Billionaire on Her Doorstep by Ally Blake Page B

looked up to find his cousin sliding into the seat Maggie had recently vacated. “Hey, Alex. “What are you doing here?”
    “On a date with Marianne.” Alex motioned over his shoulder to his long-suffering wife and the table full of daughters.
    Tom waved to Marianne, who grimaced back. “You romantic old dog, you.”
    Alex grinned. “So what’s with you and Lady Bryce? Don’t tell me you’re on some sort of date yourselves.” Alex leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “She is married, you know.”
    Tom laughed so loud he felt it rumble through his shoes, but this time he didn’t much care who was staring at him. “So I’ve recently discovered. How did you find out?”
    The Barclay sisters told me when I picked up something for Marianne at their shop a couple of days ago.”
    “Of course they did. And you didn’t think to pass that news on to me?”
    Alex shrugged. “I wasn’t aware it was a concern.” His eyes narrowed. “Is it? A concern?”
    Tom glanced at Maggie, who was three rooms away, leaning forward and pointing to something on the menu above the cashier’s head.
    “She’s getting divorced,” he said.
    “Not good enough. Tommy Boy.”
    “I know,” Tom said, the wistfulness in his voice a surprise even to him as Maggie turned, weaving her way back through the crowd, shyly smiling at anyone who caught her eye.
    “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Alex warned, getting out of the chair.
    Tom didn’t get the chance to make that promise. Maggie’s eyes had already zeroed in on his. She smiled. It was a half smile. A cautious smile. But still he couldn’t help but smile back.
    It took some kind of superhuman concentration for Tom
    W P r t - i o k o z
    I u o g
    CO
    CHAPTER SEVEN
    After another hour of gossiping about the locals, about Tom’s poor cousin Alex and his band of merry women, and the elderly diner who thought “handyman” was code for Lothario and wouldn’t give Tom the time of day, Maggie’s cheeks hurt from laughing. And from pretending that she was having fun.
    Tom, in dark jeans, soft olive-colored sweater and not a lick of sweat on him, seemed even more overwhelmingly masculine than he did bare-armed and reeking pheromones with a chainsaw in his hands. And she could no longer deny that something vital had shifted inside her last night when Tom had whispered sweet nothings in her ear - an awareness, a need, a longing.
    And the longer their feet kept bumping beneath the table, sending her nerves into a permanent twitch, the more she came to realise that just saying “no’wasn’t going to be enough to shift everything back.
    Finally, one moment, late in the evening, when their conversation hit a lull, Maggie couldn’t stand it a second longer. “We need to talk,” she blurted out.
    The last thing she expected was for Tom to groan dramatically and lower his head until it thunked on to the
    % table. It made her laugh. For real. But the pleasure that came from laughing only added to the tension building inside her.
    Tom lifted his head and rubbed his hands up and down over his face until he looked at her from between his long fingers. “Don’t you know those are the four words every man dreads more than any other?”
    “Apart from what are you thinking!” Maggie said, smiling despite herself.
    Tom slowly lowered his hands and he was grinning. Her skin warmed a full degree. Dammit! The fact that she was officially married didn’t mean the affect ion she felt for Tom was going to go away.
    To-o-o-m?” she begged, shaking the table and.sounding like a whining teenager.
    He nodded. Then said, “Right. Okay. But maybe here’s not the best place for it. These walls have ears.” He winked at someone over her shoulder to tell them the table was about to be freed up.
    She could feel his presence all the way to the bistro’s front door. She knew his hand hovered at her lower back. She knew his eyes followed her as she walked ahead of him. She could sense it all as