Dragon's Eden (24 page)

“If this is the big sex talk you were always
supposed to give me, you’re a little late, Coop. I already figured
it out.”

Cooper at least lightened up enough to
smile. “No. It’s about spending more time in California, both of
us, cutting back our overseas interests, maybe getting more into
the investment side of the business.”

Jackson had seen this one coming for days.
Cooper had hardly let him out of his sight. “I was never dead,
Cooper. She didn’t get me. She only got close, and close doesn’t
count.”

“With Baolian everything counts. I want you
out of her sight, out of her way.”

Jackson kept his silence. He couldn’t give
Cooper that, not even close. He wasn’t going to get out of
Baolian’s way. He was going to get in her face and back the Dragon
Whore down whatever hole she’d crawled out of. He was a bounty
hunter, and until he got Baolian, she was his prey.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Cooper said,
“and it can’t be done, not with any safeguards, maybe not even
without. Besides, you’re married now. You have to think about
Sugar.”

He was married, not dead, and he
was
thinking about Sugar.

“Okay, Coop,” he said, cutting the
conversation short with a smile and a wave as he headed across the
yard.

When Sugar saw him coming, she excused
herself from Paul, Jessie’s gardening brother.

“What did you and Cooper find out this
morning?” she asked.

Before he answered, he wrapped her in his
arms and kissed the top of her head.

“You’re going to get about ten grand for
Sher Chang, and Jen and I come out at about twelve grand apiece,
less expenses. That is, if he ever shows up to claim it.” The old
Chinaman had left the Kingstown Inn before she and Jackson had
returned. He hadn’t left a forwarding address, but they both knew
he’d gone back to Shulan.

“What about Cocorico?” She missed her home,
but not as much as she would have missed Jackson if she hadn’t been
with him.

“Cooper thinks we can go back with a few
precautions, and I agree. The place really is inaccessible. A few
communication adjustments and some protection would make a big
difference in its integrity.”

“Cocorico has always had impeccable
integrity,” she said, taking mock offense. “At least until you got
there and started taking your clothes off”

“Hey, that’s an idea.” He grinned down at
her.

“What?”

“We could go home and take our clothes off.”
He expected her to blush, but he should have known better. The
woman didn’t have a blush left in her.

Or did she?

He bent down and whispered in her ear, and
sure enough, after a minute, he got her to blush.

“You’re kidding,” she said, slanting him a
wary look.

“Scout’s honor.” He gave her the Boy Scout
sign. “That’s why they call it the ‘kiss of death.’ ”

Her blush deepened, then a grin twitched her
lips. “Do you love me?”

“More than I should.”

Her grin broadened. “Do you trust me?”

Now it was his turn to give her a wary look.
“Just enough . . . maybe.”

“Chicken,” she taunted, and he lunged,
grabbing her and swinging her in close.

“I’m going to remember that later,” he
threatened her, but she gave as good as she got.

“I’m counting on it”

* * *

Moonlight filtered in through the sheer
curtains and shone across the futon where they lay, safe and secure
in each other’s arms. Sugar looked over at her husband, enjoying
the beauty of him in sleep.

He was a wild one, probably more than she
could handle once he got back up to speed, if the contents of his
room were any indication. They made a fine pair, with him old in
the ways of the world and young at heart, and her with her ancient
heart and being so young when it came to worldly things.

“Sugar?” he said drowsily, rolling on his
side toward her.

“Hmm?”

In answer, he pulled her closer and promptly
fell back asleep.

She loved him, loved him like no other
before him, and she felt her love being returned with every breath
he took.

* * * * * * * * *

Thank you for reading
Dragon’s
Eden
. Please visit my website,
www.tarajanzen.com
, and
follow me on Facebook
http://on.fb.me/mSstpd
; and
Twitter @tara_janzen
http://twitter.com/#!/tara_janzen
for news on the release of my upcoming eBooks.

Please continue reading for excerpts from
Avenging
Angel
and
A Piece of Heaven
,
more great
romances from Tara Janzen.

One

The woman. He needed her . . .
desperately. He needed her to drag him up, get him out, and set him
free
.

Dylan drove with nerveless precision,
tearing down the highway, burning up the road and the tires on his
black Mustang. Wind whipped his hair through the open window and
stung his face with the blast-furnace force of a summer gone crazy
with heat. From Chicago, to Lincoln, Nebraska, to Colorado, the
asphalt had shimmered to the horizon like the shadow of a mirage on
the landscape.

Without taking his eyes from the road, he
lifted a Styrofoam cup to his mouth and drained it of coffee. He’d
lost the other two times he’d broken his FBI cover to prevent
disaster. He’d been too late, too slow, in far too deep to surface
in time to save a life. He wouldn’t be too late to save Johanna
Lane. He couldn’t be. He’d come up for good and three was his lucky
number.

A grim line broke across his face, an
expression no one had ever mistaken for a smile. Since when did he
know about luck? He had no luck.

In the darkness ahead, a pickup truck pulled
onto the highway. Dylan hissed an obscenity, his fist crushing the
empty cup before he threw it to the floor. The man had to be blind
not to see the Mustang hurtling toward him. When the driver didn’t
even speed up to the limit, Dylan cursed him again, taking a lot of
names in vain and ending up with half a dozen synonyms of dirty
slang for sex.

The oncoming traffic was heavy on the
two-lane highway outside Boulder, but Dylan had no time and nothing
left to lose except his pulse. Flooring the gas pedal, he roared up
on the truck and at the last moment jerked the wheel, sending the
Mustang slewing into the other other lane, taking a highly
calculated risk and the narrowest of openings in the traffic. Cars
scattered onto the shoulder. The truck skidded off the road.

Hard-won skill, not luck, guided Dylan
through the hundred-mile-an-hour maze he’d made of a van, a station
wagon, and two compacts. Dylan Jones had no luck.

The fact was proved a mile down the road,
less than a minute’s worth of traveling time. The flashing lights
of a police car lit up his back window and rearview mirror like a
Fourth of July parade.

Dylan swore again and pressed harder on the
gas pedal, willing the Mustang to greater speed. The city lights of
Boulder were seconds away. He’d come too far, too fast, too hard to
lose.

He swept through the first stoplight on the
north side of town, ignoring its red color. The Mustang barely held
on to the ninety-degree turn he slammed it through. The tires
squealed and smoked on the hot pavement. The chassis shuddered.
Working the steering wheel one way and then the other, he missed
hitting a car in the eastbound lane and shot between two westbound
vehicles.

The police car behind him missed the turn
and came to a jolting stop in the middle of the intersection, siren
and lights going full bore, snarling traffic even further. Dylan
made the second left-hand turn he saw, then wound through the
streets in a frenzied, seemingly haphazard fashion for more than a
mile. Finally he slowed the Mustang to a stop on a side street,
pulling between two other vehicles, a gray, nondescript sedan and a
midsize truck.

The summer night was quiet except for the
pounding of his own heart. Expensive houses crowded this part of
town. Porch lights were on, smaller, homier versions of the street
lamps, but the interiors of the houses were dark. People were
settled in for the night, safe, sound, and unsuspecting.

He waited for a moment, checking the street
before pulling his duffel bag across the front seat to his lap and
slipping his left arm out of his coat. The bag was heavier than
clothes would have allowed, the weight being made up in firepower
and ordnance. It was the only protection he had, and it felt like
damn little compared with what he was up against.

Sweat trickled down the side of his face. At
the corner of his eye, the moisture found the day-old cut angling
from his temple to his ear. The salty drops slid into the groove,
burning the raw skin. He swiped at the irritation with the back of
his hand, then yanked open the duffel.

He took out a shortened, pump-action
twelve-gauge shotgun and slipped the gun’s strap over his free
shoulder. After angling the shotgun down the side of his torso, he
put his arm back through his coat sleeve. The duffel went over his
other shoulder as he got out of the car. The policeman had been
behind him long enough to call in his plates. The Mustang had to be
ditched. It didn’t matter. If he lost Johanna Lane, he didn’t much
care if he got through the night with his life. He sure as hell
didn’t care if he got out with his car.

He walked to the pickup truck in front of
him and tried the door, his gaze moving constantly, checking
shadows and sounds. The door was locked. The owner of the
late-model gray sedan parked behind him wasn’t nearly as cautious.
He got in and smashed the ignition assembly with the butt of the
shotgun. Then he went to work hot-wiring the car.

Johanna Lane lived at 300 Briarwood Court,
and Dylan knew exactly where 300 Briarwood Court was in relation to
his current position—two blocks west and one half block north.

* * *

Johanna Lane stood on her third-floor
balcony overlooking the street. French doors were open behind her,
allowing the night wind to lift and flutter sheer, floor-length
curtains. Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
played on the stereo, the
classical notes crystal clear, floating on the air with all the
purity that the finest digital sound was capable of producing. The
stereo system was an indulgence, one of many in the oak-floored,
art-deco-furnished apartment.

She turned partway to look inside. In the
dining room, an unfinished, candlelit dinner of pasta alfredo and
salad was neatly laid out on one end of an intricately carved,
black lacquer table. A damask napkin was crumpled next to the
still-full crystal wineglass.

She really should eat, she thought, watching
the candle flame dip and bow with the breeze. If she wasn’t going
to run home to Chicago and her father, she should eat, and she’d
decided against running. Running was an admission of guilt, either
of a crime she’d been very careful not to commit, or of an act of
betrayal she’d never considered.

Austin Bridgeman was flying in from Chicago.
To do some follow-up work on a deal that had gone bad in Boulder,
he’d said when he called. He’d suggested going out for drinks or a
late dinner so they could talk about old times—old times when she
had worked for him as his most private legal counsel.

Even the thought of her previous employment
made her head ache and her palms sweat. She’d left her job and
Chicago because of what Austin Bridgeman had become, and she
doubted if the intervening four months had improved his moral
character.

Slowly, to calm herself, she closed her eyes
and took a deep breath. In four years of working for Austin, she’d
seen him skirt the law many, many times, bending it at will with
his power and his money. She’d seen him crawl on his belly like a
snake to make bribery look like a gift. She’d seen him voice
requests as unrepentant demands to politicians and judges alike.
But she hadn’t seen him break a law until two days earlier, Friday
morning, when she’d read the front-page newspaper story about a
senator charged with influence peddling. With all the other
congressional scandals cropping up, she hadn’t given the story much
more than a glance at first. Then a name had caught her eye, the
name of a small, privately held company in Illinois—Morrow
Warner.

The influence the dear senator had been
peddling went far beyond the expected pork barreling. He had
dabbled in foreign affairs and foreign wars, foreign corporations,
foreign currency, and especially foreign imports. The press had
labeled him the “Global Connection,” and all of his hard work had
been directed toward filling the coffers of Morrow Warner.

Johanna knew who owned Morrow Warner. She
also knew that no one else did, because she had hidden the owner’s
identity in miles of paperwork, barely skirting the law herself. A
precaution, Austin had said, something for his old age, something
the board of directors of Bridgeman, Inc., couldn’t take away.