Billionaire On Her Doorstep. Ally Blake
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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