Dragon and the Dove by Tara Janzen

wryness in his tone.
    “No,” she said too hurriedly. “No, I think
you did the right thing.”
    “Personally, I would have offered much, much
more for a night with you.”
    “Thank you,” she said, somewhat mollified.
Then she realized her mistake. “I mean . . . uh no, thank you. Not
that I’m not . . . uh—” Oh, hell, she didn’t know what she
meant.
    * * *
    Riding home, she was still embarrassed, but
she knew she had only herself to blame. Her last question had been
foolish, unconsciously designed to humiliate herself—and it had
absolutely changed her relationship with Cooper Daniels.
    Once a man has turned down the equivalent of
two hundred and fifty dollars for a woman and told her, it was damn
hard to keep everything on a professional level.
    What a day, she thought, and thank goodness
they were finally heading home.
    “Is this your exit coming up?” he asked,
directing her attention to the freeway sign up ahead.
    “Yes,” she said, and spent the next quarter
hour giving him directions through suburbia. Shortly before dark,
they pulled up in front of a two-story house nearly overrun by a
lush forest of trees interspersed with shrubbery, flowering plants,
and ground cover.
    And just about anything else a person could
name, Cooper thought. There didn’t seem to be a single species of
flora missing from the mélange. A dry creek bed wound its way
through gently sloping man-made hills, doing its best to anchor the
profusion of green and growing things. A beautifully carved bridge
straddled the creek on a brick path leading to the front door.
    His first impression was of a jungle
experiment that had gone haywire or been overdosed with fertilizer
and California sunshine. As he looked longer, though, he began to
see the hints of a design underlying the arrangement. The plants
were also exceptionally well tended. Compared with most other
yards, hers looked like a botanical health club.
    “My brother is a landscape architect,” she
said, “working on what he likes to call a modified chaos theory.
He’s trying to find the bifurcation points of competing indigenous
flora in an optimal but natural environment.”
    “I think they all won,” Cooper said dryly,
hazarding a guess about what she was talking about.
    “That’s what Paul is hoping will
happen.”
    “Paul is your brother?” He turned to find
her watching him, something she did a lot, though mostly when she
thought he wouldn’t notice.
    “My next to youngest,” she said, shifting
her gaze back to the yard.
    Her awareness of him lingered in the
confines of the car, filling the space between them. He’d felt her
gaze upon him many times during their long day of travel and even
more so since the fiasco in his office. But then, as now, she was
always careful to look away quickly. He hoped it wasn’t because she
saw too much. Her appeal to him wasn’t something he could afford to
explore, but it was strong, intriguing, and had damn near gotten
him killed when he’d grabbed Chow Sheng. Rash didn’t begin to cover
what he’d done.
    Reminding himself one more time to forget
having a personal relationship with her, he shrugged off the
recriminations for misplaced gallantry and opened the driver’s
door.
    He knew they needed more than a week to
accomplish his goal, even with Baolian already starting to cry
uncle—the offer she’d sent via Chow proved that—and he was counting
on Jessica staying on after her contract was fulfilled. He needed
help, and he hadn’t overstated her attributes. He was paying
himself into bankruptcy to get those attributes.
    He heard her door open as he pulled her
suitcase and carry-on out of the trunk, then he heard her sigh. The
soft sound drew his gaze, despite his better judgment and his
common sense.
    She was balancing against the car door,
lifting each foot in turn to remove her high heels. Her auburn hair
had been finger-combed into disarray in the front, while the longer
strands in back fell forward across