Tall, Dark & Rich: His Christmas Virgin / Married by Christmas / A Yuletide Seduction

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT WAS late in the morning when Mac parked her four-wheel-drive Jeep next to her motorbike in the garage on the ground floor of the warehouse after arriving back from a three-day pre-Christmas visit to her parents’ home in Devon.

She had felt the need to get away for a while after the disastrous and humiliating end to the evening spent with Jonas at his apartment. And as the men had duly arrived the following day to install the alarm system to the warehouse, and the exhibition at the gallery was going well—Jeremy had informed Mac when she spoke to him on the telephone that the paintings were all sold, and the public were pouring in to see them before the exhibition came to a close at Christmas—she was free to do what she wanted for the next few days, at least.

Just as she had hoped, the time spent with her parents—the normality of being teased by her father and going Christmas shopping with her mother—had been the perfect way to put things in her own life back into perspective. For her to decide that her behaviour that evening at Jonas’s apartment had been an aberration. A madness she didn’t intend ever to repeat. In fact, she had come to the conclusion that ever seeing Jonas Buchanan again would be a mistake…

Which was going to be a little hard for her to do when he was the first person she saw as she rounded the corner from the garage!

Mac’s hand tightened about the handle of the holdall she had used to pack the necessary clothing needed for her three days away, her gaze fixed on Jonas as she walked slowly towards him. She unconsciously registered how attractive he looked in a brown leather jacket over a tan-coloured sweater and faded jeans…

Any embarrassment she might have felt at seeing him again was forgotten as she realised he was directing the actions of the two other men, workmen from their clothing, who seemed to be in the process of building a metal tower beside the warehouse. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Mac demanded.

‘Oh, hell!’ Jonas muttered as he turned and saw her, his expression becoming grim. ‘I’d hoped to have dealt with this before you got back.’

‘Hoped to have dealt with what? What on earth…?’ Mac stared up at the wooden sides of the warehouse. Her eyes were wide with shock as she took in the electric-pink and fluorescent-green paints that had been sprayed haphazardly over the dark wooden cladding.

‘It isn’t as bad as it looks…’

‘Isn’t it?’ she questioned sharply, the holdall slipping unnoticed from her fingers as she continued to stare numbly up at that mad kaleidoscope of colour.

‘Mac—’

‘Don’t touch me!’ She cringed away as Jonas would have reached out and grasped her arm. ‘Who—? Why—?’ She gave a dazed shake of her head. ‘When did this happen?’

‘I have no idea,’ Jonas rasped. ‘Some time yesterday evening, we think—’

‘Who is we?’

‘My foreman from the building site next door,’ he elaborated. ‘He noticed it this morning, and when he didn’t receive any reply to his knock on your door he decided to report it to me.’

Mac swallowed hard, feeling slightly nauseous at the thought of someone deliberately vandalising her property. ‘Why would anyone do something like this?’

‘I don’t know.’ Jonas sighed heavily.

‘Could it be kids this time?’

‘Again, I have no idea. These two men are going to paint over it. They should be finished by this evening.’ He grimaced. ‘I had hoped to have had it done before you got back—’

‘I thought I had made it plain the last time we met that I would rather you didn’t go around arranging things for me?’ Mac reminded him coldly.

Jonas eyed her with a frown, the pallor of her cheeks very noticeable against the red padded body-warmer she wore over a black sweater and black denims. He didn’t like seeing the glitter of tears in those smoky-grey eyes, either. But he liked the cold, flat tone of her voice when she spoke to him even less. ‘Would you rather I had just left it for you to find when you got home?’

‘I have found it when I got home!’ Her voice rose slightly, almost shrilly.

Jonas shook his head. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to be back just yet; I had hoped it would be later today, or even better, tomorrow morning.’

Those huge grey eyes settled on him suspiciously. ‘How did you even know I had gone away?’

Jonas knew he could have lied, prevaricated even, but the suspicion he could read in Mac’s expression warned him not to do either of those things. ‘The Patels,’ he revealed unapologetically. ‘Once I had seen the mess, and you obviously weren’t at home, I went to their convenience store and asked if they had any idea where you were.’

Those misty grey eyes widened. ‘And they just told you I had gone away for a few days?’

He gave a rueful nod. ‘Once I’d explained about the vandalism, yes.’

‘Tarun always puts a daily newspaper by for me,’ Mac muttered absently. ‘I cancelled it while I was away.’

Jonas smiled. ‘So he told me.’

She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. ‘Nothing like this ever happened before I met you—’

‘Don’t say something you’ll only have to apologise for later,’ Jonas warned through suddenly gritted teeth.

‘Even before,’ Mac continued as if he hadn’t spoken, ‘when your assorted employees came here to try and persuade me into selling the warehouse, nothing like this happened. It’s only since actually meeting you—’

‘I said stop, Mac!’ A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched cheek.

Her gaze narrowed as she focused on him. ‘Since meeting you, I’ve had my window broken and my home vandalised,’ she said accusingly. ‘And now some helpful soul has decided to redecorate the outside of the warehouse for me. Bit too much of a coincidence, don’t you think, Jonas?’ Her eyes glittered with anger now rather than tears.

Jonas had known exactly where Mac was going with this conversation, and had tried to stop her from actually voicing those accusations.

Damn it, he had considered himself well rid of her once she’d left his apartment on Monday evening. He’d had no intention of going near her on a personal level ever again if he could avoid it. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to avoid coming here, at least, once he’d received the telephone call earlier this morning from his foreman.

He certainly wasn’t enjoying being the object of Mac’s suspicions. ‘Only if you choose to look at it that way,’ he bit out icily.

She eyed him challengingly. ‘Did you report this to the police?’

Jonas narrowed cold blue eyes. ‘I have the distinct feeling that I’m going to be damned if I did, and damned if I didn’t.’

Mac raised questioning brows. ‘How so?’

‘If I did report it then I was probably just covering my own back. If I didn’t report it, then again, I’m obviously guilty.’

Mac was feeling sick now that the shock was fading and reaction was setting in. She didn’t want Jonas to be in any way involved in this second act of vandalism. It was the last thing she wanted! It was only that the coincidence of it all was so undeniable…

She closed her eyes briefly before opening them again. ‘Your men seem to have everything well in hand,’ she acknowledged ruefully as she glanced up at the two men now scaling the metal tower with the familiarity of monkeys, pots of paint and brushes in their hands. ‘Would you like to come upstairs for some coffee?’

Jonas raised surprised brows. ‘Are you sure it’s wise to invite the enemy into your camp?’

Mac straightened from picking up the holdall she had dropped minutes ago. ‘Have you never heard the saying “keep your friends close, but your enemies even closer”?’ she teased.

His mouth tightened. ‘I’m not your enemy, Mac.’

‘I wasn’t being serious, Jonas,’ she assured him wearily.

‘Strange, I didn’t find it in the least funny,’ he muttered as he began to follow her up the metal staircase.

Those psychedelic swirls of paint were even more noticeable from the top of the staircase, evidence that the perpetrator had probably stood on the top step in order to spray onto the second and third floor of the building. They had certainly made a mess of the stained dark wood.

But why had they?

Was it just an act of vandalism by kids thinking they were being clever? Or was it something else, something more sinister?

Mac gave a disgruntled snort as she unlocked the door and entered the living area of the warehouse, dropping her holdall just inside the door before going over to the kitchen area to prepare the pot of filtered coffee.

She was so lost in thought that she didn’t notice for several seconds that Jonas had closed the door behind him and come to a complete halt. She eyed him curiously. ‘Is there something wrong?’

Jonas was completely stunned by the inside of Mac’s warehouse. He had never seen anything like this before. It was—

‘Jonas?’

He blinked before focusing on Mac as she looked across at him in puzzlement. ‘I—’ He shook his head. ‘This is—’

‘Weird?’ she finished dryly as she stepped out from behind the breakfast bar that partitioned off the kitchen area from the rest of the living space. ‘Odd? Peculiar? A nightmare?’ she concluded laughingly.

‘I was going to say fantastic!’ Jonas breathed incredulously as he now looked up at the high ceiling painted like a night sky, with the moon and stars shimmering mysteriously in that darkness.

The rest of the living area was open plan, the four walls painted like the seasons; spring was a blaze of yellow flowers against burgeoning green, summer a deeper green and gorgeous range of rainbow colours, autumn covered the spectrum from gold to russet, and winter was a beautiful white landscape.

The furniture was a mixture of all those colours, one chair gold, and another terracotta, the sofa burnt orange, with several white rugs on the highly polished wooden floor, that flat-screen television Mac had once mentioned tucked away in a corner. The bedroom area was slightly raised and reached by three wooden steps, the cover over the bed a patchwork of colours, a spiral staircase in another corner of the room obviously going up to the studio above.

And in place of honour in front of the huge picture window was a real pine Christmas tree that reached from floor to ceiling, and was decorated with so many baubles it was almost impossible to see the lushness of the branches.

Jonas had never seen anything so unusual—or so beautiful—as Mac’s warehouse home. Much as Mac herself was unusual and beautiful? he wondered…

He firmly closed off that avenue of thought as he turned to give her a rueful smile. ‘No wonder you didn’t like the décor in the sitting-room of my apartment.’

Mac brought over two mugs of coffee and put one of them down on the low bamboo tabletop before carrying her own over to sit down on the sofa, her denim-covered legs neatly tucked beneath her. ‘Obviously I prefer to go with the rustic look!’ she teased, sipping her coffee.

Jonas picked up the second mug and sat down in the terracotta-coloured chair facing her. ‘Is the studio upstairs like this, too?’

‘I’ll show it to you, if you like.’

Jonas eyed Mac curiously as he sensed the reluctance behind her offer. ‘You don’t usually show people your studio, do you?’ he guessed.

She grimaced. ‘Not usually, no.’

And yet she was offering to show it to him…

Jonas wasn’t sure if he felt privileged or alarmed at the concession, but his curiosity was such that he wanted to see the studio anyway. ‘Perhaps after we’ve drunk our coffee,’ he suggested lightly.

‘Perhaps,’ Mac echoed uneasily, not altogether sure what to do with Jonas now that he was here.

She had only invited him in for coffee because their earlier conversation had been deteriorating into accusations on her part and defensive warnings on Jonas’s. But now that he was here, in the intimacy of her home, she was once again aware of that rising sexual tension between them that never seemed to be far from the surface whenever the two of them were together.

Jonas looked very fit and masculine in his casual clothes, and that overlong dark hair was once again slightly ruffled by the cold wind blowing outside, his face as hard and sculptured as a statue Mac had once seen depicting the Archangel Gabriel. As for those fathomless blue eyes…

She turned away abruptly. ‘You never did tell me whether or not you had informed the police about this second incident of vandalism in just a few days?’

His mouth tightened. ‘I did call them, yes. Two of them arrived about an hour ago and looked the place over. If I understood them correctly, they were of the opinion that the demolishing of the other warehouses around this one has left it rather exposed and so a prime target for bored teenagers wanting to cause mischief.’

Mac was pretty sure that he had understood the police correctly. ‘And what’s your opinion, Jonas?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘I think it’s more—personal, than that.’

She gave a rueful smile. ‘We aren’t back to that disgruntled ex-lover theory again, are we?’ she said dryly.

Hardly, when Jonas now knew only too well that there had never been a lover in Mac’s life, ex or otherwise! Not even the man who had wanted her to be a trophy on his arm to show off at parties…

He gave a tight smile. ‘I prefer to go with the jealous rival theory.’

‘We’ve only been out together once,’ she taunted. ‘And that was something of a disaster, if you remember? I doubt that would have made any of your other…women friends jealous of me.’

Unfortunately, Jonas remembered every minute he had ever spent in this woman’s company. ‘Very funny.’ He scowled. ‘I was actually referring to a professional rival of yours rather than a personal angle involving me.’

‘That would make sense seeing as we don’t have a personal relationship—from any angle,’ she said cuttingly.

Jonas deliberately chose not to enter into any sort of argument as to what there was or wasn’t between himself and Mac. ‘I understand your exhibition has been a tremendous success—’

‘Understand from whom?’ Mac pounced on his comment.

‘Mac, you were the one who asked for my opinion, so would you now just let me finish giving it instead of jumping down my throat after every sentence?’ he snapped his frustration with her interruptions.

‘Fine,’ she sighed.

‘Is there anyone you know, or can think of, who might be—less than happy, shall we say, at the success of your exhibition?’

‘No, there isn’t,’ she answered snippily. Emphatically.

Which brought Jonas back to that frustrated ex-boyfriend again…

He looked at her through narrowed lids. ‘Where have you been for the past three days?’

She looked startled. ‘Sorry?’

‘I asked where you’ve been for the past three days,’ Jonas repeated firmly.

Mac gave an irritated frown. ‘I can’t see how that’s any of your business!’

‘It is if it has any bearing on the unwanted graffiti outside,’ he reasoned.

‘I don’t see how it can have.’ Mac sat forward and put her empty coffee mug down on the bamboo table. ‘If you must know, I went to visit my parents in Devon,’ she explained as Jonas continued to look at her questioningly.

‘Oh.’ He looked frustrated. ‘As you said, that’s not particularly helpful.’

It also wasn’t the answer he had obviously been expecting. ‘Where did you think I’d been, Jonas?’ Mac asked.

‘How the hell should I know?’ he retorted tersely.

Was he being defensive? It certainly sounded that way to her. But why did it? Jonas had made it more than clear on Monday evening that he wasn’t interested in becoming involved with her—or indeed with any woman who was so physically inexperienced!

Thinking about what had happened between the two of them that evening perhaps wasn’t the right thing for her to do when they were sitting here alone in her home. Well…alone apart from the two men she could see outside the window painting the wooden cladding!

She stood up suddenly. ‘I don’t think we’ll achieve anything further by talking about this any more today, Jonas.’

He looked up at her mockingly. ‘Is that my cue to politely take my leave?’

Mac felt the warmth of the colour that entered her cheeks. ‘Or impolitely, if you would prefer,’ she said sweetly.

What Jonas would prefer to do was something he dared not allow himself.

The last few minutes spent here with her, in the warmth and beauty that she had made of her home, made him strangely reluctant to leave it. Or her. Just the thought of going back alone to the cold and impersonal sterility of his own apartment was enough to send an icy shiver of revulsion down the length of his spine.

What was it about this woman in particular that made Jonas want to remain in her company? That made him so reluctant to leave the warmth and vitality that was Mary ‘Mac’ McGuire?

‘Have you ever done any interior designing other than your own?’ he heard himself asking.

Mac raised an eyebrow. ‘Not really. A room here and there for my parents, but otherwise no. Why?’

What the hell was he doing? Jonas wondered, annoyed with himself. The last thing he wanted—the very last thing—when he moved into his new apartment next year was a constant reminder of this unusual woman because he was surrounded by her choice of décor!

‘No reason,’ he replied coldly as he stood up decisively. ‘I was just making conversation,’ he explained. ‘You’re right, I have to get back to the office.’

Mac stood near the door and watched beneath lowered lashes as Jonas strode over to place his empty coffee mug on the breakfast bar, her gaze hungry as she admired the way his brown leather jacket fitted smoothly over the width of those shoulders and how his legs appeared so long and lean in his snug faded jeans.

She wasn’t over him!

Mac had thought—and hoped—that three days in Devon would put this man and that mad desire she had felt for him on Monday evening into perspective. Looking at him now, feeling the wild beat of her pulse and the heated awareness washing over her body, she realised that all she had done was force herself not to think about him. Being with Jonas again, and once more totally aware of that unequivocally passionate response to him, showed her that she hadn’t forgotten a thing about him since she’d last seen him.

She moistened dry lips, instantly aware of her mistake as she saw the way Jonas’s dark gaze fixated on the movement as he walked slowly towards her. ‘I really do need to go out and get some things in for dinner,’ she said desperately.

Jonas came to a halt only inches away from her. ‘Why don’t I take you out to dinner this evening and you can do the food shopping tomorrow?’ he prompted huskily.

Mac blinked her uncertainty, part of her wanting to have dinner with him this evening, another part of her knowing it would be reckless for her to even think of doing so. ‘I thought we had already agreed that the two of us seeing each other again socially was not a good idea?’

‘It isn’t,’ Jonas acknowledged wryly.

‘Then—’

‘I want to have dinner with you, damn it!’ he bit out fiercely.

Mac gave a rueful smile. ‘And do you usually get what you want, Jonas?’

‘Generally? Yes. As far as you’re concerned? Rarely,’ he said bluntly.

Mac was torn. An evening spent alone, after being with Jonas again, now stretched in front of her like a long dark tunnel. Alternately, spending any part of the evening with him presented a high risk of there being a repeat of Monday evening’s disaster…

‘No,’ she said finally. ‘I—no.’

Jonas eyed her speculatively. ‘That’s a definite no, is it?’