Читать книгу Tall, Dark & Rich - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 9

‘THIS is nice.’

‘Is it?’ Jonas asked darkly as they sat at a window table in Luciano’s. It was an obvious indication that Mac was indeed known personally to the restaurateur; Jonas had dined here often enough in the past to know that Luciano only ever reserved the window tables for his best and most-liked customers.

Mac was already seated at the table, and had been supplied with some bread sticks to eat while she was waiting, by the time Jonas arrived at the restaurant at ten minutes past one. Not that he had been deliberately late; his twelve-thirty appointment had just run over time.

Everything had seemed to go wrong after she had left his office this morning. His nine-thirty appointment hadn’t arrived until almost ten o’clock—which was probably as well when Jonas had spent most of the intervening time trying to dampen down his obvious arousal for Mac McGuire!

He had also found himself closely studying Yvonne throughout the morning as he searched for any signs of that ‘crush’ Mac had mentioned. Rightly or wrongly, Jonas didn’t approve of personal relationships within the workplace—and that included unrequited ones. Which meant, if Mac was right, he would have to start looking for another PA. But if anything Yvonne’s demeanour had been slightly frostier than usual, with nothing to suggest she had anything other than a working relationship with him.

Resulting in Jonas feeling annoyed with himself for doubting his own judgement, and even more irritated with Mac for mischievously giving him those doubts in the first place!

Consequently, he was feeling irritable and bad-tempered by the time he sat down at the lunch table opposite his perkily cheerful nemesis. ‘Let’s just order, shall we?’ he grated as he picked up the menu and held it up in front of him as an indication he was not in the mood for conversation.

Mac didn’t bother to look at her own menu, already knowing exactly what she was going to order: garlic prawns followed by lasagne. As far as she was concerned, Luciano made the best lasagne in London.

Instead she looked across at Jonas as he gave every indication of concentrating on choosing what he was going to have for lunch.

Every female head in the Italian bistro had turned to look at him when he’d entered a few minutes ago and taken off his long woollen coat to hang it up just inside the door. They had continued to watch him as he made his way over to the window table, several women giving Mac envious glances when he’d pulled out the chair opposite her own and sat down.

Mac had found herself watching him too; Jonas simply was the sort of man that women of all ages took a second, and probably a third, look at. He was so tall for one thing, and the leashed and elegant power of his lean and muscled body in that perfectly tailored charcoal-coloured suit was undeniable.

His irritation told her that he was also not in a good mood. ‘We don’t have to eat lunch together if you would rather not?’ Mac prompted ruefully.

He lowered his menu enough to look across at her with icy blue eyes. ‘You would rather I moved to another table? That’s going to make conversation very difficult, wouldn’t you say?’ he taunted.

Mac felt the warmth in her cheeks at his obvious mockery. ‘Very funny!’

Jonas placed his closed menu down on the table. ‘I want to know more about the break-in to your studio on Saturday night. Such as how whoever it was got inside in the first place?’ he asked grimly.

Mac shrugged. ‘They broke a small window next to the door and reached inside to open it.’

Jonas noticed that some of the animation had left those smoky-grey eyes, presumably at his reminder of the break-in. ‘You don’t have an alarm system installed?’

She grimaced. ‘I’ve never thought I needed one.’

‘Obviously you were wrong,’ Jonas said reprovingly.

‘Obviously.’ Anger sparkled in those grey eyes now. ‘I have to say that I’ve always found people’s smugness after the event to be intensely irritating!’ She was still wearing the black fitted sweater and faded denims of earlier, the silky curtain of her hair framing the delicate beauty of her face to fall in an ebony shimmer over her shoulders and down her back.

Jonas relaxed back in his chair to look across at her speculatively. ‘Then hopefully I’ve succeeded in irritating you enough to have a security system installed. Or perhaps I should just arrange to have it done for you?’ he mused out loud, knowing it would immediately goad her to respond with the information that he wanted.

‘That won’t be necessary, thank you; I have a company coming out to install one first thing tomorrow morning,’ she came back sharply. ‘Along with a glazier to replace the window that was broken.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘You haven’t had the glass replaced yet?’

‘I just said I hadn’t,’ Mac bit back.

Jonas gave a disgusted sigh. ‘You should have got someone out on Sunday to fix it.’

Mac’s eyes flashed darkly. ‘Don’t presume to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do!’

‘It’s a security breach—’

‘Oh, give it a rest, Jonas,’ she muttered wearily. ‘I’m quite capable of organising my own life, thank you.’

‘I’m seriously starting to doubt that.’

‘Strangely, your opinion is of little relevance to me!’ Mac snapped. ‘When I suggested we have lunch to talk about this situation I wasn’t actually referring to the break-in.’

Jonas managed to dampen down his impatience as he smiled up at Luciano as he appeared beside their table to personally take their order.

‘I take it you don’t have a date this evening?’ He mockingly changed the subject once the restaurateur had taken note of their order and returned to his beloved kitchen a few minutes later.

Mac knew he had to be referring to the fact that there was garlic in both of the foods she had ordered. ‘I take it that you do?’ she retorted, the Marie Rose prawns and Dover sole he had ordered not having any garlic in at all.

‘As it happens, no.’ That blue gaze met hers tauntingly. ‘Are you offering to rectify that omission?’

Mac frowned. ‘You can’t be serious?’

Was he? Having spent part of the morning in uncomfortable arousal because of this woman, Jonas had once again decided that, the less he had to do with Mac the better it would be for both him and his aching erection! A decision his last remark made a complete nonsense of.

‘Obviously not,’ he muttered.

Mac looked across at him shrewdly. ‘It sounded like you were asking me out on a date.’

Jonas shrugged. ‘You’re entitled to your opinion, I suppose.’

‘You “suppose”?’ she taunted.

He scowled darkly. ‘Mac, are you deliberately trying to initiate an argument with me?’

‘Maybe.’

Jonas narrowed his gaze. ‘Why?’

‘Why not?’ Mac smiled. ‘It’s certainly livened up the conversation!’

Jonas knew it had done a lot more than that. He was far too physically aware of this woman already; he didn’t need to feel any more so. In fact, he was somewhat relieved when the waiter chose that moment to deliver their first course to them.

What the hell had he been doing, all but suggesting that Mac ask him out on a date this evening? Meeting her for lunch was bad enough, without prolonging the time he had to spend in her disturbing company. In future, Jonas decided darkly, he would just stick to taking out his usual beautiful and sophisticated blondes!

‘The reviews of your exhibition in Sunday’s newspapers were good,’ he abruptly changed the subject.

She nodded. ‘Your cousin was especially kind.’

‘Amy is a complete professional; if she says you’re good, then you’re good,’ Jonas said.

‘I went to the gallery after seeing you this morning. It seems to be pretty busy,’ Mac told him distractedly, still slightly reeling from what she was pretty sure had been an invitation on Jonas’s part for them to spend the evening together too. An offer he had obviously instantly regretted making.

Which was just as well considering Mac would have had to refuse the invitation! Going to his office was one thing. Having lunch with Jonas so that they could discuss what was going on with her warehouse was also acceptable. Going out on a proper date with him was something else entirely…

In spite of the fact that Jonas Buchanan was so obviously a devastatingly attractive man, he simply wasn’t Mac’s type. He was far too arrogant. At least as arrogant, if not more so, as Thomas Connelly, the art critic who had considered her nothing but a trophy to parade on his arm six years ago.

She picked up her fork to deliberately spear one of the succulent prawns swimming in garlic, before raising it to her mouth and popping it between her lips. Only to glance across the table at the exact moment she did so, her cheeks heating with flaming wings of colour as she saw the intensity with which Jonas was watching the movement.

Dark and mesmerising, his eyes had become a deep and cobalt blue. There was a slight flush to his cheeks too, and those sculptured lips were slightly parted.

Mac shifted uncomfortably. ‘Would you like to try one?’

That dark gaze lifted up to hers. ‘What?’

She swallowed hard, feeling strangely alone with Jonas in this crowded and happily noisy restaurant. ‘You seemed to be coveting my garlic prawns, so I was offering to let you try one…’

Damn it, Jonas hadn’t been coveting the prawns on Mac’s plate—he had been imagining lying back and having those full and red lips placed about a certain part of his anatomy as she pleasured him!

What the hell was the matter with him?

In the last fifteen years he had never once mixed business with pleasure. Had always kept the two firmly separate. Since meeting Mac he seemed to have done nothing else but confuse the two, with the result that he was now once again fully aroused beneath the cover of the chequered tablecloth. Hopefully there would be no reason for him to stand up in the next few minutes or his arousal would be well and truly exposed!

‘No, thank you,’ he refused quickly. ‘I would prefer not to smell of garlic during any of my business meetings later this afternoon.’

Mac gave an unconcerned shrug of her shoulders. ‘Please yourself.’

‘I usually do,’ Jonas said dryly.

‘Lucky you,’ she said.

Jonas considered Mac through narrowed lids. ‘Are you saying that you don’t?’ he taunted. ‘I thought all artists preferred to be free spirits? In relationships as well as their art?’

Mac didn’t miss the contempt in his tone. Or the underlying implication that, as an artist, she probably slept around.

It would have been amusing if it weren’t so obvious that Jonas had once again meant to be insulting!

Oh, Mac had lots of friends, male as well as female, both from school and university, but that didn’t mean she went to bed with any of them. That she had ever been intimately involved with anyone, in fact.

After that fiasco with Thomas, Mac had become completely focused on what she wanted to do with her life. Which was to be successful as an artist in her own right.

From the time she was twelve years old, and her art teacher had allowed her to paint with oils on canvas for the first time, Mac had known exactly what she wanted, and that was to become a successful artist first, with marriage and children second. She had become slightly sidetracked from that ambition during that brief relationship with Thomas, but if anything the realisation of his arrogance and condescension had only increased that ambition.

‘If you’ll excuse me, I need to go to the ladies’ room.’ She placed her napkin on the table before pushing back her chair and standing up.

Jonas raised dark brows. ‘Was it something I said?’

Mac frowned down at him. ‘That necessitates my needing to go to the ladies’ room?’ she drawled derisively. ‘Hardly!’

Nevertheless, Jonas was left sitting alone at the table feeling less than happy, both with himself, and with his earlier biting comment. He knew very little about her personal life—the fact that he had an erection every time he was in her company really didn’t count! He certainly didn’t know her well enough to have deliberately cast aspersions upon the way she might choose to live her private life.

He forced himself to continue eating his own food as he waited for Mac to return.

And waited.

And waited.

After over ten minutes had passed since she’d left the table, Jonas came to the uncomfortable conclusion that she might have walked out on both him and the restaurant!

Deservedly so?

Maybe. But that didn’t make the experience—the first time that a woman had ever walked out on Jonas, for any reason—any more palatable than the prawns he had just forced himself to finish eating.

He stood up abruptly to place his own napkin on the tabletop and make his way across the restaurant to the door through to the washrooms, determined to see exactly how Mac had made her escape. Only to come to a halt in the doorway and feeling completely wrong-footed as he came face to face with Mac, who was standing in the corridor in laughing conversation with one of the waitresses.

She looked at him curiously. ‘Is there a problem, Jonas?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Your food is getting cold.’

‘Oh, dear.’ The waitress gave an apologetic smile. ‘I’ll talk to you later, Mac,’ she said, before hurrying off in the direction of the kitchen.

Leaving Mac alone in the hallway with an obviously seriously displeased Jonas.

Well, that was just too bad!

Jonas had been deliberately insulting before she left the table, and when she’d bumped into Carla as she was leaving the ladies’ room Mac had felt no hesitation in stopping to chat; Jonas Buchanan could just sit alone at the table for a few more minutes and stew as far as she was concerned.

She raised dark brows as he stepped further into the otherwise deserted hallway and quietly closed the door behind him, enclosing the two of them in a strangely tense and otherwise deserted silence. Mac shifted uncomfortably as Jonas walked stealthily down that hallway towards her. ‘I thought you said my food was getting cold?’ she prompted, suddenly nervous.

‘It’s already cold, so a few more minutes isn’t going to make any difference,’ he dismissed softly.

Mac moistened dry lips as Jonas kept walking until he came to a halt standing only inches away from her. Very tall and large, his close proximity totally unnerving. ‘Why do we need to be a few more minutes?’ She glanced up at him uncertainly.

Jonas was enjoying turning the tables and seeing Mac’s obvious discomfort—God knew she had already made his own life uncomfortable enough for one day! Since the moment he first met her, in fact. He had no doubt that leaving him sitting alone at a table in the middle of a crowded restaurant had been deliberate on her part.

A public restaurant wasn’t the ideal place for what he now had in mind, either, but to hell with that—Jonas had realised in the last few seconds that he didn’t just need to kiss Mac, it had become as necessary to him as breathing.

‘Guess,’ he murmured throatily as he stepped even closer to her.

Her eyes widened in alarm as she took several steps back until she found herself against the wall. ‘Garlic breath, remember,’ she reminded him hastily.

He gave an unconcerned shrug. ‘That will just make you taste even better.’

‘This is so not a good idea, Jonas,’ she warned him desperately.

Jonas was all out of good ideas. At this precise moment he intended—needed—to go with a bad one.

His gaze held Mac’s as he reached up to cup his hand against the silky smooth curve of her cheek and ran the soft pad of his thumb over her slightly parted lips, the warmth of her breath a caress against his own highly sensitised skin. An arousing caress that made his stomach muscles clench and his thighs harden.

He drew in a sharp breath as he stepped closer still and Mac instinctively lifted her hands to rest them defensively against the hardness of his chest, the warmth of those hands burning through the silk material of Jonas’s shirt as he deliberately rested his body against hers.

Mac suddenly found herself trapped between the cold wall and the heat of Jonas’s body, her hands crushed against his muscled chest as he slowly lowered his head with the obvious intention of kissing her.

She knew she should protest. That she should at least try to ward off this rapidly increasing intimacy.

And yet she didn’t. Couldn’t.

Instead her lips parted in readiness for that kiss, her breath arrested in her throat at the first heated touch of Jonas’s lips against hers.

Oh, Lord…

Mac had never known anything like the sensual pleasure of having Jonas’s mouth moving against hers, exploring, sipping, tasting, teeth gently biting before that kiss deepened hungrily, his body hard and insistent against hers as her hands moved up his shoulders and her fingers became entangled in the dark thickness of his hair as she pulled him even closer. Jonas pushed her against the wall and lowered his body until his arousal pressed into Mac, making her respond with an aching hotness that pooled between her thighs in a rush of moist and fiery heat, her breasts swelling, the rosy tips hardening to full sensitivity as they pressed against the lacy material of her bra.

Her fingers tightened in the silky softness of Jonas’s hair as that heat grew, their mouths fusing together hungrily, Mac groaning low in her throat as she felt the firm thrust of Jonas’s tongue enter her mouth. Hot, slow and deep thrusts matched by the rhythmic movement of his thighs into the juncture of her sensitive thighs.

Mac groaned again in pleasure as that hardness pressed against the swollen nub nestled there, creating an aching heat deep inside her before it spread to every part of her body, arousing her to an almost painful degree.

God, she wanted this man with a ferocity of need she had never imagined, never dreamt was possible. Here. Now. She wanted to strip off their clothes and have Jonas take her up against the wall, her legs wrapped about his waist as he thrust deep inside her to ease that burning ache.

As if aware of at least some of her need, Jonas moved his hand to curve about her left breast, the soft pad of his thumb unerringly finding the swollen tip and sweeping across it.

Mac whimpered as the pleasure of that caress coursed down to her thighs, and she wished Jonas could touch her there, too—

‘Well, really!’ a shocked female voiced gasped. ‘This is a public restaurant, you know,’ the woman added disgustedly as she walked past them to the washrooms. ‘Why don’t the two of you just get a room somewhere?’ The door to the ladies room closed behind her with a disapproving snap.

Mac had wrenched away from Jonas the moment she’d realised they were no longer alone in the hallway, burying the heat of her face against his chest now to hide her embarrassment at being caught in such a compromising position.

In a public restaurant, for goodness’ sake!

With Jonas Buchanan, of all people.

What could she have been thinking?

She hadn’t been thinking at all, that was the problem. She had been feeling. Experiencing emotions, sensations, she had never known before.

If that woman hadn’t interrupted them then Mac might just have gone through with that urge she’d had to start ripping Jonas’s clothes from his body before begging him to ease the burning ache between her thighs!

Oh, God.