The hard hit to the back of his head had left him with a concussion and severe bruising to his optic nerve, causing temporary but complete blindness. The duration of “temporary” was unknown. Doctors had no idea when his vision would return. He’d seen four specialists, all offering the same fuzzy explanations of the mysteries of the brain.
Be patient, they’d said.
He shook his head, running a hand through hair that he’d let grow too long. It bugged him, especially in the heat, but he didn’t feel like hearing the questions and sympathetic comments from his barber or anyone else. So he’d holed up here, mostly, waiting for life to return to normal.
Jonas reached to the left, groping to find his cell phone, and he held it in his hand. Thankfully, his was an older model with a hard keyboard that he could still use, though he sometimes hit the wrong button.
He still had the number for Tessa’s shop on speed dial, number two, second only to the office, and he ran his thumb over the button, as if tempting himself. He should erase it, but couldn’t quite do it.
Cursing, he put the phone down and found his way to the shower. As much as he wanted Tessa, he’d get over it eventually. His blindness made things worse, blowing his attraction to her all out of proportion. He was frustrated and bored. When he had his sight back, he’d be able to move on, get his own life back.
Maybe the hit on the head had kept him from making an even bigger mistake. At least the attack had happened before they were both naked, out in the open for anyone to see.
No sooner had he turned on the water when he heard a knock on the front door—soft, but he could still hear it. He’d always had sharp senses, even before he was blind. You didn’t survive in his line of work without them.
Still, there was a noticeable uptick in his perception that would have been kind of cool if it weren’t at the expense of his vision.
“Keep your pants on, I’m getting there,” he said as the knock sounded again, harder this time. He wrapped a towel around his waist and shut the water off. It had to be one of his brothers, come by to pull him out of bed, no doubt. He had another doctor’s appointment that afternoon. It galled him not being able to go anywhere on his own and that he required help for everything.
It had to be Garrett, who had been fussing around him like a mother hen since the attack. Jonas made his way to the door, opening it and turning to walk back into the room.
“I know, I slept late, but the appointment isn’t for another hour. Give me a chance to clean up, then we can go,” he said.
“Jonas?”
He stopped in his tracks, frozen. He wasn’t dreaming now. He didn’t think so, at least.
“Tessa?” he said, his voice choked and not sounding like his at all. He turned toward her voice, knowing this was real as the familiar scents of honey and almond filled the room. His heart slammed in his chest.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“WELL, THAT KIND OF greeting sure makes a girl feel welcome,” Tessa Rose countered with no small bit of sarcasm, hoping to cover her nerves.
She took a deep breath, in part for courage, and in part because seeing Jonas for the first time since the night of the attack had knocked the breath right out of her.
He’d lost some weight, his dark hair grown out from military short to longish, brushing the tops of his shoulders. He was clad only in a very small white towel, slung low on his hips and slipping lower. She found herself licking her lips, and tried to push back the lust that always erupted when she looked into those dark eyes.
Something was off, though.
He’d looked right at her when he’d opened the door and then turned away, talking to her as if he had expected someone else. That told her the worst of it.
“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
