Sunsets & Seduction

“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.

“We could use the rain. Get rid of some of this heat,” Jonas said. He loved summer storms, the power and energy of them. “What are Ely and Chance up to?”

“They’re both in the field. Ely’s finishing up the bank job down in Norfolk, and Chance will be caught up in New York for a while. Ely should be back tonight, depending on how the storm affects his travel. I’ve just been minding the store.”

They always tried to have three in the field, with one in the office. They alternated home duty. They didn’t want a secretary, and Garrett did the books. The fewer additional people in the agency, the tighter the security, and that was what it was about.

Ely was the most serious of the bunch, the second youngest, a Marine and just returned from a lengthy tour in Afghanistan. He’d almost re-upped, but after recovering from a near-fatal injury caused by an IED, he’d decided to come back home.

Jonas had held his breath with the rest of his family for pretty much the entire time Ely was gone, and was never as relieved as when his little brother came home for good and joined their family venture.

Chance, aptly named, was their baby brother—and hated being called that with a vengeance. He was also the risk-taker of the family. If it could launch him over a cliff, speed him around a track or take him thousands of feet over the earth, Chance was up for it.

He was also a crack shot and a martial arts expert. Jonas always told him he was overcompensating for being youngest and two inches shorter, though at a solid six feet, it hardly made a difference. In so many ways, easygoing Chance was more deadly than all of them put together because he seemed to have no fear of anything.

“Another couple of jobs well done,” Jonas murmured, proud of his brothers and wishing he could have felt as happy about his own work recently.

The Norfolk job, in particular, was one that James Rose had recommended them for. A high-profile case at a federal bank, it was a nice feather in their cap.

Not only had Jonas crossed a line almost sleeping with Tessa, but if anything had happened to her, he’d never have been able to forgive himself.

He was quite sure the senator would never forgive him, and Jonas only hoped that in time, they could still do business together.

He and Garrett made their way back out on the street. The air was even thicker than before, the humidity near smothering, though a warm wind blew around them. He could hear thunder in the distance rolling closer as wet drops splashed on his face.

“So what now?” Jonas said.

“I have some paperwork stacked up at the office,” Garrett said, walking along.

Jonas was faced with the paralyzing anxiety he’d had every day since coming home from the hospital. When he couldn’t work, he didn’t know what to do with himself. He used weights, listened to books, listened to TV, which was maddening. There wasn’t much he could do at the office.

He didn’t like being at loose ends, useless to those around him. His thoughts and emotions tangled in the darkness that was his life at the moment as they got in the car and drove slowly down the city street. Heavy raindrops hit hard on the outside of his brother’s car as a heavy gust of wind shook them.

Garrett started to say something when a crack of thunder and lightning boomed around them, and Garrett hit the brakes hard.

“What happened?” Jonas asked as they stopped cold.

“Tree down,” Garrett said, sounding apprehensive. “Just split and blocked the street right in front of us. This is getting bad fast. The office is closer than your apartment, so let’s head that way and hunker down there.”

Jonas murmured agreement, his thoughts still on Tessa, though they shouldn’t be. The humid air made her scent rise from his skin, and he swore he could still taste her from the kiss they’d shared that morning. The electric energy in the air from a nearby lightning strike seemed to exacerbate the memory.

He turned on the radio, listening to the storm warnings, trying to forget her, though he suspected it was going to take a very long time for that to happen.

“I SWEAR, LYDIA, I had no idea. It was such a shock. How could they not tell me that he’s blind?” Tessa asked for the fourth time, pacing the hard tile floor of the foundry, her voice breaking with misery. “And it’s because of me. My father had to know. He could have told me.”

It was starting to rain harder, the drops falling more heavily from a blackening sky; even though it was only midday, it looked like evening. The weather approximated her mood.

Lydia Hamilton, who owned the tattoo shop Body, Inc. next door to Au Naturel, looked on in sympathy as Tessa paced.

“Your dad has been traveling, and you know how he is. It’s not your fault, Tessa. These guys take risks every day,” Lydia said in her usual frank fashion. “It’s part of the work they do. It is a shame though. He was hot.”

“He still is. He’s blind, not maimed or dead,” Tessa said, thanking the universe for that, at least.

It was part of why she always resisted the protection her father pushed on her. She could never stand to think someone died trying to protect her. What made her so special?

“Jonas was so … angry. He has some idea that I was using him to get back at my father.”

“Well, that was your M.O. once,” Lydia said, sliding her a knowing look.

“Yeah, back in my twenties. Not for a long time. Believe me, it didn’t take long to figure out the jerks I dated to annoy my father didn’t make me happy, either. I can’t figure out why Jonas would think that. We got to know each other quite a lot in those few weeks. I thought he was starting to like me.” More than like.

“Well, he’s lost his sight. It’s a trauma. People have strange reactions to things like that. Maybe he just had to strike out at someone, and you were there.”

“I guess. But he was pretty specific about why he was angry with me.”

Never had Tessa imagined the degree of Jonas’s injury from that night. She remembered feeling reassured when she’d heard his voice as he talked to the EMTs when they had loaded him into the ambulance. She’d wanted to go with him, but the police wanted to talk to her about the attack, and then her father had sent Howie to check in on her, and everything was chaos for the rest of the night, with the press and trying to get rid of Howie.

“Are you sure he’s angry with you? Maybe he’s just upset in general?”

“Furious might be a better word.”

“Well, maybe wait it out, see what happens. He might come around.”

“I guess I shouldn’t have pushed the issue by throwing myself at him. If he had a bad opinion of me to start with, that didn’t help. I was just so hurt. By how he kept saying there was nothing between us.”

“So you wanted to prove that there was.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know. From what I saw, the way he used to look at you, a fool could tell he was crazy for you,” Lydia said, picking up a lotion sample and rubbing it into her hands, then smiling as she sniffed.

“I like this,” she interjected. “Is it new?”

“Yes. I meant to tell you about it—it’s a combination of gardenia extracts and spices.”

“Nice.”

“Well, I put the ball in his court. I told him if he wants me, he knows where I am. I’ll be damned if I’ll beg or humiliate myself any further.”

“Under the right conditions, I might consider begging if a guy like Jonas was interested in me,” Lydia said mischievously.

“You’re a bad influence, you know that?” Tessa said, smiling at her friend.

Lydia smiled sympathetically, which accentuated the small crescent moon tattooed at the corner of her lips. “So I’ve heard. If he’s smart, he’ll show up at that door and apologize. If he doesn’t, it’s his loss. You have to be able to move on.”

“I know.” Tessa sighed. “I just never really felt with any other man what I felt with him.”

“Then you haven’t been with enough men, my friend.”

“Again, the bad-influence thing.”

“I have to get back to the store,” Lydia said, looking upward as thunder crashed louder outside, offering Tessa a warm smile before she walked to the door. “I do love storms. I know you don’t. If you need company, just text me. I’m closing down early.”

“Okay,” replied Tessa as two other people walked into the store.

She didn’t expect any business in weather like this, and the two women struggled to get their umbrellas folded and left their raincoats on hooks by the door.

“Welcome to Au Naturel, ladies. You are a couple of determined shoppers, to be out in this weather,” Tessa said with a professional smile, helping them set their soaked umbrellas by the front window to dry.

“We had no idea the weather was going to be this bad, but we had to stop here before heading home,” one explained, pushing a handful of thick, auburn curls away from her face, smiling.

“I’m getting married this weekend, and I need to buy some items for my honeymoon. You know, maybe some scents that will drive him a little crazy? A friend of mine was raving about your honey dust?”

Tessa smiled. Her organic honey dust—a body powder made of honey that made women’s skin very soft and that was also very delicious to lick off—was one of her top-selling products.

“I have several new varieties,” she said. “I’m sure I can find something that will work for both of you,” she promised.

She had been working on a line of scents that were specifically for erotic stimulation, but many scents had arousing side effects.

Sage for boosting libido and quelling anxiety. Lavender to create a sense of comfort and safety, perhaps for lovers who were having rough times. Orange for joy and heightened sensitivity, and sandalwood, her favorite, to incite an air of earthy creativity, encouraging lovers to experiment and enjoy each other.

She was so excited about the new idea. Sex and scent were so closely aligned, more so than people imagined, but there were a lot of myths about scents, as well.

For instance, according to some studies, a woman’s sensitivity to musk scents was almost one thousand times more sensitive than a man’s, being that much more arousing for women than for men, as previously thought. Hence, musk colognes for women didn’t make much sense, depending on your sexual orientation.

Stopping for a moment, she closed her eyes, inhaling and remembering Jonas’s scent. He didn’t wear cologne, but he used a sandalwood soap that she had given him, and he had grudgingly admitted to liking it. She liked it, too. A lot.

She’d worn some scents including cinnamon and lavender around Jonas, the first known to arouse men and increase erections, the second providing comfort and an inviting aura.

People thought that sex happened in the brain, but the brain only processed all the things brought to it by other reaches of the body, like the nose or the mouth. Or the hands, the lips … and all the other parts she would like to share with Jonas.

Jonas had a very strong nose, and a firm, sensual mouth. She loved his hands. How he had closed his long fingers around her wrists earlier, even though he had been trying to stop her, still made a delicious shiver run down her spine.

“Miss?”

Tessa blinked, her cheeks warming as she realized she had completely lost track of the moment, and the two women were standing, gazing at her curiously.

“Oh, so sorry. I was thinking about which scents would be best for a bride on her honeymoon. Tell me a little more about your husband-to-be, his likes and dislikes, and your relationship. We can go from there,” Tessa said, pushing thoughts and worries about Jonas to the back of her mind as she listened and focused on her work.

There was no point in torturing herself with thoughts of him—that was clear from how he’d walked away earlier, rebuffing her concern.

An hour passed, and before she knew it, she was hustling the two women back out the door to the cab she had called for them. It was normally still light outside, but the storm had made it like night. The winds were picking up, the rain coming down harder.

She flipped the sign to Closed and stared out at the wind-whipped rain, wrapping her arms around herself and holding on as a roll of thunder made a ripping sound that had her hugging tight.

She hated storms because when she was a kid, lightning had hit their house outside her bedroom and had started a small fire. It wasn’t a major incident, the fire was put out before it became serious, but all she could remember was being shaken from a sound sleep by the crash of noise and blinding light, being hustled from her bed and then the sirens. Although lightning had started the fire, it was the thunder that always bothered her more.

She wished it was Jonas’s arms she had around her, but that didn’t look as if it was going to happen. When he was around, she hadn’t feared anything. He made her feel safe. But he wasn’t here, and he wouldn’t be. She would be riding this one out alone.

The best solution was work, to keep busy. It was her usual solution to disappointment and heartache.

Maybe she could make some new scents—rosewood, jasmine and lavender for healing a broken heart. Though right now, as her mind rolled over all that had happened, she knew it would take a lot more than aromatherapy to make her feel better.

But it was a beginning.

3

5:00 p.m.

JONAS FOCUSED AS he ran his fingers along the edge of the window frame where he used duct tape to attach plastic sheeting to the edge. His entire right side was soaked from the rain coming in while he worked, and the wind kept pushing the plastic around, but he managed, proving to himself that he wasn’t entirely useless.

A few minutes after they had gotten back to their offices, Garrett went to help a friend whose house was having some serious flooding in her basement.

Jonas smiled to himself. Melissa, the friend in question, was a particularly pretty friend who had been making no bones about her interest in Garrett. Jonas wondered how serious the flooding problem was, or if Garrett was going to have a little fun during the storm.

Good for him, if so. His brother deserved some of that particular variety of fun.

Ever the responsible one, Garrett had insisted Jonas come along with him, but Jonas had made a point of wanting to stay at the office, telling Garrett to go. He said he wanted to listen to some of the most recent recordings of case files, and that he would call a taxi to get home. Garrett seemed happy about Jonas’s apparent interest in work, and had grudgingly agreed but said he would keep his cell phone on.

Jonas didn’t plan to interrupt him.

Jonas also wasn’t exactly alone in the big old Victorian in West Philly that housed their offices, as well as a few other businesses, along with one apartment on the top floor. He’d heard sounds on the other side of the wall and assumed the insurance office that resided there was open if he needed anyone. He also had Irish to keep him company, though the big old tomcat who had adopted them the year before wasn’t being much help. Irish was about six, they figured, and had some nicks and scars from his battles before he’d found his home. In that respect, he fit perfectly with the Berringers, who all had their own set of scars and histories.

Jonas knew Irish was really a lover more than a fighter, though. The big male cat had been caught soothing a sick kitten that lived next door, and wooing the pretty calico upstairs.

Right now, Jonas glanced down when he heard the cat’s inquiring noise.

“I’m fine, Irish. Just getting this window taped up, bud.”

As Jonas sat reviewing cases, a window at the back busted when a small branch had broken off a tree and fell through it.

Right now, Jonas was struggling to adjust the plastic sheeting to keep the rain out. He had asked Rhonda, the insurance company’s secretary, for help finding tape and plastic down in the basement all three businesses shared. She’d been on her way out, but offered to help, in the neighborly spirit of most Philadelphians.

Jonas had heard her saying something about “the kids being all right” on the phone when he had walked into the office, and told her to go, he was fine. Which he was. Mostly.

He’d cut himself once, a minor injury, and had a few bruises from getting up and down on a chair to reach the top of the window, but he’d gotten the job done. He took an odd amount of satisfaction from that fact. It was good to do something, to be competent in spite of his blindness.

When his phone rang, he frowned. He hated not being able to see the caller ID for who was calling, but just answered, since it was his personal line.

“Jonas.”

“Jonas, I was hoping you’d be there,” Senator Rose’s voice boomed across the line.

For the second time that day, Jonas was surprised by one of the Rose family. Not in a good way. He hadn’t talked to the senator since his accident, and had no idea why he’d be calling now.

“Hello, sir. Are you back in the U.S.?” he asked, trying to sound neutral. The guy had a lot of nerve, threatening Jonas’s family business, and then calling out of the blue, sounding as if nothing was wrong.

“No, no. In Italy, now, but I’m heading home early and I’ll be back tomorrow. Has your sight returned yet?”

Jonas paused, wondering at the question. The senator was calling to check on his health? This was getting stranger by the second.

“No, not yet I’m afraid.”

“Sorry to hear that. I need your help with something, Jon,” he said.

Jonas experienced a surge of excitement—had the senator decided to forgive and forget?

“I don’t know how much help I can be with anything right now, sir. But I can refer one of my brothers—”

“It has to be you. I need you to keep an eye on Tessa for me until I get back.”

Jonas paused, quite sure he hadn’t heard right.

“I’m sorry?”

“Tessa. There’s a problem in my office. I can’t say what it is yet. It doesn’t have anything to do with Tessa directly, but I’d feel better knowing she wasn’t alone for a day or so. Oh, and this needs to stay between us.”

“You don’t want her knowing she’s under protection?” He’d done undercover guard duty before, but this time he wasn’t sure that would work, or that he even wanted to do it.

“That would be best. You know how she hates my interference in her life. It’s only until I get back. Then things will be straightened out.”

“Sir, not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m blind. I can’t see how—”

“Jonas, it’s true I was less than happy to find out that you were messing around with my daughter. It could have cost both of you your lives,” Rose said. “I know she can be a handful, and she likes nothing more than to take a shot at her old man now and then. But you two fooling around plays in our favor now. If anyone has a chance of staying close to her and not raising her suspicions, it’s you. Blind or not, you’re probably twice as effective as anyone else. Just don’t let her get to you this time.”

In other words, keep it in your pants, son. Jonas heard the clear subtext.

“But, sir—”

“I need you to do this for me. Don’t let me down, Jon.”

The line went dead.

Muttering a string of curses, Jonas shook his head at the strange call. Tessa was not exactly his biggest fan right now. How could he insert himself into her life without her being suspicious after he’d thrown her out that morning?

The sound of something crashing outside the window made him spin back, and he teetered, falling to the floor, his foot still caught in the chair. The wind knocked out of him, Jonas lay there for a moment, getting his bearings. He grunted as Irish landed on his chest and began licking his face, obviously concerned for him.

Standing, he winced at the twinge in his ankle. Great. Just what he needed.

He made his way to the bathroom and rifled through everything seeking the first-aid kit he knew was there, and found the package of Ace bandages he sought, stripping his sock and shoe off. He could feel some minor swelling, but it wasn’t bad.

Trying, unsuccessfully, to wrap his ankle, he gave up and sought out the familiar feel of the jar of painkillers they kept on hand in the cabinet. It was barely a sprain, more of a twist, and probably didn’t even need wrapping, anyway.

However, it was clear he wasn’t up to doing chores around the office, and he reached for his phone to call for a taxi so he could get home.

And then he paused, thinking about the call from James.

Like it or not—and he didn’t—the request to babysit the boss’s daughter for the next few days was his second chance, his way to make amends for his screwup the first time. If nothing else, he owed it to his brothers to try to make amends for nearly losing their biggest benefactor.

But it was more than that for him, and Jonas knew it. His mind went back to that night with Tessa, to kissing her, as it had almost every day since it had happened.

He could still remember every detail of holding her. Kissing her. Her taste. Her scent.

The wind hit the side of the house hard, the thunder deafening.

Tessa hated thunder.

Maybe she needed him. If James thought she was in trouble, or even that she just needed someone close by, he couldn’t turn his back on that. But the senator was right—she’d never allow him to guard her. She had issued an invitation—one he hadn’t intended to respond to, but now things had changed. It gave him an in—cold, sure—but he had a job to do, and this time he would do it right. She’d hate him afterward, but that might be better, anyway.

Before he could think about it too much, he hit the second number on his speed dial.

“Tessa?”

She was so quiet at first, he thought they might have dropped the connection.

“Jonas?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry to bother you, but … um, I … I need your help.”

A SHORT WHILE LATER, Tessa was banging at the front door. “Jonas, are you there? Let me in, I’m getting soaked out here!”

Through the glass, she saw him limping slightly on his way to the door, which he opened. She hurried in, soaked to the skin. Rain dripped off her coat, puddling on the polished wood floors.

“The rain is coming down sideways out there,” she said, glad to have an excuse to cover her nerves about showing up.

When she’d seen his number on her caller ID, she thought maybe he’d had a change of heart—that he wanted to take her up on her invitation from earlier.

When he’d said he needed her help, she’d been worried sick, imagining every terrible thing possible between her store and the office, but from what she could tell, he looked in one piece, more or less.

“I’m sorry to drag you out in this, but you were the only person I could reach,” he said.

His last resort, she thought, her hopes dipping. This wasn’t exactly what she’d counted on. “What happened?”

“I turned suddenly, and I think I sprained my ankle. I tried to take care of it myself, but couldn’t. If you could help me out with that, and getting me home, I’d appreciate it.”

“What’s been going on here?”

“A tree limb broke the window. I managed to get it covered.”

She walked to the edge of the room on her left, seeing leftover bits of broken glass.

“You’re going to trip yourself up again.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You’re standing here with one bare foot and an Ace bandage twisted around it and trailing behind you.” She couldn’t help but smile as she watched a big cat turn into a kitten as he followed the edge of the strap, chasing it. “Your cat seems to think it’s great fun, though.”

“Oh. Yeah, he would.”

“How could your brothers leave you alone in this storm? You shouldn’t have been climbing up on a chair—you could have hit your head.”