still inhaling,
before he’d had a chance to balance the tension in his muscles, let
alone strike his blow.
    The woman at his side brushed her hands
together and straightened her neckline again. “I think you’re
right, Mr. Daniels. We should leave.”
    She’d tripped the bastard, put him to the
floor, and she’d done it half-drunk. Cooper had seen it, but he
hardly believed it.
    Jessica slipped her arm through her
employer’s and ushered him toward the door before the man on the
floor could clear the confusion out of his head. She’d had the
advantage of surprise. She often did. She didn’t look particularly
athletic, she didn’t look like a martial-arts disciple, and she
certainly didn’t look as dangerous as her employer. The sailor had
made a wise choice in watching Cooper Daniels instead of her. It
just happened to have been the wrong choice.
    Once outside, she hailed a cab, and Cooper
let her. The woman amazed him, and provoked him, and fascinated
him. He remembered the look on her face when she’d seen him limping
toward her across the pub, and he had an idea why she’d taken the
initiative in dispatching the sailor. The thought that she might be
pitying him, or that she believed he needed her protection, was
damned aggravating and damned intriguing.
    He needed somebody he could trust at his
back. That somebody had always been Jackson, but Jackson was gone.
The realization never came without an accompanying sense of loss,
but it would never have occurred to him in a million years that the
kind of protection and loyalty he’d received from his younger
brother could be replaced, or that it could be replaced by a
woman.
    Jessica Langston had been hired to track the
financial investments of Fang Baolian and to thereby bring down the
dragon lady. He’d tried to fire her because he’d thought she wasn’t
up to the job. He’d thought she wasn’t tough enough, or seasoned
enough, or that the angelfish even knew where the jugular was on a
man-eating shark.
    He watched her flag down a taxi and lean
inside to give directions. She knew what she was about. The last
half hour had proven that much to him. A long conversation with
Elise Crabb two days earlier had assured him that Jessica knew at
least as much about the money game as she did about handling
herself in the Boarshead.
    That only left him with one problem—her
legs, and her face, and her mouth, and the indefinable something
that attracted him to all three. He had no business wanting her,
but he did.
Three
    Jessica sat stiffly in a high-backed chair,
squinting against the early-morning light and watching Cooper
Daniels prowl around the enormous sitting room of his suite. He was
talking on