Billionaire on Her Doorstep (8 page)

“Nah,” he said. “I was just planning a five-minute break as is. Too much needs to be done. I’ll just grab my pasta from your fridge and head back. Thanks, anyway.”

Her shoulders dropped and her throat worked and it was as good a thank you as he was going to get. He waited for Freya to depart the kitchen before he entered, grabbed his Tupperware container from the fridge, borrowed a fork from the cutlery drawer and slipped outside with a quick, “Nice to meet you ladies. Take care.”

It was nearly three hours later when Tom heard the sounds of loud laughing female voices spilling out the front door of the house.

“Give the girls a kiss from me,” Maggie said, after jogging back from the mailbox.

Freya gave her a hug so long he thought she might not let go. “Shall do.”

“And remember, you must find out if your new friend is a Jack of all trades, okay?” Sandra asked.

Tom bit his lip to stop himself from laughing and hunkered down behind the cab of his Ute. Freya shushed Sandra and, though Tom strained to hear her response, Maggie’s following words were regrettably muffled.

“Come on, girls,” Ashleigh called out. “Our chariot awaits.” The three women waved, yelled their goodbyes and tumbled into a waiting taxi.

After they had driven away, Maggie turned and looked straight at him. Tom stopped retying the ropes on the bed of his truck and simply looked back.

Her hands shot into the back pockets of her jeans and she rolled up on to her toes, as though she was about to head down the hill to join him. But something held her back.

He gave her a small wave, she nodded back and then she ducked inside at speed. And for the rest of the afternoon Tom had to remind himself he was there for a job, not to head in for a coffee and a chat and to test if he was in fact the reason behind that new resident blush in Maggie Bryce’s cheeks.

CHAPTER FIVE

Eight o’clock Friday night rolled around and Maggie wasn’t on her usual spot on the drop cloth.

Tom sauntered over to the enclosed stairwell, which must have led up to who knew what. Huge bedrooms with high ceilings, or cramped and aching for a renovation? An attic room or two with fabulous canted roofs and quaint picture windows? Maybe one day she’d let him see them. And maybe one day he’d tell her why he was so interested. He sneaked a look upwards, but all he could see was hazy darkness.

Tom moved to wait for her by The Big Blue, even though each day it had been darker by the time he made it home. He was constantly playing catch up on the job as the chats by Maggie’s painting every morning and their shared lunches got longer each day.

Even so, he couldn’t seem to find the opportunity to ask her out, even with his brilliant Nolan in the bedroom line raring to go. He wasn’t blind to the idea that maybe it was that very challenge that had him so gung-ho. Either way, so far all he’d managed was “I like your painting.” Nice one, Romeo.

Tom whistled under his breath as he sauntered over to her corner and stepped over the curled edge of the paint-splattered cloth. Up close, the scent of paint was overwhelming, especially without Maggie’s signature perfume to negate it.

He stared hard at The Big Blue, looking to find a similarity to the ocean view out the window, when suddenly, clear as day, he saw a face looking back at him from the canvas.

It gave him such a fright he backed up, startled. But the moment he blinked the image was gone. The painting was once again nothing more mysterious than blue smears. He stepped off the drop cloth, rubbing at his eyes. It had been a long week.

The sound of bare feet shuffling against wood announced Maggie’s arrival through the front door. She flicked through a small stack of unopened mail, then threw the lot on to the bench at the front door.

“Maggie, are you sure this painting of ours is a landscape?” he asked when she joined him on her drop cloth.

“Nah,” she said. “It’s a still life of blue apples.”

“Smart arse,” he said under his breath. “The thing is, I was sure I just saw a face in there.”

“A face,” she repeated, her surprised gaze skittering to the painting.

“Yeah.” He waved his hand over the canvas, but even he couldn’t see it any more. “Or maybe I’m going silently mad out there in your crazy old garden.”

“Why do you think I hired someone else to clear it?” she said, deadpan, as she rubbed at her neck, long thin fingers massaging deep into the tendons along the tops of her shoulders.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his attention diverted.

“Hmm,” she groaned. In the gloomy evening light her pupils filled her large eyes and sent his imagination on a trip and a half. “Sorry, what?”

“Your neck,” he said, reaching out to her and then letting his hand drop away when her faraway gaze flickered and focused, pinning him to the spot, daring him to even think about walking one more step closer.

“What about it?” she asked, her hand still kneading her shoulder.

And Tom laughed. Out loud. No wonder he’d never worked up the nerve to ask her out; he had simply never met anyone who was as much hard work. “You haven’t stopped fussing with it since you came in.”

“I’m fine.” Maggie’s hand dropped, but she couldn’t hide her wince as she stopped giving it the attention that it needed.

“Of course you are.” Tom wondered what her skin would feel like beneath his hands. Would it be cool like her eyes? Or fiery like her impertinent mouth? From those few moments he’d come close enough to guess, he had the distinct feeling her skin would naturally be as warm as if she had spent half an hour basking in the sun.

In a huff Maggie turned away to stare at her painting some more, unwittingly giving Tom a perfect view of the back of her neck. Her vertebrae stuck out in a neat vertical row and fine blonde hairs whirled in tufts at the base of her chaotic ponytail. Her skin was the color of diluted honey. Delicate. Too frail for his workman’s hands.

Tom rubbed his hands together, easing away the prickling as flashes of memory of times he’d been praised on his use of those very hands skidded and tripped behind his eyes. But they soon gurgled away down a sinkhole of past reminiscences, as though he needed the room for new memories. Memories of a future in which Maggie Bryce closed her eyes, let her head roll forward until her messy ponytail slid over her shoulder, as she begged him to make her feel all better.

Taking in her furrowed brow and tight fists and earnest stare, he found the sudden need to swallow. “What was he thinking? There was not one thing about the woman that said fling material. But a fling was all he could offer. No more. Never more. Not after what it had taken for him to get back on to his feet after losing Tess. So if that was all obvious, why was he expending so much energy reminding himself?

He took the one step back that left Maggie Bryce on her drop cloth island while he moved to the ocean of unpolished wood floor.

“Right,” Tom said, his voice thick. He coughed behind a tightly closed fist. “Anyway, I came to tell you I was done for the day, so I’m heading off.”

“Okay.” But she half turned, pinning him down with that sharp grey stare, and Tom’s feet stayed right where they were. “Or you could stay for a beer.”

Maybe he wanted to find out if the beer was for real; he would have been surprised if she even had milk and bread in the fridge. Or maybe it was the idea of beer itself that had him in such a lather, considering the sweat running down his spine. Or maybe it was the hesitation in her eyes and the imagined warmth of her skin beneath his hands.

“Whatever the reason, he found himself saying, “Sure. A beer sounds great.”

“Why don’t you head outside where it’s cooler and I’ll bring them out in a sec?”

Tom headed out to the balcony and Maggie moved into the kitchen, glad for the reprieve. Had it been getting hot in there, or was that just her? The hair at the base of her neck was stuck to her skin and all her hairs on her arms stood on end as though seeking out a cooling breeze.

She stuck her head in the fridge, savoring the cool air, and found the beer behind a whole bunch of exotic groceries she’d ordered the previous afternoon when she’d received a desperately needed letter from her bank to say some royalties had arrived in her bank account from a British calendar in which a couple of her paintings had appeared.

The money was enough to cover Belvedere’s mortgage payments, so maybe she should have transferred the lot straight away and given herself another month’s reprieve. But what good could another month of the same do?

Of all the noise and bluster she’d had to sit through with the Wednesday girls, one thing Freya had said had hit home; she was meant to be connecting with herself. The money in her bank account was a sign; the time had come to stop marking time. The time had come to break free from old habits.

It was like Sandra and her French cigarettes. Freya and her gourmet tastes. Ashleigh and the multitudinous textures she chose to wear against her skin. These experiential effusions all helped make them the artists and the people they were.

Well, in all twenty-nine years of her life, Maggie had never tasted beer. Moving in art circles, her bent had run to wine or late night Smirnoff. If she was going to start slaying old habits, that had seemed a painless one to start with. And Tom seemed like a beer kind of guy, so it really would have been a waste not to invite him to experience it with her. Right?

She grabbed a couple of designer bottles from the back of the fridge and then snapped the lids off using the heel of her hand and the edge of her bench like she had seen in some movie, and it worked! How was that for a new experience? The fact that she’d forgotten to buy a bottle-top opener was beside the point.

Through the kitchen window she saw Tom leaning on the balustrade of the white wooden balcony, resting his forearms along the splintered wood, no doubt surveying the huge amount of work he still had to do to get her mess of a backyard cleared.

He filled much of that view himself, he was so tall. Broad. Solid. And just plain magnificent.

Funny, but Maggie usually leaned towards finer men. Lean. Elegant. Suits and ties. Men like her dad - an executive who traveled a lot and then one day simply hadn’t come home. But that hadn’t stopped her from turning into the arms of men like that all her life. Men who looked the part, and said all the right things, and let her down in the end. Of all bad habits, that was the one she was most determined to break.

Maggie grabbed the beers with one hand and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps with the other and headed out to join her big, strong, straightforward, what-you-see-is-what-you-get handyman for a sunset drink.

“Here you go,” Maggie said, heralding her barefooted arrival so as not to startle him. He really had seemed so far away.

He turned, giving her an appreciative smile, a crooked, hazel-eyed smile that she felt deep in her belly. But that was not why she had invited him to stay. She needed a beer buddy and he’d been working hard, and he deserved some proper thanks.

He took the beer, his fingers sliding momentarily against hers as he slipped the condensation loaded bottle from her grasp.

Maggie’s knees felt a little wobbly all of a sudden, so she sat in a rickety wrought iron chair and tossed the packet of crisps on to the matching mosaic table that she’d found in the backyard when she’d first moved into the house.

In fact almost every piece of furniture in the place was a found object. All bar her king-sized bed, which she had ordered from Melbourne - new, huge and ridiculously luxurious, with the most expensive white Egyptian cotton sheets from her favorite shop on Chapel Street.

She’d hoped it might help her get a good night’s sleep. But so far, no deal. Maybe if she bought that second-hand stereo and a few CDs it might help her relax enough to sleep a full night. Tom said he knew which CD had that INXS song that had been playing when they’d sat together on the back of his truck. She wouldn’t mind owning that one for a start.

The man in question leant his backside against the railing, the warmth of the setting sun gathering in his hair highlighting streaks of bronze amidst the dark waves. He took a swig of the beer. A great manly swig - the column of his tanned throat working overtime to down the bubbly liquid. Then he lowered his head, lowered the beer and lowered his hazel eyes to hers. And his crooked smile and her tummy twitches were back with a vengeance.

“That hit the spot,” he said. “Thanks.”

She took her own ladylike sip.

“Interesting bunch of friends you had over the other day,” Tom said.

Maggie hid behind her right hand as she swallowed, the unfamiliar bubbles burning in her throat. “I hope they didn’t give you too much of a hard time.”

“Hardly. They were very polite.”

“Them? Never. Politeness is only a mask for what people really want to say, and those girls don’t hold back.”

Tom blinked. And it hit Maggie how polite the two of them had become since that day. She remembered ripples beneath the brief hellos, even lengthier goodbyes. The pleases and thank yous galore over their shared lunches…

“I don’t think the redhead liked me all that much,” Tom said, saving her from her daunting thoughts. “Did I once cut her off in traffic?”

“Doubtful. Freya is ferociously overprotective of all of us,” Maggie said, feeling the need to over-explain to show that she wasn’t holding any thing important back. “Hence the vibes you no doubt felt pummeling you the minute you invaded her inner sanctum of womanly placation. Don’t take it personally.”