Dragon and the Dove by Tara Janzen Page B

“Tony has
told me a lot about you.”
    “Nice meeting you too,” Jessica replied.
With a lift of her hand, she also included Cooper. “This is my
boss, Cooper Daniels. Mr. Daniels, my brother Tony Signorelli, and
his friend Alaina Fairchild.”
    Cooper stepped forward and shook hands all
around.
    “Alaina is an accounting senior at
Berkeley,” Tony explained. “So I’ve told her a lot about you, Jess.
Nice to meet you, Mr. Daniels.”
    Cooper nodded, silently agreeing that it was
damn nice to meet everyone.
    “Here, let me help you with those,” Tony
said, reaching for his sister’s luggage. “We’re all just sitting
down to supper. You ought to stay, Mr. Daniels. I’m sous chef at
Balay, and I cooked, so it’s not like you have to eat that stuff
Jessie comes up with, and Alaina made dessert.”
    Cooper opened his mouth to decline the
invitation, even though he knew Balay was a good restaurant, but
before the words could get out of his mouth, another scream filled
the air.
    “
Mom!
” A young girl, all legs and
flying dark hair, launched herself at his assistant, along with a
smaller but sturdier-looking bundle of boy. Cooper reached out a
hand to steady Jessica and found himself accidentally tangled up in
the melee of hugs. It unnerved the hell out of him.
    “Jessie!” yet another voice hollered, and
Cooper started feeling like he’d brought home the Holy Grail. The
newcomer had to be Paul, of course. There wasn’t anyone else left.
At least he didn’t think so.
    “Lime cheesecake with raspberry sauce. It’s
one of her specialties,” Tony was explaining to Jessica even as she
hugged her other brother.
    “Mr. Daniels,” a small voice spoke to him
from about waist height.
    Cooper looked down to see an equally small
hand extended. He shook it. He didn’t know what else to do.
    “I’m Eric Langston.”
    “Hello, Eric.”
    “You’re not my father.”
    “I know.” Cooper felt like he’d just landed
on an unexplored planet.
    “I’m Christina,” another voice addressed
him.
    Cooper turned and shook a slightly larger,
but infinitely more delicate hand. “Cooper Daniels,” he said.
Christina Langston looked like her mother, all wide
cinnamon-colored eyes and pale skin with a dusting of freckles
across her cheeks.
    He turned hack to Jessica to say good-bye
and to ask her to do a little work for him over the weekend, but he
got waylaid by another introduction to yet another tall,
dark-haired man, her brother Paul, who shook his hand, but then
didn’t quite let it go. The dinner invitation was repeated a bit
more firmly. Paul said something about wanting to get to know his
sister’s boss better, especially since the boss was showing a
tendency to whisk her off to faraway places.
    Cooper got the impression he was being sized
up and analyzed by a man about ten years his junior, and a gardener
no less. He would have laughed, if laughter had been at all
appropriate. The strength of the younger man’s handshake told him
it wasn’t. Cooper Daniels was invited to dinner.
    He could have declined. He wasn’t a stranger
to power plays, winning through intimidation, or outright rudeness,
and he wasn’t averse to using whatever method met his needs. But
the Signorelli brothers were trying to be nice, and they were doing
it out of concern for their sister. Cooper could do worse than to
ease their worries about him. He knew he’d have to put on his best
face and work at being sociable. It would be an imposition on his
naturally antisocial—even surly—inclinations. But he could do it.
Prove to them he was a good guy, and maybe they would influence
their sister to stay on the job until the job was done.
    Charm and affability. He hadn’t used either
in so long, he should have a ready supply.
Six
    “He’s not what I expected,” Paul said,
handing Jessica another double shot of espresso for her to mix with
hot milk. Everyone else was lingering over Alaina’s dessert on the
back patio, leaving the two