Sunsets & Seduction

“You’re blind,” she whispered, her voice stolen by her surprise.

“Yeah.”

She saw the change in his body language, the way he tensed as he turned his face away from her, his jaw tight. He was wounded and embarrassed about it. Ashamed to be caught this way, exposed and vulnerable.

“I didn’t know.”

“Your dad didn’t tell you? Oh, right, I guess you pissed him off royally, so he’s probably not confiding in you these days.”

She drew back at the bitterness in his tone.

Tessa had resisted the notion of having a bodyguard at first. It was reflex for her to resist her father. He was a great politician, she knew, but a total control freak, and he liked to control her life more than he should. It was an understatement to say they hadn’t gotten along, and they still had their problems, though things had changed a bit since her mother had passed away two years before.

The senator manipulated everything to the benefit of his image, a necessity of his political career, he always claimed. Tessa had grown up resisting his control, and she’d be the first to admit that she hadn’t always done that in positive or productive ways. But then again, her father hadn’t always played fair, either.

As she got older, they had hammered out a truce of sorts, but mostly because she lived in Philadelphia where she ran her business—and her life—the way she wanted to, and he stayed in D.C. They got together on holidays, and it was enough.

When he said he was sending a bodyguard to her shop, they’d argued, but she’d relented when she sensed he was really concerned. He seemed to think this particular threat was very serious—and it had ended up that way.

She’d expected some stiff in a suit, but then Jonas had walked in the store, over six feet of muscle, brooding eyes and sensuality all wrapped in well-worn jeans and a bomber jacket.

Every bad-girl instinct she had surged to the fore.

The feeling she had when she was with him was like that zing of perfect chemistry that she always experienced when she made a new scent.

Scent was the most primal of the senses. Complementary scents attracted or enhanced a relationship, and the wrong scent repelled. It was the most basic principle of natural chemistry, the basis of most elements of survival. She and Jonas were a perfect combination, she could tell from the moment they locked eyes on each other.

Jonas obviously hadn’t agreed. He kept his distance, his treatment of her businesslike to the nth degree, but she saw the desire in his eyes when he thought she wasn’t looking.

That only upped the challenge. Tessa didn’t give up when she saw something she wanted. To that extent, she was very much like the senator. She wanted to make her bodyguard lose that rigid control. It proved to be more of a challenge than she thought, until that night in the parking lot.

She’d met her friends for a birthday celebration—not hers—and she’d worn the sexiest dress she owned. Jonas didn’t think she should go, but she told him that she was going, and if he wanted, he could tag along. In truth, she’d dressed for him. Danced for him. Tempted him in every way she knew how. And she’d almost given up—the man seemed to be oblivious—until they arrived home. He didn’t say a word the entire drive back, but then hauled her against him as she’d stepped out of the car and kissed her until she couldn’t breathe.

When she’d felt the hardness of his chest pressed against hers, she didn’t back away. He didn’t, either.

His wonderful hands had been sliding up underneath the sheer fabric of her gown, holding her backside against his hardness, his masculine scent surrounding and seducing her like a drug, when it had all gone wrong.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” he’d whispered against her neck as she’d let her hands explore him the way she’d been dying to for weeks. He was a big man, in more ways than one, and her body craved him.

“Maybe that’s why it feels so good,” she’d replied, and she would remember the lust that had burned in his eyes until her dying day.

They were completely wrapped up in each other when the attacker hit Jonas from behind. He’d dropped from her arms to the pavement, leaving her to face her attacker, a political extremist who clearly was willing to cross the line to protest her father’s work. Tessa still could feel the icy fear of that moment, thinking Jonas had been killed and that she was next.

She’d gotten very, very lucky, remembering the bat she had in the back of her car from summer softball games with her friends. Adrenaline served her well in fighting the man off.

She figured at first, when there was no word from or about Jonas, that he was just laying low. Staying out of the limelight, since the story had been all over the news, at least insofar as her and her father were mentioned. The Berringers might not have existed, which is what she supposed made them effective.

From her experience, some protective details, she knew, were all about the flash. They wore Armani and soaked up the media attention that guarding famous or powerful people granted them.

Berringer wasn’t like that. They were serious security who put the client first. When she tried to find out about Jonas on the web, she’d found next to nothing; there were a few news articles from when he was on the police force, and the agency web page, which offered a minimum of information.

The Berringer brothers in the background, keeping their clients quietly safe.

It soon became clear that Jonas wasn’t just laying low. He didn’t want anything to do with her.

Her father was caught up in business on the Hill when the attack happened, and Tessa kept her distance from Howie, who was holding court in her father’s absence. Tessa didn’t ask Howie anything about Jonas, since she didn’t want to encourage her father’s aide. Howie had come on to her a few times, and she’d made it clear that she wasn’t interested, but the guy didn’t seem to understand the word no.

Jonas’s brothers wouldn’t tell her anything, either. She assumed that they all blamed her for distracting him and almost getting him killed. Rightfully so. She’d tracked him down now, intent on apologizing, but she hadn’t expected this.

“I’m so sorry, Jonas,” she said on a raw whisper as she dragged her attention back to the present.

He looked fierce as he closed the space between them. He might be blind, but Jonas honed in on her with no hesitation, his hands clamping hard over her shoulders.

“Stop it, Tessa. Sympathy is the last thing I want from you, or anyone.”

“What do you want, then?” she asked, her mind trying to grasp the new discovery.

“What I’d really like is for you to go, and don’t come back,” he said harshly.

She lifted hands to frame his face, and he flinched, but she didn’t draw back. No way was she leaving.

“What happened between us that night, Jonas, it—”

“Meant nothing,” he interrupted. “Why are you here? Haven’t you done enough?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, shocked by his tone. “I came here to apologize—”

“Come on, Tessa. Your father made it clear that you didn’t want a bodyguard in the first place. He said you could be … difficult. So, what? Was getting me into bed the easiest way to piss the senator off and get me pulled off the job? Or was it just for fun? Were you bored?”

“None of that is true,” she said, appalled.

“What happened that night shouldn’t have. I take full responsibility for that, but I won’t make the same mistake twice. You should go.”

His obviously low opinion of her hurt more than she imagined it would have. Did he hate himself that much for giving in to her? For wanting her?

“The way I remember it, you wanted me as much as I did you, Jonas.”

He paused a second too long before nodding shortly. “It was a momentary lapse. It happens sometimes when mostly naked women throw themselves at you,” he said unkindly.

“I see,” she said, stepping in and tracing her finger down his chest, feeling his heart slam under the hard wall of muscle, and her own heart thudding even harder. She was angry, hurt and intent on not being so easily dismissed.

He was perfect. His skin was deep brown from the summer sun, taut and warm with a sprinkling of dark hair that provided softness over the hard cords of muscle that flexed under her touch. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. Her fingers played over the sculpted muscles she had only fantasized about.

His hands grabbed at the air, seeking and then finding her wrists, holding her away. A pulse throbbed in the base of his throat. He wasn’t unaffected by her at all.

“Stop, Tessa. No more games.”

“No, Jonas,” she said softly, not fighting his hold, but leaning in as she lifted her mouth to take his unsuspecting lips in a warm kiss. “No more games.”

He resisted, standing rigid, his mouth firm and unmoving, until she sighed against him and licked at his lower lip. She inhaled deeply, loving the manly scent of sandalwood, soap and sweat. “You make me crazy. You know it’s true.”

He cursed against her lips. His hands tightened on her wrists, but then let go and his arms banded around her and pulled her in, his mouth opening to hers, taking control, plundering and ravishing her in a hard, punishing kiss.

Tessa gave herself up to him, let him take his fill as she took hers. They parted a few moments later, both breathless.

“Is this what you want, Tessa?” he asked when he pulled back, and she paused before responding.

He was hard, his arousal clear under the towel he wore. Not immune to her, not completely.

Or was it how he said, that any man would respond this way?

“Not like this,” she said, seeing none of the warmth or desire in his face that had been there before.

He shook his head in disgust. “You know the thing that really ticks me off? That you would come here, intent on getting whatever it is you want, with no regard for the consequences to others. You don’t care who gets hurt, do you, as long as you can stick it to your old man.”

“I never did that. My father respects you, or he wouldn’t have sent you to guard me. And he and I don’t have that kind of relationship anymore.”

“Right. As if you couldn’t wait to rub what happened that night in his face. I’m the hired muscle, after all, not the guy he’d want you to end up with. That he sent me must have been icing on the cake.”

“He has no say in the matter, but I didn’t—”

“If you came here for more, forget it. I’d rather you don’t use me as a way to make that point to him.”

“What’s between us has nothing to do with my father,” she said, frustrated.

“There is no us.”

“There could be.”

“Not gonna happen,” he insisted stubbornly.

Tessa stepped back, stinging at his rejection, but refusing to accept that there wasn’t anything between them.

“Well, in case you decide to change your mind, you know where I am. But I wouldn’t wait forever, Jonas.”

She walked out, and he didn’t say another word.

2

3:00 p.m.

THE NURSE IN his ophthalmologist’s office had bumped against Jonas four times while showing him down the hall to the office, and then again in the office itself. She sounded cute and smelled nice, like jasmine and vanilla. She was also stacked, from what he could tell when she leaned past him as she’d opened the door.

As the door opened and the doctor came in, she leaned close and pushed a piece of paper into his hand, whispering, “Call me. Let’s have a drink sometime. I can show you some tips for getting around without your sight.”

“I’ll bet you can,” he’d said with a chuckle, but in truth it left him completely cold. All he could think of was Tessa, and cursed her again for her earlier visit.

He didn’t even know how she’d gotten his address, but he supposed a senator’s daughter had good resources. It paid to know people in powerful places—until you pissed them off.

“Hey, Doc,” he said to Dr. Matt Sanders, his eye specialist, whom he’d known in the Philadelphia business community and their basketball league for some time, though never as a patient.

“Jonas,” Matt acknowledged from somewhere to the right and stepped in closer. “I hope you don’t intend on answering my nurse’s invitation,” he said lightly, lifting one of Jonas’s eyelids to look.

Jonas didn’t pull back anymore, having gotten used to the closeness, as well as the poking and prodding around his eyes.

“Do you see anything? Flickers, shadows, flashes?” Doc Sanders asked.

“Nope, nothing,” Jonas said, trying to keep his voice level. “Why shouldn’t I call her?”

Matt chuckled lightly. “She’s trying to make me jealous. That’s why she waited until I was in here to slip you that note. Probably nothing written on it.”

“I see. You two are—”

“Jury is still out,” Matt said.

“So how does it look?”

“I’ll probably ask her out, see how work mixes with pleasure. I don’t want to lose her as my nurse. She’s very good.”

“I meant my eyes,” Jonas said dryly. “No worries, Matt. About your nurse, I mean. I’m not interested in getting involved with anyone right now,” he said. “She’s all yours.”

“Gee, thanks,” the doctor replied, poking at Jonas some more, going back and forth between shuffling papers and checking his eyes.

“Any headaches? Nausea?”

“Nothing notable.”

“Okay, well, it’s looking much better. The swelling is almost completely gone, but it’s the bruising that’s probably causing the ongoing problem. That can take some time. If there’s no progress in a few weeks, we’ll run more tests, see what’s up.”

Jonas sat perfectly still, but his hands turned cold. Matt’s voice was so neutral, that particular doctor tone that tried not to upset patients, but just made you all the more paranoid. Not that it took much these days.

“Do you mean this could be permanent?”

“No. Really, Jon, if I thought there was a serious possibility of that, I’d tell you straight up,” Matt reassured, and Jonas breathed again when the doctor put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

Jonas wasn’t a particularly touchy-feely sort of guy. He and his brothers all had their ways of sharing physical contact—including fighting—and his family was probably more or less as affectionate as most. But since losing his sight, touch had taken on a completely new meaning. He welcomed it, and at some particularly dark moments, even craved it.

Matt continued, “The nervous system is delicate and unpredictable, and everyone takes their own time to heal. Your brain will let you know when it’s ready to let your eyes work again. Give it a few more weeks, and if you aren’t back to at least partial vision—and it’s very likely you will be—then we’ll figure it out, okay? Be patient. That guy nearly cracked your skull open. This could have been much, much worse.”

Jonas nodded, grabbing on to the “very likely” bit with both hands. He’d always considered himself a patient guy until recently. First Tessa and now his eyesight had proven differently.

“All right, Doc,” he said, standing and running his hand along the wall to the door. “I’ll wait and see.”

“You take care, Jonas. Let me know right away if there are any changes. Make another appointment for a check in two weeks on the way out.”

“Will do.” He found the knob and opened the door. “Doc?”

“Yes?”

“Your nurse. She’s getting impatient.”

“What makes you think that?”

He rubbed his fingers over the paper in his pocket. “There is writing on the paper. I can make out at least three numbers,” he said, handing the doctor the note and leaving Matt to think about that as he made his way out to where his brother Garrett waited for him in the lobby.

“What’s the verdict?” Garrett asked. Jonas could hear the worry riding under his casual tone as they made their way out to the car after Jonas made his follow-up appointment.

“Same. Everything looks fine. It just takes time. Hopefully things will start working again within a few weeks, or they’ll do more tests to see why not.”

“Damn. Well, we have to stay positive. Things could change at any moment.”

“Yeah, no reason to think otherwise, for now.” It was easier to say it than to believe it.

“Smart man.”

“Smarter than you,” Jonas joked, delivering a solid, friendly punch to his brother’s upper arm, nodding in satisfaction as he felt the solid muscle of Garrett’s tricep under his fist.

“Pretty good aim for a blind guy,” Garrett joked.

“Watch it or I’ll aim higher,” Jonas returned.

It was good to laugh about something. What other choice was there? Their family had seen their share of hard times, growing up on the lower end of lower working class, even though his parents had worked like dogs to provide their four boys with everything they needed. There were various crises along the way, always handled together with humor and love.

This was no different. His lack of vision made Jonas feel like an outsider, different, even with his own clan. People treated him differently, and he didn’t like it.

“So she just walked in?” Garrett asked out of the blue.

Garrett had shown up as Tessa was leaving, bumping into her as she left the building. Jonas had been raw and completely unable to discuss the visit at the time, so Garrett had let it go, let him calm down. He still didn’t want to discuss it as his brother led the way out to the car, but he knew Garrett wouldn’t let the matter drop.

“Let’s get some food. I missed breakfast and lunch,” Jonas said, and then blew out a breath before answering the question. “Yeah. She just walked in.”

“I knew I liked her,” Garrett said, and Jonas could hear the smile in his voice. It was a new experience, hearing smiles. “I know you liked her, too,” Garrett added, pulling away from the curb.

Jonas didn’t answer. His brother was a romantic.

Lust had very little to do with liking someone, in his view, but he had to admit, he had seen a lot to like about Tessa while he had worked with her for those few weeks. More than he had expected to. More than he was comfortable with.

She was dedicated to her business, much as he was to his. Her obvious caring for her customers and her friends was clear, and she did seem to truly love her father, in spite of their differences. She was extroverted, sexy and gregarious, but not the reckless, selfish woman he had envisioned. At least, that was what he’d thought until she’d proven him wrong.

There were a lot of reasons to keep a principal—the term they used for the person receiving their protection—at arm’s distance. Women in particular, even married women, had a tendency to fall for their bodyguards—a kind of transference, like falling for their doctors or therapists. Jonas never took the bait. Not before Tessa.

“You know what she did, Gar. She didn’t have to tell anyone what happened between us. It was my bad for falling for it in the first place.”

Garrett couldn’t argue that. Losing a client like the senator was a major blow.

“I think you should give her the benefit of the doubt. She came by the office a few times, looking for you, and I don’t know, Jon. She just didn’t hit me that way. There might be more going on.”

“How else to explain her father warning me off her?”

“I guess you have a point. But you were different when you were around her for those few weeks. I can’t put my finger on it, but I thought she might be good for you.”

“Frankly, after what you’ve been through, I’m surprised you have a romantic bone left in your body, Gar.”

Jonas heard his brother’s silence louder than any reply, and cursed under his breath at his blunder. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have gone there.”

“It’s okay. You’re right. Lainey and I had some wonderful years, and I lost her too soon. But what we had was great. You deserve that with someone. You’re too much on your own all the time.”

Rain was coming down a little harder than when they left, and Jonas remembered that some strong storms had been forcasted for later in the evening.

Jonas didn’t respond, but his brother’s words hit home.

They were different men, even if they were brothers. Garrett had lost his wife in a car accident while he was gone on a job, and it had nearly wrecked him. He’d bounced back, and from what Jonas could see, would be able to find happiness again someday. Jonas hoped he would. Garrett was made for family, being a husband, a father.

Jonas didn’t see that in his future, but he still put family first. The senator’s aide had made Rose’s threat clear—if he went near Tessa, there could be serious repercussions to the agency, to Jonas’s brothers and everything they had worked for. No way would Jonas risk that.

“You should come in the office today, listen up on some of the recent cases,” his brother offered, changing the subject.

“Maybe,” Jonas replied.

He’d like nothing better than to get to work, but he worried about being at the office too often. He figured it was better to keep his condition as hidden as possible. If clients discovered he had messed up or been seriously wounded on the job, it could compromise people’s confidence in the agency, in their ability to do their jobs.

The car stopped, and Jonas detected the rich aroma of cheese steak and onions from their favorite shop just west of Center City.

“This way,” Garrett directed, walking at his side. Jonas negotiated his way along with the cane, hating every minute of it, but he needed it to find his way through more obstacle-ridden environments like streets and crowded public places. As soon as they reached their table, he stashed it away.

“It’s just a cane, Jonas. A tool. People don’t even notice. Most blind people these days live very normal, active lives.”

“I’m not a blind person. This is temporary,” Jonas bit out, and then regretted his tone.

Garrett was right, but Jonas was edgy—an understatement of the emotional mess Tessa had left him in.

It had taken everything he had inside not to take her to bed right there and then. He was that hungry for her, and that fact generated even more self-disgust. How could he be so attracted to a woman who was obviously so manipulative? But if she hadn’t said no, he knew it would have happened.

It was just pent-up lust and frustration, or so he told himself.

His lack of vision certainly hadn’t seemed to put Tessa off any, he thought, remembering how passion and need had practically vibrated off her. Her scent was still on his skin. He didn’t know if she was faking that or not. The senator was out of the country, and maybe she’d decided to finish what they’d started when her father was out of play—something like eating cake and having it, too.

“Well, if not with Tessa, you still need to get out more,” Garrett continued. “You’re blind, not under quarantine. When was the last time you were even on a date?”

“Now, there’s the pot calling the kettle black,” Jonas accused.

“I’ve gone on a few dates, but my situation is different.”

Jonas frowned. “I don’t date. I have plenty of women I know who are available when I want one.”

“Classy.”

“Drop it, Garrett. Can we talk about cases, the weather, anything but this? You’re beginning to make me wish I’d gone deaf, too.”

Garrett laughed and acquiesced as their sandwiches arrived and they dug in. They were delicious as always, though Jonas was getting a little tired of sandwiches, in general. They’d been standard fare since he lost his sight, as he didn’t have to worry about using utensils to find the food on his plate, or embarrassing himself in front of others.

When his sight returned, he was heading for the first Italian restaurant he could get to for some pasta. Ideally, he would meet one of the women he called now and then to join him and kill two birds with one stone. If he could get back to his normal life, he knew his obsession with Tessa would fade.

“We’re supposed to be getting some wicked storms today. It’s already turning gray out there. The news said there were tornadoes down south, and it’s all moving this way,” Garrett commented.