Billionaire On Her Doorstep

‘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 centimetre 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 on to 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 favourite colour,’ 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 corner 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 colourful 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 realise 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 corner of his mouth.