His Christmas Virgin (8 page)

Unless you're in love with him, after all?
a little voice deep within her wanted to know.

No. She was most definitely not. Mac had felt closer to Jonas this evening. Felt she understood him and his motivations better after hearing about his parents' marriage and his own childhood. And she had physically wanted him. That was undeniable. But none of those things added up to her being in love with him.

Not even a little bit?
the same annoying voice persisted.

No, not even a little bit! she answered it firmly.

Jonas was arrogant. Cold. And his behaviour just now proved that he was also completely undeserving of her emotions or her body.

 

Jonas had pulled his jumper back on and was sitting at the oak kitchen table drinking some of the wine when Mac came back into the room, his gaze narrowing as he took in her appearance in his T-shirt. It was far too big for her, so long it reached almost down to her knees, the shoulder seams hanging halfway down her arms—and yet, somehow, she still managed to look sexy as hell.

Nothing at all like the virgin she was.

Jonas couldn't have known about her inexperience. He would never have guessed it from how she'd responded to him so passionately, so eagerly…

He scowled across at her broodingly. ‘Having dinner together was obviously no more successful than our attempt at having lunch.' The food remained half eaten and cold on the plates.

Mac strode across the room to grab her own T-shirt from the back of the chair where Jonas had draped it. ‘At least I know who to see now if I ever want to lose weight,' she retorted.

Jonas's jaw tightened. ‘You're too thin already.'

Her eyes flashed a deep, smoky grey. ‘I didn't hear you complaining a few minutes ago!'

He raised dark brows, his smile sardonic. ‘I wasn't stating a preference now either, only fact.'

Mac wanted to slap that mocking smile off his face. No—she wanted to pummel his chest with her fists until she actually hurt him. As he had hurt her when he'd turned away from her so coldly.

She held her T-shirt protectively in front of her.
‘Is there a bathroom I can use to change back into my own top?'

He kept one mocking brow raised. ‘Isn't it a little late for modesty when I've already seen you naked?'

Her cheeks warmed hotly. ‘Not completely!'

Jonas gave a shrug. ‘The part you're going to expose, I have.'

Mac's mouth set determinedly. ‘Would you just tell me where the bathroom is?'

‘The nearest one is down the hallway, first door on the right,' he told her before turning away.

It was a cold and uninterested dismissal, Mac realised with a frown as she turned and walked out of the kitchen. Anyone would think that being a virgin at her age was akin to having the plague! Maybe in his eyes it was…

She wasted no time in admiring the luxurious bathroom as she quickly pulled off Jonas's overlarge T-shirt and replaced it with her own white one, a glance in the mirror over the double sink showing her that her hair was in too much of a mess for her to do any more than plait it loosely in an effort to smooth it into some sort of order.

Her face was very pale, her eyes huge and slightly red from the tears she had shed earlier, her lips full and swollen from the intensity of the kisses she had shared with Jonas.

Most of all she looked…sad.

Which wouldn't do at all, Mac decided as she set her shoulders determinedly before leaving the bathroom to go back to the kitchen. She was a mature and confident woman—even if, horror or horrors, she was still a virgin!—and she intended to act like one.

Jonas was still sitting at the table surrounded by the
remains of their meal, although the level of wine in his glass had definitely gone down in her absence.

Mac placed his T-shirt on the back of one of the other chairs. ‘Thank you,' she said stiltedly, her face averted as she sat down to begin pulling on her leathers.

This, putting her clothes back on in a strained and awkward silence, had to be one of the most embarrassing and humiliating experiences of her entire life. More embarrassing than if she and Jonas had actually made love completely? Probably not, she acknowledged with a self-derisive grimace, as she could only imagine his reaction if he had discovered her virginity when it was too late for him to pull back.

Once again Jonas watched Mac broodingly through narrowed lids, easily able to read the self-disgust in her expression, the underlying hurt. Damn it, he had never meant to hurt her. Hadn't wanted to hurt her. He just knew he had nothing to offer a woman like Mac. Beautiful. Emotional. Virginal…

His relationships were always,
always
based on a mutual attraction and physical need. That desire definitely existed between himself and Mac, but the fact that she was still a virgin, and had been willing to give that virginity to him, had also warned him that if they made love together then she would probably want more from him than that. Much more.

Jonas didn't have any more than that to give. Not to Mac or any other woman. But that wasn't her fault.

‘I'm sorry.'

She gave him a sharp glance as she straightened from lacing her boots. ‘For what?'

Jonas grimaced. ‘For allowing things to go as far between us just now as they did. If I had known—'

‘If you had known I was a virgin then you wouldn't
have invited me up to your apartment at all!' she finished knowingly as she stood to zip up her leathers.

Jonas winced at the bitterness he could hear in her tone. ‘None of what happened was premeditated on my part—'

‘No?' she challenged.

‘No, damn it!' A scowl darkened his brow.

Mac shrugged. ‘Don't worry about it, Jonas. Not all men are as fickle as you; I'm pretty sure I can find one who's more than willing to become my first lover. Maybe I'll come back once I have, and we can finish what we started?' she taunted.

Jonas pushed his chair back noisily to stand up. ‘Don't be so stupid!' he rasped harshly.

Mac's chin tilted with determination as she looked up at him. ‘What's stupid about it?'

‘You can't just decide to lose your virginity in that cold-blooded way!'

‘Why can't I?'

He shook his head. ‘Because it's something too precious to just throw away. It's a gift you should give to a man you care about. That you love.'

Mac felt a clenching in her chest as she acknowledged that she
did
care about Jonas. She didn't think she was in love with him yet—it would be madness on her part to fall in love with him!—but she definitely cared about him. About the hurt child he had once been, and the disillusioned man he now was.

She looked him straight in the eye. ‘I believe that's for me to decide, Jonas, not you.'

‘But—'

‘I would like to leave now,' she told him flatly.

Jonas stared down at her in obvious frustration. ‘Not
until you promise me that you aren't going to leave here and do something totally reckless.'

‘Like taking a lover?'

‘Exactly!'

Mac gave him a pitying glance. ‘I don't believe that anything I do in future is any of your business.'

His mouth was set grimly, a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw. ‘If you're really that desperate for a lover—'

‘Oh, I'm not desperate, Jonas,' she said coolly. ‘Just curious,' she added, deliberately baiting him.

Jonas wanted to shake her. Wanted to grasp the tops of Mac's arms and shake her until her teeth rattled. Except that he didn't dare touch her again. Because he knew that if he did, he wouldn't be able to stop…

He sighed heavily. ‘I thought you understood after the things I told you about my childhood. Mac, I'm not the man you need, and I never could be.'

She frowned. ‘I don't believe I ever asked you to be anything to me,' she pointed out.

‘But you would.' That nerve continued to pulse in his jaw. ‘Perhaps you would enjoy the novelty of the relationship at first, the sexual excitement, but eventually you would want more than I have to give you.'

‘You know what, Jonas,' she said conversationally, ‘I think you're taking an awful lot for granted in assuming that I would have wanted to continue a—a sexual relationship with you after tonight. I mean, who's to say I would actually have enjoyed having sex with you? Or is it that you're under the illusion you're such a great lover that no woman could possibly be left feeling disappointed after sharing your bed?'

Jonas felt the twitch of a smile on his lips as Mac de
liberately insulted him. ‘That would be a little arrogant of me, wouldn't it?'

‘More than a little, I would have said,' she shot back. ‘So, how do I get out of here?' She moved pointedly across the room to stand beside the doorway out into the hallway.

This evening had been something of another disaster as far as he and Mac were concerned, Jonas acknowledged ruefully as he preceded her out of the kitchen and walked with her to the lift.

She grimaced once she had stepped inside the lift. ‘I'm not sure if I said this before, but thank you for sending Bob over this afternoon to fix my window.'

Jonas had totally forgotten that was the original reason she had followed him home! ‘But don't do anything like it again?' he guessed dryly.

‘No.'

He nodded. ‘That's what I thought. I—If I don't see you again before then—Merry Christmas, Mac.'

She eyed him quizzically. ‘And I'd already marked you down as the “bah, humbug” type!'

‘I am the “bah, humbug” type,' he admitted with a quirk of his mouth.

Mac nodded as the lift doors began to close. ‘Merry Christmas, Jonas.'

Jonas continued to stand in the hallway long after she had gone down to the car park and no doubt driven away on that powerful motorbike as if the devil himself were at her heels.

He liked Mac, Jonas realised frowningly. Liked the way she looked. Her spirit. Her independence. Her optimism about life and people in general. Most of all he admired her ability to laugh at herself.

Unfortunately, he also knew that allowing himself
to like Mac McGuire was as dangerous to the solitary lifestyle he preferred as having a sexual relationship with her would have been.

I
T 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 incred
ulously 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.'