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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.’
