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“Horses?” Jonas said incredulously.
“Yep. Some of the local cowboys and a few of the state police are offering services to get where regular transport can’t go. They can get you there with no stopping, unless the skies open up again.”
“I love horses, no problem,” said Tessa. “I learned to ride as a kid.”
Jonas looked less sure.
“I don’t know, Tessa, maybe you should go, and I can wait—”
“It will be fine, Jonas. Just trust in the universe. This could even be fun,” she said.
“Fun. Right.”
“Don’t worry. The officer will ride, and all you have to do is hang on.”
“Right,” he said again, sounding less than convinced. “Well, let’s go, then.”
The detective led them out through a side exit, and Tessa smiled at the large, handsome quarter horse that stood with his rider under a roof that protected them from the rain, which had lightened considerably, she saw with relief.
The quarter horse belonged to the state cop, who stood next to a younger man, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Tessa recognized him as one of Philadelphia’s native urban cowboys.
The city had developed a program to help inner-city youth avoid crime and learn to ride, caring for their horses and riding them around the city, as long as they stayed out of trouble and did well in school. The program had some ups and downs over the years, and had had its share of controversies. Struggling to stay afloat in terms of funding, it still was active.
Tessa supported the program through her business, and knew her father did, as well—it was one of the few things they agreed on. It was a good idea, and she loved seeing the horses being ridden down a Philly side street in the evening, the cowboys appearing like some vision from the Old West. She also liked to think about the kids in the program getting a second chance.
“Ricardo? Officer Styles?” Rachel greeted them, and introduced herself, as well as Tessa and Jonas.
“You think you can deliver these two safely to Germantown? They have a friend in need,” the detective explained. “Jonas is a former detective with the force. Tessa owns a store down on South.”
Jonas spoke up upon hearing the younger man’s voice. “Ricardo? Ricardo Nunez?” he asked.
“Detective Berringer,” the young man said happily. “I remember you.”
“Not a detective anymore, but I take it you’re doing well?”
“Yes. Thanks to you,” he said. “Detective Berringer introduced me to the stables when I was a kid. He got me out of a crack house during a raid when I was ten and got me into a good foster home,” Ricardo explained to the rest.
“Ricardo is planning to go to the academy,” Officer Styles interjected. “He wants to be in our Mounted Division.”
Tessa saw the pleasure reflected in Jonas’s expression.
“Ricardo, that’s great,” Jonas said. “I’m proud of you.”
The young man crossed to Jonas, who held out his hand for Ricardo to find, shaking it and pulling the young man in for a quick, manly chest bump.
Tessa’s throat was a little tight with emotion as she looked on. There was so much about Jonas she didn’t know, and she wanted to know it all.
A roll of thunder was dull in the distance, and they all glanced up at the night sky.
“We’d better go. We can get you there pretty quickly, but we have to keep the horses out of the worst of this,” Styles added.
“Okay,” Tessa said, looking at Jonas. “You ready?”
He blew out a breath, offering a sideways smile that made her heart skip. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“REMIND ME NEVER TO do that again,” Jonas said, wincing as he stretched out his legs in front of the counter where Tessa was waiting for the pharmacist who was gathering Kate’s supplies.
“Oh, it was fun!” she said, smiling and looking as if she really had enjoyed herself.
It had only been a twenty- or thirty-minute horse ride to the pharmacy, cutting cross-lots, but it had been a bit rough considering he didn’t have anything but his jeans between him and the saddle.
He hadn’t been too crazy about Tessa riding with the mounted officer, either. Officer Styles had been enjoying her company a little too much, from what he could tell of the way the guy flirted, encouraging her to “hold on.”
At one point, they had galloped across the park, and he and Nunez had to catch up. Jonas wasn’t sure, but he thought he overheard the guy asking Tessa out.
Regardless of his confused feelings about her, he didn’t want anyone else touching her or flirting with her.
Jonas hadn’t been jealous of anyone in a long time, and he’d almost forgotten what it was like to feel this possessive.
He also reminded himself that he had no ties to Tessa, and didn’t want any. The sexual chemistry between them was combustible. They were willing adults sharing some mutual enjoyment, but that was it.
In the morning, they would have to accept that nothing had changed.
Liar, an inner voice accused.
“It was kind of exciting, don’t you think?” Tessa asked, interrupting his thoughts and sounding more relaxed. Jonas knew she was relieved to be at the pharmacy, and they could walk the rest of the way to Kate’s. Officer Styles was willing to take her as far as she wanted to go, as he’d made clear, but once Jonas was down off that steed, there was no way he was getting back up on it.
“Exciting. That’s one word for it,” Jonas said dryly, and felt her nudge him.
“You looked good up there. You should take up riding. I can toally see you in a cowboy hat and boots,” she said, and he wasn’t sure if she was teasing.
“Not likely.” He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, recalling the ride. “I do have a bike.”
“A bicycle?”
“A motorcycle,” he corrected. “An eighties Harley that I take out on the road when I’m off duty.”
“Very sexy,” she purred, sliding up close to him.
“So, did the Mountie ask you out?”
“Hold on,” she said, kissing him lightly and avoiding the question. “They just called my number at the counter.”
Jonas sighed in frustration. She wasn’t making this easier. He couldn’t get a fix on her. She was sexy and alluring, flirtatious and open about it. He couldn’t see what had gone on between her and the officer, but he knew that flirty laugh, and figured she’d had a good time. It confirmed his earlier suspicions about her.
She was also a concerned friend and a kind person. A passionate woman who didn’t hide who she was.
If he was really honest, maybe he was as angry at himself as he was at her. No matter how much he could blame Tessa for getting him in a bind with her father, Jonas had been the one placed in a position of authority, sent to protect her. He was also the one who’d caved to temptation.
And still wanted to.
It wasn’t the first time he’d made that mistake. His mind wandered back to his last year on the force. His unit had been working with the Bunko Squad to take down an underground gambling ring.
The bodies of several people associated with the ring had surfaced around town, and Homicide was called in, where Jonas had made detective two years before. When Bunko undercover officers had snagged an inside CI, a confidential informant, to serve as a witness, she’d been given to Homicide to watch while the undercover team closed in.
Jonas, the junior detective at the time, had been on protection detail at the safe house. He still remembered Irena Nadik. Young, lovely and lethal.
The lethal part he’d had no idea about. Jonas had believed she was a victim, and that was how she played it. Forced to comply with a ruthless crime boss’s orders, she’d tearfully relayed a story about her father’s murder by the men who held her now against her will, the constant threats to sell her into the sex trade when they were done with her.
Jonas had fallen for her, let her seduce him, and looked forward to when the case was closed and they could be together. He’d even thought of marriage. Maybe that was how he’d rationalized breaking the rules for love.
He’d had no idea she was playing him the whole time. Slept with him, got him to tell her things he shouldn’t have.
On the night of the raid, she’d drugged him, and used his own phone to try to warn the ring. Luckily, his partner had shown up and caught her before she succeeded.
The ring was taken down, Irena was in jail for a good long time, but Jonas had messed up big-time. He was suspended during an investigation, but eventually cleared for duty with only a light reprimand on his record.
But Jonas knew the truth. He couldn’t look the guys he worked with in the eye each day and expect them to trust him when he had messed up so seriously. For a woman.
He left the force the following year and joined the personal security business Garrett was launching. It had taken him a long time to trust his instincts again, and that’s what bothered him the most. He didn’t know what to think about Tessa.
It was easy to focus on the job.
The senator was out of the country, and he was given a light-duty assignment to keep her company, make sure she was okay. He had no idea what the senator’s agenda was, or Tessa’s, for that matter, but he could focus on the job. That he knew how to do.
“All set. Kate’s house is about six blocks from here, though we had better hurry,” Tessa said briskly, breaking into his brief foray into the past. “The storm is winding up again.”
He didn’t say anything, still caught up in dark thoughts, but let her take his hand.
“I picked up a few things for later,” she said mischievously, putting a bag in his hand, where he felt the corner of what he assumed were several rather large boxes of condoms.
“You’re overestimating my endurance,” he said.
“I just thought we’d like some variety,” she countered.
Feeling cornered, wanting what he couldn’t, and shouldn’t, have, but not knowing how to walk away, he just kept moving.
“Everything okay?” she asked, clearly picking up on his change in mood.
“Let’s get to Kate’s before the storm hits,” he said shortly.
He couldn’t let this go any further.
He had to walk away. He’d get her safely to her friend’s, then back to her place, and try to finish this job without making things worse. The crunching sound of the bag of condoms he carried seemed to mock him.
The wind was picking up, and she linked her elbow in his, picking up the pace.
“Is this storm never going to stop?” Tessa said breathlessly as they hurried down the street.
She guided him flawlessly, alerting him to step down or up, holding him close with her elbow linked in his. “It’s like some bad Armageddon movie out here,” she joked.
The end of the world as we know it.
Jonas twisted his mouth sardonically at his own sense of melodrama.
“Tomorrow the sun will come out, and it will just be a memory,” he said, unsure if he was talking completely about the storm.
She yipped as thunder cracked overhead, and jumped closer to him, moving faster.
Jonas stopped suddenly, wrenching her to a stop as well, the flash of light obliterating any of his previous thoughts.
The flash that he saw.
He pointed. “Was that lightning—over there, this direction,” he asked while pointing, his voice urgent.
“I think so,” Tessa said cautiously. “It’s kind of all around us.”
Then it happened again. A dim flash at the corner of his eye, and he whipped his head in that direction.
“There!”
Tessa sucked in a breath, realizing what he was saying.
“Oh, my God, Jonas, you saw it! You saw the lightning!”
She let out a whoop and flew into his arms as the thunder growled even more loudly above, following the lightning strike.
Jonas held her, but lifted his face into the rain, eager, urgently wanting to see another flash, needing more confirmation that he hadn’t imagined it.
Tessa’s arms were tight around his neck, and he wasn’t sure if it was rain or tears he felt on her skin. In his excitement, he’d forgotten how afraid she was of the storm.
“I’m sorry. I just remembered you don’t like storms. I … can’t believe I might have actually seen something.”
“I don’t care about the storm,” she said. “I’m so happy for you.”
Then she was kissing him as the rain came down harder and the wind picked up around them. He gathered her up close, returning the kiss with everything he had, jubilant in the moment.
Tessa’s not Irena, he thought, and neither were his feelings for the two women at all similar.
Irena had been exotic, different and had appealed to him as a younger man who was easily fooled by beauty and charm.
Jonas wasn’t as easy to fool anymore—was he?
He wasn’t so sure he could walk away, in spite of his temporary resolve to do so. They parted, breathing heavily, as the rain came down harder.
Jonas wished more than anything that he could see her. Maybe if he could see her face, her expression, her eyes, he could know if she was being honest with him. If any of this was real.
Soon, he thought, another bright flash showing up in his field of vision.
