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‘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?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, that’s a definite no? Or yes, I’ve changed my mind and would love to have dinner with you this evening, Jonas?’ he drawled.
He was teasing her! It was so unexpected from this normally forcefully arrogant man that Mac couldn’t stop herself from laughing softly as she gave a slight shake of her head. ‘You aren’t making this easy for me, are you?’
Jonas had no idea what had possessed him to make the invitation in the first place, let alone try to cajole her into accepting it. Especially when he knew that spending any more time with this woman was the very last thing he should do.
He had been telling himself exactly that for the past three days. To no avail, obviously, when the first time he set eyes on her again he was pressing her to have dinner with him!
Even now Jonas couldn’t bring himself to retract the invitation. ‘It can’t be that difficult, Mac,’ he cajoled. ‘The answer is either yes or no.’
Mac looked up at Jonas quizzically, wondering why he had invited her out to dinner when he was so obviously as reluctant to spend time alone with her again as she was with him.
Except the two of them were alone right now…
Alone, and with the sexual tension between them rising just as obviously. The very air that surrounded them seemed to crackle with that awareness; she was so aware of it now that her heart raced and her palms felt damp.
She drew in a sharp breath. ‘I think that has to be a definite no.’
‘“I think” is surely contradictory to “definite”?’ Jonas pressed.
Because Mac was having a problem thinking at all in Jonas’s company!
Because she really wanted to say yes?
Maybe. No, definitely! But the part of her that could still reason logically—a very small part of her, admittedly!—knew it really wasn’t a sensible thing for her to spend any more time in his highly disturbing company.
‘I don’t want to go out to dinner with you, Jonas,’ she stated very firmly—at the same time aware of a sinking disappointment in the pit of her stomach. An ache. A hollowness that instantly made her want to retract her refusal. She bit her bottom lip, hard, to stop herself from doing exactly that.
Jonas looked down at Mac through narrowed lids, physically aware of everything about her; the slender and sexy elegance of her body, the long silky length of her ebony hair, the warm grey of her eyes, her tiny up tilted nose, the satiny smoothness of her cheeks, those full and sensuous lips—the bottom one firmly gripped between her tiny white teeth. Could that be in an effort to stop Mac from retracting her own refusal?
Implying she didn’t really want to say no to his dinner invitation…
Jonas straightened. ‘I’m not asking you out so that you can dress up and be a trophy on my arm, Mac,’ he assured her gently. ‘How about we eat here instead of going out? I’ll come back at eight o’clock with a bottle of wine and a takeaway. Would you prefer Chinese or Indian?’
Mac’s eyes widened. ‘But I just said—’
‘That you didn’t want to go out to dinner,’ he cut in. ‘So we’ll eat dinner here instead.’
She frowned. ‘That wasn’t quite what I meant.’
‘I know that, Mac.’ Jonas smiled.
‘Then—’
‘Look, we both know that we would actually prefer not to spend any more time together,’ Jonas said neutrally. ‘The problem with that is I can’t seem to stay away from you. How about you?’ he asked, eyes suddenly fierce with emotion in his otherwise calm face.
Mac realised from his careful tone and fierce expression that he disliked intensely even having to make that admission. That he was still as disturbed by their physical attraction to each other as she was. A physical attraction that was going precisely nowhere when he distrusted her sexual inexperience and she distrusted her own ability to resist him. To see him any more than was absolutely necessary would be absolute madness.
She drew herself up determinedly. ‘I said no, Jonas, and I meant no!’
His mouth tightened, jaw clenched. ‘Fine,’ he said tersely. ‘I’ll wish you a pleasant evening, then.’ He nodded abruptly before crossing to the door, closing it softly behind him as he left.
That hollow feeling deepened in Mac’s stomach as she watched him go. She knew absolutely that the last thing she was going to have was a pleasant evening in any shape or form.
CHAPTER NINE
‘I HAVE Miss McGuire for you on line one, Mr Buchanan,’ Mandy informed Jonas lightly down the telephone line when he responded to her buzz.
‘Miss McGuire?’ Jonas frowned as he suddenly realised Mandy was referring to Mac; he had ceased thinking of her as ‘the irritating Miss McGuire’ days ago!
He and Mac had only parted a few hours ago, and not exactly harmoniously, so why was she calling him at his office now? Had something else happened at her home?
Jonas put his hand over the mouthpiece to look across at Yvonne as she sat on the other side of his desk, the two of them having been going through some paperwork. ‘Would you come back in fifteen minutes so we can finish up here?’
‘Of course, Jonas.’ She stood up smoothly. ‘Are you having better luck persuading Miss McGuire into selling?’ she paused to ask ruefully.
Jonas gave her an irritated look. ‘It hasn’t come into our conversation for some time,’ he answered honestly. Part of him had forgotten why he had ever met Mac in the first place. Part of him wished that he never had.
‘Oh.’ Yvonne looked surprised. ‘I thought that was the whole point of your—acquaintance?’
‘Did you?’ Jonas returned unhelpfully. Yvonne was a good PA, a damned good one, but even so that didn’t give her the right to question any of his actions. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, this is a private call…?’ he prompted pointedly, regretting the embarrassed colour that entered Yvonne’s cheeks, but making no attempt at an apology as he waited for her to leave his office before taking Mac’s call. ‘Yes?’ he said tersely, not sure who he was annoyed with, only knowing that he was.
Mac had been aware of each second she’d been kept waiting to be put through to Jonas—perhaps because he was unsure about taking her call?—and she could hear the displeasure in his voice now as she held her mobile to her ear with one hand and poured two mugs of coffee with the other. ‘Have I called at a bad time?’
‘No.’
Mac begged to differ, considering that long wait, and the impatience she could hear in Jonas’s tone. She knew she shouldn’t have telephoned him. Had tried to talk herself out of it. Wished now that she had heeded her own advice! ‘I realised after you had left earlier that I hadn’t…I just called to say thank you,’ she said awkwardly. ‘For everything you did for me this morning. Calling the police. Arranging to have the graffiti painted over.’
There was a brief silence before Jonas answered, his voice sounding less aggressive. ‘Have Ben and Jerry finished the painting now?’
‘Ben and Jerry? That’s what they’re called?’
‘Yes,’ Jonas answered dryly.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really,’ Jonas chuckled softly.
Mac felt slightly heartened by that chuckle. ‘They’ve almost finished, yes. I was just making them both a mug of coffee.’
‘That’s very…kind of you.’
Mac bristled. ‘You sound surprised?’
His sigh was audible. ‘Let’s try to not have another argument, hmm, Mac.’
‘No, of course not.’ She grimaced. ‘Sorry.’
‘Was that the only reason you called?’ Jonas asked huskily.
Was it? Mac had convinced herself that it was before she made the call, but now that she had heard his voice again she wasn’t so sure.
They had parted with such finality earlier. Leaving no room for manoeuvre. Something that had left Mac with a feeling of uneasy dissatisfaction.
‘I think so,’ she answered.
‘But you’re not sure?’ he pressed.
‘I am sure,’ she said firmly. ‘I just—Anyway, thank you for your help earlier, Jonas. It is appreciated.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he said warmly. ‘Have you had second thoughts about dinner?’
Second and third ones, Mac acknowledged ruefully. But all of them with the same conclusion—that a relationship between herself and Jonas was going nowhere. Except possibly to a broken heart on her part.
She wasn’t sure when—or even how—the feelings she had for Jonas had sneaked up on her. She only knew that they had.
Quite what those feelings were, she had so far shied away from analysing; she only knew, after seeing him again this morning, that her three days away had achieved nothing and that she definitely felt something for him.
She felt energised in his company. A tingling awareness. An excited thrumming. Whether or not that was just a sexual excitement, Mac wasn’t experienced enough in relationships to know. She only knew that the thought of never seeing him again, speaking to him again, was a painful one.
It made no difference to those feelings whatsoever that she knew there was no future for the two of them. Jonas undisputedly affected her in a way no other man ever had.
‘I’ll take it from your delay in answering that you have,’ he drawled softly.
‘I didn’t say that—’
‘In which case, Indian or Chinese?’ he said authoritatively, rolling right over her vacillation, having no intention of letting her wriggle out of the invitation a second time. Or was it a third time? Whatever. For some reason, Mac had called him, once again opening the line of communication between them, and at the same time renewing Jonas’s own determination to see her again. ‘I’m waiting, Mac,’ he added.
Her raggedly indrawn breath was audible. ‘Indian. But—’
‘No buts,’ Jonas cut in forcefully. ‘I’ll be there about eight o’clock, okay?’
‘I—Yes. Okay.’
Jonas only realised he had been tensed for another refusal as he felt his shoulders relax. ‘We’re only going to eat dinner together, Mac,’ he mocked gruffly—not sure whether he was offering her that reassurance or himself!
Himself, probably, he accepted derisively. Mac had got under his skin in a way he wasn’t comfortable with. So much so that he knew he shouldn’t see her again. So much so that he knew he had to see her again.
She was a magnet he was inexorably drawn to. And resistance on Jonas’s part was proving as futile as preventing the proverbial moth from being drawn to a flame…
‘Very festive,’ Jonas told Mac dryly later that evening once she had opened the door to his knock and he had stepped into the living area of the warehouse, the main lights switched off to allow for the full effect of the brightly lit Christmas tree. The smell of pine was thick in the air, and the branches were heavily adorned with decorations and glittering shiny baubles that reflected those coloured lights.
The dining table in the corner of the huge open-plan area was already set for two, with several candles placed in its centre waiting to be lit, and a bottle of red wine waiting to be opened.
Jonas turned away from the intimacy of that setting to look at Mac instead. Her hair was loose again this evening, and she had changed out of the black jumper, jeans and red body-warmer, into an overlarge thigh-length long-sleeved red shirt over black leggings, with calf-high black boots.
Jonas had spent the remainder of the afternoon telling himself what a bad idea it was for him to come here again this evening. One look at Mac and he didn’t give a damn how bad an idea it was, he was just enjoying being in her company again.
‘Here.’ He handed her the bag of Indian food before thrusting his hands into his jeans pockets in an effort not to reach out, as he so wanted to do, and pull her close to him. Jonas knew that once he had done that he wouldn’t want to let her go again. That he would forget everything else but having her in his arms…
Mac turned away from the stark intensity of Jonas’s gaze to carry the bag of food over to the breakfast bar and take out the hot cartons before removing the lids with determined concentration, feeling strangely shy in his company now that she was aware of—if choosing not to look too closely at—the feelings she had for him.
‘Ben and Jerry did a good job painting over the graffiti,’ she told him conversationally as she carried the warmed plates and cartons of food over to the table on a tray.
Jonas shrugged. ‘It’s too dark for me to tell.’
Mac nodded. ‘They were very efficient.’ Her gaze didn’t quite meet his as she straightened and turned, at the same time completely aware of how vibrantly attractive he looked in a blue cashmere sweater, the same colour as his eyes, and faded jeans of a lighter blue.
‘Mac…?’
She raised her eyes to look at him before as quickly looking away again as she felt that familiar thrill of awareness down the length of her spine. ‘We should sit down and eat before the food gets cold.’
Jonas frowned at the awkwardness he could feel growing between them. ‘Mac, are you even going to look at me?’
She leant back against the table as she turned and raised startled lids, her eyes huge grey orbs in the paleness of her face, her expression pained. ‘What are we doing, Jonas?’ she groaned huskily.
He gave a rueful shrug. ‘Eating dinner together, I thought.’
She shook her head. ‘After agreeing only this afternoon that it was a bad idea!’
‘No, you said it was a bad idea. I don’t think you asked for my opinion,’ Jonas recalled dryly. Although, if asked at the time, he would have said it was a bad idea, too! ‘As you said, the food is getting cold, so I suggest that for now we just sit down and eat and think about this again later?’ He moved to pointedly pull back one of the chairs for her to sit down.
Mac regarded him quizzically as she sat. ‘You really do like having your own way, don’t you?’
‘Almost as much as you enjoy doing the exact opposite of what you know I want,’ Jonas acknowledged with a quick smile as he sat down opposite her before picking up the bottle of wine and deftly opening it.
Mac chuckled softly. ‘Interesting.’
‘Irritating for the main part, actually,’ Jonas admitted as he poured the wine into their glasses. He raised his own glass and made a toast. ‘To—hopefully—our first indigestion-free meal together!’
Mac raised her glass and touched it gently against the side of Jonas’s. ‘To an indigestion-free meal!’ she echoed huskily, not too sure about the ‘first’ part of the toast. It implied there might be other meals to come, and, as Mac knew only too well, she and Jonas always ended up arguing if they spent any length of time together.
Well…almost always. The times when they didn’t argue were even more disturbing…
‘You really do like Christmas, don’t you?’
Mac looked up from helping herself to some of the food in the cartons to see Jonas was looking at her brightly decked Christmas tree. ‘I would have said, doesn’t everyone?’ she replied. ‘But I already know that you don’t.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ Jonas said.
‘No?’ Mac eyed him interestedly.
He shrugged. ‘I don’t dislike Christmas, Mac, it’s just a time I remember when my parents were forced to spend a couple of days in each other’s company, with the result they usually ended up having one almighty slanging match before the holiday was over. As my grandmother died on Christmas Eve, Joseph wasn’t particularly into celebrating it, either.’
‘What about your cousin Amy and her family?’
‘Amy always goes away with her partner for Christmas, and I’m not close to my uncle and aunt. What can I say?’ he drawled at Mac’s dismayed expression. ‘We’re a dysfunctional family.’
It sounded awful to Mac when she thought of her own happy childhood, and the wonderful memories she had of family Christmases, both in the distant past and more recently. ‘Why did you call your grandfather Joseph?’
Jonas gave a humourless smile. ‘Calling out “Granddad” on a building site didn’t go down too well with him, so it became a habit to call him by his first name.’
Looking at Jonas now, so suave, so obviously wealthy from the car he drove and the penthouse apartment he lived in, it was difficult to envision him as a rough and tough teenager working on a building site.
Yet there were those calluses Mac had noticed on his palms three days ago. And there was a ripcord strength about Jonas that didn’t look as if it came solely from working out in a gym. Wealthy or not, underneath all that suave sophistication, she realised he was still capable of being every bit as rough and tough as he had been as a teenager.
‘What?’ Jonas paused in eating his food to look across at her questioningly.
Mac shrugged. ‘I was just thinking that maybe you should think about starting your own Christmas traditions.’
From the way Mac had been looking at him so searchingly Jonas was pretty sure that hadn’t been what she had been thinking at all. Although quite what she had been thinking, he had no idea.
She was still something of an enigma to him, he recognised ruefully. There was no sophisticated game-playing with Mac. No artifice. As she had so emphatically told him, what you saw was what you got. And what Jonas saw he wanted very badly indeed…
He sighed. ‘It’s never seemed worth the bother when I only have myself to think about.’
Mac looked at him assessingly. ‘I’m taking a bet that you usually go away for Christmas. Somewhere hot,’ she qualified. ‘Golden sandy beaches where you can sunbathe, and there are waiters to bring you tall drinks with exotic fruit and umbrellas in them. Somewhere you can forget it even is Christmas,’ she teased.
‘You would win your bet,’ Jonas acknowledged with a smile.
She shook her head. ‘I can’t imagine ever going away for Christmas.’
Neither could Jonas when he could clearly see the distaste on Mac’s face. ‘What do you and your family do over Christmas?’ he asked.
Those beautiful smoky grey eyes glowed. ‘Nowadays we all converge on my parents’ house in a little village called Tulnerton in Devon. My mother’s parents, several aged aunts. All the presents are placed under the tree, and Christmas Eve we all have a family meal and then attend Midnight Mass at the local church together. When we get back Mum and I usually put the turkey in the oven so that it cooks slowly overnight and the house is full of the smells of it cooking in the morning when we sit down to open our presents. When I was younger, that sometimes happened as early as five o’clock in the morning,’ she recalled wistfully. ‘Nowadays it’s usually about nine o’clock, after we’ve checked on the turkey and everyone has a cup of tea.’
Jonas’s mouth twisted. ‘The perfect Christmas indeed.’
Mac eyed him ruefully. ‘To me it is, yes.’
Jonas reached out and placed his hand over hers as it rested on the tabletop. ‘I wasn’t mocking you, Mac,’ he said gruffly.
‘No?’
Strangely enough, no…It was all too easy for Jonas to envisage the Christmas Mac described so warmly. The sort of Christmas that many families strived for and never actually experienced. The sort of Christmas Jonas had never had. And never would have.
‘There are no arguments?’ he prompted.
Her eyes glowed with laughter. ‘Usually only over who’s going to pull the wishbone after we’ve eaten our Christmas lunch!’
His fingers curled about hers. ‘It sounds wonderful.’
Mac was very aware of the air of intimacy that now surrounded the two of them. But it was a different type of intimacy from a physical one. This intimacy was warm and enveloping. Dangerous…
She removed her hand purposefully from beneath Jonas’s to pick up her fork. ‘I’m sure there must have been arguments; you can’t put eight or ten disparate people in a house together for four or five days without there being the odd disagreement. I’ve obviously just chosen to forget them.’ She grimaced.
Jonas looked across at her with enigmatic blue eyes. ‘You don’t have to make excuses for your own happy childhood, Mac.’
‘I wasn’t—’
‘Weren’t you?’ he rasped.
Yes, she supposed she had been. Because Jonas’s childhood had borne absolutely no resemblance to her own. Because, although he wouldn’t thank her for it in the slightest, her heart ached for him. ‘If you haven’t made other plans yet, perhaps you would like to—’ Mac broke off abruptly, her cheeks warming as she realised how utterly ridiculous she was being.
Jonas eyed her warily. ‘Please tell me you weren’t about to invite me to spend Christmas with you and your family in Devon.’
That was exactly what Mac had been about to do! Impulsively. Stupidly! Of course Jonas didn’t want to spend Christmas with her, let alone the rest of her family; with half a dozen strangers there, as well as Mac herself, he would necessarily have to be polite to everyone for the duration of his stay.
Her cheeks were now positively burning with embarrassment. ‘I think I feel that indigestion coming on!’
Jonas studied Mac through narrowed lids, knowing by her evasiveness that she had been about to invite him to spend Christmas with her and her family. Why? Because she actually wanted to spend Christmas with him? Or because she felt sorry for him and just couldn’t bear the thought of anyone—even him—spending Christmas alone?
His mouth thinned. ‘I don’t recall ever saying that I’m alone when I spend my Christmases sunbathing on those golden sandy beaches.’
‘No, you didn’t, did you?’ The colour had left Mac’s cheeks as quickly as it had warmed them, her eyes a huge and haunted grey as she gave a moue of self-disgust. ‘How naïve of me.’
Jonas knew that he had deliberately hit out at her because pity was the last thing he wanted from her. From anyone. Damn it, he was successful and rich and could afford to do anything he wanted to do. He had never met refusal from any woman he’d shown an interest in taking to his bed. All the things he had decided he wanted out of life years ago when he left university so determined to succeed he had achieved.
Then why did just being with Mac like this, talking with her, make him just as aware of all the things he didn’t have in his life?
Things like having someone to come home to every night. The same someone. To share things with. To laugh with. To make love with.
‘Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,’ Jonas drawled. ‘In fact, why don’t you consider giving the traditional family Christmas a miss this year and come away with me instead?’ he asked as he looked at her over the top of his wine glass before lifting it and taking a deep swallow of the ruby-red liquid.
Mac stared at Jonas, absolutely incredulous that he appeared to be asking her to go away with him for Christmas.
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