Billionaire on Her Doorstep (12 page)

“Nothing?’Maggie repeated. “But - “

“But? he said, cutting her off. He held up a hand, as though he was about to cup her face. But it stopped halfway between them, hovering like some kind of promise. “Something cuwJrfhave happened, which I think is the point you are trying to make .”

She nodded.

“I like you, Maggie/ he said. “I can’t deny that, and I wouldn’twantto.I like our chats. I like the way you tidy your hair only to make a bigger mess. I even like your terrible sandwiches because I know the care that has gone into them. And last night I would have been quite happy to have kissed you. I think that’s fairly evident without us having to talk ourselves silly about it. Right?”

Maggie bit at the inside of her lip. He liked her. She knew it, but hearing him say it only made it all the more real. And immediate. And enticing. For she liked him right on back. And ifhe was going to continue coming to her place every day, and taking off his shirt and smiling at her and sharing his meals and jokes and saying nice things about The Big Blue, then she was fairly sure she was only going to like him more and more.

“i?wf you’re married,’Tom continued, “and I’m not the kind of guy to make light of that. No matter the circumstances. So, as far as I can see, there’s nothing more to talk about. I think we are both bright enough to know when we’re beaten.”

He was right. The facts were the facts. And nothing was going to happen between them. Good. Excellent. Fabulous. But she itched to just ask him outright how he could run so hot and cold, how one minute he could make her feel so sure that he had wanted to kiss her until her toes curled and her lips ache d and her stomach melted into a pool of heat, and the next minute simply move on. She barely managed to hold it all in.

“How about we wind down? Walk off dinner,” Tom said.

She did her best impersonation of indifference and said, “Sure, why not?”

Tom motioned to the Sorrento Pier ahead of them, where dawdling seagulls cooed and dived for scraps on the low tide sands and the great white Queens cliff to Sorrento Ferry had just left mooring on its final trip across The Rip.

Maggie had to walk carefully so that her slippery soles didnt slide over the wide cracks between the old wooden planks of the pier. Tom reached out to take her hand in his to guide her through, but she ignored it. Instead she slipped out of her flat canvas shoes and went the rest of the way barefoot. The feel of the crusty old wood felt goodbeneathher feet. It groundedher.

They re ache d the end in silence. A week before she would have walked to the far side of the pier and given in to the tug of the city lights across the bay. But tonight she followed Tom’s lead and lo oked back towards the bay where the sweep of the bay was dotted with the massive houses of Portsea and the familiar row of quaint and colorful beach huts.

There’s Belvedere,” Tom said, his long arm pointing off to her right.

Maggie searched the cliff tops and spotted her great white hope peeping through the masses of brambles. Her gaze skittered down the rocky cliff to find…

There’s a beach!” she cried out. It was hardly Surfers Paradise, but there was a skinny stretch of neat white sand below her home. She felt something swell inside her at the sight. Pride? Hope? Contentment?

“Can you see your place from here?” she asked.

He waved a hand towards the cliffs. “It’s out there somewhere.”

Something in the timbre of his voice made her turn to look at him. Out there somewhere? She realized she had no clue as to where the guy lived. In what. Or with whom. “Where is it?” she demanded. “Show me.”

Tom bent over to lean his forearms along the railing, his gaze far away, his chin stubborn. Maggie pushed on.

“Come on. To m. You’ve spent more hours this wee k in my home than you likely have in your own. You could live in a caravan, under a palm tree or in so me dumbfounding mansion fit for Architectural Digest as far as I know.”

That I could,” he agreed and his cheek twitched.

“From the little you’ve told me about you this week, you could be married with ten kids by now,” she said.

”

“Fine,’she said, spinning back to look out over the cliffs. “Don’t tell me.”

Don’t tell me? Suddenly that one question opened up a slew of others. Had he ever been married? Divorced? Did he have a girlfriend? A family? He hadn’t said to her that he didn’t have kids…

“Maggie,” he said, and her tense, frustrated gaze skittered to his.

“What?” she shot back.

“I thought we were meant to be winding down.” He smiled. It was a smile of pure understanding. And her tense stomach turned to liquid. “Just relax.”

“Fine,” she whispered, before taking a deep breath, bending over to mirror Tom’s attitude and letting her shoes dangle over the edge of the white wooden railing.

The sky was streaked with deep blue, bright apricot and slashes of pale grey clouds. The same colors glinted back up at her from the still waters of the bay. The heavily clumped trees on the cliffs created dark, shadowy holes in the Technicolor vista. And in the back of her mind she mixed paint colors on her palette to try to make just that perfe ct shade of so oty green that glowered back at her from Belvedere’s backyard.

At the edge of her vision she caught sight of Tom’s hands. Workman’s hands. Hands that last night had trailed across her forehead and down her chee k as he had tucke d a strand of hair behind her ear. She shivered as the memory took her over.

“Are you cold?” Tom asked.

Maggie shook her head. “I’m okay.”

Nonetheless, Tom reached out and took her hands in his, rubbing warmth back into them. Her skinny hands. Her bony knuckles. Her rough, often blistered palms. But within his large, brawny, tanned, labourer’s hold they felt dainty, ladylike and cherished as he ran his palms over them, around them, intertwining their fingers and then completely enclosing her hands in his.

It hit Maggie that this was the first real pro longe d physical contact they’d had. Could that be right? How could she be feeling what she was feeling when they had barely even touched? She had no idea.

But what she did learn, as Tom cradled her hands so carefully in his, oaressingher palms and holding her as if she was something precious, was that she wasn’t alone in her disorientation. Tom was right there with her, stretching out the night just to be ne ar her.

Maggie was suddenly hit with a wave of sensory awareness so strong she had no choice but to close her eyes and drink it in. Se a air. Salt on the tongue. Crisp, wintry aftershave.

A scent reminiscent of the vinegar that Tom had poured over his fries. And something else soft and homey. Something delectable and comforting. Paint? Wood stain?

Tom, she thought on an inner sigh.

This was all too hard. It had taken her twenty-nine ye ars and a failed marriage to realise that her instincts about this sort of thing sucked. She couldnt fall into the same old trap of mistaking attention for affection; she would only be hurt in the end.

A low rumbling laugh rolled from the man beside her. “You’re not all that relaxed, are you?” he said.

“Not all that much,” she admitted. “But I’m trying.”

That you are,” Tom said and with a great sigh he tucked her hand in his and led her away from the railing and back down the pier towards the shore. “When they re ache d her Jeep he let her go.

Thanks for staying for dinner, Tom,” she said, shoving her tingling hands into the safe back pockets of her jeans. “I had a really nice time.”

“No more jibes about the Captain, then?” he asked, his mouth kicking into that easy smile of his.

“We’ll see how he digests tonight.”

“See you Monday, Maggie,” he said, backing away.

“Looking forward to it,” she admitted, and even she heard the wayward note of longing in her voice.

Tom’s boot seemed to catch against something on the ground and his backward momentum ceased. Maggie’s breath caught in her throat, until he lifted his foot and kept moving away.

He gave her a quick salute, then turned and headed up the hill towards - who knew where? The Hotel Sorrento, in which he kept a small suite? The shell of an abandoned car he slept in at night? A lean-to in the woods?

Maggie furiouslyj abbe d the key into her car door with the promise that she would wholeheartedly spend the next week finishing The Big Blue, leaving Tom to finish the job of clearing her damn brambles, and not reliving the moment she had watched the sun set with her hands enclosed in his.

By the time the sun had set on Monday night, Maggie had spent a whole day ignoring Tom as best she could. It wasn’t all that easy when the soft strains of his stereo reminded her she wasn’t alone.

The only time she’d said two words to him all day had been when she’d begged off lunch, claiming she was mid-breakthrough with The Big Blue. Tom had stood at the back steps, staring her down for way longer than she thought entirely necessary before giving in and going back outside to eat his lunch alone.

But somehow, as though through the sheer force of her will. The Big Blue had moved forward in leaps and bounds. She tipped her he ad to one side, twirled her paintbrush in her right hand and began to hum. Nothing in particular, just a melodious tune. For, though she might not be the greatest landscape artist in the world, this painting was sure beginning to look like… something.

“Bright Eyes,” Tom’s deep voice said.

Maggie leapt a good inch in the air as the man at the forefront of her mind appeared from nowhere. She spun towards him with her hand on her chest and only realized that her paintbrush was wet with paint when it seeped through her T-shirt. With a muffle d oath, she swiped at her shirt and tossed the brush into ajar of water and turned back to Tom.

“What did you just say?” she asked, half angry at herself for being so flustered and half angry at him for been so able to make her feel that way.

“Bright Eyes,” he said, coming towards her like a mirage from the dark shadows of the doorway. “You know, the song byArtGarfUnkel.”

Maggie knew it. Intimately. ““What about it?”

“You’ve been humming it for days. I thought I’d picked it more times than I can count, but I wasn’t even close.”

He congratulated himself for another good ten seconds before he seemed to realise that she was leaning back on her workbench, gripping on to the edge for all her might.

“Maggie, are you okay?” He took a single step forward, his face creased with concern.

Maggie didn’t answer. Instead she pushed herself away from the bench and turned on numb feet to face her painting. It was so obvious. Like one of those magic eye drawings where you had to look with the right distance and perspective to see the real picture beneath the dots.

“My father used to sing that song to me when I was a little girl,” Maggie said, running her fingers over the soft, dusty image of a right cheek. “He asked me to paint him a self-portrait when I was seven so he could take it with him when he went on business trips interstate.”

Tom moved slowly up next to her, his eyes roving over The Big Blue, widening in amazement as he too saw the fine jaw, the straight nose, the sweep of straight hair and the sad cavernous eyes. “Holy heck,” he whispered.

“I gave him another self-portrait, framed, for his fortieth birthday,” she said. “It was a picture I still to this day think is better than my Archibald winner. But when he left for good, he left that painting behind as well. It hurt me so much I haven’t painted a picture of myself since. Until now…”

“You’re really in there, aren’t you?”

“I really am,” she said, pulling her hand back from the canvas to rub at her upper arms, though it did little to protect her against the wave after wave of emotion bombarding her. ““What do you think it means?”

Tom moved in closer and, reaching across, took her shaking left hand in his, drawing it to his chest. “We’ve been known to do strange things in order to fight our way out from under the burden of heartache.”

She knew she ought to pull away, not allow herself to give into the comfort of being touched by him, held by him, cared for by him. But, as though sensing she was about to move away, Tom’s grip only grew tighter. So tight she felt pain. But the pain wasn’t in her hand. It was in her heart. For she realized he was talking from experience.

“You moved here right after your sister died,” she remembered aloud, her voice barely above a whisper.

That I did.”

“Why?”

He turned back to the painting, see ming to give it his whole attention again. “When Tess died I was on the other side of the world, trying to lure a Canadian specialist back to Sydney to see her. She died holding the hand of a home nurse she’d only met three days beforehand. When I came back to our home to the knowledge that she would never be there again, the manner in which I had been living my life didn’t have the same meaning any more. So I sold up, moved to the beach, and now, here I am.”

Maggie’s heart twisted so severely she thought it might rupture. She didnt know what to say. That she understood why he’d run? That she understood why he expected so little of life, and especially of himself, now? If only the guy knew how great he was. She ran her thumb back and forth along his palm.