Jonas looked at her suspiciously. ‘You can’t possibly still be a virgin!’

‘What difference does it make whether or not I’ve had other lovers?’ Mac asked.

‘All the difference in the world to me,’ he said harshly.

‘Why? Most men would be only too pleased to be a woman’s first lover,’ she retorted.

‘Not this man,’ he replied fervently.

Mac couldn’t believe Jonas was refusing to make love to her just because she was a virgin!

‘Why is that, Jonas?’ she challenged. ‘Do you think that I’m making such a grand gesture because I already imagine myself in love with you? Or do you think I’m trying to trap you in some way?’

Her eyes widened as she saw from the cold stiffening of his expression, the icy glitter of his eyes, that that was exactly what he thought—and so obviously feared…

His Christmas Virgin

By

Carole Mortimer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author

CAROLE MORTIMER was born in England, the youngest of three children. She began writing in 1978, and has now written over one hundred and fifty books for Harlequin Mills & Boon. Carole has six sons: Matthew, Joshua, Timothy, Michael, David and Peter. She says, ‘I’m happily married to Peter senior; we’re best friends as well as lovers, which is probably the best recipe for a successful relationship. We live in a lovely part of England.’

MILLS & BOON

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Chapter One

MAC came to an abrupt and wary halt halfway down the metal steps leading from the second floor of her warehouse-conversion home. She’d suddenly become aware of a large figure standing in the dark and shadowed alleyway beneath her.

A very large figure indeed, she noted with a frown as a man stepped out from those shadows to stand in the soft glow of light given out by the lamp shining behind her at the top of the staircase.

The man looked enormous from where Mac stood, his wide shoulders beneath the dark woollen overcoat that reached almost to his ankles adding to that impression. He had overlong dark hair brushed back from a hard and powerful face that at any other time Mac would have ached to put on canvas, light and piercing eyes—were they grey or blue?—and high cheekbones beside a long slash of a nose. He also possessed a perfectly sculptured mouth, the fuller bottom lip hinting at a depth of sensuality, and a firm and determined chin.

None of which was of the least importance—except maybe to the police, Mac wryly acknowledged to herself, if the man’s reasons for being here turned out to be less than honest!

She repressed a shiver as the chill of the cold wind of an early December evening began to seep into her bones. ‘Can I help you?’ she prompted sharply as she finished pulling on her cardigan, using both her hands to free the long length of her midnight-black hair from the collar. All the time wondering if she was going to have to use the ju-jitsu skills she had learnt during her years at university!

The man shrugged broad shoulders. ‘Perhaps. If you can tell me whether or not Mary McGuire is at home?’

He knew her name!

Not that any of her friends ever called her Mary. But then, as Mac had never set eyes on this man before, he was hardly a friend, was he?

She glanced at the brightly lit studio behind and above her before turning to eye the man again guardedly. ‘Who wants to know?’

‘Look, I understand your wariness—’

‘Do you?’ she challenged.

‘Of course,’ he confirmed. ‘I’ve obviously startled you, and I’m sorry for that, but I assure you my reasons for being here are perfectly legitimate. I simply wish to speak to Miss McGuire.’

‘But does Miss McGuire wish to speak to you?’

The man gave a hard, humourless smile. ‘I would hope so. Look, we could go back and forth like this all night.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Mac shook her head, deciding that perhaps she wouldn’t need to use those self-defence lessons on this man, after all. ‘The Patels shut up shop in precisely ten minutes and I intend to be there before that.’

Dark brows rose over those light-coloured eyes. ‘The Patels?’

Mac elaborated. ‘They own the corner shop two streets away.’

‘The significance of that being…?’

‘I need to get some groceries before they close. That being the case, would you mind stepping aside so that I can get by?’ She stepped down two more of the stairs so that they now stood at eye level.

Blue. His eyes were blue. A piercing electric blue.

Mac’s breath caught in her throat as she stared into those mesmerising blue eyes, at the same time screamingly aware of the subtle and spicy smell of his aftershave or cologne. Of the leashed power he exuded. Even so, Mac was pretty sure she could take him; it was skill that mattered when it came to ju-jitsu, not size, and she was very skilled indeed.

The man looked at her beneath hooded lids. ‘The fact that you’re obviously leaving her home would seem to imply that you’re a friend of Miss McGuire’s.’

‘Would it?’

Jonas deeply regretted the impulse of his decision to call and talk to Mary McGuire this evening. It would have been far more suitable, he now realised—and far less disturbing for one of the woman’s friends—if he had simply telephoned first and made an appointment that was convenient to both of them. During the daylight hours, and hopefully at a time when one of her arty friends wasn’t also visiting!

The fact that the thin little waif standing on the stairs had long, straight black hair that reached almost to her waist, and almond-shaped eyes of smoky-grey in a delicately beautiful face, took nothing away from the fact that she had obviously taken to heart the persona of the ‘artist starving in a garret’!

As also evidenced by the overlarge dungarees she wore over a white T-shirt, both articles of clothing covered by a baggy pink cardigan that looked as if it would wrap about the slenderness of her body twice. Her hands were tiny and thin, the skin almost translucent. The ratty blue canvas trainers on her feet were hardly suitable for the wet and icy early December weather, either.

Jonas had spent the last week in Australia on business. Successfully so, he acknowledged with inner satisfaction. Except he now felt the effects of this cold and damp English December right down to his bones, after the heat in Australia, despite wearing a thick cashmere overcoat over his suit.

This delicate-looking little waif must be even colder with only that thin cardigan as an outer garment. ‘I apologise once again if I alarmed you just now.’ He grimaced as he moved aside and allowed her to step down onto the pavement beside him.

The top of her head reached just under Jonas’s chin as she looked up at him with obvious mockery. ‘You didn’t,’ she came back glibly before wrapping her cardigan more tightly about her and hurrying off into the night.

Jonas was still watching her through narrowed lids as she stopped beneath the lamp at the corner of the street to glance back at him, her face a pale oval, that almost-waist-length hair gleaming briefly blue-black before she turned and disappeared around the corner.

He gave a rueful shake of his head before turning to ascend the metal steps that led up to Mary McGuire’s studio; hopefully she wasn’t going to be as unhelpful as her waiflike friend. Although he wouldn’t count on it!

Mac lingered to chat with the Patels for a few minutes after she had bought her groceries. She liked the young couple who had opened this convenient mini-market two years ago, and Inda was expecting their first baby in a couple of months’ time.

Mac’s steps slowed as she saw the man who had spoken to her earlier sitting on the bottom step of the metal staircase waiting for her when she returned carrying her bag of groceries, those electric-blue eyes narrowing on her coldly as she walked towards him. ‘I take it Miss McGuire wasn’t in?’ she asked lightly as she stopped in front of him.

It had been fifteen minutes since Jonas had reached the top of the metal staircase to ring the doorbell and receive no response. To knock on the door and get the same result. The blaze of lights in the studio told him that someone had to be home.

Or had very recently been so?

Leaving Jonas to pose the question as to whether or not the young woman in the dungarees and baggy pink cardigan, who had hurried off to the Patels’ store to get groceries before they closed, was in fact Mary McGuire, rather than the visiting friend he had assumed her to be.

Something he found almost too incredible to believe!

This young woman looked half starved, and her clothes were more suited to someone living on the streets rather than the successful artist she now was; Mary McGuire had become an artist of some repute the last three years, her paintings becoming extremely valuable as serious collectors and experts alike waxed lyrical about the uniqueness of her style and use of colour.

Her reputation as an artist aside, the woman had also become the proverbial thorn in Jonas’s side the last six months.

This woman?

He stood up slowly to look down at her critically as he took an educated guess on that being the case. ‘Wouldn’t it have just been easier to tell me that you’re Mary McGuire?’

She gave a dismissive shrug of those thin and narrow shoulders. ‘But not half as much fun.’

The hardening of Jonas’s mouth revealed that he didn’t appreciate being anyone’s reason for having ‘fun’. ‘Now that we’ve established who you are, perhaps we could go upstairs and have a serious conversation?’ he rasped coldly.

Smoky-grey eyes returned his gaze unblinkingly. ‘No.’

He raised dark brows. ‘What do you mean, no?’

‘I mean no,’ she repeated patiently. ‘You may now know who I am but I still have no idea who you are.’

Jonas scowled darkly. ‘I’m the man you’ve been jerking around for the past six months!’

Mac frowned up at him searchingly, only to become more positive than ever that she had never met this man before. At well over six feet tall, with those dark and dangerous good looks, he simply wasn’t the sort of man that any woman, of any age, was ever likely to forget.

‘Sorry.’ She gave a firm shake of her head. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’

That sculptured, sensual mouth twisted in derision. ‘Does Buchanan Construction ring any bells with you?’

Alarm bells, maybe, Mac conceded as her gaze sharpened warily on the hard and powerful face above hers. A ruthless face, she now recognised warily. ‘I take it Mr Buchanan has decided to send in one of his henchmen now that all attempts at polite persuasion have failed?’

Those blue eyes widened incredulously. ‘You think I’m some sort of heavy sent to intimidate you?’

‘Well, aren’t you?’ Mac bit out scathingly. ‘So far I’ve had visits from Mr Buchanan’s lawyer, his personal assistant, and his builder, so why not one of his henchmen?’

‘Possibly because I don’t employ any henchmen!’ Jonas bit out icily, a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw as he glared down at her.

He had decided to come here personally this evening in the hope that he would be able to talk some sense into the reputed and respected—and mulishly stubborn—artist Mary McGuire, and instead he found himself being insulted by a five-foot-nothing scrap of a woman who had the dress sense of a bag-lady!

Those deep grey eyes had opened wide. ‘You’re Jonas Buchanan?’

At last he had succeeded in shaking that mocking self-confidence a little. ‘Surprised?’ he taunted softly.

Surprised was definitely understating how Mac felt at that moment; stunned better described it.

She had known of Buchanan Construction—impossible not to, when for years there had been boards up on building sites all over London with that name emblazoned across them—when she was approached by the company’s legal representative with an offer to buy her warehouse-conversion home.

Yes, Mac had certainly known the name Jonas Buchanan, and, if she had thought about it at all, she had always assumed that the owner of the worldwide construction company would be a man in his fifties or sixties, who probably enjoyed the occasional cigar with his brandy after no doubt indulging in a seven-course dinner.

The man now claiming to be Jonas Buchanan could only be in his mid-thirties at most, the healthy glow of his tanned face indicating that he didn’t smoke even the occasional cigar, and the muscled and hard fitness of his body told her that he didn’t indulge in seven-course dinners, either.

Mac looked up at him shrewdly. ‘Do you have a driver’s licence or something to prove that claim?’

Jonas scowled as his irritation deepened. He had travelled all over the world on business for years now, and never once during that time had anyone ever questioned that he was who he said he was. Until Mary McGuire, that was! ‘Will a credit card do?’ he snapped as he reached into the breast pocket of his overcoat for his wallet.

‘I’m afraid not.’

Jonas’s hand stilled. ‘Why not?’

She shrugged in that ridiculously baggy pink cardigan. ‘I need something with a photograph. Anyone could have a credit card with the name Jonas Buchanan printed on it.’

‘You think I forged a credit card with Jonas Buchanan’s name on it?’ Jonas was incredulous.

‘Or stole it.’ She nodded. ‘I would much rather see a passport or a driver’s licence with a photograph on,’ she stubbornly stuck to her guns.

Jonas’s mouth compressed. ‘On the basis, one supposes, that I haven’t had either one of those forged in the name of Jonas Buchanan, too?’

She frowned. ‘Hmm, I hadn’t thought of that…’

No, he definitely shouldn’t have given into impulse and come here this evening, Jonas acknowledged with ever-growing frustration as he pulled out the passport that he hadn’t yet had the chance to remove from his pocket following his flight back from Sydney yesterday. He had stupidly allowed his success in Australia to convince him, after months of getting nowhere with the woman, that talking personally to Miss McGuire was the right way to handle this delicate situation!

‘Here.’ He thrust the passport at her.

Mac carefully avoided her fingers coming into contact with his as she took the passport and turned to the laminated photo page. Unlike her own passport photo, where she looked about sixteen and as if she ought to have a prisoner number printed beneath, this man’s photograph showed him as exactly the lethally attractive and powerful man that he appeared in the flesh.

She quickly checked the details beside that photograph. Jonas Edward Buchanan. British citizen. His date of birth telling Mac that he had recently turned thirty-five.

She thought quickly as she slowly closed the passport before handing it back to him, knowing she could continue this game, and so annoy the hell out of this man, or…‘What can I do for you, Mr Buchanan?’ she asked politely.

‘Better,’ he rasped impatiently as he stashed the passport back in his breast pocket. ‘Obviously you and I need to talk, Miss McGuire—’

‘I don’t see why.’ Mac brushed past him and began to ascend the stairs back up to her home, seeing no reason for her to linger out here in the cold now that she knew—or, at least, assumed—that this man wasn’t about to mug her, after all. ‘I’ll be turning the light out at the top of the stairs in a minute or so; before I do, you might want to get back to the main streets where it’s more brightly lit,’ she advised without turning as she took the key from the pocket of her dungarees to unlock the door.

Jonas continued to look up at her in seething annoyance for a mere fraction of a second before following her, taking the stairs two at a time until he stood directly behind her. ‘You and I need to talk,’ he bit out between gritted teeth.

‘Write me a letter,’ she advised as she unlocked the door before stepping inside and turning to face him, her expression one of open challenge.

Jonas placed his hands on either side of the doorframe. ‘I’ve already written you half a dozen letters. Letters you haven’t bothered to reply to.’

She grimaced. ‘There’s always the possibility that I’ll reply to the seventh.’

‘I doubt that somehow,’ Jonas accepted grimly. ‘I don’t think so!’ He put his booted foot between the door and the frame as she would have closed that door in his face.

She opened it again to glare at him, those smoky grey eyes glittering darkly, bright colour in her normally pale cheeks. ‘Remove your foot, Mr Buchanan, or you’ll leave me with no choice but to call the police and have you forcibly removed from the premises!’

It was all too easy for Jonas to see that she was more angry than alarmed by his persistence. ‘I only want the two of us to sit down and have a sensible conversation—’

‘I’m busy.’

‘I’m asking for two minutes of your time, damn it!’ Jonas exclaimed.

Mac really wasn’t being difficult when she said she was busy; she had a major exhibition at a gallery on Saturday, only two days away, and she had one more painting to finish before then. Besides, no amount of talking to Jonas Buchanan was going to make her change her mind about selling the warehouse she had so lovingly worked on to make into her home.

Her grandfather had left this property to Mac when he died five years ago. It had been one of many warehouses by the river that had fallen into disuse as the trade into the London dock had fallen foul of other, more convenient transportation. Three floors high, it had been the perfect place for Mac to make into her home as well as her working studio. From the outside it still looked like an old warehouse, but inside the ground floor consisted of a garage and utility room, the second floor was her living quarters, and the third floor made a spacious studio.

Unfortunately, the area where the warehouse stood had recently become very attractive to property developers such as Jonas Buchanan, as they bought up the rundown riverside properties to put up blocks of luxurious apartments that had the added allure of a magnificent and uninterrupted view of the river.

It was this man’s bad luck that Mac’s own warehouse home stood on one of those sites.

She sighed. ‘I’ve already given my answer to your lawyer, your personal assistant, and your builder,’ she reminded him pointedly. ‘I don’t want to sell. Not now. Not in the future. Not ever. Is that clear enough for you?’

Jonas Buchanan’s expression was one of pure exasperation as he gave an impatient shake of his head. ‘You must realise that the area around you is going to become a noisy building site over the winter months?’

She shrugged. ‘You’ve fenced off this area for that purpose.’

He frowned. ‘That isn’t going to lessen the noise of lorries arriving with supplies. Workmen constantly hammering and banging as the buildings start to go up, followed by huge cranes being erected on site. Exactly how do you expect to still be able to work with all that going on?’

Mac’s eyes narrowed. ‘The same way I’ve continued to work the last few months as you’ve systematically pulled down all the buildings around this one.’

Jonas’s mouth firmed at the implied criticism. ‘I offered several times to relocate you—’

‘I have no wish to be “relocated”, Mr Buchanan,’ Mary McGuire growled out between clenched teeth. ‘This is my home. It will remain my home still, even once you’ve built and sold your luxurious apartments.’

And, as Jonas was only too aware, be a complete eyesore to the people who lived in those exclusive multimillion-pound apartments! ‘In my experience, everyone has a price, Mary—’

‘Mac.’

He frowned. ‘Sorry?’

‘Everyone who actually knows me calls me Mac, not Mary,’ she explained. ‘And maybe the people you’re acquainted with have “a price”, Mr Buchanan,’ she said scathingly, smoky-grey eyes glittering with contempt. ‘I happen to believe that my own family and friends have more integrity than that. As do I!’

Jonas now fully understood the frustration his employees had previously encountered when trying to talk to Mary ‘Mac’ McGuire; he had never before met a more stubborn, pigheaded and unreasonable individual than this particular woman!

His mouth thinned. ‘You know where to reach me when you change your mind.’

‘If I change my mind,’ she corrected firmly. ‘Which I won’t. Now, if you will excuse me, Mr Buchanan?’ She raised ebony brows. ‘I really am very busy.’

And Jonas wasn’t? With millions of pounds invested in one building project or another all over the world, Jonas’s own time was, and always had been, at a premium. He certainly didn’t have any more of it to waste tonight on this woman.

He stepped back. ‘As I said, you know where to reach me when you’ve had enough.’

‘Goodnight, Mr Buchanan,’ she shot back with saccharin—and pointed—sweetness, before quietly closing the door in his face.

Jonas continued to scowl at that closed door for several minutes after she had carried out her threat to turn off the outside light and left him in darkness apart from the lights visible inside the warehouse itself.

He had already invested too much time and money in the building project due to begin on this site in the New Year to allow one stubborn individual to ruin it for him, or Buchanan Construction.

Obviously the money he had so far offered for this property wasn’t enough of a reason for Miss McGuire to agree to move. Which meant Jonas was going to have to come up with a more convincing reason for her to want to leave.

Chapter Two

‘CHEER up, Mac,’ Jeremy Lyndhurst teased as the first of the guests invited to this evening’s viewing began to come through the gallery. The fifty-something co-owner of the prestigious Lyndwood Gallery continued, ‘A few hours of looking good and being socially polite this evening, and tomorrow you can go back to being reclusive and dressing like a tramp!’

Mac chuckled huskily—as she knew she was meant to—at this reminder of the affront it was to Jeremy’s own impeccable dress sense whenever she turned up at his gallery in her paint-smeared working clothes. Which she had done a lot the last few weeks as she came to deliver the individual paintings due to be exhibited at this evening’s ‘invitation only’ showing of her work.

Jeremy’s partner—in more ways than one—Magnus Laywood, a tall, blond giant in his forties, was at the door to ‘meet and greet’ as more of those guests began to arrive; mainly art critics and serious collectors, but also some other individuals who were just seriously rich.

There were twenty of Mac’s paintings on show this evening, and all of them expertly displayed by Jeremy and Magnus, on walls of muted cream with their own individual lighting so that they showed to their best advantage.

It was the first individual exhibition of its kind that Mac had ever agreed to do—and now that the evening had finally arrived she was so nervous her knees were knocking together!

‘Here, drink this.’ Jeremy picked up a glass of champagne from one of the waiters who were starting to circulate amongst the guests in the rapidly filling room, and handed it to her. ‘Your face just went green!’ he explained with a chuckle.

Mac took a restorative sip of the bubbly alcohol. ‘I’ve never been so nervous in my entire life.’

‘Oh, to be twenty-seven again,’ Jeremy murmured mournfully.

Mac took another sip of the delicious champagne. ‘What if they don’t like my work?’ she wailed.

‘They can’t all be idiots, darling,’ Jeremy drawled. ‘It’s going to be a wonderful evening, Mac,’ he reassured her seriously as she still looked unconvinced. ‘I know how hard this is for you, love, but just try to enjoy it, hmm?’

The problem was that Mac had never been particularly fond of exhibiting her work. Selling it, yes. Showing it to other people, and being ‘socially polite’ to those people, no. Unfortunately, as Mac was well aware, she couldn’t make a living from her paintings if she didn’t sell them.

‘I’ll try—Oh. My. God!’ she gasped weakly as she saw, and easily recognised, the man now standing beside the door engaged in conversation with Magnus.

Jonas Buchanan!

He was as tall as Magnus, and dark and dangerous where the other man was blond and amiable, there was no mistaking that overlong dark hair and those hard and chiselled features dominated by piercing blue eyes that now swept coldly over the other guests.

Mac’s heart hammered loudly in her chest as she took in the rest of his appearance. Dressed like every other man in the room, in a tailored black evening suit and snowy white shirt with a perfectly arranged black bowtie at his throat, Jonas nevertheless somehow managed to look so much more compellingly handsome than any other man in the room.

‘What is it?’ Jeremy followed her line of vision. ‘Who is that?’ he murmured appreciatively, his longstanding relationship with Magnus not rendering him immune to the attractions of other men.

Mac dragged her gaze away from Jonas to look accusingly at the co-owner of the Lyndwood Gallery. ‘You should know—you invited him!’

‘I don’t think so.’ Jeremy’s eyes were narrowed as he continued to look across at Jonas. ‘Who is he?’

Mac swallowed hard before answering. ‘Jonas Buchanan.’

Jeremy looked impressed. ‘The Jonas Buchanan?’

As far as Mac was aware there was only one Jonas Buchanan, yes!

‘Ah, I understand now.’ Jeremy nodded his satisfaction as a puzzle was obviously solved. ‘He’s with Amy Walters.’

Mac turned back in time to see Jonas Buchanan placing a proprietary hand beneath the elbow of a tall and beautiful redhead, the two of them talking softly together as they crossed the room to join a group of guests, Jonas easily standing several inches taller than the other men. Mac turned away abruptly.

‘Amy’s the art critic for The Individual,’ Jeremy supplied dryly as he saw the blankness of Mac’s expression.

A completely unnecessary explanation as far as Mac was concerned; she knew exactly who Amy Walters was. It was the fact that the other woman had brought Jonas with her this evening, a man Mac was predisposed to dislike, that made things more than a little awkward; Mac was only too aware that she would have to be polite to the beautiful art critic if the two of them were introduced. Something that might be a little difficult for her to do with the arrogantly self-assured Jonas Buchanan standing at Amy’s side!

The reason for that current self-assurance was obvious; invitations to this exhibition had been sent out weeks ago to ensure maximum attendance. Meaning that Jonas Buchanan had to have known, when they had met and spoken so briefly together two evenings ago, that he was going to be at her exhibition at the Lyndwood Gallery this evening.

Rat!

If he thought he could intimidate her by practically gatecrashing her exhibition, then he could—

‘How nice to see you again so soon, Mac.’

Mac stiffened, her earlier nervousness completely evaporating and being replaced by indignation as she recognised Jonas Buchanan’s silkily sarcastic tone as he spoke softly behind her.

Double rat!

Jonas kept his expression deliberately neutral as Mary ‘Mac’ McGuire slowly turned to face him.

To say that he had been surprised by her appearance this evening would be a complete understatement! In fact, if Amy hadn’t teasingly assured him that the delicately lovely woman with her ebony hair secured on top of her head to reveal the slender loveliness of her neck, and wearing a red Chinese-style knee-length silk dress with matching red high-heeled sandals that showed off her shapely legs to perfection, was indeed the artist herself, then Jonas wasn’t sure he would have even recognised her!

She looked totally different with her hair up, older, more sophisticated, those mysterious smoky-grey eyes surrounded by long and thick dark lashes, the paleness of her cheeks highlighted with blusher, those full and sensuous lips outlined with a lip gloss the same vibrant red as that figure-hugging red silk gown and three-inch sandals.

In a word, she looked exquisite!

Whoever would have thought it? Jonas mused ruefully. From bag-lady to femme fatale with the donning of a red silk dress.

Although the challenging glitter in those smoky grey eyes as she glared up at him was certainly familiar enough. ‘Mr Buchanan,’ she greeted dryly. ‘Jeremy, this is Jonas Buchanan. Jonas, one of the gallery owners, Jeremy Lyndhurst.’

Mac watched through narrowed lashes as the two men shook hands, finding Jonas’s appearance even more disturbing tonight than she had two evenings ago. He was one of the few men she had met who wore the elegance of a black evening suit rather than the clothes wearing him, the power of his personality such that it was definitely the man one noticed rather than the superb tailoring of the clothing he wore.

‘Have you managed to lose Miss Walters already?’ Mac asked sweetly as she saw that the other woman was talking animatedly to another man across the room.

Those electric-blue eyes darkened with sudden humour. ‘Amy pretty much does her own thing,’ Jonas Buchanan replied with a singular lack of concern.

‘How…understanding, of you,’ Mac taunted. Really, she was nervous enough about this evening already, without having to suffer this particular man’s presence!

‘Not at all,’ Jonas drawled with deepening amusement.

‘I do hope you will both excuse me…?’ Jeremy cut in apologetically. ‘Someone has just arrived that I absolutely have to go and talk to.’

‘Of course,’ Jonas Buchanan accepted smoothly. ‘I assure you, I’m only too happy to stay and keep Mac company,’ he added as he took a deliberate step closer to her.

A close proximity that Mac instantly took exception to!

One or other of this man’s associates had been hounding her for months now in an effort to buy her home—but only so that it could be knocked down to become part of the area of ground landscaped as a garden for the new luxury apartment complex. The fact that Jonas Buchanan himself had now decided to get in on the act did not impress Mac in the slightest.

‘You’re looking very beautiful this evening—’

‘Don’t let appearances deceive you, Mr Buchanan,’ she interrupted sharply. ‘I’ll be back to wearing my dungarees tomorrow.’ Mac had made the mistake of dating a prestigious and arrogant art critic when she was still at university, and she wasn’t about to ever let another man treat her as nothing but a beautiful trophy to exhibit on his arm. ‘Exactly what are you doing here, Mr Buchanan?’ she asked him directly.

Jonas studied her through narrowed lids. Two evenings ago he had thought this woman looked like a starving waif with absolutely no dress sense, but her exquisite appearance tonight in the red silk dress—which Jonas realised almost every other man in the room was also aware of—indicated to him that she must actually dress in those other baggy and unflattering clothes because she wanted to.

He shrugged. ‘Amy asked me to be her escort this evening.’

Those red-glossed lips curled with distaste. ‘How flattering to have a woman ask you out.’

Jonas’s gaze hardened. ‘I’m always happy to spend the evening with my cousin.’

Those smoky-grey eyes widened. ‘Amy Walters is your cousin?’

He arched a mocking brow at her obvious incredulity. ‘Is that so hard to believe?’

Well, no, of course it wasn’t hard to believe, Mac accepted uncomfortably. But it did mean that Jonas wasn’t here this evening on a date with another woman, as Mac had assumed that he was…

And why should that matter to her? She had no personal interest in this man. Did she…?

Lord, she hoped not!

The fact that he was one of the most compellingly attractive men Mac had ever met was surely nullified by the fact that he was also the man trying to force her out of her own home, by the sheer act of making it too uncomfortable for her to stay?

She steadily returned Jonas’s piercing gaze as she shrugged. ‘I don’t see any family resemblance.’

He smiled wickedly. ‘Maybe that’s because Amy is a woman and I’m a man?’

Mac was well aware that Jonas was a man. Much too aware for her own comfort, as it happened. At five feet two inches tall, and weighing only a hundred pounds, in stark contrast to Jonas Buchanan’s considerable height and powerful build, she was made totally aware of her own femininity by this man. And, uncomfortably, her vulnerability…

Her mouth firmed. ‘I really should go and circulate amongst the other guests,’ she told him as she placed her empty champagne glass down on a side table with the intention of leaving.

‘Maybe I’ll come with you.’ Jonas Buchanan reached out to lightly grasp Mac by the elbow as she would have turned away.

His touch instantly sent a quiver of shocking awareness along the length of her arm and down into her breasts, causing them to swell inside her bra and the nipples to engorge to a pleasurable ache against the lacy material.

It was a completely unfamiliar—and unwelcome—feeling to Mac. After that one brief disaster of a relationship while at university, she had spent the following six years concentrating solely on her painting career, with little or no time to even think about relationships. She wasn’t thinking of one now, either. Jonas Buchanan was the last man—positively the last man!—that Mac should be feeling physically attracted to.

Her body wasn’t listening to her, unfortunately, as the warmth of Jonas’s hand on her arm began to infiltrate the rest of her body, culminating uncomfortably at the apex of her thighs as she felt herself moisten there, in such a burst of heat that she gasped softly in awareness of that arousal.

She raised startled eyes to that hard and compellingly handsome face above hers, Jonas standing so close to her now she was able to see the individual pores in his skin. To recognise the lighter blue ring that surrounded the iris of his eyes, which gave them that piercing appearance. To gaze hypnotically at those slightly parted lips as they slowly lowered towards hers—

Mac jerked herself quickly out of his grasp. ‘What are you doing?’

Yes, what was he doing? Jonas wondered frowningly. For a brief moment he had forgotten that they were surrounded by noisily chatting art critics and collectors. Had felt as if he and the exquisitely beautiful Mac McGuire were the only two people in the room, surrounded only by an expectant awareness and the heady seduction of her perfume.

Damn it, Jonas had been so unaware of those other people in the room that he had been about to kiss her in front of them all!

Her appearance this evening was an illusion, he reminded himself. Tonight she was the artist, deliberately dressed to beguile and seduce art critics and art collectors alike into approving of or buying her paintings. The fact that she had almost succeeded in seducing him into forgetting exactly who and what she was only increased Jonas’s feelings of self-disgust.

His mouth thinned as he stepped away to look down at her through hooded lids. ‘I really shouldn’t keep you from your other guests any longer.’

Mac trembled slightly at the contempt she could hear in Jonas’s tone. As she wondered what she had done to incur that contempt; he had been the one about to kiss her and not the other way around!

Her gaze returned to those sensually sculptured lips as she wondered what it would have felt like to have them part and claim her own lips. Jonas’s mouth looked hard and uncompromising now, but seconds ago those firm lips had been soft and inviting as they lowered to hers—

Get a grip, Mac, she instructed herself firmly as she straightened decisively. The fact that he looked wonderful in a black evening suit, and was one of the most gorgeous men she had ever set eyes on, did not detract from the fact that he was also the enemy!

She eyed him mockingly. ‘I would be polite and say that it’s been nice seeing you again, Mr Buchanan, but we both know I would be lying…’ She trailed off pointedly.

He gave a humourless smile in recognition of that mockery.

‘I doubt very much that you’ve seen the last of me, Mac.’

She raised dark brows. ‘I sincerely hope that you’re wrong about that.’

His smile deepened. ‘I rarely am when it comes to matters of business.’

‘Modest too,’ Mac scorned. ‘Is there no end to your list of talents?’ She snorted delicately. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Mr Buchanan.’ She didn’t wait for his reply to her statement but moved to cross the room to where she realised Magnus had discreetly been trying to attract her attention for the past few minutes.

Jonas stood unmoving as he watched her progress slowly across the room, stopping occasionally to greet people she knew. Unlike her behaviour towards him, the smiles Mac bestowed on the other guests were warm and relaxed, the huskiness of her laugh a soft caress to the senses, and revealing small, even white teeth against those full and red-glossed lips.

The tight-fitting silk dress emphasised the rounded curve of her bottom as she moved, and the slit up the side of the gown revealed the shapely length of her thigh. Jonas scowled his disapproval as he saw that most of the men in the room were also watching her, with one persistent man even grasping her wrist and trying to engage her in conversation before she laughingly managed to extricate herself and walked away to join Magnus Laywood.

‘So what did you make of our little artist…?’

Jonas turned to look at Amy, compressing his mouth in irritation as he realised he had been so engrossed in watching Mac that he hadn’t noticed his cousin’s approach. A tall and beautiful redhead, with a temper to match, Jonas’s maternal cousin wasn’t a woman men usually overlooked!

‘What did I think of Mary McGuire?’ Jonas played for time as he was still too surprised at his reaction to the artist’s change in appearance to be able to formulate a satisfactory answer to Amy’s archly voiced question. ‘She seems…a little young, to have engendered all this interest,’ he drawled with bored lack of interest as he took two glasses of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter and handed one of them to his cousin.

‘Young but brilliant,’ Amy assured him unreservedly as she sipped the chilled wine.

‘High praise indeed,’ Jonas mused; his cousin wasn’t known for her effusiveness when it came to her job as art critic for The Individual.

Amy linked her arm with his encouragingly. ‘Come and look at some of her paintings.’

Mac continued to chat lightly with a collector who had expressed a serious interest in buying one of the paintings on display, at the same time completely aware of Jonas Buchanan and his cousin as they moved slowly through the two-roomed gallery to view her work.

It was impossible to tell from Jonas’s expression what he thought of her paintings, those blue eyes hooded as he studied each canvas, his mouth unsmiling as he murmured in soft reply to Amy Walters’s comments.

He probably hated them, Mac accepted heavily as she politely tried to refer the flirtatious collector to Jeremy for the more serious discussion over price. No doubt Jonas preferred modern art as opposed to her more ethereal style and bright but slightly muted use of colour. No doubt he had only agreed to accompany his cousin this evening in the first place because he had known that by doing so he would undermine Mac’s confidence.

He needn’t have bothered—Mac already hated all of this! She disliked the artificiality. Found the inane chatter tiresome. And she found herself especially irritated by the opportunistic collector she now realised was unobtrusively trying to place his hand on her bottom…

Mac moved sharply away from him, her eyes snapping with indignation at the uninvited familiarity. ‘I’m sure that you’ll find Jeremy will be only too happy to help with any further questions you might have.’

The middle-aged man chuckled meaningfully as he moved closer. ‘He isn’t my type!’

Mac frowned her discomfort, at a complete loss as to how to deal with this situation without causing a scene. Something she knew was out of the question with a dozen or so reporters also present in the room.

In their own individual ways Jeremy and Magnus had worked as hard on producing this exhibition this evening as Mac had. If she were to slap this obnoxious man’s face, as she was so tempted to do, then the headlines in some of tomorrow’s newspapers would read ‘Artist slaps buyer’s face!’ instead of any praise or constructive criticism on her actual work.

She gave a shake of her head. ‘I really don’t think—’

‘Sorry to have been gone so long, darling,’ Jonas Buchanan interrupted smoothly as his arm moved firmly about Mac’s waist to pull her securely against his side. He gave the other man a challenging smile, those compelling blue eyes as hard as the sapphires they resembled. ‘It’s rather crowded in here, isn’t it?’

‘I—yes.’ The older and shorter man looked disconcerted by this unmistakable show of possessiveness. ‘I—If you will both excuse me? I’ll take your advice, Mac, and go and discuss the details with Jeremy.’ He turned to hurriedly disappear into the crowd.

Mac found that she was trembling in reaction—and was totally at a loss to know if it was caused by the unpleasantness of the last minute or so, or because Jonas still held her so firmly against him that she was totally aware of the hard warmth of his powerful body…

Jonas took one look down at Mac’s white face before his arm tightened about her waist and he turned her towards the entrance to the gallery. ‘Let’s get some air,’ he suggested as he all but lifted her off the floor to carry her across the room and out of the door into the icy cold night. Something he instantly realised was a mistake as he could see by the street-lamp how Mac had begun to shiver in the thin silk dress. ‘Here.’ He slipped off his jacket to place it about her shoulders, his thumbs brushing lightly against the warm swell of her breasts as he stood in front of her to pull the lapels together.

Her eyes were huge as she looked up at him. ‘Now you’re going to be cold.’

She looked like a little girl playing dress-up with the shoulders of Jonas’s jacket drooping down at the sides and the bulky garment reaching almost down to her knees. Except there was nothing childlike about the sudden awareness that darkened those smoky-grey eyes, or the temptation of those parted red-glossed lips as she breathed shallowly.

‘How old are you really?’ Jonas rasped harshly.

She blinked. ‘I—What does that have to do with anything?’

He gave an impatient shrug of his shoulders. ‘When I met you the other night you looked like someone’s little sister. Tonight you look—well, tonight you look more like most men wished their best friend’s little sister looked!’

She tilted that long elegant neck as she looked up at him. ‘And how is that?’ she prompted huskily.

This is a bad idea, Buchanan, Jonas cautioned himself. A very, very bad idea, he warned firmly even as his fascinated gaze remained fixed on those moist and parted lips.

A taste. He just wanted a taste of those sexy red lips—

Hell, no!

He was trying to transact a business deal with this woman, and he made a point of never mixing business with pleasure. And Jonas had no doubts it would have been very pleasurable to touch and taste those full and pouting lips with his own…

His expression was deliberately taunting as he looked down at her. ‘In that dress you look like a woman who’s ready for hot and wild sex.’

Mac’s eyes widened as she gasped at the insult. ‘I’ll wear what I damn well please!’

That blue gaze moved deliberately down to the split in the side of her dress that revealed the long, bare length of her silky thigh. ‘Obviously.’

‘You’re no better than the idiot whose attentions you just appeared to save me from,’ she accused furiously as she pulled his jacket from about her shoulders and almost threw it back at him before turning on her heel and marching back into the gallery without so much as a second glance.

Rude. Obnoxious. Insulting. Rat!

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