Billionaire on Her Doorstep (5 page)

Drawn to the sound like scattered iron filings to a magnet, she followed it down the back steps and around the side of the house, to find Tom sitting on the flat bed of his truck with a grindstone in one hand and a set of garden shears in the other. A small black radio roosted atop the cab of his truck, blaring out an early INXS song.

Maggie stayed in the shadows, watching as Tom sharpened the shears, the muscles along his back clenching with a measured rhythm. There was nothing rushed about the way he worked, as though his time was his alone.

She only wished she could be that laid-back. She’d tried, really she had, going with the Wednesday girls to wine and cheese clubs and early morning t’ai chi on the beach. But all she’d wanted to do afterwards was indulge in a healthy dose of road rage or to scream at the referees at a footy match to relieve the tension build-up in her head.

Freya had suggested she ought to blame it all on her deadbeat dad and that hypnotherapy would help. Maggie thought it more likely she was suffering from withdrawal from the little cherry and white chocolate muffins she used to buy from the cafe below her apartment every Sunday.

But there was Tom, a Sydney guy oozing a kind of laid-back charm that Maggie had believed she could never achieve even after a million years of t’ai chi. So how did he come to be that relaxed? Melbourne was a challenging city, but Sydney was ten times so.

Unless of course she was thinking about it all wrong. Maybe he’d always been mellow and had never quite had it in him to run the rat race and that was why he’d moved to Sorrento when his sister no longer needed him there. She wasn’t sure if that thought made her feel better or worse.

She must have made a noise. Or perhaps Tom had sensed her watching him. Either way, he turned, pinning her with that hot hazel gaze. He watched her for a few moments, giving away nothing, before his shoulders relaxed, an easy smile melted away all earlier single-minded concentration and Tom the laid-back charmer was back.

“Howdy,” he drawled.

“Hi,” she said, her voice strangely breathy.

“What’s up?”

She came away from her hiding place, placing her bare feet carefully as she walked to avoid the prickles. “I heard music”

Tom closed one eye and squinted over his shoulder at his stereo. “It’s not too loud, is it?”

She shook her head. “Not at all. I love this song. I haven’t heard it since I was a teenager.”

Tom reached over and turned the stereo up a fraction and Maggie felt the familiar assertive beat pulsing more strongly through her veins with every footfall.

“I used to always have music playing in the background when I worked,” she said. “Though it was usually classical CDs. Sometimes I would get one piece in my head and I had to listen to it over and over for weeks while I worked on a particular painting. It drove everyone else mad.”

Her voice faded and she waited for him to inquire as to whom the “everyone else” might be, but he merely looked up at her with that care free, smiling face of his. Such a nice face, she thought - lots of character. The kind of face that would light well, easily capturing shadows and allowing those intelligent eyes to become the focus of the piece. Not that she had any intention of painting the guy, ever.

“I’ve got this song on CD. I could lend it to you.”

“I could probably do with all the help I can get right now,” she admitted. And it was a pretty nice song actually. Moody. Evocative.

“Have you got an iPod?” he asked.

She shook her head. She had once. She wished then that she’d thought to bring it with her when she’d left Melbourne. But she’d been in such a terrible hurry that night, such a blinding self-directed rage, and all she’d been thinking of was the need to get away…

Maybe a small second-hand stereo wouldn’t be such a stretch. She could shift the dial a centimeter to the left from where it usually rested and it might make all the difference .A new music station for a new place. A new song for a new painting.

“So why do you need help?” Tom asked.

“My painting sucks,” she shot back, and felt as surprised as he looked. “Wow, I can’t believe I just said that out loud. I’ve never told anyone when I’ve felt blocked before.”

“Why on earth not?” he asked. “Everyone’s allowed to have a down patch every now and then.”

“Once it’s out there,” she said, “you can never take it back. Like if I ever said my painting sucked, then that would make it so.”

It occurred to Maggie that she had given her life the same treatment - smiling her way through the down patches, only pouring out her feelings onto the canvas, and look where that had landed her. Alone, all but broke and drooling over the idea of buying a second-hand stereo.

Tom lowered his shears and shuffled his backside sideways, leaving a space for her to sit beside him if she so desired. And it didn’t take much thought for her to decide that she did.

She placed a hand on the hot metal tray and lifted herself up. Tom’s feet touched the ground but she had to point her toes to touch dirt. She gave up and let her long legs swing free.

“I like it,” he said. “Your painting.”

She turned her head an inch and squinted up at him, to find that those dark hazel eyes were even more intimidating up close and personal. It made her feel slightly unsettled.

“No, you don’t,” she said.

“Sure I do. Blue’s my favorite color,” he insisted. “And your painting has a lot of blue in it. So far there’s nothing about it for me not to like.” His mouth didn’t need to move for her to know that he was smiling inside.

“Heathen,” she said, rolling her eyes, and turning away to hide her own budding smile.

After a few moments of collective silence, Tom asked, “So what is it a painting of, exactly?”

Maggie laughed, the sensation decompressing her a little. Her feet stopped swinging. Her hands unclenched from the edge of the truck’s tray. And her shoulders lowered a good inch.

She went to tell him it was the vista out of her window, but even she knew it wasn’t that. It wasn’t even nearly close to being that. “It’s the last in a long line of paintings of a blue smudge,” she said. “And, since you like blue so very much, if you want it you can have it.”

He glanced at her and then he nodded. “Deal. But only if we agree that I can have The Big Blue in lieu of payment.”

Maggie opened her mouth to argue, to ask how he could survive on her job alone if he wasn’t getting paid for it, but the devil on her shoulder screamed at her to take the deal. The money she’d earmarked would come in more handy to her than she would ever admit out loud. But the angel on her other shoulder gently reminded her she’d been kidding when she’d made the offer.

“It’s a deal-breaker,” Tom said before she could get a word in. “I get the painting or the dough. I won’t accept both.”

Maggie closed her eye to the angel and said, “Okay. Deal.” Heck, if they’d made the same arrangement a year before he would have come out the better by far. It wasn’t her fault his timing was unlucky.

Tom leaned back, away from her, so that he could make sure she was really looking at him. “But it’s not finished yet, is it?”

“How can you tell?”

“You wouldn’t spend so much time staring at the thing if you were done with it, would you?” he asked.

She shrugged and looked up the grassy hill towards her front gate, not at all equipped for this stranger, this man, to know her quite so well so quickly.

“So go on,”he said. “You’ve given me two weeks to get this mess of a backyard cleaned up. I’ll give you the same two weeks to finish my painting.”

“Two weeks? At the rate I’m going, I reckon it’s going to take more like two years.”

Tom’s bottom lip jutted out as he absorbed this new piece of information. “I thought I remembered you telling me you work better under pressure.”

Maggie felt a smile tugging at the comer of her mouth but she kept her gaze dead ahead. “Was that me?”

“It was. So consider this pressure. But because I think you drink too much coffee, and I’d like you to get some sleep during that time, I’ll let you off the hook just a little. I’ll still be here in two years, so if that’s what it will take, that’s what it’ll take.”

Maggie blinked. Imagining where she would be two weeks into the future was quite enough to grasp, but two years? Two years ago she was living on another planet, living another person’s life. Two years ago she was the toast of the town, selling faster than any other fine artist in Australia, happily married, or so she’d thought…

She took in a deep breath and looked around her. Salty sea air tickled the back of her nose. The distant sound of circling seagulls split the air. A big, beautiful, unconventional house disintegrated silently beside her, while a disturbingly charismatic man she barely knew sat all too comfortably a bare inch to her left. So whose life was she living now?

With a heartfelt sigh that was a million miles from contented, she slid slowly off the back of the truck and took a couple of steps back towards the house.

“Off in search of more distractions?” Tom asked. There was a definite twinkle in his eye that Maggie chose to ignore, for this guy was already becoming the kind of distraction she oughtn’t to indulge in.

“Always. So you really think I can have this painting done in two weeks?” she asked, walking backwards.

He grinned and nodded. “Somebody once told me there’s nothing like a deadline to get a person inspired.”

Maggie gave him a smile, one that she felt bubble up from some long buried place inside her, before she sauntered back to the house, humming a lively tune.

“I don’t know what you’re grizzling about. It’s great.”

Later that afternoon Maggie blinked frantically to pull herself out of the gold and indigo smeared horizon to find Tom walking towards her, a mug of freshly brewed coffee in his hands.

“I’m sorry?”

“The Big Blue. He’s coming along nicely.”

She twirled a thin, dry paintbrush between her fingers as she watched Tom’s eyes flicker appreciatively over the large canvas. That afternoon she’d added some colorful smears to the upper half, so though it still mightn’t be any good, or any thing, at least it was progress.

Tom moved to stand beside her, so close Maggie could feel heat waves emanating from his sun-drenched skin. His heavy work boots half disappeared into the folds of her huge drop cloth. He brought his coffee to his mouth and took a swig, but his eyes never once left the painting.

Her stomach took a small happy trip as she experienced the thrill that came with seeing someone making a connection with one of her paintings.

“It’s really growing on me,” he said. “Yep, this one’s going to look just right on the wall in my John.”

Maggie coughed out a laugh. It was so without warning that her stomach kind of clenched. The sensation wasn’t in any way uncomfortable but it made her feel off kilter all the same. She crossed her arms low over her belly.

“If you’re even thinking about putting this painting on your toilet wall, Tom Campbell, the deal’s off.”

“Fine,” he said. “Okay. Though more people would get to enjoy it there than anywhere else in my house.”

He turned to face her so quickly she hoped he didn’t realize she had been staring at him rather than the subject of their conversation. She glanced away quickly, but not before she’d noticed the solid crease appear above the comer of his mouth.

“I’m kind of glad my agent won’t get to see this one,” she admitted.

“You have an agent?”

She faced him fully and glared. “I thought we had decided you thought I was talented.”

He laughed, his eyes creasing, every part of him seeming to overflow with amusement. Beneath her crossed arms it now felt as though her stomach had flipped all the way over.

“Sorry,” he said, his eyes dancing. “Of course we had. That came out wrong. It’s just that we get painters out here all the time. In summer they line the beaches, painting beach huts and sunsets over Sorrento. But I just never knew anybody personally who’d actually sold anything.”

Maggie shrugged. “Well, now you do.”

Tom nodded, kept watching her, and she felt the word personally dig into her mind and take hold. She let her arms drop, then began twirling the paintbrush again to give herseIf something to do with her suddenly nervy hands.

“How do you do that?” he asked, shifting closer and glancing at her hand.

“It’s easy,” she said. “Much easier than actually painting, therefore one of the all-time great distractions.”

He held out a hand. “Show me how?”

Maggie stopped twirling, clamping the wood into a closed fist. She dropped the brush into Tom’s open palm, careful not to let her fingers touch his.

He looked down the barrel of the brush for any aerodynamic imperfections, weighed it in his palm, then held it between his forefinger and his thumb, swinging it back and forth, as though the brush would give into his mighty will and perform the trick on its own.

“It’s physically impossible,” he finally said. “It’s too long to fit between the gaps in my fingers.”

“Oh, rubbish.” Maggie plucked a larger brush from her stash and tucked it between her first and middle fingers. “It has nothing to do with physics and everything to do with faith.”