Billionaire On Her Doorstep
Ally Blake

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my gorgeous husband, Mark,

and our fabulous first ten years together.

Love you always….

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER ONE

TOM CAMPBELL slammed the door of his trusty rusty Ute, not bothering to lock it. Not because he wouldn’t have cared if it was pinched. Or because the area had an unparalleled neighbourhood watch programme. But because it didn’t need to.

The good people of Portsea were more likely to make a steal as doctors or lawyers or footballers than to steal a dilapidated tradesman’s car. For Portsea was the land of high brushwood fences and vast homes with purely ornamental tennis courts and architecturally designed swimming pools posturing magnificently on the tip of the Mornington Peninsula.

Tom hitched his tool belt higher on his hips, threw a pink pillowcase full of old rags over his shoulder and strode through one such brushwood gate graced with the word ‘Belvedere’ burnt into a lump of moss-covered wood.

From the top of the dipping dirt driveway he caught glimpses of white wood and a slate-grey tiled roof, which was not an unusual combination for a house by the beach. What was unusual was that, unlike other properties in Portsea, Belvedere wasn’t manicured to within an inch of its life. In fact it wasn’t manicured at all.

As the foliage cleared, he saw a house that looked as if it had been built over fifty years by half a dozen architects with incompatible visions. At least five levels ambled down the sloping hill towards the cliff’s edge. Most of the original pale green shutters were closed to the morning light and by the deep orange rust on their hinges he guessed many hadn’t been opened in months. The rest was hidden behind what looked to be years of neglected foliage. If the local council had any idea that this place was in such disrepair they’d be up here in a Sorrento second waving their ordinances on beautification and escalating land value.

Many of the homes in Portsea were empty most of the year and needed nothing more than basic upkeep by overpaid full-time gardeners. As a hire-a-handyman he only did odd jobs. But this place…Already he could see it could do with a lick of paint. And the garden could do with some tender love and care, or a backhoe. It was a renovator’s dream. And Tom would be sure to tell Lady Bryce all of that once he had a damn clue what he was doing there in the first place.

Tom smiled to himself. Lady Bryce. That was what the Barclay sisters, the doyennes of Portsea who ran the local haberdashery, had labelled her because she hadn’t yet deigned to frequent their fine establishment.

He’d never met her either, though he had spied her driving down the Sorrento main street in her big black Jeep, large sunglasses and ponytail, eyes ahead, mouth in a determined straight line and fingers clamped to the steering wheel as though for dear life. And when weighing up working for a woman who at first glance seemed pretty highly strung against the time it would take away from his fishing he had considered declining politely. But, as usual, when it came to the crunch, he hadn’t had it in him to say no.

He could picture his cousin Alex laughing at him even considering turning down a damsel in distress, for Alex seemed to think Tom had some sort of knight in shining armour complex. Tom thought Alex ought to mind his own business.

He ducked out of the way of a low-hanging vine, watched his step for fear of turning an ankle and slowed as a magnificent ten-foot-high wood-carved double front door loomed amidst a shower of hanging ferns. The right door was ajar, but guarded by a sizeable old red-brown hound with a great big smiley-face charm with the word ‘Smiley’ written upon it hanging off his thick collar.

‘Smiley, hey?’ Tom said.

The dog lifted its weary head and blinked at him, its floppy ears and sad expression not changing a lick to show that he felt any pleasure at the unexpected company.

Tom reached down and gave the poor old soul a rub on the head. ‘Is the lady of the house about?’

A sudden crashing noise followed by a seriously unlady like spray of words told Tom that the lady of the house certainly was about.

‘Hello,’ he called out, but he was met with silence as sudden as the previous verbal spray had been. Not finding any evidence of a doorbell, he stepped over the melancholic guard dog and walked further inside the entrance to find himself face to face with a square stain on the wall, evidence that once upon a time a picture had hung there, a garden bench that had a mildewed look about it as though it had been relegated from outside, covered in a pile of unopened mail, and yet another fern living its sad, bedraggled life in a bright new ceramic pot.

Another curse word, this one softer than the last, caught his hearing and he followed it like a beacon to find himself in a huge main room with sweeping wooden floors in need of a good polish, lit bright by a series of uncurtained ceiling-to-floor French windows through which he had a thicket-shrouded view of the sun glinting off glorious Port Phillip Bay.

Images piled up in his mind of what he could do with this place if given half a chance. And the whole summer, and an open cheque book, and his old team at his side, and a time machine to take him back ten years…He shook his head to clear away the wool-gathering within.

The room he was in was empty. No furniture. No pictures on the walls. Nothing. Well, nothing bar a twisting cream telephone cord snaking across the middle of the room to the far wall, where a large grey drop cloth, buckets of paint, several flat, square structures draped in fabric, a rickety old table, which held numerous jars of coloured water and different sized paintbrushes, and an easel with a three-by-four-foot canvas slathered in various shades of blue.

And, in front of it all, wearing no shoes, paint-spattered jeans, a T-shirt that might at one time have been white and a navy bandanna covering most of her biscuit-blonde hair was the lady in question.

Tom cleared his throat and called out, ‘Ms Bryce?’

She spun on her heel with such speed that paint from her brush splattered across the all-blue canvas.

Tom winced. It was red paint.

‘Holy heck!’ she blurted in a toned down version of the language from earlier. Her voice was husky, her high cheekbones pink and her pale grey eyes aglow.

Well, what do you know? Tom thought. My lucky day. For Lady Bryce was a knockout. He wished his cousin Alex was there with him now so he could poke him hard in the side and tell him—this is why you never say no to a damsel in distress.

‘Who the hell are you?’ the lady asked, seemingly not nearly as impressed with him. But the day was young. ‘And what are you doing in my house?’

Tom actually thought it pretty obvious who he was considering the family of tools swinging low on his hips. But the lady looked as if she knew how to wield that paintbrush of hers as a lethal weapon so he answered her query.

‘I’m Tom Campbell, your friendly neighbourhood handyman,’ he said, deciding to pull out all the stops in the hopes she wouldn’t use that thing as a javelin. He smiled the smile that had got him out of trouble on any number of occasions and opened his arms wide to show he was not a threat in any way, shape or form. ‘You called a few days ago, asking if I could come around today to fix…something.’

The lady blinked. Several times in quick succession. Long eyelashes swooping against her flushed cheeks. Unfairly long eyelashes, he thought, especially for a woman who continued to send off such fierce keep-away vibes. Then her eyes scooted down to rest on his tools.

Tom clenched his toes in his boots to stop himself from shuffling under her acute gaze.

‘Right,’ she said suddenly, punctuating the sharp word by pointing her skinny paintbrush his way.

And dammit if he didn’t actually flinch!

Tom took a slow, deep breath. He’d let those crazy old Barclay sisters get inside his head so much that he’d actually begun to believe this poor woman could be some kind of nut job, simply because she hadn’t found the need for haberdashery, whatever haberdashery might be.

So far nothing worse had happened than red splatters on her picture. So far she seemed merely antisocial at worst. And at best? Unimpressed by him in particular. Lucky him.

‘Tom Campbell. The handyman,’ she repeated. ‘Okay.’ She unconsciously twirled the offensive paintbrush in her fingers like a cheerleader’s baton before turning back to her work-table, choosing a water pot at random and swooshing the brush in the dirty liquid.

She glanced briefly at her big blue painting, saw the red splatters and swore again. It seemed she wasn’t the type to pull her punches because she had company.

Tom felt his cheeks tugging into a smile. If the Barclay sisters knew her penchant for French he was quite sure they would drop the ‘Lady’ moniker quick smart.

With a shake of her head, she tiptoed off the drop cloth, scrunching her toes as she wiped her bare feet at the edge, and moved to join him.

She walked with a sort of natural elegance, like a ballet dancer, heel to toe, long legs fluid. Her skin had an almost translucent appearance and her clothes hung off her as if she had lost weight quickly and had not found the time or inclination to put it back on.

She was pretty tall too. She must have been near five-ten. Tom drew himself up to his full six feet and one half inch to compensate. And though her eyes were grey, when she wasn’t glaring at him they held hints of the same pale blue found in the clear spring sky behind her.

She pulled the navy bandanna from her hair and used it to wipe her hands, then tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans. Next she yanked a hair-band from her ponytail and shook the straight length loose until it hung long and dishevelled halfway down her back, before gathering it all and folding it into a messy low bun.

This little act was merely a habit, he was sure. Her movements were fast, spare and not meant to impress. But they impressed him. In fact he found the whole hair shaking move pretty darned satisfying.

Or maybe that was the point after all. Maybe that was how she got her kicks—conning local workmen into her web for a quickie before tumbling them off the cliff on to the jagged rocks behind her secluded home. Perhaps her infrequent trips into town at the wheel of her suburban tank were to buy quicklime and shovels.

She strode past him and into the massive kitchen and, despite his lively imaginings, Tom followed. There were no scrawled pictures on the fridge. No post-its or shopping lists. No flowers on the window ledge. No jars full of mismatched utensils as were to be found in most of the homes he worked in. According to the Barclay sisters, she’d lived here for months, but the place looked as if she’d just moved in and hadn’t unpacked all her boxes.

Still, though he had as much fun seeing inside other people’s homes as the next guy, if she didn’t have a job for him in the next ten seconds he was going to walk. It really was a glorious day outside and the fish would no doubt be biting…

‘What would you like me to do for you, Ms Bryce?’

She switched on the kettle, then turned and leaned her backside against the sink and stared him down, her grey eyes shrewd, distant and enormous.

‘Maggie,’ she said. ‘Firstly I would like you to call me Maggie.’

He nodded. ‘Only if you call me Tom.’ Having been brought up to believe that a proper introduction required it, Tom reached out to shake hands.

Maggie reached forward herself and gave his hand a brisk pump. Her palm was neither soft nor smooth. Her lean hand rasped against his, her calloused palm creating a strange sensation against his own work-roughened mitt.

Nevertheless, he kept a hold a moment longer than he really ought. As he soon found himself caught in a wave of her perfume.

For, of all the scents to choose from in the big wide world, she wore dark and delicious Sonia Rykiel. He was sure of it. One Christmas a cute blonde at the perfume counter of a department store in Sydney had convinced him to buy it for his sister. But, considering Tess had been bright and vivacious, with not a lick of the dark and delicious about her personality, it had been a running joke between them that she’d never worn the stuff. But on Maggie Bryce he could have sworn the balmy scent wasn’t worn so much as radiating from her pores.

Despite the thorns, and the colourful vocabulary, and the bohemian lack of furniture, she was seriously lovely. And he was definitely loveable. As far as he saw it, they were a summer romance just waiting to happen. All he had to do was convince her.

‘So you’re living all the way out here alone?’ he asked, gradually letting her go.

‘I have Smiley,’ she said, reclaiming her hand and crossing her arms. ‘You no doubt met him at the front door.’

‘He’s an interesting variety of male companionship,’ he said. ‘I’ll give him that.’

She snorted elegantly, though Tom’d never known it possible to do so. Then, looking him dead in the eye, she said, ‘I’ll take Smiley over the rest any day.’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Who wouldn’t?’

Okay, so there must have been any number of women who thought him not their type; during his past life in Sydney when he’d at one time been seen as the catch of the town, and again since moving to Sorrento where he was now regarded as contentedly uncatchable. But at least he’d never had one look him the eye and as much as said, Don’t even think about it. Until now.

‘Smiley obviously can’t wield a set of tools with any sort of finesse or I am beginning to believe you would never have called me for help,’ he said.

‘And Smiley has already had a good talking to about that, I assure you.’

Now that he knew how, Tom snorted elegantly himself, despite his bruised pride. For beneath the cool demeanour this one was spunky. And Tom liked nothing if not a spunky woman.

The kettle boiled and she blithely ignored him while she set to making coffee for them both.

Perhaps it wasn’t him per se; perhaps she wasn’t into blue-collar men. Women living on their own in Portsea clearly fell into two categories: those who looked straight through men dressed like him and those who saw him as the perfect antidote to whatever white-collar dullard had made them rich and single in the first place.

If that was her problem, he could always accidentally drop an ATM statement on her floor so that she could see he wasn’t quite the unfortunate he seemed to be. Maybe that would perk her up a bit. Clear that furrowed brow. Create a cheeky sparkle in those impassive grey eyes.

Unless of course she wasn’t his type either. Now that he thought about it, she was pretty tall, and he liked putting his arm around a woman’s shoulders without pulling a muscle. Too blunt, where he’d rather have charming subtlety. Too cool, where he preferred everything in his life to be warm—his days, his nights, the woman in his arms during his days and nights. Yep, it was probably for the best if he just left the lady well enough alone.

‘Are you available for longer jobs?’ she asked.

She passed him a hot black coffee and pressed the sugar shaker an inch his way, then looked at him beneath her long lashes as she pursed her lips and blew across the top of her own mug.

‘I’m on call for a number of businesses around. Okay, on call might be putting it a little too formally. In the phone book is more factual. Though the Barclay sisters will brook no excuses if they need a light bulb changed.’

Maggie swished a hand across her face as though flapping away a particularly unimportant fly. ‘It’s not that big a job, I’m sure,’ she said.

Tom begged to differ. Belvedere was a colossal job waiting to happen. The ceiling of the kitchen could do with being lifted another two feet at least. Add a skylight and it would feel twice as big. Tear away the thick, dusty concave mouldings and he’d put money on the fact that the original cornices would be revealed beneath. ‘What sort of job?’ he asked.

‘I can’t get down to the beach,’ Maggie said, cutting his flight of fancy off at the knees.

‘The beach?’

‘The backyard is utterly overgrown,’ she continued. ‘Brambles, vines and brush so thick and so tall and so broad you can’t see beyond.’

‘Brambles,’ he repeated. Thick, intertwined, thorny, scratchy brambles. Excellent.

‘Right. Brambles. Remember that really hot day last week, so still there was not a sea breeze to speak of?’

Tom nodded. He remembered feeling as if spring was near its end. Soon the tourists would swarm the place, his phone would ring off the hook and he and his little boat wouldn’t have any time alone for a good three months.

‘I had it in mind that day to find out what sort of private beach this place might have,’ Maggie said, ‘and I discovered there was no way through without a chainsaw or a pole vault. You may have noticed that I am living here with the bare basics, thus I had neither instrument handy.’

Attractive, spunky and a self-deprecating sense of humour to boot? Tom leant his hip against the bench and cocked his left foot against the cupboard door, wondering if he had been too hasty in deciding she was too tall for him. Besides which, Portsea and next door Sorrento in which he lived were small and mostly transient communities, so it would be sensible to get to know her better. In case he one day needed to borrow a cup of sugar.

‘Right. A beach, you say. So how long have you lived here now?’ he asked.

‘I moved here from Melbourne about six months ago. Give or take,’ she said.

Well, now, that wasn’t so hard for her, was it? That was decidedly social. Tom made a move to ask a follow-up question but she got there first.

‘Shall we?’ she asked, pushing away from the bench.

Right. Now she was in a hurry.

Maggie led him out the back door, which was held open by a massive red earthenware pot, on to the shady veranda which ran the length of the back of the house and down a set of rickety wooden steps that opened up to a small paved courtyard as heavy with weeds as the front walk.

And beyond that? A thirty metre wide wall of thick, sharp, decade-old scrub, as tall as two men. Tom couldn’t even tell how deep he might have to dig before he hit the cliff face, or where any path or steps down to the beach might even begin. If there in fact was a beach there at all.

‘Nice ferns,’ he said to stop himself from saying the rest, as he had to duck under another row of bedraggled plants in hanging pots.

‘They came with the house,’ she said. ‘You may have noticed I’m not much of a gardener.’

Noticed? He’d become pretty darned intimate with a whole range of plants on his way in. He was certain he would be finding leaves and twigs in numerous nooks and crannies when he stripped for his shower later that night.

‘I noticed,’ was all he said, especially since Maggie had now decided to be friendly. He had to think of the future possibility of sugar after all.

‘I’m resigned to the fact that I have a black thumb,’ she said. She held her right thumb up between them and it told a different story, covered as it was in blue paint. ‘Okay, so it’s in fact a blue thumb. What does that mean?’

‘Perhaps you are doomed to breed depressed plants rather than dead ones.’

And at that, for the first time since he’d laid eyes on her, Maggie smiled. Her eyes gleamed, her cheeks bloomed into rosy mounds and she even showed a hint of neat white teeth with the tiniest of overbites. The fact that Tom had always had a thing for overbites was not lost on him.

‘I think you might be right,’ she said, the overbite sadly disappearing as she brought her features back under strict control. She flicked another glance at his tool belt. ‘You can do gardens, I hope?’

‘I can. And I have. I am a verified genius at mowing and pulling weeds. I’ve even fixed my fair share of cracked pool pavers.’ He took another step towards the seemingly impenetrable wall of green and fingered a sharp-edged leaf. ‘But now’s my chance to fulfil the lifelong dream to use a scythe.’

He glanced sideways in time to see Maggie’s gaze flicker to his. A small muscle moved in her cheek and he thought himself about to be on the receiving end of another smile. Another vision of her two front teeth tucking over her terribly attractive full bottom lip. But he was mistaken.

‘I’m glad to oblige,’ she said with a small shrug of her slight shoulders. ‘It’s not often a person gets to be involved in the culmination of another’s lifelong dream.’

Tom grinned and Maggie frowned.

‘So, how long do you think it will take?’ she asked.

‘I’ll have more of an idea by the end of the day,’ he said.

‘Right. Then I shall leave you to it,’ she said. ‘There’s some sort of shed around the side of the house. Feel free to see if there is anything in there you can use. No scythe, though, I’m afraid.’

‘No scythe and no pole vault? How do you survive out here?’ Tom asked, smiling himself, showing her how it was done, seeing if he could again encourage hers out to play, but all he got for his trouble was a cool grey stare.

‘Tremendous amounts of coffee seem to do the trick,’ she said, deadpan. She blinked at him once more, those long curling lashes making themselves known deep down in his gut.

He was absolutely certain she was deciding whether she really wanted the likes of him hanging around her place.

Her frown lines diminished and he determined she had made the decision that she did. Want him. Around the place.

Then, without a further word, Maggie Bryce took her long legs, cool eyes and adorable overlapping teeth back upstairs, leaving Tom, his tools and his overactive imagination to their own devices.

CHAPTER TWO

A FEW hours later, Maggie glanced down at the mug of Jamaican Roast perched in between her water jars to find it had become paint dust swimming in cold dregs.

She moved to the edge of her drop cloth, wiped her feet—which was more a decade-old habit than any intention to keep the floor paint-free—refixed her hair and then shuffled into the kitchen to make another coffee.

As she waited for the kettle to boil, she leant her backside against the kitchen bench and stretched the crick in her neck. The tendon along the top of her right shoulder was aching. Back in Melbourne she would have taken a quick trip to Maurice for a life-affirming massage. But back in Melbourne she had been able to afford Maurice. Here, with her single bank account dwindling to near drastic levels while she paid the colossal mortgage on the big house around her, she had to make do with a heat pack at the end of the day.

She started at the anomalous sound of thrashing foliage breaching the unvarying Portsea peace and quiet. At first she thought it was Smiley out adventuring. Then she remembered the stranger in her midst. She turned and, standing on tiptoe, looked through the kitchen window. But he must have moved somewhere under the house.

When she’d found Tom Campbell’s name in the phone book she’d half expected some wizened, semi-retired jack-of-all-trades working to earn extra bingo money. She’d fully expected wizened old Tom Campbell to take one look at her brambles, run a sorry arm across his wrinkled forehead and claim the way through an impossibility.

She’d been prepared for that eventuality, ready for it to be the last in a long line of signs that her experimental life at the beach had come to an end. The other clear signs being no money left in the bank, no brilliance happening on the canvas and not even the slightest sense that she would ever fit in, no matter how hard she wished she could.

What she hadn’t been prepared for was Tom Campbell himself. He’d surprised the heck out of her by actually being there when he said he would, and also by being the complete opposite of wizened. He was in his mid-thirties with dark hair in need of a cut. He was broad, strapping, in shockingly good health. And had the kind of smile built to warm the coldest heart. Then he’d further compounded her surprise by taking one look at her impossible brambles and saying, ‘Can do’.

The sight of that thirty metre wide wall of thorns should have sent him running in terror. The guy must have needed a pay cheque worse than she did.

She bit at her bottom lip, not all that sure if she was relieved or disappointed that his can do attitude had given her decision time a stay of execution. She was sure it would cost a considerable amount to pull apart the great twisted wall of leaves and branches blocking her from the promise of—what? A few jagged rocks? Maybe, if she was lucky, a skinny patch of sand? But if he could get through the wall to the virgin beach beyond, then she could stretch out her finances and her resolve until then.

The kettle boiled and, with a fresh mug warming her tender, wood-scratched palms, Maggie slipped out of the kitchen and through the back door. She eased over to the edge of the balcony, rested her forearms along the brittle railing and looked one floor below to where her handyman was once again hard at work.

At some stage that morning he had ditched his sweater. His soft grey T-shirt, now drenched in sweat, twisted around his torso as he used his substantial might to heave threads of dead vines from the mass of brush. His tool belt lay neatly across the bottom step next to a lumpy pillowcase with a rag poking out the top.

Maggie’s cheek twitched as she leant her chin on her palm and thought there was something to be said about the confidence of a man who took a pink pillowcase to a worksite.

Smiley ambled up behind her and nuzzled against her hand. ‘Hey, buddy, how’s it hangin’?’ she asked.

Smiley looked up at her in bemusement.

‘Now I know it’s not often that your big city guard dog instincts have had to come into play down here, but how about next time you warn me when we have a stranger at the front door? Deal?’

Smiley slumped to the floor on top of her feet and Maggie knew that was all the answer she was going to get.

The scent of the Jamaican Roast tickled her nose and with an enthusiast’s satisfied sigh she took a long leisurely sip, relishing the feeling of the hot liquid scorching her tongue and throat. Her stomach thanked her. But it needed more.

She glanced again over the railing. It would take some time, days even, to clear the wilderness choking her backyard, even once he had a chainsaw. And though the guy was an accomplished flirt, and she had no intention of flirting back, that didn’t mean she oughtn’t to be civil.

She would bring him lunch. Nothing flash. A plain cheese and tomato sandwich would surely show she wasn’t interested in anything he had to offer besides his skilful hands. Which were only welcome in her garden. On her plants.

‘Inside,’ she said to Smiley. ‘I must be more famished than I realise.’

Ten minutes later, Maggie walked down her wooden back steps with the first meal she had made for someone other than herself or Smiley in nigh on six months. Even Freya, Sandra and Ashleigh brought their own food when they came over for their regular play date each Wednesday. And sensibly so. Cheese and tomato on white was about as gastronomically adventurous as Maggie could be.

Tom turned at the sound of creaking steps. There were tracks in his dark hair where his fingers had pushed his too long fringe out of his eyes.

‘I figured you might be hungry,’ Maggie said.

‘Starving,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’ He breathed in deep and stood taller, stretching his arms over his head, arms jam-packed with sinewy muscles.

Maggie cleared her throat and turned away to put his sandwich and cup of black coffee on the step above his tool belt. She was all prepared to shoot a farewell wave and jog back up the stairs when she noticed a trail of dirt smeared across his shiny forehead. She seriously considered leaving him with a smudge on his face for the rest of the day. But his spoiled aesthetic was too much of a shame for her artist’s eye to leave be.

‘You’ve got a smear,’ she mumbled, waving a hand in his general direction. ‘Right across your forehead. Dirt. Grass. General mess.’

He shrugged, his hands dropping to hang casually at his sides. ‘It won’t be the last of the day. This is the kind of job that leaves its mark on a man. As is yours, I see.’

He glanced downward and Maggie did the same to find her bare feet covered in splotches of blue paint with a dash of that blasted red thrown in for good measure. She wiggled her toes back up at herself. Toes that had once been pedicured on a weekly basis now had nails so short they looked like the feet of a rambunctious teenager.

‘Occupational hazard,’ she said, tucking the filthier of her feet behind the other.

‘Not such a bad one—getting dirty,’ he said. ‘At least we don’t have to worry about things like hypertension and stress like they do up in the city.’ He smiled at her, as though awaiting a response.

Maggie blinked at him. He wanted to chat?

She reminded herself that she had a very much unfinished painting upstairs awaiting her return. But then again it would be rude to just cut and run…

‘High blood pressure they can keep,’ she said. ‘But I do miss the stress of living in the city.’

‘Why’s that?’ he asked.

‘Without a strict deadline to keep me focused, I give in to distraction all too easily. I have been known to take navel gazing to the heights of an art form.’

Tom’s dark hazel eyes skittered down her front to land upon the general region of the navel in question.

To distract herself from the ridiculous need to tug at her T-shirt, she blurted, ‘And I desperately miss the traffic noise at night. The steady whoosh below my apartment window. I still haven’t found a way to fall asleep before two in the morning without it. My friend Freya seems to think I should thank my lucky stars that I’ve replaced car fumes for sea air. But I’m not sure it’s natural for a coffee-drinking, night owl workaholic to transform into a late-sleeping, star-gazing, shell-collecting yoga zealot overnight.’

When she stopped to take a breath Maggie realised she had gone a mile further into her personal zone than she had ever meant to go. But, rather than looking at her as if she was some kind of chump in need of therapy, as Freya did when she said such things, Tom nodded.

‘I was like that for the first few weeks after I moved here from Sydney.’

‘You’re from Sydney?’ When his right eyebrow disappeared beneath his fringe, she pressed her lips together and tilted her nose a little higher in the air.

Tom gave a small bow. ‘Born and bred. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Though I’ve been here for a while now, so the sand and salt has permeated my skin for good. Give it time.’ His eyes crinkled kindly. ‘You’ll get there too.’

Maggie’s cheeks warmed. Was it that obvious that salt and sand had yet to make it on to her all-time top one hundred list of favourite things? And was it that obvious that she wished more than anything in the world that they had? For it would mean that she really could change the patterns of her life?

‘Were you in the same line of work in Sydney?’ she asked, deliberately changing the subject.

Tom paused, but only briefly. ‘In a manner of speaking. I worked in restorations.’

‘Of houses?’

‘Some,’ he said. ‘At first. Then we expanded and eventually concentrated on the restorations of heritage listed buildings.’

‘Lots of those in Sydney,’ she said. ‘Not so many here. So why did you move?’ Okay, so now she was asking a heck of a lot of questions. But that ‘you’ll get there’ comment had stuck in her craw. And, like a dog with a bone she couldn’t leave it be.

‘We used to spend our summers here when we were kids, and my cousin Alex still lives down the road in Rye,’ he said.

‘So far as I can tell, people around here would rather knock an old place down than renovate,’ she said. ‘Belvedere might well have gone that way if I hadn’t bought her when I did. So there can’t be much call for restoration guys.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I don’t do that sort of thing any more.’

‘Why not?’

He paused again and she noticed that he was no longer smiling all that much. But by then it was too late.

‘I changed a lot—’ he said ‘—my trade, my location, my lifestyle, right after my little sister, Tess, died.’

Maggie’s solar plexus seized up and a small ‘Oh,’ escaped her lips. Suddenly she wished she could take it all back—the conversation, the sandwich, the phone call asking him to come out and clear her brambles.

She waved a hand in front of her face until he became lost within the fast shifting movement of her open fingers. ‘Tom, I’m sorry, it’s none of my business. I—’

‘It’s okay,’ he said, shrugging, but even after knowing him for all of five minutes she could see that his inner light had dimmed. ‘The funny thing is, if she was here now in my stead she would have bent your ear until it hurt. Although she had the same skill with a paintbrush as you have with plants, she adored all things art. Funny, funny girl…At any rate, when she died it was an easy decision to come here, even though the call for restorations wasn’t all that significant.’

Maggie had no idea what to say. Knowing more about the guy than she had ever meant to unearth, she shot him a tight-lipped smile, flattened her heel against the first step and made a move to retreat before things became any more uncomfortable, when he said, ‘You want my advice for a good night’s sleep?’

Her foot stopped moving. ‘If you think it’ll help.’

‘You just have to give yourself over to the sounds of the ocean—the seagulls, the waves hitting the shore, the distant horns as ships pass one another in the night. And, when you do, you’ll wonder why you haven’t been a beachcomber all your life.’

His smile came creeping back, brightening his dark eyes and adding oodles of character to his too handsome face. Sceptical, about a good many things, Maggie shook her head. ‘It can’t be that easy.’

‘You know people actually buy CDs of ocean waves to help them sleep?’ Tom asked.

‘Best of luck to them,’ she said.

At her determined mulishness Tom laughed. Maggie wasn’t all that surprised that he had a natural, throaty, infectious laugh. For she was coming to see that he was living proof that the Wednesday girls were right. If Tom was any indication, maybe this place, with its peace and quiet and fresh air and sunshine, really did hold the elixir for a long and happy life.

A drop of sweat ran down Tom’s face. His arm came up, blocking her view and wiping the drop away. But when his hand dropped she found herself looking into a pair of smiling hazel eyes, filled with unambiguous invitation.

Maggie swallowed. Hard. But she couldn’t look away.

Then Tom took a sudden step towards her.

It was so unexpected that Maggie flinched, and abruptly, so that the back of her heel whacked against the edge of the step, making a horrid crunching sound that seemed to reverberate in the sudden deep well of silence.

The poor guy withdrew, hands raised in the international sign of surrender. ‘I was just going for the sandwich, I promise,’ he said.

Maggie would have kicked herself if only her heel wasn’t already so sore. Instead she dug her fingernails into her palms as she willed her body to rock back on to flat feet.

‘I know. Of course. I’m—Sorry, I was startled because I was away with the fairies. Another occupational hazard.’ She stepped aside, leaving the way between the man and his food clear.

He moved, more slowly this time, picked up his meal and backed away as though he knew instinctively just how much space she needed in order to breathe. He bit off a quarter of the sandwich in one go. Then, after washing it down with a healthy slug of coffee, he leaned against the canted railing, shook his boyish fringe from his eyes and breathed out what sounded to Maggie like a sigh of contentment.

Envy of his every laid-back action arced around her as she tried to remember how long it had been since she’d done anything in contentment. The pile of half-finished canvases stacked against the wall in her great room reminded her that it had been months and months. Even since long before she had arrived in Portsea.

And then on that stinking hot day a week before, she had received a letter from her agent, Nina, asking when exactly she might have something new to show—read sell.

Maggie had sat curled up on a chair on her back veranda, playing with Smiley’s big soft ears and staring through the top of her backyard growth at the hazy horizon beyond, and it had occurred to her for the first time that day that she might never produce anything worthy of selling again. Her vibrant, abstract portraits with their distinctive lashing swathes of primary colours and movement and mirth might well be a thing of the past, for now all she seemed able to produce were nondescript, unintelligible smudges of blue.

Even the pressure of Nina’s letter, which hinted broadly at a parting of the ways if she didn’t produce and soon, hadn’t provided her with the stimulation she required, for out here it was physically impossible to build up a rich head of steam. Out here she needed something different to pull her out of her professional doldrums. Something special. She needed the possibility of a pure, unspoilt beach at the bottom of her cliff.

And for that she needed Tom Campbell. And his muscles. And his can do attitude. And his bright sunshiny contentment, no matter that it touched a raw nerve. That sounded like a plan.

She breathed in deep through her nose. ‘If you need any more coffee, help yourself,’ she said, backing up a step. ‘Ditto on the contents of my fridge.’

As Maggie headed up the stairs, she was caught in a delicious wave of hot aftershave, hot coffee and hot sunshine rolling in from the coast.

And somehow that very mix of scents only served to remind her how quickly a person’s best laid plans could unravel before their very eyes.

At the end of a long hot day grappling blackberries, lantana and what seemed like every other heinous weed known to man, Tom dusted himself off, collected his rags, tools and sweater and found his new employer in the corner of the great room, staring at her blue canvas with such concentration that he thought she might well find the answer to life, the universe and everything within its lumps and weaves.

His back muscles hurt. His forearms were scratched to hell. He was hot, filthy and lathered in sweat. Right then he’d gladly put life, the universe and everything on hold for the sake of a shower, a square meal and a cold beer.

As he neared, he saw that the red splatters from earlier had been cleared away. No, not cleared, but diffused into the blue, giving shade and depth where there had previously been none. He also realised that Maggie was humming.

Tom took another step, his boot-clad foot rolling heel, instep, toe, not yet ready to be discovered.

It was such a subtle sound it was more of a tuneful breath than a hum, but he was sure he recognised the song. Was it something classical? He was more of a classic rock fan himself, but he knew the tune. Or maybe he only recognised the feeling behind the husky, sonorous, faraway note threading from Maggie’s throat and curling itself out into the room like the thin tendrils of smoke from a torch singer’s cigarette.

Tom breathed it in, but it was too late before he realised his intake of breath was louder than her subdued singing.

Maggie turned from the hips, a skinny, dry paintbrush clenched between her teeth like a rose for a tango dancer.

‘I’m done for the day,’ he said, his right foot cocked guiltily.

She slid the paintbrush from between her teeth and blinked several times before he was entirely certain she remembered who he was and what he was doing there.

How’s that for gratitude? he thought, placing his right foot and his sensibilities firmly on the ground.

‘The backyard,’ he said by way of a reminder, ‘will take me over a week. Probably closer to two. And you were right about the chainsaw. We’ll also need a skip to dispose of the mess so the spores won’t bring it all back again by the end of the summer. My cousin Alex owns the hardware store in Rye, so I’ll talk to him tomorrow and then I can give you a formal quote.’

‘That’s fine,’ she said, her bare feet twisting until her legs caught up with her hips. ‘Go ahead. Take the two weeks. Order the equipment. Do whatever it takes.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want to wait for my quote before deciding?’

‘Positive. If you think you can do it, I want to go ahead. But if you would prefer I pay you upfront, I can give you some cash now,’ she said, her gaze shifting to the edge of his face on the last couple of words. ‘I have enough. Plenty.’

She made a move to step off her drop cloth but then stopped just as her toes scrunched around the edge. Her eyes shifted again until she looked him in the eye, and out of nowhere her sharp edges softened until all he could think of was mussed hair and long lean lines and winsome entreaty.

Tom was infinitely glad in that moment that she hadn’t yet figured out that he was the man who couldn’t say no. If she asked him to work through the night he wondered whether he might just turn around and head back out to the scratchy leaves.

‘Oh no,’ she said, blushing madly. ‘I used the last of my cash on paint yesterday. Can I write you a cheque?’

‘A cheque will be fine,’ he said, his voice unusually gruff. He cleared his throat. ‘There’s no rush, though. You can hardly skip out on me. I know where you live.’

In order to ease some of the unexpected tension from the room, Tom winked and tried his charming smile on for size. But Maggie just blinked some more, those big grey eyes deep and unfathomable. If anything, she drew further inside herself, scrunching her toes into the grey sheet beneath her feet.

Tom had a sudden vision of Tess laughing herself silly at him—grinning and winking and flirting and making plans to wow the beguilingly aloof newcomer with his wit and charm—while the beguilingly aloof newcomer looked at him as if he was a piece of lint clogging what was surely a very nice view of the navel she so liked gazing at.

And Tess would have been in the right. The summer romance he had quite happily envisaged all morning wasn’t going to happen. For Maggie smelled of Sonia Rykiel. And he smelled of sweat. She was a city girl doing an abominable job of pretending to be a beach girl, and he was a beach boy trying his best to pretend he’d never had a life anywhere else.

Her drop cloth said it all. She had no intention of leaving her mark—not on this house, not on this town and not on some cocky handyman flitting through her life.

‘Ten a.m. tomorrow okay?’ he asked, taking a step back.

‘Ten a.m. Ten p.m. I’ll be here, chained to my painting, trying to prise Smiley off my feet,’ she said. Then from nowhere her cheek suddenly creased into the beginnings of a rueful grin and for a brief second she was engaging, not all that aloof, and downright gorgeous.

He took another deliberate step towards the front door. ‘See you then, Maggie.’

‘See you then, Tom.’

Tom turned and walked out the fern-laden front entrance, past the saddest-looking dog in the world and through the crumbling ruins of her front yard; he had the feeling he would never forget any odd detail of meeting Maggie Bryce, no matter how she might wish him to do so.

CHAPTER THREE

THE next morning Tom parked at the back of Maggie’s house on the dot of ten, the tray of his truck filled with all sorts of weird and wonderful appliances borrowed from Alex’s hardware store.

In a repeat of the day before, Smiley lifted his head for a scratch behind the ear when Tom met him at the front door, and inside Lady Bryce was to be found staring at her painting.

Overnight Tom had managed to talk down the potency of the impact she’d made on him, putting it all down to becoming overcome with paint fumes. But seeing her in the flesh again, he had to admit that, despite the insomnia and lack of furniture, and issues the likes of which a determinedly casual guy like he had no intention of getting mixed up in, she truly was an enchanting soul.

She was dressed down again, this time in a yellow hooded top and dark brown cargoes, her dust-coloured hair pulled back into a messy ponytail and held back by a red bandanna, but beneath it all she had the posture of a princess.

Add to that her dark and delicious scent that bombarded him the second he walked inside her front door, and Tom knew that if she ever let down that prickly guard of hers for longer than ten seconds over a stale cheese and tomato sandwich, Lady Bryce would be some package.

His gaze slid sideways to the big blue painting. To his eyes it was exactly how he remembered it. No progress had been made.

He’d never tried to paint a picture since primary school, but he knew enough about creativity to know there was more to a lack of inspiration than the need for a deadline. Having to produce a finished painting of a tree by the end of class hadn’t made him an artist.

But then again Maggie was different. Different from him, anyway. Didn’t she crave male company besides that of a glum canine? And something else to drink besides coffee? And furniture? Didn’t she crave furniture? Why did she have no furniture?

The more the questions about Maggie mounted, the more he wanted to know the answers. All the answers. Like how she could still be so dumbfoundingly immune to his smiles and why, despite her reserve, he still cared.

‘Morning, Maggie,’ he said a mite louder than necessary.

When she spun to face him he was pleased to see that it only took about a second for her to remember exactly who he was.

‘Oh, good morning, Tom.’ She had dark smudges of grey beneath her eyes and if she wasn’t in a different outfit he might have guessed that she’d pulled an all-nighter. Though the three coffee mugs lined up behind her water jars told a different story. ‘How did you go with your supplies?’

‘Great. I’m all ready to make a go of it.’

‘Coffee?’ she asked, already moving off her drop cloth and towards the long skinny kitchen.

‘You bet.’

‘Did you get the chance to formalise the quote?’ she asked as she tucked her bandanna into the back pocket of her cargo pants, shook out her long ponytail and retied it, scrubbed her hands clean, then put the kettle on to boil.

They agreed on a time limit—two weeks, and a price—enough to keep Tom in hot dinners for the next month even if the ocean ran dry of fish, and enough that he noticed a rapid widening of Maggie’s soft grey eyes despite the fact that she didn’t hesitate to reach straight for her cheque book from an otherwise bare kitchen drawer.

Tom held up both hands. ‘How about we save all that for the last day?’

Her eyes narrowed, as though trying to figure out how he was planning to screw her over.

‘It’s probably not the best business practice,’ he said, ‘but I’ve found it helps keeps relations friendly. This way I get treated like a helpful guest rather than having to deal with the odd situation of working for a friend.’

‘If you’re sure you’d prefer it that way,’ she said, turning away from him, closing the cheque book and sliding it into the empty kitchen drawer.

‘I do. After all’s said and done, we exchange a discreet envelope and a handshake before organising the next bowling outing or dinner invite.’

Her eyes widened ever so slightly. Did she think he was hitting on her? Had he accidentally given himself an avenue to do so?

Tom wondered what Maggie might say if he made the dinner invite suggestion concrete. Maybe something casual at his place with another couple to keep it relaxed. Alex and Marianne were always good for a laugh when you could get them away from their brood of five girls under the age of eight.

A heavy furry lump landed upon Tom’s toes. And the moment was gone.

‘Smiley, come on,’ Maggie said, clicking her fingers at the despondent-looking creature. But Smiley wasn’t silly. He could play deaf with the best of them.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her cheek twitching. ‘You could try giving him a little shove.’

But Smiley let his chin slump on to his crossed front legs with a great rush of air streaming from his nostrils. He wasn’t going anywhere.

‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘He spends half his day sitting on my toes. He looks miserable but really he’s just a big mushy bundle of love.’

Tom smiled. ‘It’s fine.’

She took a step closer and clicked madly at the dog. And over the scent of Smiley, Tom once more caught a wave of Maggie’s perfume. For a woman who wore not a lick of makeup and so clearly didn’t feel the need to dress up for him, the aesthetic nature of that elegant scent was an anomaly.

And anomalies were intriguing. Even to the most invulnerable of men. Search and discover—it was as instinctive to the human male as breathing.

Maybe inviting her to dinner wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. But without the chaperons. Candlelight. No, moonlight. On his back deck. Fresh calamari, barbecued. And a cold liberating beer to wash it all down…

Maggie moved closer still, bent down to her haunches and looked Smiley in the eye. Though Tom was sure the dog knew it for the ruse it was, he hauled his great hulking form off the floor and padded over to his mistress for a big cuddle before heading over to sit in the kitchen doorway.

The walking talking anomaly in question stood, and suddenly there was nothing between the two of them bar a metre of space and warm swirls of hot spring sea air. He saw the moment Maggie knew it too. Her mouth slowly turned downwards and she thrust her hands in her back pockets.

Tom’s instincts hollered at him to hunt and gather. To smile, to flirt, to grow a backbone and simply ask her out. What was so important about furniture, really?

But every lick of sense in his body told him to leave well enough alone and get back to work. Despite the bare feet and mussed hair, this woman wasn’t in the same place he was. She was haughty and urbane, all sharp edges and scepticism. His head knew that would hardly make for a fun date. If only his impulses were half as rational.

Tom downed the remainder of his black coffee in one hit, thus negating every scent bar the strong roasted beans. He rinsed the mug and left it upside down on the sink and moved out of the skinny kitchen.

‘What time would you like lunch?’ Maggie called out before he got as far as the back door.

He turned to find her standing in the kitchen doorway, her long length leaning against the door jamb, her fingers unconsciously running up and down Smiley’s forehead and curling about his ears.

And though he had a bunch of ham and avocado sandwiches, fruit and a block of dark chocolate in a cooler in his truck, Tom found himself saying, ‘Whenever you’re having yours.’

As he walked down the back steps he didn’t look back. He didn’t need to. He could feel her guarded grey eyes watching him all the way.

Maggie’s work in progress was going nowhere fast. And considering she spent all day every day looking out over one of the most inspirational views any artist could hope to find—well, bar whomever Michelangelo based the David upon—it was frustrating as hell.

True she hadn’t painted a landscape in years. Her talent had always run to portraits. From the first picture she’d ever painted for her dad when she was four years old to grade school art class, to her art school scholarship days, to her first showing and onwards.

But when she’d first moved to Portsea she hadn’t been able to shrug off a few particular faces that she had no intention of painting. So she’d decided to try her hand at something new, something innocuous, something safe: landscapes. But so far they all had the emotional impact of a pot plant.

Rubbing a hand over her tight neck muscles, she stepped off her cloth and let her body flop forward until her hands were touching the ground. As the blood rushed to her head, mercifully blocking out the faces therein, Maggie heard a strain of something familiar tickle at the back of her mind.

She stood up so fast she almost blacked out, but the sound was still there. Music. She’d heard music.

Drawn to the sound like scattered iron filings to a magnet, she followed it down the back steps and around the side of the house, to find Tom sitting on the flat bed of his truck with a grindstone in one hand and a set of garden shears in the other. A small black radio roosted atop the cab of his truck, blaring out an early INXS song.

Maggie stayed in the shadows, watching as Tom sharpened the shears, the muscles along his back clenching with a measured rhythm. There was nothing rushed about the way he worked, as though his time was his alone.

She only wished she could be that laid-back. She’d tried, really she had, going with the Wednesday girls to wine and cheese clubs and early morning t’ai chi on the beach. But all she’d wanted to do afterwards was indulge in a healthy dose of road rage or to scream at the referees at a footy match to relieve the tension build-up in her head.

Freya had suggested she ought to blame it all on her deadbeat dad and that hypnotherapy would help. Maggie thought it more likely she was suffering from withdrawal from the little cherry and white chocolate muffins she used to buy from the café below her apartment every Sunday.

But there was Tom, a Sydney guy oozing a kind of laid-back charm that Maggie had believed she could never achieve even after a million years of t’ai chi. So how did he come to be that relaxed? Melbourne was a challenging city, but Sydney was ten times so.

Unless of course she was thinking about it all wrong. Maybe he’d always been mellow and had never quite had it in him to run the rat race and that was why he’d moved to Sorrento when his sister no longer needed him there. She wasn’t sure if that thought made her feel better or worse.

She must have made a noise. Or perhaps Tom had sensed her watching him. Either way, he turned, pinning her with that hot hazel gaze. He watched her for a few moments, giving away nothing, before his shoulders relaxed, an easy smile melted away all earlier single-minded concentration and Tom the laid-back charmer was back.

‘Howdy,’ he drawled.

‘Hi,’ she said, her voice strangely breathy.

‘What’s up?’

She came away from her hiding place, placing her bare feet carefully as she walked to avoid the prickles. ‘I heard music.’

Tom closed one eye and squinted over his shoulder at his stereo. ‘It’s not too loud, is it?’

She shook her head. ‘Not at all. I love this song. I haven’t heard it since I was a teenager.’

Tom reached over and turned the stereo up a fraction and Maggie felt the familiar assertive beat pulsing more strongly through her veins with every footfall.

‘I used to always have music playing in the background when I worked,’ she said. ‘Though it was usually classical CDs. Sometimes I would get one piece in my head and I had to listen to it over and over for weeks while I worked on a particular painting. It drove everyone else mad.’

Her voice faded and she waited for him to enquire as to whom the ‘everyone else’ might be, but he merely looked up at her with that carefree, smiling face of his. Such a nice face, she thought—lots of character. The kind of face that would light well, easily capturing shadows and allowing those intelligent eyes to become the focus of the piece. Not that she had any intention of painting the guy, ever.

‘I’ve got this song on CD. I could lend it to you.’

‘I could probably do with all the help I can get right now,’ she admitted. And it was a pretty nice song actually. Moody. Evocative.

‘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.

‘I’m kind of glad my agent won’t get to see this one,’ she admitted.

‘You have an agent?’

She faced him fully and glared. ‘I thought we had decided you thought I was talented.’

He laughed, his eyes creasing, every part of him seeming to overflow with amusement. Beneath her crossed arms it now felt as though her stomach had flipped all the way over.

‘Sorry,’ he said, his eyes dancing. ‘Of course we had. That came out wrong. It’s just that we get painters out here all the time. In summer they line the beaches, painting beach huts and sunsets over Sorrento. But I just never knew anybody personally who’d actually sold anything.’

Maggie shrugged. ‘Well, now you do.’

Tom nodded, kept watching her, and she felt the word personally dig into her mind and take hold. She let her arms drop, then began twirling the paintbrush again to give herself something to do with her suddenly nervy hands.

‘How do you do that?’ he asked, shifting closer and glancing at her hand.

‘It’s easy,’ she said. ‘Much easier than actually painting, therefore one of the all-time great distractions.’

He held out a hand. ‘Show me how?’

Maggie stopped twirling, clamping the wood into a closed fist. She dropped the brush into Tom’s open palm, careful not to let her fingers touch his.

He looked down the barrel of the brush for any aerodynamic imperfections, weighed it in his palm, then held it between his forefinger and his thumb, swinging it back and forth, as though the brush would give into his mighty will and perform the trick on its own.

‘It’s physically impossible,’ he finally said. ‘It’s too long to fit between the gaps in my fingers.’

‘Oh, rubbish.’ Maggie plucked a larger brush from her stash and tucked it between her first and middle fingers. ‘It has nothing to do with physics and everything to do with faith.’

As she’d done a hundred times before when art students had asked her the same thing, she looked him in the eye and waited until all of his attention was focused there. Okay, so maybe that wasn’t her brightest idea. For some reason his hazel eyes did things to her insides that art students’ eyes never had. Her hand began to shake.

Better to get it over with then, she thought. She took a shallow breath and started to spin.

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