His Christmas Virgin. Carole Mortimer

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