When her doorbell rang, she remained quite calm. After weeks of leaping to answer the telephone’s ring or a knock on the door, Maddy at last knew, without any shadow of a doubt, that there was no chance the caller would be Byron. Slowly she rose to her feet and dusted toast crumbs from her T-shirt. As she padded across the room in her bare feet, Maddy noticed a bean had rolled down her front, leaving a bright amber trail over one breast, so she dabbed at the stain with a tissue. But the orange glob simply spread further.
She swung the door open and took two rapid steps back.
‘Hi,’ said Rick Lawson.
‘Oh!’ Her mouth stayed open in a silly, round circle.
The sight of him dressed casually in jeans and a black polo shirt and filling her doorway with his one hundred percent all-male presence stunned her. What on earth was he doing here?
‘Mr Lawson?’ After her week of pent-up resentment, she could only think of one reason why he would be calling. ‘Have you come to apologise?’
His brows shot down into a deep V. ‘Pardon?’
Maddy felt her eyes roll towards the ceiling. ‘You realise you were rude to me last week after I went to a lot of trouble to get you those flowers.’
He stepped forward into her flat and Maddy found herself taking another step back.
‘I wasn’t being rude, Madeline. Just cautious.’
‘And I’m being cautious now. What do you want?’ she asked.
‘I need some advice.’
‘Really?’
‘Really,’ he replied with an amused smile. ‘After considering your little lecture on good neighbourly relations, I’ve decided to accept your offer.’
‘My offer?’ she echoed, at the same time flinching at the inanity of her question. Surely she wasn’t going to flounder through another moronic episode of foot-and-mouth disease?
‘Dinner,’ he replied with annoying succinctness. From behind his back he produced a bottle of expensive-looking red wine.
‘But you refused that offer,’ she protested, hands on hips.
Rick cocked his head to one side and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Then he grinned. Maddy noticed rather irrelevantly that he had nice teeth. ‘I need a change of scenery. Sam’s feeling much better and getting stroppy. And I think you might be able to help me.’
‘I don’t see how I can help you, Rick,’ Maddy countered, feeling totally confused. ‘I’m quite sure you don’t need my advice on how to humour your friend while she recuperates.’
Rick chuckled. He handed Maddy the wine and she accepted it, but stood there holding it in front of her while she waited for an explanation. He scratched his head. ‘I’m interested in some business advice. You seem to have a pretty good little outfit running here. And I’m keen to do some networking on my partner’s behalf.’
Maddy felt her lips flatten into a half-hearted smile. She’d only inherited her grandfather’s shop eighteen months ago and didn’t consider herself all that experienced. And she was hardly flattered that Rick Lawson considered her company an improvement on the grumpy Sam. But then again, on a lonely Friday evening, anything that helped her forget about Byron was a bonus.
Rick strode across her lounge room towards the kitchen, and he sniffed as he walked. ‘What are you eating? Can I smell chilli?’
‘Chilli beans,’ she answered without enthusiasm. ‘On toast.’ He would pick the one night she was having a scratch meal!
‘With cheese?’
She almost responded in her usual manner by jumping straight into hostess mode. Maddy was more than capable of hauling a range of items out of her well-stocked fridge and throwing together quite a presentable meal. But, she reminded herself, this was Rick Lawson, the moody and undeserving monster from upstairs. There was nothing to be gained by bending over backwards to impress him.
‘No cheese,’ she lied airily.
‘Salsa?’
‘No.’
‘I suppose corn chips or sour cream would be out of the question?’
‘Completely.’
He pivoted, then stood with feet firmly planted on her hand-woven rug, and his mouth pulled into a rueful smile. His eyes shimmered as he hooked his thumbs through the loops of his jeans and Maddy couldn’t help noticing the snug fit of blue denim over well-toned, masculine muscles.
‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ she said.
‘Of course you weren’t,’ Rick replied with a shrug. ‘Will your boyfriend mind?’
Maddy’s stomach plummeted. She shook her head. If she were brave, she would confess now that there was no boyfriend—that she’d only invented him in an attempt to ward off Cynthia’s oppressive one-upmanship.
But she wasn’t brave.
‘He—he’s not home tonight,’ she stammered. ‘He—he’s taking evening classes and he had to go to a lecture.’
Rick’s eyes widened. ‘And he won’t mind if you dine with a stranger?’
‘Oh, of course not!’ she spluttered. ‘He’s not the jealous type and—and anyhow, you’re my—our neighbour, hardly a stranger.’ Thoroughly flustered now, she flounced past him into the kitchen. ‘I’ll see how much is left in the pot.’
He followed her. ‘Even though it’s smaller, your place looks a lot classier than mine.’ Rick’s gaze scanned Maddy’s flat with interest, taking in the glowing timber floors and blinds and the deep royal-blue walls, which provided a striking backdrop for her collection of bright prints. ‘I have an old, moth-eaten carpet in a delightful shade of baby-poop yellow and a slightly lighter version of the same fetching hue on the walls.’
Maddy handed him back the wine bottle plus a corkscrew then took a step back. In her tiny kitchen, he suddenly seemed bigger, even more overwhelmingly male. ‘Interior decorating is my hobby,’ she said as she scraped beans away from the sides of a saucepan, sloshed in a dollop of chilli sauce and placed it back on a low heat. ‘I get urges to make any place I live in as comfortable and cheery as possible, so I talked the landlord into letting me do up these rooms. He provided the materials, I supplied the elbow grease.’ She dropped two slices of bread into her toaster.
‘You’ve done a great job,’ Rick admitted as he pulled the cork out of the bottle. It came with a gentle pop. His lazy smile mocked her. ‘So you have an overdeveloped nesting instinct?’
Maddy sniffed. ‘What’s so funny? I put a lot of energy into my business, but my home is important to me as well.’
‘Sounds smart.’ He lifted a restraining hand. ‘There’s no need to wave that wooden spoon at me like that. Your shirt already has a bad case of the measles.’
She looked down at her white T-shirt. A splattering of bright red dots had joined the stain she’d noticed earlier. But, worse than a little mess, she noticed that, under Rick Lawson’s sardonic gaze, her nipples were hardening into obvious tight buds, straining against the thin cotton fabric. She dumped the spoon back in the pot and, as casually as possible, crossed her arms over her chest.
The toast popped up and Maddy was grateful for the diversion. She placed the slices on a plate and spooned beans onto them. ‘You’ll find a knife and fork in that drawer to your left. And wineglasses in the cupboard above.’
As she carried their food to the glass-topped table at one end of the lounge-dining room while Rick followed with the wine and glasses, Maddy reprimanded herself for being so easily manipulated.