Free Billionaire on Her Doorstep by Ally Blake

needed the room for new memories. Memories of a future in which Maggie Bryce closed her eyes, let her head roll forward until her messy ponytail slid over her shoulder, as she begged him to make her feel all better.
    Taking in her furrowed brow and tight fists and earnest stare, he found the sudden need to swallow. “What was he thinking? There was not one thing about the woman that said fling material. But a fling was all he could offer. No more. Never more. Not after what it had taken for him to get back on to his feet after losing Tess. So if that was all obvious, why was he expending so much energy reminding himself?
    He took the one step back that left Maggie Bryce on her drop cloth island while he moved to the ocean of unpolished wood floor.
    “Right,” Tom said, his voice thick. He coughed behind a tightly closed fist. “Anyway, I came to tell you I was done for the day, so I’m heading off.”
    “Okay.” But she half turned, pinning him down with that sharp grey stare, and Tom’s feet stayed right where they were. “Or you could stay for a beer.”
    Maybe he wanted to find out if the beer was for real; he would have been surprised if she even had milk and bread in the fridge. Or maybe it was the idea of beer itself that had him in such a lather, considering the sweat running down his spine. Or maybe it was the hesitation in her eyes and the imagined warmth of her skin beneath his hands.
    “Whatever the reason, he found himself saying, “Sure. A beer sounds great.”
    “Why don’t you head outside where it’s cooler and I’ll bring them out in a sec?”
    Tom headed out to the balcony and Maggie moved into the kitchen, glad for the reprieve. Had it been getting hot in there, or was that just her? The hair at the base of her neck was stuck to her skin and all her hairs on her arms stood on end as though seeking out a cooling breeze.
    She stuck her head in the fridge, savoring the cool air, and found the beer behind a whole bunch of exotic groceries she’d ordered the previous afternoon when she’d received a desperately needed letter from her bank to say some royalties had arrived in her bank account from a British calendar in which a couple of her paintings had appeared.
    The money was enough to cover Belvedere’s mortgage payments, so maybe she should have transferred the lot straight away and given herself another month’s reprieve. But what good could another month of the same do?
    Of all the noise and bluster she’d had to sit through with the Wednesday girls, one thing Freya had said had hit home; she was meant to be connecting with herself. The money in her bank account was a sign; the time had come to stop marking time. The time had come to break free from old habits.
    It was like Sandra and her French cigarettes. Freya and her gourmet tastes. Ashleigh and the multitudinous textures she chose to wear against her skin. These experiential effusions all helped make them the artists and the people they were.
    Well, in all twenty-nine years of her life, Maggie had never tasted beer. Moving in art circles, her bent had run to wine or late night Smirnoff. If she was going to start slaying old habits, that had seemed a painless one to start with. And Tom seemed like a beer kind of guy, so it really would have been a waste not to invite him to experience it with her. Right?
    She grabbed a couple of designer bottles from the back of the fridge and then snapped the lids off using the heel of her hand and the edge of her bench like she had seen in some movie, and it worked! How was that for a new experience? The fact that she’d forgotten to buy a bottle-top opener was beside the point.
    Through the kitchen window she saw Tom leaning on the balustrade of the white wooden balcony, resting his forearms along the splintered wood, no doubt surveying the huge amount of work he still had to do to get her mess of a backyard cleared.
    He filled much of that view himself, he was so tall. Broad. Solid. And just