Billionaire on Her Doorstep (4 page)

Tom took another step, his boot-clad foot rolling heel, instep, toe, not yet ready to be discovered.

It was such a subtle sound it was more of a tuneful breath than a hum, but he was sure he recognized the song. Was it something classical? He was more of a classic rock fan himself, but he knew the tune. Or maybe he only recognized the feeling behind the husky, sonorous, faraway note threading from Maggie’s throat and curling itself out into the room like the thin tendrils of smoke from a torch singer’s cigarette.

Tom breathed it in, but it was too late before he realized his intake of breath was louder than her subdued singing.

Maggie turned from the hips, a skinny, dry paintbrush clenched between her teeth like a rose for a tango dancer.

“I’m done for the day,”he said, his right foot cocked guiltily.

She slid the paintbrush from between her teeth and blinked several times before he was entirely certain she remembered who he was and what he was doing there.

How’s that for gratitude? he thought, placing his right foot and his sensibilities firmly on the ground.

“The backyard,” he said by way of a reminder, “will take me over a week. Probably closer to two. And you were right about the chainsaw. We’ll also need a skip to dispose of the mess so the spores wont bring it all back again by the end of the summer. My cousin Alex owns the hardware store in Rye, so I’ll talk to him tomorrow and then I can give you a formal quote.”

“That’s fine,” she said, her bare feet twisting until her legs caught up with her hips. “Go ahead. Take the two weeks. Order the equipment. Do whatever it takes.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to wait for my quote before deciding?”

“Positive. If you think you can do it, I want to go ahead. But if you would prefer I pay you up front, I can give you some cash now,” she said, her gaze shifting to the edge of his face on the last couple of words. “I have enough. Plenty.”

She made a move to step off her drop cloth but then stopped just as her toes scrunched around the edge. Her eyes shifted again until she looked him in the eye, and out of nowhere her sharp edges softened until all he could think of was mussed hair and long lean lines and winsome entreaty.

Tom was infinitely glad in that moment that she hadn’t yet figured out that he was the man who couldn’t say no. If she asked him to work through the night he wondered whether he might just turn around and head back out to the scratchy leaves.

“Oh no,” she said, blushing madly. “I used the last of my cash on paint yesterday. Can I write you a cheque?”

“A cheque will be fine,” he said, his voice unusually gruff. He cleared his throat. “There’s no rush, though. You can hardly skip out on me. I know where you live.”

In order to ease some of the unexpected tension from the room, Tom winked and tried his charming smile on for size. But Maggie just blinked some more, those big grey eyes deep and unfathomable. If anything, she drew further inside herself, scrunching her toes into the grey sheet beneath her feet.

Tom had a sudden vision of Tess laughing herself silly at him - grinning and winking and flirting and making plans to wow the beguilingly aloof newcomer with his wit and charm - while the beguilingly aloof newcomer looked at him as if he was a piece of lint clogging what was surely a very nice view of the navel she so liked gazing at.

And Tess would have been in the right. The summer romance he had quite happily envisaged all morning wasn’t going to happen. For Maggie smelled of Sonia Rykiel. And he smelled of sweat. She was a city girl doing an abominable job of pretending to be a beach girl, and he was a beach boy trying his best to pretend he’d never had a life anywhere else.

Her drop cloth said it all. She had no intention of leaving her mark - not on this house, not on this town and not on some cocky handyman flitting through her life.

“Ten a.m. tomorrow okay?” he asked, taking a step back.

“Ten a.m. Ten p.m. I’ll be here, chained to my painting, trying to prise Smiley off my feet,” she said. Then from nowhere her cheek suddenly creased into the beginnings of a rueful grin and for a brief second she was engaging, not all that aloof, and downright gorgeous.

He took another deliberate step towards the front door. “See you then, Maggie.”

“See you then, Tom.”

Tom turned and walked out the fern-laden front entrance, past the saddest-looking dog in the world and through the crumbling ruins of her front yard; he had the feeling he would never forget any odd detail of meeting Maggie Bryce, no matter how she might wish him to do so.

CHAPTER THREE

The next morning Tom parked at the back of Maggie’s house on the dot of ten, the tray of his truck filled with all sorts of weird and wonderful appliances borrowed from Alex’s hardware store.

In a repeat of the day before. Smiley lifted his head for a scratch behind the ear when Tom met him at the front door, and inside Lady Bryce was to be found staring at her painting.

Overnight Tom had managed to talk down the potency of the impact she’d made on him, putting it all down to becoming overcome with paint fumes. But seeing her in the flesh again, he had to admit that, despite the insomnia and lack of furniture, and issues the likes of which a determinedly casual guy like he had no intention of getting mixed up in, she truly was an enchanting soul.

She was dressed down again, this time in a yellow hooded top and dark brown cargoes, her dust-colored hair pulled back into a messy ponytail and held back by a red bandanna, but beneath it all she had the posture of a princess.

Add to that her dark and delicious scent that bombarded him the second he walked inside her front door, and Tom knew that if she ever let down that prickly guard of hers for longer than ten seconds over a stale cheese and tomato sandwich. Lady Bryce would be some package.

His gaze slid sideways to the big blue painting. To his eyes it was exactly how he remembered it. No progress had been made.

He’d never tried to paint a picture since primary school, but he knew enough about creativity to know there was more to a lack of inspiration than the need for a deadline. Having to produce a finished painting of a tree by the end of class hadn’t made him an artist.

But then again Maggie was different. Different from him, anyway. Didn’t she crave male company besides that of a glum canine? And something else to drink besides coffee? And furniture? Didn’t she crave furniture? Why did she have no furniture?

The more the questions about Maggie mounted, the more he wanted to know the answers. All the answers. Like how she could still be so dumbfoundingly immune to his smiles and why, despite her reserve, he still cared.

“Morning, Maggie,” he said a mite louder than necessary.

“When she spun to face him he was pleased to see that it only took about a second for her to remember exactly who he was.

“Oh, good morning, Tom.” She had dark smudges of grey beneath her eyes and if she wasn’t in a different outfit he might have guessed that she’d pulled an all-nighter. Though the three coffee mugs lined up behind her water jars told a different story. “How did you go with your supplies?”

“Great. I’m all ready to make a go of it.”

“Coffee?” she asked, already moving off her drop cloth and towards the long skinny kitchen.

“You bet.”

“Did you get the chance to formalize the quote?”she asked as she tucked her bandanna into the back pocket of her cargo pants, shook out her long ponytail and retied it, scrubbed her hands clean, then put the kettle on to boil.

They agreed on a time limit - two weeks, and a price - enough to keep Tom in hot dinners for the next month even if the ocean ran dry of fish, and enough that he noticed a rapid widening of Maggie’s soft grey eyes despite the fact that she didn’t hesitate to reach straight for her cheque book from an otherwise bare kitchen drawer.

Tom held up both hands. “How about we save all that for the last day?”

Her eyes narrowed, as though trying to figure out how he was planning to screw her over.

“It’s probably not the best business practice,” he said, “but I’ve found it helps keeps relations friendly. This way I get treated like a helpful guest rather than having to deal with the odd situation of working for a friend.”

“If you’re sure you’d prefer it that way,” she said, turning away from him, closing the cheque book and sliding it into the empty kitchen drawer.

“I do. After all’s said and done, we exchange a discreet envelope and a handshake before organizing the next bowling outing or dinner invite.”

Her eyes widened ever so slightly. Did she think he was hitting on her? Had he accidentally given himself an avenue to do so?

Tom wondered what Maggie might say if he made the dinner invite suggestion concrete. Maybe something casual at his place with another couple to keep it relaxed. Alex and Marianne were always good for a laugh when you could get them away from their brood of five girls under the age of eight.

A heavy furry lump landed upon Tom’s toes. And the moment was gone.

“Smiley, come on,” Maggie said, clicking her fingers at the despondent-looking creature. But Smiley wasn’t silly. He could play deaf with the best of them.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her cheek twitching. “You could try giving him a little shove.”

But Smiley let his chin slump on to his crossed front legs with a great rush of air streaming from his nostrils. He wasn’t going anywhere.

“Sorry,” she said again. “He spends half his day sitting on my toes. He looks miserable but really he’s just a big mushy bundle of love.”

Tom smiled. “It’s fine.”

She took a step closer and clicked madly at the dog. And over the scent of Smiley, Tom once more caught a wave of Maggie’s perfume. For a woman who wore not a lick of makeup and so clearly didn’t feel the need to dress up for him, the aesthetic nature of that elegant scent was an anomaly.

And anomalies were intriguing. Even to the most invulnerable of men. Search and discover - it was as instinctive to the human male as breathing.

Maybe inviting her to dinner wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. But without the chaperons. Candlelight. No, moonlight. On his back deck. Fresh calamari, barbecued. And a cold liberating beer to wash it all down…

Maggie moved closer still, bent down to her haunches and looked Smiley in the eye. Though Tom was sure the dog knew it for the ruse it was, he hauled his great hulking form off the floor and padded over to his mistress for a big cuddle before heading over to sit in the kitchen doorway.

The walking talking anomaly in question stood, and suddenly there was nothing between the two of them bar a meter of space and warm swirls of hot spring sea air. He saw the moment Maggie knew it too. Her mouth slowly turned downwards and she thrust her hands in her back pockets.

Tom’s instincts hollered at him to hunt and gather. To smile, to flirt, to grow a backbone and simply ask her out. What was so important about furniture, really?

But every lick of sense in his body told him to leave well enough alone and get back to work. Despite the bare feet and mussed hair, this woman wasn’t in the same place he was. She was haughty and urbane, all sharp edges and skepticism. His head knew that would hardly make for a fan date. If only his impulses were half as rational.

Tom downed the remainder of his black coffee in one hit, thus negating every scent bar the strong roasted beans. He rinsed the mug and left it upside down on the sink and moved out of the skinny kitchen.

“What time would you like lunch?” Maggie called out before he got as far as the back door.

He turned to find her standing in the kitchen doorway, her long length leaning against the door jamb, her fingers unconsciously running up and down Smiley’s forehead and curling about his ears.

And though he had a bunch of ham and avocado sandwiches, fruit and a block of dark chocolate in a cooler in his truck, Tom found himself saying ““Whenever you’re having yours.”

As he walked down the back steps he didn’t look back. He didn’t need to. He could feel her guarded grey eyes watching him all the way.

Maggie’s work in progress was going nowhere fast. And considering she spent all day every day looking out over one of the most inspirational views any artist could hope to find - well, bar whomever Michelangelo based the David upon - it was frustrating as hell.

True she hadn’t painted a landscape in years. Her talent had always run to portraits. From the first picture she’d ever painted for her dad when she was four years old to grade school art class, to her art school scholarship days, to her first showing and onwards.

But when she’d first moved to Portsea she hadn’t been able to shrug off a few particular faces that she had no intention of painting. So she’d decided to try her hand at something new, something innocuous, something safe: landscapes. But so far they all had the emotional impact of a pot plant.

Rubbing a hand over her tight neck muscles, she stepped off her cloth and let her body flop forward until her hands were touching the ground. As the blood rushed to her head, mercifully blocking out the faces therein, Maggie heard a strain of something familiar tickle at the back of her mind.

She stood up so fast she almost blacked out, but the sound was still there. Music. She’d heard music.