Billionaire on Her Doorstep (16 page)

“Always,” Sandra insiste d, le aning forward, her eyes bright with anticipation.

“With Tom I feel constantly on edge. My skin prickles and my hair itches whenever he’s within view. “When I bite, he bites right on back. When I tear up, he gets torn up himself. And when he comes within ten feet of me I want to eat up those ten feet and just throw myself into his arms and never let him go.”

Freya scoffed. Sandra sighed. And Ashleigh looked so deep into her eyes Maggie thought she might choke on the tenderness growing inside her. That was all she had intended to say, but once she’d started she found she couldn’t stop.

“He’s charming as all get out, but it’s only to cover up the fact that deep down he’s as scratched and dented as the rest of us. But he’s instinctive and unaffected. And those eyes and those shoulders… You have to admit he’s gorgeous.”

Ashleigh smiled. Sandra nodded. Even Freya raised an eyebrow in assent.

“Look, the simple fact of the matter is that every time I start a relationship I expect they’ll hurt me and leave me and that’s what happens. But, with Tom, I don’t know, I haven’t ever expected anything and he just keeps coming through.”

Maggie took a breath to tell them about the way he had held her in his arms two nights before, allowing her to let out a lifetime’s worth of demons through her tears, and the picnic on the bluff he had created just for her, and the million small kindnesses he had given her every day since they’d met, but she swallowed the stories down.

They were precious memories. Beautiful memories. And there was no way she was going to offer them up for Freya’s ridicule. Or to make poor Freya feel even sadder about the love she’d never really managed for herself.

So, to put the subject matter at rest, Maggie took a deep breath and said, “He figured out what The B ig Blue is all about.”

“No, he can’t have,” Sandra whispered, her eyes slamming sideways to the painting leaning at the base of her art table. “So what is it?”

She felt Ashleigh’s hand squeeze her thigh and she knew that Ashleigh, her best friend and mentor, had already known for some time.

“It’s a self-portrait,” Maggie said before her throat closed over completely. “It’s me.”

Freya stood up in shock and Sandra leapt to her feet to have a closer look.

“Holy heck, he’s right,” Freya finally said, her voice raw with emotion. “How could we not have all seen it?”

Maggie shrugged. “I don’t know. But he saw it. Days ago. I told you, he’s insightful. Scarily so.”

Freya’s face closed down again. She slid on her knees in front of Maggie, taking both her hands. “It’s the sensitive ones that will let you down the hardest, Maggie. Be lieve me.”

“Nan, the sensitive ones only cry when you’ve had enough of them,” Sandra said, shaking her head in wonder as she sat with her nose an inch from The B ig B lue. “He’s hot, Mags, but when you come to your senses it’ll be a mess letting him go.”

‘You’re one in a long line of many, Maggie,” Freya said. “I’ve been asking around about him. It’s not just that horrible American woman last summer. He’s a serial dater. A heart-breaker who targets unavailable women. He has more money than Midas and because of that thinks he can use people up and spit them back out again when he’s done.”

“Freya, just stop. You’re only doing yourself a disservice in brandishing all that rubbish. You don’t know him,’Maggie said, her voice trembling. She pulled her hands away.

Freya flinche d as though she’d been slappe d. “I need some air,” she muttered, before tearing from the couch and outside on to the balcony.

“She’s a redhead, Mags, what do you expect?” Sandra lit up a cigarette and headed outside too.

“I was in love once,” Ashleigh said, once they were alone, and Maggie was certain she had heard wrong.

“You were in love?” With a man? Maggie wanted to ask, but she had the distinct feeling Ashleigh wasn’t finished talking.

“I was thirty. His name was Robert. He was tall, with intelligent blue eyes that saw right through me. I was down for the count in an hour, and in his bed by the end o f the night. It took me six months of bliss before the fog cleared enough for me to realise he was married.”

“Oh, Ash .’She could see inAshleigh’seyes that she still loved this man. Twenty-odd years later and she had never moved on.

It seemed love was never an easy road. Was that what Ashleigh was trying to tell her - that it was just a vicious circle? Was that why she felt so much for Tom? Despite the huge differences between him and the type of men she had been with before, was there something about him that gave her that same deep down feeling? Was the very fact that he was emotionally unavailable the true reason why she was so drawn to him?

*’I’d never take that six months back for all the tea in China,” Ashleigh said, running a finger down Maggie’s cheek. “Okay?”

Maggie nodded, but she wasn’t all that certain what she was nodding about.

Freya came back inside all of a sudden, followed by Sandra, practically sprinting behind her.

And after them came Tom. He looked over the scattered group - Freya’s pinched face, Sandra’s open amusement and Ashleigh’s cool appraisal. And, beneath the tan and stubble, Maggie was sure she saw him blush. “Sorry to interrupt your natter, guys. I was just getting myself a cup of coffee .Anyone else thirsty?”

Smiley whimpered at the front door. Maggie looked up. Smiley never whimpered. He was the worst guard dog in history. The others didn’t hear it. Ashleigh was busy putting in an order for tea, Freya mumbled something about needing a strong black coffee and Sandra was batting her eyelashes and following Tom into the kitchen to help.

Maggie got to her feet and moved to the open front door. A warm wind slithered against her face. And Smiley, standing, looking outward, whimpered and wagged his tail.

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CHAPTER TEN

Tom followed Sandra back out of the kitchen, blowing cool air across a mug of coffee he’d made for Maggie.

But she wasn’t sitting curled up on the couch as she had been when he’d walked into the great room minutes before. She was standing in the open doorway talking to a man with salt-and-pepper hair, an expensive-loo king suit and a purple tie.

Maggie looked once over her shoulder at the group before grabbing the guy by the jacket sleeve and dragging him outside. Smiley even dragged himself up and followed them. And then the front door slammed shut.

Tom made a move to call attention to the goings on to the other girls when he suddenly realized where he had seen the man before. Salt-and-pepper hair. Expensive suit. In the pho -to graphs at the art gallery on the Internet.

That washer husband. The shmuck who had robbed those molten silver eyes of their permanent shine.

Tom snapped his mouth shut and let his hand slump until Maggie’s hot coffee came to rest on the dining table with such a bump that coffee sloshed out over the sides.

He looked at the girls - Freya was frowning and sweeping up a mess of crumbs from the rustic table top, while Sandra was sitting at the dining table poking her in the side with her finger. But Ashleigh was watching him with a slight smile on her face. He knew there was no point feigning innocence around this woman. She was some kind of witch or something.

“Was that Carl?’he asked.

Ashleigh nodded.

“Was what Carl?” Freya of the big ears asked.

Tom tensed and glanced to the front door. Freya saw it. “He’s here?’she hissed.

Sandra pushed her chair back with a loud scrape. “The sleazoid rat bastard. Leaving our Maggie all broken-hearted and destitute, while he schleps about town with all his money and her bastard friends. Let me at him.”

Ashleigh held out a hand and Sandra shut up.

But Tom saw it all only peripherally; his vision was blurred as he dug his fingernails into his palms and tried to listen through twenty feet of open space and a closed front door to what could possibly be being said between salt-and-pepper Carl and the bright and beautiful woman he had treated so badly.

Maggie moved Carl away from the door and away from any possibly straining eyes and ears, though her heart thumped so hard against her ribs she could barely hear her own words above it.

“How’s Becca?” was the first thing that came into her he ad, though she wondered how she’d react if he smiled and said she was still a size six with an adorable bump and not a varicose vein in sight.

“She’s in the hospital, Mags. She came prematurely,” he said, before he even said hello. “Eight weeks early. The baby is still in the ICU;

The baby. After all the pain and suffering and recriminations and blame, and trying so hard to be a family, or fix a family, out there somewhere there was now a baby - fighting for its life. Maggie automatically held out a hand to Carl and then remembered who he was and what he had done to her. Her hand shrunk b ack to her side.

“Is she okay?” No matter what he’d done, she would never have wished that on him, or Becca, or especially Becca’s tiny baby.

“She spends most of her time at the hospital,” he said. She thought she saw a minuscule shrug, and that truly reminded her who she was talking to. Urbane, sophisticated, imperturbable Carl. So very cool and untouchable, like her father had been be fore him. She wondered how she had never seen any of that be fore. But then she’d never really known anybody to compare that kind of man with. Until now.

“He’s so very, very tiny.”

He. She clutched her T-shirt to her stomach. They’d had a little boy.

“Small, like Becca,” he continued, clueless as always as to the emotions stirring inside her. “Funny, I always imagined my first boy to be strapping and strong. Like you.”

“Me? Strong? It hardly takes a strong person to run away from home.”

“You never ran, Maggie. I forced you out. It was cruel. And childish. But I wanted you to feel how I’d been feeling for years.”

““What’s that supposed to mean?”

“For the last years of our marriage I felt like a fifth wheel. You knew what you wanted and went for it. And when you succeeded you didn’t need me any more. My connections. My money.”

“Carl, that’s a terrible thing to say.”

“It’s the truth. But it’s not your fault, it’s mine. I was looking for someone soft to nurture, and you thought you were looking for a man to look after you. But you never re ally needed anything of the sort.”

“So is that why you screwed around on me? Because I wasn’t soft enough for you?”

He winced at her choice of words, and she was glad. Because she couldn’t believe this man who’d shared her life for ten years had no ide a how soft she really was. She was so soft that in the early days of their separation she’d felt as if the only thing keeping her upright was her clothes. She was so soft that all she’d ever really wanted from him was his love. And she wondered now if she’d ever even really had that.

And, in that moment, Maggie felt finally, fully and dizzily released. She had outgrown the need for a father figure, but he’d never outgrown the need to be the carer, sole breadwinner, the head of the house, and likely never would. It wasn’t such a bad trait for a guy to have, it just wasn’t the trait that she needed or wanted in her man.

About to ask him again why he’d come, she saw that he was leaning back, looking blankly through the foliage to the front picture windows. His brow was furrowed and his eyes hooded and looking somewhere off to her left.

She glanced over her shoulder to find the gang mid-argument as usual. Sandra was waving a linen napkin at Freya, who was ducking out of the way, Ashleigh was clapping her hands to silence them and Tom was seated on the edge of the dining table, sipping from a cup of coffee, his gaze faraway. A smile tugged at the comer of her mouth before she realized Carl was watching her.

““Who’s the guy?” His eyes focused on her face for the first time since he’d shown up at her doorstep.

“He’s a friend,” she said on a faint sigh.

She saw a flare of pain flash across their clear blue depths and then it was gone. He’d just seen a glimpse into her new life. The life she’d made for herself down here. He’d seen she wasn’t pining away without him, and without his money. She was moving on with her life. And it was time he did too.

“Carl, do the right thing by all of us and sign the divorce papers, send them to my lawyer and go home to your girlfriend and child.”

She reached out and squeezed him on the shoulder. And then her natural caring instincts came to the fore and she gave in and hugged him. Carl hugged her back, comforting in his familiarity, but even more comforting in that she felt not one spark in his arms. Not one itch. Not one desire to ever be in that position again.

She’d done the right thing in leaving when she had, in asking for not one cent of Carl’s money in the settlement, just the clothes on her back, the car in her driveway, the dog on her front doorstep and the equity in the house sending its long protective shadow over her now.

She pulled away and took a step back. “Go odbye, Carl. Tell Becca my prayers are with you all.”

And then she turned her back on her old life for the last time.