Billionaire on Her Doorstep (20 page)

“When he looked up she was smiling at him, tendrils of her hair curling on to her creamy naked skin, and his nerves fled. A week ago he’d wanted this more than he remembered wanting anything else in his life. But she hadn’t been his for the wanting. And now…

Now she was here, unwrapping herself like a precious gift, smiling at him, wanting him right back, and in the end he knew exactly what to do.

Maggie woke up with the delicious scent of cooking calamari tickling at the back of her nose. She breathed in deep and stretched her arms over her head, the fresh cotton sheets feeling sensual as all get out against her naked skin.

Naked skin? She always slept in a tank top and underpants.

Her eyes flew open and it took a few seconds to remember where she was. Her all white bedroom with its peeling wallpaper had been replaced with a cavernous dark room lit only by the discreet golden glow of a lamp in the far comer.

She slid up on to her elbow, dragging the sheet with her, to find she was alone, but there was a perfect Tom^sized indent on the feather pillow beside her.

She reached out and stroked a gentle hand over the indent. She breathed in deeper and, over the scent of calamari cooking somewhere in this huge house of his, she found the scent of Tom. Hot aftershave, hot coffee and hot sunshine.

She lay back against her own pi How with a thud. Letting her arms land in a sprawl above her head, she stretched until she was taking up the whole huge bed, and a grin spre ad across her face as she admitted that every bit of the dull ache she felt in almost every muscle in her body felt so very, very good.

She tippe d her head sideways to find the open door of an en suite bathroom. Then, after a quick glance at the bedroom door, she slipped out of bed and made anudie run for the shower.

Maggie luxuriated under the hot, hard shower spray, reliving the past hours spent in Tom’s arms, kissing Tom’s skin, drowning in bliss as Tom kissed hers. She tasted salt and realized that she was crying, her tears getting mixed up with the beads of shower water. But she was almost certain it had nothing to do with second thoughts, it was just an overflow of emotion. Necessary tension release. It had been a long time coming.

Meeting Tom, being attracted to Tom, falling for Tom, pulling away, as, no matter how much of a mess Carl had made of their marriage, she’d still had no intention of adding to the horrors by having an affair.

And now she was free! Free to live how she saw fit. And the first thing she had done with this new found freedom was to run straight into another man’s arms.

The soap slid unchecked from Maggie’s hands.

She tipped the showerhe ad away, le av ing her body cold in the night air. She picked up the soap, Tom’s soap, and put it carefully back onto its tray where it belonged.

She cleaned the suds from her suddenly shaking hands, turned off the water and stepped out onto the fluffy white bath mat.

What were you thinking? she asked her foggy reflection in the mirror as she rubbed the thick cotton towel up and down her cool arms vigorously.

I was thinking I wanted those beautiful hands all over my body. I was thinking I wanted to taste those strong lips and run my fingers through that glorious hair and know the look in those burning hazel eyes when they looked at me with devotion and tenderness. That’s what I was thinking.

But you couldn’t have waited a couple of days? Enough time to see if you were actually going to be living in Portsea for longer than a week?

Well, no, because that might have given me the perfect excuse not to be with him. And I needed to be with him. Just once, to appease the need and want and desire and love that was fast becoming all I thought about any more.

But you know he doesn’t yet love himself near enough to be able to truly love anybody else. So you’ve only set yours elf up for heartache.

“Right,” Maggie said out loud. “Well, this time at least I know that. This time I have come into this forewarned. And forewarned is… what’s the saying? Oh, bugger it.”

She pulled a frustrated face at her reflection and stormed into the bedroom to get dressed. After changing back into her tank top and jeans, Maggie took a deep breath and felt as if she was walking the plank to her doom as she followed the scent of seafood to find Tom in his open-plan kitchen.

His hair was damp from a recent shower and he wore low slung jeans and the soft grey T-shirt he’d worn when opening his door earlier that night. Michelangelo’s David had nothing on him. This guy made her heart thump so hard in her chest just looking upon him she thought she might faint.

“Hi,” Tom said, smiling at her from the stove on his island kitchen bench.

“Hi,” she said back, suddenly feeling desperately shy.

Well, it had been some time since she had done this. She’d been married for nearly ten years. Though, like every woman of her generation she had seen every episode of Sex and the City, she still wasn’t quite sure what the protocol was when dealing with the aftermath.

After whispering words of affection in a man’s ear before biting down on it so hard it made him cry out. After running her palms over his naked rear end and giving her expert opinion on its beautiful form. After falling asleep in the embrace of a man with whom she had fallen crazy in love, and waking to wonder if she had just made a huge mistake. What was a girl to do?

An antique clock on his mantel chimed ten at night.

“Are you hungry?” Tom asked, licking something off his finger and creating another flashback to the most beautiful, tender, sexy act of love ma king she had ever experienced.

“Starving,” she said, her voice husky.

Tom smiled with his finger still clamped between his teeth and Maggie suddenly realized she was starving. After having done more physical work in the past two hours than she had in months she was ravenous.

“So, sit,” he said, waving a spatula at a couple of bar stools on the other side of the island bench.

Not knowing what else to do, she did as she was told.

“I caught them myself, last night down at the Rye Pier.”

“Seriously?”

He raised one sexy eyebrow, as though no one had questioned his hunting and gathering ability before.

“I mean I’d never really thought about how one catches calamaribefore. Maybe on one of those big fishing trawlers out in the middle of the ocean. And I should really shut up now as I am sounding like such a city slicker.”

“Nan,” he drawled, “I would never say such a thing.”

“But you think it,” she said, pointing an accusatory finger his way.

“Every single day,” he admitted and, though it was meant to be an insult, it felt so very much.like an endearment.

He grinned at her, all sexy eyes and cheek creases, and her heart thumped against her chest. Careful, she thought, sitting straighter to give her heart more room to move.

Should she act as if this was nothing new and thank him for a great roll in the hay and leave?

Should she be polite and sleep over? Or would he panic and think she was clingy?

“What would she think of all of this when morning came? Nothing ever looked good at sunrise. Bathed in fresh light, everything always seemed sharper, clearer, wrinklier.

Maggie shifted on her seat. He was watching her. Smiling. He was happy she was still there. He was cooking for her. So she would stay. Until the precise right moment came to leave. Argh!

Tom switched off the stove and walked around the island with the handle of the frying pan in his hand. He sat down next to her, his thigh sliding against hers, and he left it there. His hair was sexily mussed, his T-shirt creased from its time on the floor of his bedroom, and his eyes… his eyes were filled with nothing but her.

She knew then that he wanted her again. More. She knew it deep in her bones. This man. This handyman. This restoration artist. This expert at bringing new life to broken dreams. This hot to trot, sexy, gorgeous, kind, generous man wanted her.

And she knew that she’d come to him that night, not just because she had wanted to make love to him. She’d come to Tom because she was in love with him.

But now that she’d gone ahead and given him what he wanted would that be it? Was she so very easy to leave that after tonight everything would fade? It had happened before. And not only to her, but by him.

After his sister had died, he’d left his business in the middle of the night. Had le ft behind employees and business partners and people who depended on him. When the going got tough. How was that any different from Carl turning to the calm, easy arms of his law partner when things had become difficult for him at home? Didn’t it take a stronger man to face the bad times head on? To talk them through? To do whatever it took to make everything better?

Oblivious to the battle raging in her mind, Tom picked up apiece of calamari in his fingers, blew on it for a few seconds and held it up to her mouth. Weak-willed and enchanted, Maggie opened her mouth and let it inside. The taste exploded on her tongue, the tangy lemon and searing from the pan adding a biting flavour to the morsel.

That is the most delicious thing in the history of food,’she groaned with her mouth still full.

“Prove it,’Tom said, leaning in to kiss her.

Somehow they ate the whole frying pan full of calamari and finished off the bottle of wine she had brought and, though she was sure it must have all tasted fantastic, Maggie didn’t remember another mouthful. s.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

Tom woke up early and slowly the next morning, caught halfway between a delicious dream and even more mouthwatering memories of the past twelve hours.

He and Maggie had made love again during the night. They’d taken their time. They’d taken their turn. And as Maggie lay falling asleep in his bed he’d never felt so contented in his whole life.

Tom usually slept with one arm tucked beneath his pillow, the other arm atop the covers and one leg draped over the side of the bed, ready to bolt out the door at a moment’s notice if anyone needed him. But that morning he woke curled into a ball, warm, secure, with his arms wrapped tight around…

A pillow. He squeezed. Yep, definitely a pillow. His eyes shot open and he found himself alone in his big bed.

He’d woken up alone in his bed every morning of his life. Even when he’d dated, he’d never had a woman over to his place to stay. Ever. First he’d wanted to keep any stress out of Tess’s life and when he’d moved to Sorrento he’d simply wanted to keep stress out of his own life. But that morning as he woke up alone he felt it.

He raised himself up on to his elbow and looked out his bedroom doorway and into his huge house beyond. But he hadn’t really been expecting to see Maggie perched on his barstool reading the newspaper.

She was gone. The morning had come and, even after all he had given her, all he’d said and done and felt and witnessed, she’d still left. Because that was what she’d been brought up to do.

He could still smell her perfume on his pillow. If he tried hard enough he could still fee her soft skin beneath his roving hands and the taste of lemon and calamari on her lips. But it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough again.

He knew without a doubt that she had left him in a bout of self-protection. She’d left before he’d had the chance to do it to her. Well, if Tom was half the man he hoped he was, if he was worth the trust she had put in him up until that morning, then he was going to damn well run after her.

He pulled himself out of bed and, with a fierce determination lighting his way, he took the fastest shower of his life. For, though she had proven herself quick on her feet, he knew he was quicker.

Especially since he now ha d that so ft sweet voice whispering I love you to him just before he fell asleep as the new soundtrack to his life.

Maggie sat on the edge of her own bed staring at a birds’ nest in the tree outside her window. A mother bird flew in and three little baby birds popped out their heads, waiting for a feed. Summer had arrived, Maggie realized. “When and how had that happened?

Was it really six months ago, at the dawn of winter that she had packed a suitcase and taken the car and the dog and walked away from her city apartment, her work, her so-called friends, her so-called life…

It felt like only yesterday that she had opened her one suitcase to find she had packed enough underwear for three people, but no toiletries. She had packed a thousand T-shirts, jeans galore and a sequined gown which she would never have need for out here, but no shoes.

She remembered collapsing to the floor, in the middle of that great front room, and staring out the window at the huge wall of dark forbidding brush while Smiley sat at her side, nudging her to make sure she was okay.