Billionaire On Her Doorstep

‘Did you get the chance to formalise 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 organising 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 metre 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 scepticism. His head knew that would hardly make for a fun 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.

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 café 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 enquire as to whom the ‘everyone else’ might be, but he merely looked up at her with that carefree, 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.