Billionaire on Her Doorstep (13 page)

“Don’t get me wrong,’he said, glancing her way. His cheek lifted into a wry smile but his eyes were masked by the lengthening shadows in the dark room. “Moving here was the best decision of my life.”

Just as it could be the best decision of yours, his eyes seeme d to say. If only yo u “d let it.

This place is all about new memories,” she allowed. So many weird and wonderful new memories. And now, when she’d begun to appreciate them, it felt as if they were about to slip right through her fingers. Maggie turned away from Tom’s all too discerning gaze, but that only brought her face to face with herself again.

The big question is, why now?” he said. “Why didn’t The Big Blue come out when you hooked up with… Carl?”

She heard his hesitation, and felt the tumble of emotions again shoot from his hand to hers. Though this time they were harder to pin down. Fuzzy. Confused. And far too redolent of her own emotions in that moment.

She shook her head. “I have no idea. They never met. Though they would have been best buds. Well-heeled. Old-fashioned. Prone to mid-life crises. They could have started a club. With me as mascot.”

They do say girls go after men like their fathers.”

“Well, they saw me coming a mile away.”

Tom smiled, and she was relieved to see a hint of the sparkle return. “Don’t be so hard onyourself .A bigthing like that - losing someone you love in such gruelling circumstances^ - can leave its mark on a person. It’s not all that easy to let go, is it?”

“Maybe it shouldn’t be easy,’she finally said. “Maybe forgiveness should be hard. Because then at least you know it’s real.”

Tom nodded. “It sounds therapeutic to me.”

But Maggie suddenly wasn’t sure who she was talking about forgiving any more. Her father or Carl. Or herself for letting their failings affect her so much.

“I have been watching this thing evolve for days now, and I still have no idea how you managed to turn all that swirling blue into something so fantastic,” he said, glancing her way. “You really are one fine painter, Ms Bryce.”

His voice was soft, his face was full of wonder, and Maggie bit her lip to stop herself from blubbering all over him.

“One thing, though,” Tom said.

“Mmm?”

“Did you ever look that blue?” he asked, catching her completely off guard. So off guard in fact that she burst out laughing.

She laughed so long and so hard that she hiccuped at the end of it and even had to wipe away a couple of stray tears into the bargain. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who painted a blue face. Did you moonlight as an Arctic explorer? Or do you feel the cold more than most? Perhaps you’ve always harboured a secret wish to become a member of the Blue Man Group?”

Tom, come on, this isn’t funny,” she said.

“Who said it was?”

He was smiling at her. But it wasn’t a cheeky smile. It was a doting smile. A compassionate smile. She watched in mute fascination as he lifted her hand and kissed the upturned palm. His hot lips, so gentle and so affectionate, burned a brand into her calloused skin. A brand she feared she would never be able to wash away.

Maggie didn’t even realise she was crying until she tasted the salt of her tears in her mouth. And this time Tom didn’t hesitate. Before she knew it, she was in his arms, those strong warm hands running up and down her back, over her hair, in a perfect wave of consolation and understanding.

“Maggie, sweetheart,” he said, “it’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

He continued muttering the “there, there” words she’d had to endure from so many friends over the years. B ack when her dad had left, and again when her husband had cheated. But somehow, coming fro m this big strong man, she found herself hoping it might be true.

He kissed the top of her head before pulling away, and she fought against the urge to wrap her arms around his neck and hang on with all her might. She sniffed, the tears no longer coming, as if letting it all out in one fell swoop, the tension, the upset, the embarrassment had left her.

“All better?” he asked.

“Perfect,” she said. She took in a shaky breath and her focus narrowed to the moist patch her tears had left on Tom’s grey T-shirt. Though her life was nowhere near perfect, it was looking up. She only wished she had more time, more money, that she’d been able to paint more than therapy on to the canvas, and that Portsea property wasn’t quite so very pricey.

She risked looking up at Tom. Thank you,” she said, making sure to hold on to his gaze with all her strength.

“For what?” he asked, his voice gravelly as he used both hands to sweep her messy hair out of her eyes.

“Being here. Being the first man in my life who didn’t run the moment everything looked like it was about to get too hard.”

His hazel eyes flickered left to right and back again, as though he was trying to tell her something he couldn’t put into words. But didn’t say a word.

Maggie’s confidence slipped, just a bit, but enough to let in a whole new load of self-doubt. She gave herself a good mental shake. For, no matter how good he’d been to her tonight, how kind, how sweet, how present, he had run before. He hadn’t left Sydney looking for a change of pace, he’d run from himself. And she had no guarantee he wouldn’t do so again.

To save face, and her wavering heart, she disentangled herself from his warm embrace and backed away. “Look at the time! It must be after nine. I’m so sorry to have kept you. Why don’t you head off?”

He tucked his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. “Are you sure?”

She smiled up at him. “I’m sure. I’ll see you tomorrow, Tom.”

He gave her a small wave and jogged down the back steps and to his car

Andl’llseeyou the next day and the next, she thought. But could she count on seeing him the day after, that? Looking deep inside herself, Maggie knew she had no idea. But things in her life were progressing such that she was at last beginning to believe that she could count on herself.

She took one last look at The Big Blue. The portrait was ambiguous, blurred, and so very blue. Just as she had felt for so very long.

She took the painting down from its pride of place on her easel and set it aside. It was time to start with a fresh canvas.

CHAPTER EIGHT

By lunch time Tuesday the taste of the coming summer hung hot, humid and heavy in the air. Tom’s back ached, he felt as if his knuckles had been cracked twenty times over and he would have given away the sizeable contents of his bank account for an hour-long shower. But the shower could wait, for he was a man on a mission.

He wiped his hands on the sides of his jeans and pulled a T-shirt over his sweat-lathere d torso as he headed up Maggie’s back stairs.

Seeing her crying the night before had twisted him into knots the likes of which he had never known. His urge to help, to fix, had gone into overdrive - so much he’d arrived before she was up and hadn’t stopped during the six straight hours since.

He hoped the pay-off for all his hard work that morning would be worth it. He really did. But, even as he’d pulled weeds and yanked out tough vines and wrenched muscles he hadn’t even known he had, he’d known that it was the least he could do.

“Maggie?” he called out from the back door, not wanting to clump mud inside.

After a pause he heard a small, “Yep?” no

“Are you ready for lunch?”

“Coming. Give me a minute,” she said, meaning he wouldn’t have to follow thro ugh on his back-up plan to throw her over his shoulder and carry her downstairs in a fireman’s lift if she tried to beg off lunch again. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved about that or disappointed. “You’ve been quiet out there today. Tom?”

Feeling silly having a faceless conversation, he wiped his muddy boots on the back mat and then made his way inside.

He looked up, ready to give her lip about the fact that he was used to her finding any excuse to walk away from The Big Blue, when he saw that The Big Blue was gone.

In its place was a new canvas, already lathered in deep forest-green and apricot so bright it was almost blinding. He looked up to her to ask what was going on, but all words stopped before they even hit his throat.

A red bandanna was tucked into her waistband, leaving her mass of pale brown hair scrunched up into a messy bun, which over the course of the morning had fallen into a sexy tumble of disarray. She wore a cream collared T-shirt which gave her skin a golden glow.

And be low? Below were the shortest pair of short shorts a girl could wear without a health warning. They were khaki, cuffed and reached just below the swell of her buttocks, leaving bare a pair of long, smooth, shapely legs which went all the way to the floor.

“Hi,” Maggie said, wiping her hands on an old rag, her voice a little breathless.

Tom struggled to lift his eyes. “How are you doing?’he asked.

“I’m okay. I’m fine. Truly.”

“I would have come up earlier to check on you, but I really wanted to get to work in a big way today.”

She gave him a small smile which told him she didn’t believe a word of it. “Tom, it’s okay. I didn’t expect you to come in and pat me on the hand and lather me with sympathy. In fact I would have hated it. I really do feel much better today. Great, in fact. On top of the world.”

He nodded. And stared at her a little more. At the wisps of sleek, soft hair hanging beside her fine jaw. At the small line of muscle along the length of her upper arm. Had she always been this stunning? He’d always thought her beautiful in a detached kind of way, but seriously, had she always been this beautiful?

“Sorry. Are you in some kind of rush?” she asked, her full mouth hooking into a shy smile.

This Maggie, this cool, self-assured, at ease Maggie was so intimidating it caused Tom to fall back on his own self-defence mechanism - innocuous flirtation.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, shooting her a grin. As the blood returned to his feet he ambled to her side. “I was just hoping you hadn’t shaved for my sake.”

“Excuse me?” she said, her easy smile faltering.

He let his gaze drop and take pleasure in another eyeful of her graceful limbs, which had somehow managed to avoid the wrath of her flicking brush while her feet had still captured flecks of blue paint. “I was momentarily blinded by the fact that you seem to have legs,” he admitted.

Maggie ingenuously tipped her toes in towards one another and looked down. “You’d had your doubts?”

“More like suspicions, really. And I’m quite enjoying them being brought to light.”

She curled her lip to show that she wasn’t all that impressed by his candour. “You may have noticed that it’s a bloody hot day. If you’re allowed to work out there with your shirt off, then I’m allowed to wear shorts.”

Tom held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, I’m not complaining.” He let his hands drop. “So you’ve been watching me work, have you?”

A pretty pink blush grew in her pale cheeks as she only just realized what her comeback had revealed, and he caught a refreshing glimpse of the ruffled Maggie he knew and… liked.

“I have to make sure you’re not out there slacking off on my dollar.”

“Of course you do,” he said.

“Anything else?” she asked, glaring at him and lifting a hand to her cocked right hip. “Or can we go eat?”

“We eat. Outside.”

““Why?” Maggie said, but she was already cleaning her paintbrush in a jar of water, scrunching her toes on the drop cloth and retying her hair into a less messy high bun to keep her hair off the back of her neck. “Didn’t we just agree it’s too hot?”

Why is because you paid for dinner Saturday night and it pained my manhood, so I decided to make it up to you with so mething a bit spe cial today.” That p art was rubbish, but she didn’t need to know that.

She met him at the back door. He faltered for a second when her heady perfume sneaked under his defences and curled itself around him.

Before he had the chance to second guess himself, he snaffled the bandanna from the waistband of her shorts, the tips of his fingers accidentally making contact with a small sliver of skin on her waist.

Okay, so it wasn’t entirely accidental. But it was subtle. Subtle enough that she would have no idea how much he’d longed to touch her right there. Nor how much touching her there only made him want to touch her everywhere else.

“When he moved back he saw that her eyes were closed. Not mid-blink, but closed. They flittered open - grey, wide and expressive . Okay, so she knew.

He gave her an eloquent smile before reaching up and covering her eyes in the square of red cloth.

“Hey!” she cried, reaching up to grab at the bandanna.

“Uh-uh,” he said, pee ling her hands away and tucking them at her sides. Her hands clenched in his, before slowly letting go. Trusting him…

He baulked at the thought, his fingers losing grip on the fabric for a brief moment. But he couldn’t back out now. It would only make him look like an idiot. So he tied the bandanna over her eyes, then took her by the shoulders and led her down the back steps, so ftly saying, “Step. Step. Step,” until they reached level ground.

“Is this really necessary?” she aske d as they made their way across the expanse of dirt.