Dragon and the Dove by Tara Janzen Read Free Book Online

you’d be fine,” George went on. “But things ain’t been
atall normal with Cooper the last couple of months. It was a bad
business, Jackson getting killed like that—out and out murdered,
really—and I think it kind of put Coop about half a bubble off. He
ain’t been himself. I don’t think he could take care of a ship’s
skillet right now, and I don’t think he can take care of you, or
that he’d even be inclined.”
    “I see,” Jessica said, forcing her voice to
a respectable blandness, working hard to hide her shock.
Murder!
George was right. The pirate business was no place
for a sweet bird like her. Two days with the old man still hadn’t
inured her to the bombshells of information he was given to
dropping. She turned sideways, giving her back to Cooper before
giving in to her curiosity and whispering, “Who was Jackson?”
    The action didn’t do her any good. Even as
she asked the question she felt the hairs rise on the nape of her
neck. She was well aware of the cause. Knowing she couldn’t very
well hide herself or her conversation from the man staring a hole
through her back, she casually turned around to face him.
    The look he was giving her was anything but
casual, and it should have prepared her for George’s answer. It
didn’t.
    “Jackson were Coop’s younger brother,”
George said. “But Coop don’t like to talk about him, so don’t go
mentioning me mentioning him, if you please.”
    Jessica blanched, her gaze instinctively
dropping away from the anguish and anger reflected in Cooper
Daniels’s eyes. His brother had been killed, and he knew she’d just
been told that. She wished she’d done anything except ask her last
question.
    Regret washed through her and left an awful
feeling in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t know where George
thought Cooper might have gone that he wasn’t listening to every
word she was saying. She silently damned the man for not giving her
a warning before she’d spoken Jackson’s name.
    “George, I—” She needed to get off the
phone, but George didn’t give her a chance. He kept talking,
burying her in information, none of it what she would have expected
to hear about the enigmatic man she’d seen warming his body in a
pool of sunlight half a world away.
    “It’s a quid to a bloater that Coop will be
dead before the New Year too. He’s takin’ chances, takin’ on bigger
people than he can chew, if you know what I mean.”
    She had an idea, a damn good idea. She swore
under her breath. The conversation was quickly going from bad to
worse.
    She glanced at her employer, unable to stop
herself, and found his anguish replaced by something less pained.
In self-defense, she turned away, wishing George had told her these
few things a damn sight earlier. If he had, she might have been
long gone, instead of standing in a hotel suite, enduring the cold
regard of a man whose reasons for disliking her were multiplying at
an alarming rate. Enigmas never appreciated having their personal
tragedies revealed to strangers.
    “He was there when Jackson got it,” George
continued, dragging her in deeper. Despite the lines of courtesy
she was crossing, despite Cooper’s presence not ten feet from her,
she didn’t even hint that he should stop. She was already accused
and condemned. She wanted the whole story. “I think seeing his
brother cut down in the prime of
life loosened a few screws. Coop’s not playing smart like he used
to. He’s sold a couple of properties he shouldn’t have at fire-sale
prices when there weren’t no fire. Not that I’m complaining, mind
you.”
    Jessica understood the last piece of
information perfectly. For all the impression he gave of being a
bum, George Leeds was the consummate businessman who knew within a
centimeter on any deal where profit turned to loss. He’d obviously
been the fire-sale buyer.
    “And I’m not complaining about the twenty
thousand pounds he’s borrowed either. It won’t be me who cuts