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In spite of the fact that Jonas Buchanan was so obviously a devastatingly attractive man, he simply wasn’t Mac’s type. He was far too arrogant. At least as arrogant, if not more so, as Thomas Connelly, the art critic who had considered her nothing but a trophy to parade on his arm six years ago.
She picked up her fork to deliberately spear one of the succulent prawns swimming in garlic, before raising it to her mouth and popping it between her lips. Only to glance across the table at the exact moment she did so, her cheeks heating with flaming wings of colour as she saw the intensity with which Jonas was watching the movement.
Dark and mesmerising, his eyes had become a deep and cobalt blue. There was a slight flush to his cheeks too, and those sculptured lips were slightly parted.
Mac shifted uncomfortably. ‘Would you like to try one?’
That dark gaze lifted up to hers. ‘What?’
She swallowed hard, feeling strangely alone with Jonas in this crowded and happily noisy restaurant. ‘You seemed to be coveting my garlic prawns, so I was offering to let you try one…’
Damn it, Jonas hadn’t been coveting the prawns on Mac’s plate—he had been imagining lying back and having those full and red lips placed about a certain part of his anatomy as she pleasured him!
What the hell was the matter with him?
In the last fifteen years he had never once mixed business with pleasure. Had always kept the two firmly separate. Since meeting Mac he seemed to have done nothing else but confuse the two, with the result that he was now once again fully aroused beneath the cover of the chequered tablecloth. Hopefully there would be no reason for him to stand up in the next few minutes or his arousal would be well and truly exposed!
‘No, thank you,’ he refused quickly. ‘I would prefer not to smell of garlic during any of my business meetings later this afternoon.’
Mac gave an unconcerned shrug of her shoulders. ‘Please yourself.’
‘I usually do,’ Jonas said dryly.
‘Lucky you,’ she said.
Jonas considered Mac through narrowed lids. ‘Are you saying that you don’t?’ he taunted. ‘I thought all artists preferred to be free spirits? In relationships as well as their art?’
Mac didn’t miss the contempt in his tone. Or the underlying implication that, as an artist, she probably slept around.
It would have been amusing if it weren’t so obvious that Jonas had once again meant to be insulting!
Oh, Mac had lots of friends, male as well as female, both from school and university, but that didn’t mean she went to bed with any of them. That she had ever been intimately involved with anyone, in fact.
After that fiasco with Thomas, Mac had become completely focused on what she wanted to do with her life. Which was to be successful as an artist in her own right.
From the time she was twelve years old, and her art teacher had allowed her to paint with oils on canvas for the first time, Mac had known exactly what she wanted, and that was to become a successful artist first, with marriage and children second. She had become slightly sidetracked from that ambition during that brief relationship with Thomas, but if anything the realisation of his arrogance and condescension had only increased that ambition.
‘If you’ll excuse me, I need to go to the ladies’ room.’ She placed her napkin on the table before pushing back her chair and standing up.
Jonas raised dark brows. ‘Was it something I said?’
Mac frowned down at him. ‘That necessitates my needing to go to the ladies’ room?’ she drawled derisively. ‘Hardly!’
Nevertheless, Jonas was left sitting alone at the table feeling less than happy, both with himself, and with his earlier biting comment. He knew very little about her personal life—the fact that he had an erection every time he was in her company really didn’t count! He certainly didn’t know her well enough to have deliberately cast aspersions upon the way she might choose to live her private life.
He forced himself to continue eating his own food as he waited for Mac to return.
And waited.
And waited.
After over ten minutes had passed since she’d left the table, Jonas came to the uncomfortable conclusion that she might have walked out on both him and the restaurant!
Deservedly so?
Maybe. But that didn’t make the experience—the first time that a woman had ever walked out on Jonas, for any reason—any more palatable than the prawns he had just forced himself to finish eating.
He stood up abruptly to place his own napkin on the tabletop and make his way across the restaurant to the door through to the washrooms, determined to see exactly how Mac had made her escape. Only to come to a halt in the doorway and feeling completely wrong-footed as he came face to face with Mac, who was standing in the corridor in laughing conversation with one of the waitresses.
She looked at him curiously. ‘Is there a problem, Jonas?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Your food is getting cold.’
‘Oh, dear.’ The waitress gave an apologetic smile. ‘I’ll talk to you later, Mac,’ she said, before hurrying off in the direction of the kitchen.
Leaving Mac alone in the hallway with an obviously seriously displeased Jonas.
Well, that was just too bad!
Jonas had been deliberately insulting before she left the table, and when she’d bumped into Carla as she was leaving the ladies’ room Mac had felt no hesitation in stopping to chat; Jonas Buchanan could just sit alone at the table for a few more minutes and stew as far as she was concerned.
She raised dark brows as he stepped further into the otherwise deserted hallway and quietly closed the door behind him, enclosing the two of them in a strangely tense and otherwise deserted silence. Mac shifted uncomfortably as Jonas walked stealthily down that hallway towards her. ‘I thought you said my food was getting cold?’ she prompted, suddenly nervous.
‘It’s already cold, so a few more minutes isn’t going to make any difference,’ he dismissed softly.
Mac moistened dry lips as Jonas kept walking until he came to a halt standing only inches away from her. Very tall and large, his close proximity totally unnerving. ‘Why do we need to be a few more minutes?’ She glanced up at him uncertainly.
Jonas was enjoying turning the tables and seeing Mac’s obvious discomfort—God knew she had already made his own life uncomfortable enough for one day! Since the moment he first met her, in fact. He had no doubt that leaving him sitting alone at a table in the middle of a crowded restaurant had been deliberate on her part.
A public restaurant wasn’t the ideal place for what he now had in mind, either, but to hell with that—Jonas had realised in the last few seconds that he didn’t just need to kiss Mac, it had become as necessary to him as breathing.
‘Guess,’ he murmured throatily as he stepped even closer to her.
Her eyes widened in alarm as she took several steps back until she found herself against the wall. ‘Garlic breath, remember,’ she reminded him hastily.
He gave an unconcerned shrug. ‘That will just make you taste even better.’
‘This is so not a good idea, Jonas,’ she warned him desperately.
Jonas was all out of good ideas. At this precise moment he intended—needed—to go with a bad one.
His gaze held Mac’s as he reached up to cup his hand against the silky smooth curve of her cheek and ran the soft pad of his thumb over her slightly parted lips, the warmth of her breath a caress against his own highly sensitised skin. An arousing caress that made his stomach muscles clench and his thighs harden.
He drew in a sharp breath as he stepped closer still and Mac instinctively lifted her hands to rest them defensively against the hardness of his chest, the warmth of those hands burning through the silk material of Jonas’s shirt as he deliberately rested his body against hers.
Mac suddenly found herself trapped between the cold wall and the heat of Jonas’s body, her hands crushed against his muscled chest as he slowly lowered his head with the obvious intention of kissing her.
She knew she should protest. That she should at least try to ward off this rapidly increasing intimacy.
And yet she didn’t. Couldn’t.
Instead her lips parted in readiness for that kiss, her breath arrested in her throat at the first heated touch of Jonas’s lips against hers.
Oh, Lord…
Mac had never known anything like the sensual pleasure of having Jonas’s mouth moving against hers, exploring, sipping, tasting, teeth gently biting before that kiss deepened hungrily, his body hard and insistent against hers as her hands moved up his shoulders and her fingers became entangled in the dark thickness of his hair as she pulled him even closer. Jonas pushed her against the wall and lowered his body until his arousal pressed into Mac, making her respond with an aching hotness that pooled between her thighs in a rush of moist and fiery heat, her breasts swelling, the rosy tips hardening to full sensitivity as they pressed against the lacy material of her bra.
Her fingers tightened in the silky softness of Jonas’s hair as that heat grew, their mouths fusing together hungrily, Mac groaning low in her throat as she felt the firm thrust of Jonas’s tongue enter her mouth. Hot, slow and deep thrusts matched by the rhythmic movement of his thighs into the juncture of her sensitive thighs.
Mac groaned again in pleasure as that hardness pressed against the swollen nub nestled there, creating an aching heat deep inside her before it spread to every part of her body, arousing her to an almost painful degree.
God, she wanted this man with a ferocity of need she had never imagined, never dreamt was possible. Here. Now. She wanted to strip off their clothes and have Jonas take her up against the wall, her legs wrapped about his waist as he thrust deep inside her to ease that burning ache.
As if aware of at least some of her need, Jonas moved his hand to curve about her left breast, the soft pad of his thumb unerringly finding the swollen tip and sweeping across it.
Mac whimpered as the pleasure of that caress coursed down to her thighs, and she wished Jonas could touch her there, too—
‘Well, really!’ a shocked female voiced gasped. ‘This is a public restaurant, you know,’ the woman added disgustedly as she walked past them to the washrooms. ‘Why don’t the two of you just get a room somewhere?’ The door to the ladies room closed behind her with a disapproving snap.
Mac had wrenched away from Jonas the moment she’d realised they were no longer alone in the hallway, burying the heat of her face against his chest now to hide her embarrassment at being caught in such a compromising position.
In a public restaurant, for goodness’ sake!
With Jonas Buchanan, of all people.
What could she have been thinking?
She hadn’t been thinking at all, that was the problem. She had been feeling. Experiencing emotions, sensations, she had never known before.
If that woman hadn’t interrupted them then Mac might just have gone through with that urge she’d had to start ripping Jonas’s clothes from his body before begging him to ease the burning ache between her thighs!
Oh, God.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘SO, WHAT do you think?’ Jonas asked as he stepped back from Mac.
‘What do I think about what?’ She blinked up at him as she straightened away from the wall to push the tangle of her hair back from her face; her eyes fever bright, her cheeks flushed, and those sensuously enticing lips slightly swollen from the fierce hunger of their kisses.
A hunger that had made Jonas forget, not only who they were, but where they were. All that had mattered to him at that moment was tasting Mac, devouring those tempting red lips, pressing the heat of his body against hers, her fingers becoming entangled in his hair as she responded to his desire.
Jonas knew he hadn’t been this physically aroused, so totally lost to reason, since he was an inexperienced teenager. And he didn’t like the sensation of being out of control. He didn’t like it at all.
His mouth twisted. ‘The two of us getting a hotel room for the afternoon.’
Mac’s eyes widened. ‘Certainly not!’ she exclaimed indignantly.
‘Why not?’ he taunted.
‘Why not?’ Mac repeated as she glared up at him. ‘I have no idea what sort of women you usually associate with, Jonas, but I can assure you that I do not go to hotel rooms with men for the afternoon!’
‘I wasn’t suggesting you went with men plural, Mac, just me,’ he drawled.
‘I said no!’ She was breathing heavily in her agitation, the fullness of her breasts rapidly rising and falling.
Something that Jonas was all too well aware of as he looked down at her and his still heavily roused manhood pulsed achingly in response. ‘You want me, I want you, so why the hell not?’ he rasped.
He would have felt happier about this situation if Mac had just said yes to the two of them going to a hotel for the afternoon. That way he would have found her less of an enigma than he did now. Less intriguing than he did now.
Because Mac had definitely returned his passion. Yet it was a passion she made it clear she had no intention of doing anything about, probably not now nor in the future. He already knew his own afternoon was going to be as uncomfortable as his morning had been, but how did Mac intend dealing with her own unsatisfied arousal?
‘Unless you’re trying to tell me you don’t want me?’ he murmured.
Mac wasn’t sure which of her emotions was the strongest—the urge she had to slap Jonas’s arrogant face or the one she had to just sit down and cry at her own stupidity.
Because he was right, damn him. She did want him. She had never physically wanted a man more, in fact, her whole body one burning ache of need. Something Mac knew was going to bother her long after he had gone back to his office to attend his afternoon meetings.
But she definitely wanted to slap him too. For bringing that physical awareness down to a purely basic level by suggesting they get a hotel room for the afternoon and satisfy those longings.
She really wasn’t that sort of woman. She had never done anything so impulsively reckless as kissing a man so heatedly on the premises of a restaurant before, let alone gone to a hotel room with him, and she had no intention of doing the latter now with Jonas, either. Much as she might secretly ache to do so. It sounded wild. Liberating. Dangerously exciting…
She deliberately fell back on anger as the solution to her predicament. ‘Whether I want you or not, an afternoon in a hotel bedroom with a man I barely know—and who I really don’t want to know any better—is really not my thing,’ she told him scornfully. ‘If you’re feeling frustrated, Jonas, then I’m sure there are any number of women you could call who would be only too happy to spend the afternoon satisfying you!’
Jonas’s eyes narrowed to icy slits. ‘I’ve never been that desperate for sex, Mac.’
Including sex with her, she knew he was implying. Which was no doubt true. Jonas was young, handsome and rich enough to attract any woman he decided he wanted. He certainly didn’t need to trouble himself over one stubborn artist, who obviously irritated him as much as she aroused him.
And Mac had aroused him. She’d felt the hard evidence of that arousal pressed against her own thighs as Jonas kissed her.
Her mouth firmed. ‘I suggest we just forget about lunch,’ she said abruptly. ‘I’m really not hungry any more, and I doubt you are either—’
‘Not for food, anyway,’ Jonas muttered.
‘I—’ Mac broke off suddenly as the woman who had interrupted them earlier now came back out of the ladies’ room, her gaze averted as she passed them and returned to the dining room of the restaurant. Mac’s embarrassment returned with a vengeance. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll explain to Luciano that you had an appointment you had to go to rather than intending any slight to the preparation of his food.’
‘I moved my afternoon around. My next appointment isn’t for another hour,’ Jonas told her.
Her eyes widened. ‘You want us to go back to the table and finish eating lunch together?’
After what just happened between us? Jonas inwardly finished Mac’s question. And the answer to that was no, of course he didn’t want them to return to the table and carry on eating lunch together as if nothing had happened. But neither did he appreciate Mac dismissing him as if the last few minutes had never happened at all.
His mouth thinned. ‘Obviously not,’ he bit out tersely. ‘I’ll settle the bill and explain to Luciano that you had a previous appointment.’
Mac frowned. ‘I asked you out to lunch—’
‘I’m paying the bill, Mac,’ Jonas repeated firmly.
Mac continued to look up at him frowningly for several long seconds before giving an impatient shrug. ‘Fine. Whatever.’ Her tone implied she just wanted to get out of here. Away from him. Now.
A need she followed through on as she turned swiftly on her heel and marched down the hallway back into the restaurant, the door swinging closed behind her.
Jonas remained where he was for several more minutes after Mac had gone, eyes narrowed and his expression grim as he recognised that she was no longer just a problem on a business level, but had also become one on a personal level, too.
Perhaps one that would only be resolved once they had been to bed together…
Mac was barefooted and belatedly eating a piece of toast for her lunch when she went to answer the knock on her door later that afternoon, a brief glance through the spy-hole in the door showing her that she didn’t know the grey-haired man standing at the top of the metal staircase dressed like a workman in blue overalls and a thick checked shirt. ‘Yes?’ she prompted politely after opening the door.
‘Afternoon, love,’ the middle-aged man returned with a smile. ‘Bob Jenkins. I’ve come to replace ya window.’
Mac’s brows rose. ‘That’s great!’
He was already inspecting the broken window next to the door. ‘Had a break-in, did ya?’ He gave a shake of his head. ‘Too much of it about nowadays. No respect, that’s the problem. Not for people or their property.’
‘No.’ Mac grimaced as she recalled the mess that had been left in her studio.
‘It will only take a few minutes to fix.’ Bob Jenkins gave her another encouraging smile. ‘I’ll just go and get my things from the van.’
Mac had made him a mug of tea by the time he came back up the stairs with his tools and a pane of glass that appeared to be the exact size of the one that had been broken. ‘How did you know which size glass to bring?’
The glazier took a sip of tea and put the mug down before he began working on the window frame. ‘The boss is pretty good at judging things like this,’ he explained.
Mac sipped her own tea as she watched him work. ‘Was that the man I spoke to on the telephone this morning?’
‘Don’t know about that, love.’ Bob Jenkins looked up to give her a grin. ‘He just told me to get over here toot sweet and replace the window.’
Mac had no idea why, but she had a sudden uneasy feeling about ‘the boss’. Maybe because she didn’t recall telling the man at the glazier company she had called this morning what size window had been broken. Or expected anyone to arrive from that company until tomorrow…
She eyed Bob warily. ‘Exactly who is the boss?’
He raised grizzled grey brows. ‘Mr Buchanan, of course.’
Exactly what Mac had suspected—dreaded—hearing!
After their strained parting earlier Mac hadn’t expected to see or hear from Jonas ever again. Although technically, she wasn’t seeing or hearing from him now, either; he had just arrogantly sent one of his workmen over to fix her broken window.
Why?
Was Jonas treating her like the ‘fragile little woman’ who needed the help of the ‘big, strong man’?
Or was Jonas replacing the window because he knew that he—or someone who worked for him—was responsible for it being broken in the first place?
‘Of course,’ Mac answered the workman distractedly. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Bob?’
‘No problem,’ he assured her brightly.
Mac was so annoyed at Jonas’s high-handedness that she didn’t quite know what to do with all the anger bubbling inside her. What did he think he was doing, interfering in this way, when she had already told him that she had arranged for a glazier to come out tomorrow?
An arrangement he had instantly expressed his disapproval of. Enough to have arranged for one of his own workmen to come out and replace the window immediately, apparently! Were Jonas’s actions prompted by a guilty conscience? Or by something else? Although quite what that something else could be Mac had no idea. It was enough, surely, that Jonas was sticking his arrogant nose into her business?
Too right it was!
‘What can I do for you this time, Mac?’ Jonas took his briefcase out of the car before locking it and turning to face her wearily across the private and brightly lid underground car park beneath his apartment building.
He had been vaguely aware, as he drove home at the end of what had been a damned awful day, of the black motorbike following in the traffic behind him. He simply hadn’t realised that Mac was the driver of that motorbike until she followed him down into the car park, stopped the vehicle behind his car and removed the black crash helmet to shake the long length of her ebony-dark hair loose about her shoulders. The black biking leathers she was wearing fitted her as snugly as a glove, and clearly outlined the fullness of her breasts and her slender waist and hips. Jonas couldn’t help thinking of how they were no doubt moulded to her perfectly shaped bottom, too!
But there was no way that Jonas could mistake the obviously hostile demeanour on her face for anything other than what it was as she climbed off the motorbike; her eyes were sparkling with challenge, the fullness of her lips compressed and unsmiling.
Jonas’s afternoon had been just as uncomfortable as he had thought it might be. So much so that he hadn’t been able to give his usual concentration to his business meetings.
What was it about this woman in particular that so disturbed him? Mac was beautiful, yes, but in a wild and Bohemian sort of way that had never appealed to him before. There was absolutely nothing about her that usually attracted him to a woman. She was short and dark-haired, boyishly slender apart from the fullness of her breasts, and not in the least sophisticated; she even rode a motorbike, for heaven’s sake!
Jonas wasn’t particularly into motorbikes, but even he recognised the machine as being a Harley, the chassis a shiny black, its silver chrome gleaming brightly. For what had to be the dozenth time, Jonas told himself that Mac McGuire was most definitely not his type.
So why the hell couldn’t he stop thinking about her?
His eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t you think—whatever your reason for being here—that following me home is taking things to an extreme?’
Her mouth tightened further at the criticism. ‘Maybe.’
He raised mocking brows. ‘Only maybe?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted grudgingly.
He eyed her coldly. ‘And so you’re here because…?’
She glared at him. ‘You sent a glazier to repair my window.’
‘Yes.’
Her eyes widened. ‘You aren’t even going to attempt to deny it?’
Jonas grimaced. ‘Presumably Bob told you I had sent him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then what would be the point of my trying to deny it?’ he reasoned impatiently.
Mac was feeling a little foolish now that she was actually face to face with Jonas. Anger had been her primary emotion, as she waited the twenty minutes or so it had taken Bob Jenkins to replace the window, before donning her leathers and getting her motorcycle out of the garage and riding it over to Jonas’s office. Just in time to see Jonas driving out of the office underground car park in his dark green sports car.