Ally Blake - Billionaire On Her Doorstep

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.

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