Tall, Dark & Rich: His Christmas Virgin / Married by Christmas / A Yuletide Seduction

‘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.’