Billionaire On Her Doorstep. Ally Blake

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