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

      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 incredulously 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.’

      ‘That would make sense seeing as we don’t have a personal relationship—from any angle,’ she said cuttingly.

      Jonas deliberately chose not to enter into any sort of argument as to what there was or wasn’t between himself and Mac. ‘I understand your exhibition has been a tremendous success—’

      ‘Understand from whom?’ Mac pounced on his comment.

      ‘Mac, you were the one who asked for my opinion, so would you now just let me finish giving it instead of jumping down my throat after every sentence?’ he snapped his frustration with her interruptions.

      ‘Fine,’ she sighed.

      ‘Is there anyone you know, or can think of, who might be—less than happy, shall we say, at the success of your exhibition?’

      ‘No, there isn’t,’ she