Billionaire On Her Doorstep

Tom clenched his toes in his boots to stop himself from shuffling under her acute gaze.

‘Right,’ she said suddenly, punctuating the sharp word by pointing her skinny paintbrush his way.

And dammit if he didn’t actually flinch!

Tom took a slow, deep breath. He’d let those crazy old Barclay sisters get inside his head so much that he’d actually begun to believe this poor woman could be some kind of nut job, simply because she hadn’t found the need for haberdashery, whatever haberdashery might be.

So far nothing worse had happened than red splatters on her picture. So far she seemed merely antisocial at worst. And at best? Unimpressed by him in particular. Lucky him.

‘Tom Campbell. The handyman,’ she repeated. ‘Okay.’ She unconsciously twirled the offensive paintbrush in her fingers like a cheerleader’s baton before turning back to her work-table, choosing a water pot at random and swooshing the brush in the dirty liquid.

She glanced briefly at her big blue painting, saw the red splatters and swore again. It seemed she wasn’t the type to pull her punches because she had company.

Tom felt his cheeks tugging into a smile. If the Barclay sisters knew her penchant for French he was quite sure they would drop the ‘Lady’ moniker quick smart.

With a shake of her head, she tiptoed off the drop cloth, scrunching her toes as she wiped her bare feet at the edge, and moved to join him.

She walked with a sort of natural elegance, like a ballet dancer, heel to toe, long legs fluid. Her skin had an almost translucent appearance and her clothes hung off her as if she had lost weight quickly and had not found the time or inclination to put it back on.

She was pretty tall too. She must have been near five-ten. Tom drew himself up to his full six feet and one half inch to compensate. And though her eyes were grey, when she wasn’t glaring at him they held hints of the same pale blue found in the clear spring sky behind her.

She pulled the navy bandanna from her hair and used it to wipe her hands, then tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans. Next she yanked a hair-band from her ponytail and shook the straight length loose until it hung long and dishevelled halfway down her back, before gathering it all and folding it into a messy low bun.

This little act was merely a habit, he was sure. Her movements were fast, spare and not meant to impress. But they impressed him. In fact he found the whole hair shaking move pretty darned satisfying.

Or maybe that was the point after all. Maybe that was how she got her kicks—conning local workmen into her web for a quickie before tumbling them off the cliff on to the jagged rocks behind her secluded home. Perhaps her infrequent trips into town at the wheel of her suburban tank were to buy quicklime and shovels.

She strode past him and into the massive kitchen and, despite his lively imaginings, Tom followed. There were no scrawled pictures on the fridge. No post-its or shopping lists. No flowers on the window ledge. No jars full of mismatched utensils as were to be found in most of the homes he worked in. According to the Barclay sisters, she’d lived here for months, but the place looked as if she’d just moved in and hadn’t unpacked all her boxes.

Still, though he had as much fun seeing inside other people’s homes as the next guy, if she didn’t have a job for him in the next ten seconds he was going to walk. It really was a glorious day outside and the fish would no doubt be biting…

‘What would you like me to do for you, Ms Bryce?’

She switched on the kettle, then turned and leaned her backside against the sink and stared him down, her grey eyes shrewd, distant and enormous.

‘Maggie,’ she said. ‘Firstly I would like you to call me Maggie.’

He nodded. ‘Only if you call me Tom.’ Having been brought up to believe that a proper introduction required it, Tom reached out to shake hands.

Maggie reached forward herself and gave his hand a brisk pump. Her palm was neither soft nor smooth. Her lean hand rasped against his, her calloused palm creating a strange sensation against his own work-roughened mitt.

Nevertheless, he kept a hold a moment longer than he really ought. As he soon found himself caught in a wave of her perfume.

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 colourful vocabulary, and the bohemian lack of furniture, she was seriously lovely. And he was definitely loveable. 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 uncatchable. 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 demeanour 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 mouldings 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 humour 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.