Billionaire on Her Doorstep (2 page)

For, of all the scents to choose from in the big wide world, she wore dark and delicious Sonia Rykiel. He was sure of it. One Christmas a cute blonde at the perfume counter of a department store in Sydney had convinced him to buy it for his sister. But, considering Tess had been bright and vivacious, with not a lick of the dark and delicious about her personality, it had been a running joke between them that she’d never worn the stuff. But on Maggie Bryce he could have sworn the balmy scent wasn’t worn so much as radiating from her pores.

Despite the thorns, and the colorful vocabulary, and the bohemian lack of furniture, she was seriously lovely. And he was definitely lovable. As far as he saw it, they were a summer romance just waiting to happen. All he had to do was convince her.

“So you’re living all the way out here alone?” he asked, gradually letting her go.

“I have Smiley,” she said, reclaiming her hand and crossing her arms. “You no doubt met him at the front door.”

“He’s an interesting variety of male companionship,” he said. “I’ll give him that.”

She snorted elegantly, though Tom’d never known it possible to do so .Then, looking him dead in the eye, she said. “I’ll take Smiley over the rest any day.”

“Sure,” he said. “Who wouldn’t?”

Okay, so there must have been any number of women who thought him not their type; during his past life in Sydney when he’d at one time been seen as the catch of the town, and again since moving to Sorrento where he was now regarded as contentedly unatainable. But at least he’d never had one look him the eye and as much as said. ‘Don’t even think about it.’ Until now.

“Smiley obviously can’t wield a set of tools with any sort of finesse or I am beginning to believe you would never have called me for help,” he said.

“And Smiley has already had a good talking to about that, I assure you.”

Now that he knew how, Tom snorted elegantly himself, despite his bruised pride. For beneath the cool demeanor this one was spunky. And Tom liked nothing if not a spunky woman.

The kettle boiled and she blithely ignored him while she set to making coffee for them both.

Perhaps it wasn’t him per se; perhaps she wasn’t into blue-collar men. Women living on their own in Portsea clearly fell into two categories: those who looked straight through men dressed like him and those who saw him as the perfect antidote to whatever white-collar dullard had made them rich and single in the first place.

If that was her problem, he could always accidentally drop an ATM statement on her floor so that she could see he wasn’t quite the unfortunate he seemed to be. Maybe that would perk her up a bit. Clear that furrowed brow. Create a cheeky sparkle in those impassive grey eyes.

Unless of course she wasn’t his type either. Now that he thought about it, she was pretty tall, and he liked putting his arm around a woman’s shoulders without pulling a muscle. Too blunt, where he’d rather have charming subtlety. Too cool, where he preferred everything in his life to be warm - his days, his nights, the woman in his arms during his days and nights. Yep, it was probably for the best if he just left the lady well enough alone.

“Are you available for longer jobs?” she asked.

She passed him a hot black coffee and pressed the sugar shaker an inch his way, then looked at him beneath her long lashes as she pursed her lips and blew across the top of her own mug.

“I’m on call for a number of businesses around. Okay, on call might be putting it a little too formally. In the phone book is more factual. Though the Barclay sisters will brook no excuses if they need a light bulb changed.”

Maggie swished a hand across her face as though flapping away a particularly unimportant fly. “It’s not that big a job, I’m sure,” she said.

Tom begged to differ. Belvedere was a colossal job waiting to happen. The ceiling of the kitchen could do with being lifted another two feet at least. Add a skylight and it would feel twice as big. Tear away the thick, dusty concave moldings and he’d put money on the fact that the original cornices would be revealed beneath. “What sort of job?” he asked.

“I can’t get down to the beach,” Maggie said, cutting his flight of fancy off at the knees.

“The beach?”

“The backyard is utterly overgrown,” she continued. “Brambles, vines and brush so thick and so tall and so broad you can’t see beyond.”

“Brambles,” he repeated. Thick, intertwined, thorny, scratchy brambles. Excellent.

“Right. Brambles. Remember that really hot day last week, so still there was not a sea breeze to speak of?”

Tom nodded. He remembered feeling as if spring was near its end. Soon the tourists would swarm the place, his phone would ring off the hook and he and his little boat wouldn’t have any time alone for a good three months.

“I had it in mind that day to find out what sort of private beach this place might have,” Maggie said, “and I discovered there was no way through without a chainsaw or a pole vault. You may have noticed that I am living here with the bare basics, thus I had neither instrument handy.”

Attractive, spunky and a self-deprecating sense of humor to boot? Tom leant his hip against the bench and cocked his left foot against the cupboard door, wondering if he had been too hasty in deciding she was too tall for him. Besides which, Portsea and next door Sorrento in which he lived were small and mostly transient communities, so it would be sensible to get to know her better. In case he one day needed to borrow a cup of sugar.

“Right. A beach, you say. So how long have you lived here now?”he asked.

“I moved here from Melbourne about six months ago. Give or take,” she said.

Well, now, that wasn’t so hard for her, was it? That was decidedly social. Tom made a move to ask a follow-up question but she got there first.

“Shall we?” she asked, pushing away from the bench.

Right. Now she was in a hurry.

Maggie led him out the back door, which was held open by a massive red earthenware pot, on to the shady veranda which ran the length of the back of the house and down a set of rickety wooden steps that opened up to a small paved courtyard as heavy with weeds as the front walk.

And beyond that? A thirty meter wide wall of thick, sharp, decade-old scrub, as tall as two men. Tom couldn’t even tell how deep he might have to dig before he hit the cliff face, or where any path or steps down to the beach might even begin. If there in fact was a beach there at all.

“Nice ferns,” he said to stop himself from saying the rest. as he had to duck under another row of bedraggled plants in hanging pots.

“They came with the house,” she said. “You may have noticed I’m not much of a gardener.”

Noticed? He’d become pretty darned intimate with a whole range of plants on his way in. He was certain he would be finding leaves and twigs in numerous nooks and crannies when he stripped for his shower later that night.

“I noticed,” was all he said, especially since Maggie had now decided to be friendly. He had to think of the future possibility of sugar after all.

“I’m resigned to the fact that I have a black thumb,” she said. She held her right thumb up between them and it told a different story, covered as it was in blue paint. “Okay, so it’s in fact a blue thumb. What does that mean?”

“Perhaps you are doomed to breed depressed plants rather than dead ones.”

And at that, for the first time since he’d laid eyes on her, Maggie smiled. Her eyes gleamed, her cheeks bloomed into rosy mounds and she even showed a hint of neat white teeth with the tiniest of overbites. The fact that Tom had always had a thing for overbites was not lost on him.

“I think you might be right,” she said, the overbite sadly disappearing as she brought her features back under strict control. She flicked another glance at his tool belt. “You can do gardens, I hope?”

“I can. And I have. I am a verified genius at mowing and pulling weeds. I’ve even fixed my fair share of cracked pool pavers.” He took another step towards the seemingly impenetrable wall of green and fingered a sharp-edged leaf. “But now’s my chance to fulfill the lifelong dream to use a scythe.”

He glanced sideways in time to see Maggie’s gaze flicker to his. A small muscle moved in her cheek and he thought himself about to be on the receiving end of another smile. Another vision of her two front teeth tucking over her terribly attractive full bottom lip. But he was mistaken.

“I’m glad to oblige,” she said with a small shrug of her slight shoulders. “It’s not often a person gets to be involved in the culmination of another’s lifelong dream.”

Tom grinned and Maggie frowned.

“So, how long do you think it will take?” she asked.

“I’ll have more of an idea by the end of the day,” he said.

“Right. Then I shall leave you to it,” she said. “There’s some sort of shed around the side of the house. Feel free to see if there is anything in there you can use. No scythe, though, I’m afraid.”

“No scythe and no pole vault? How do you survive out here?” Tom asked, smiling himself, showing her how it was done, seeing if he could again encourage hers out to play, but all he got for his trouble was a cool grey stare.

“Tremendous amounts of coffee seem to do the trick,” she said, deadpan. She blinked at him once more, those long curling lashes making themselves known deep down in his gut.

He was absolutely certain she was deciding whether she really wanted the likes of him hanging around her place.

Her frown lines diminished and he determined she had made the decision that she did. Want him. Around the place.

Then, without a further word, Maggie Bryce took her long legs, cool eyes and adorable overlapping teeth back upstairs, leaving Tom, his tools and his overactive imagination to their own devices.

CHAPTER TWO

A few hours later, Maggie glanced down at the mug of Jamaican Roast perched in between her water jars to find it had become paint dust swimming in cold dregs.

She moved to the edge of her drop cloth, wiped her feet - which was more a decade-old habit than any intention to keep the floor paint-free - re fixed her hair and then shuffled into the kitchen to make another coffee.

As she waited for the kettle to boil, she leant her backside against the kitchen bench and stretched the crick in her neck. The tendon along the top of her right shoulder was aching. Back in Melbourne she would have taken a quick trip to Maurice for a life-affirming massage. But back in Melbourne she had been able to afford Maurice. Here, with her single bank account dwindling to near drastic levels while she paid the colossal mortgage on the big house around her, she had to make do with a heat pack at the end of the day.

She started at the anomalous sound of thrashing foliage breaching the unvarying Portsea peace and quiet. At first she thought it was Smiley out adventuring. Then she remembered the stranger in her midst. She turned and, standing on tiptoe, looked through the kitchen window. But he must have moved somewhere under the house.

When she’d found Tom Campbell’s name in the phone book she’d half expected some wizened, semi-retired jack-of-all-trades working to earn extra bingo money. She’d fully expected wizened old Tom Campbell to take one look at her brambles, run a sorry arm across his wrinkled forehead and claim the way through an impossibility.

She’d been prepared for that eventuality, ready for it to be the last in a long line of signs that her experimental life at the beach had come to an end. The other clear signs being no money left in the bank, no brilliance happening on the canvas and not even the slightest sense that she would ever fit in, no matter how hard she wished she could.

What she hadn’t been prepared for was Tom Campbell himself. He’d surprised the heck out of her by actually being there when he said he would, and also by being the complete opposite of wizened. He was in his mid-thirties with dark hair in need of a cut. He was broad, strapping, in shockingly good health. And had the kind of smile built to warm the coldest heart. Then he’d further compounded her surprise by taking one look at her impossible brambles and saying, ‘Can do’.

The sight of that thirty meter wide wall of thorns should have sent him running in terror. The guy must have needed a pay cheque worse than she did.

She bit at her bottom lip, not all that sure if she was relieved or disappointed that his can do attitude had given her decision time a stay of execution. She was sure it would cost a considerable amount to pull apart the great twisted wall of leaves and branches blocking her from the promise of - what? A few jagged rocks? Maybe, if she was lucky, a skinny patch of sand? But if he could get through the wall to the virgin beach beyond, then she could stretch out her finances and her resolve until then.

The kettle boiled and, with a fresh mug warming her tender, wood-scratched palms, Maggie slipped out of the kitchen and through the back door. She eased over to the edge of the balcony, rested her forearms along the brittle railing and looked one floor below to where her handyman was once again hard at work.

At some stage that morning he had ditched his sweater. His soft grey T-shirt, now drenched in sweat, twisted around his torso as he use d his substantial might to heave threads of dead vines from the mass of brush. His tool belt lay neatly across the bottom step next to a lumpy pillowcase with a rag poking out the top.