Page 62 of Seduce

She smiled. Her man. Yes, Damon was hers. It had been a month since the Valentine’s Day party, but they’d spent a lot of time together. Her phone rang, and she automatically answered on hands free.

“Hello.”

“Hello, sis.”

“Allen.” Tessa almost swerved her car off the road. Why was her brother calling?

“I’m going to be out West in a few weeks. Why don’t we have dinner?”

Tessa blinked. “Dinner?” She’d visited her family a few times but kept a super low profile. She didn’t want anything to follow her back here, to her home.

“Yeah, you know… Dinner. Food. Conversation.”

“Sure. I guess.” What else could she say to her brother?

“Okay, good. I’ll call when I get to town. Bye.” The line went dead. Tessa turned down Damon’s driveway and stopped. Her brother was coming to town. She wondered why. She’d have to check political news and see if there was something big going on. She couldn’t see him simply coming to see her.

Pushing thoughts of her brother out of her head, Tessa continued up the driveway and parked. She knocked on the front door, but there was no answer. She pulled out her cell phone and called him.

“Damon, here.” He sounded out of breath.

“It’s Tessa. I’m at the house.”

“Aw, shit. Sorry, I got caught up in work. Look toward the garage, see that path?”

“Yes.”

“Take it and you’ll come around to my workshop. The doors are open, so just walk in.”

“Okay.” Tessa ended the call. She’d been curious about his workshop. Now, she’d get to see it. She stashed her purse back in her car and pushed her cell into the front pocket of her jeans before making her way down the path to Damon’s workshop.

As she got closer, grunge music blared. She wondered how Damon could even think, but then she saw him striking a piece of metal with a hammer. The smell of hot iron hung in the air.

Damon glanced up. “Hi,” he said, but she put her hand to her ear.

He turned down the music. “Sorry, forgot I had it so loud.” He banged on the metal a few more times before he lifted it with metal tongs and dunked it into another bucket filled with water.

She looked around his workshop. “Wow.”

“Is that a good wow or bad wow?” he asked, wiping his face with a surprisingly clean white towel.

“Good wow.” This is amazing. She glanced around at the metal pieces hung around the shop.

“Thanks. All the metal is a special order from a client who is doing suspension and wants different shapes and sizes to use.”

“You made all of these?” Tessa ran her fingers over the entwined metal circles sitting on the workbench all polished up.

“Yep.” Damon captured her hand and lifted it to his lips. “I thought I’d be finished before you came out tonight.”

“No worries.” She watched him start shutting down his equipment. Then his computer pinged.

“Can you take a look at that? It’s an incoming email.”

“Sure.” Tessa crossed to the desk. While it wasn’t messy, there were drawings all over it. Sitting down in the chair, she clicked the email open. “Someone named Dave wants to know if you can make him your special double-headed vibrator and a set of silver nipple rings?”

“Would you reply for me and tell him yes, but it will take at least three weeks. I’m swamped right now.”

Tessa typed out the message and sent it. That’s when she noticed his inbox. There were at least one hundred messages in it. “It looks like you’re busy.”

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