Billionaire on Her Doorstep by Ally Blake

several of her paintings, all of them selling for amounts so astronomical Alex coughed so hard he had to take a moment to get another beer.
    In those pictures the money that afforded her a home in Portsea showed. Her hair was ice blonde and cut into a slick do that tucked perfectly along her cheekbones and flicked beneath her chin. She wore ubiquitous Melbourne black that made her look tall and slim, but still more curvaceous than she was now.
    But in these pictures she wasn’t smiling any more. Her eyes were sadder somehow. Older. The shining light that had turned her eyes to molten silver in that school room picture had dimmed.
    He scrolled down the page. But she was only in the background of a couple more pictures with a good-looking guy with salt-and-pepper hair, bent over, listening to him and touching him on the arm. The level of attention she was giving to the guy was enough to have him slam his laptop closed.
    “Hey!” Alex cried out.
    “That’s enough,”Tom insisted. “You’ve seen what she looks like, you know she’s a hot-shot painter, now you know all I know about her.”
    Alex laughed and moved away, taking his beer with him. “Now I know why she has you all hot and bothered. Miss Hoity -Toity treats you as Tom the handyman, doesn’t she?”
    Tom ran a hand over his rough chin. “I am Tom the handyman,” he insisted. “I have been for years.”
    “Have you told her what you used to do for a living?”
    “Not in detail. But she’s upstairs painting and I’m downstairs wielding sharp, dangerous cutting implements. There’s not much time for small talk.”
    Tom had never hidden the fact that he had money. Those close to him knew, and thought it a great lark that he’d downgraded his skill set to changing light bulbs rather than ordering them by the hundreds for the intricate restoration of old buildings. It made it easier having the locals know too as they didn’t mind sending work to other people or calling off jobs late, which was fine with him. But he’d never run around with a megaphone telling every newcomer either.
    So where did that leave Maggie?
    Alex slumped down into a plush wing-chair by the desk. “I would put money on the fact that when around pretty little Lady Bryce, the big-shot, CEO, he-man inside of you just itches to come out of his cave and beat his chest.”
    “She’s not little,” Tom said. “She’s taller than you.”
    That shut Alex up, just as he’d hoped.
    “And you’re nowhere near the mark,” Tom said, stalking over to the remote to turn on his wide-screen TV. “She’s a job, that’s all. Just as restoring old homes was just a job. Nothing more than a means to an end.”
    He took a moment to gulp down a swig of beer.
    Alex reached out and gave him a slap on the back. He knew better than anyone that the reason Tom had made Campbell Designs such a phenomenal success had been to make enough money to get Tess the best medical treatment money could buy.
    “And when I’ve reached the end of this job,” Tom continued, “Maggie will be another face driving past in the street and I’ll be just another name in the Peninsula phone book.”
    But if Alex knew that the end had become the ownership of a big smudge of blue on canvas, he would laugh until beer came out of his nose.
    Late the next morning, a bustle of noise at Maggie’s front door heralded the arrival of Freya, Sandra and Ashleigh, the Wednesday girls. Annoyed at the racket, Smiley plodded through the house and out the back door.
    Sandra, the youngest of the gang, lumbered in first, her dark wavy hair in pigtails, her pretty blue eyes rimmed in lashings of rebellious black kohl and her heavy combat boots clumping loudly on the wooden floor.
    “Mornin’, Mags, sorry we’re late. Blame Freya,” she called out, dumping her black leather beanbag in the middle of the floor.
    Freya, a single mum with twin girls in the first grade, whirled in next, short red hair scruffy, pale cheeks pink, clay stains