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him, to warn him they were serious women. Tom’s cheek twitched.
    “Though we four like to think ourselves a band apart,” said an older woman with riotous blonde curls, clothes better suited to a woman double her weight and eyes that seemed to see into his soul.
    “You’re Ashleigh Caruthers,” Tom blurted out, as if she wouldn’t know who she was. And the face in Maggie’s Archibald Prize-winning portrait, he managed to hoId back. “An old colleague of mine in Sydney is a big fan of your sculptures. He has a couple of your Tragedy series. They’re wonderful.”
    “Aren’t they just?” Ashleigh returned. She lifted herself from her dainty chair just long enough to shake his hand before drifting back down.
    “And this is Freya,” Maggie said, pointing to the woman with short red hair and pursed lips. The big red pot in the back doorway is one of hers. And you’ve likely seen her pottery in homeware stores in town.”
    Tom smiled politely, not even trying to pretend that he had ever shopped in any homeware stores in town, much less noticed the pottery.
    After silence reigned for a good five seconds, Freya rolled her eyes and pushed herself off her neatly folded picnic blanket, picked it up by one corner and threw it out on to the floor until it made a neat large square. “I’ll get lunch.”
    “Right,” Maggie said. “Tom, you will join us, I hope.”
    Tom glanced to the kitchen, where the scent of sun-dried tomatoes and eggplant wafted on the air. But, as much as her words were telling him to stay, her eyes were begging him to leave. Besides which, he wasn’t entirely sure he would survive a lunch in the company of this merry coven.
    “Nah,” he said. “I was just planning a five-minute break as is. Too much needs to be done. I’ll just grab my pasta from your fridge and head back. Thanks, anyway.”
    Her shoulders dropped and her throat worked and it was as good a thank you as he was going to get. He waited for Freya to depart the kitchen before he entered, grabbed his Tupperware container from the fridge, borrowed a fork from the cutlery drawer and slipped outside with a quick, “Nice to meet you ladies. Take care.”
    It was nearly three hours later when Tom heard the sounds of loud laughing female voices spilling out the front door of the house.
    “Give the girls a kiss from me,” Maggie said, after jogging back from the mailbox.
    Freya gave her a hug so long he thought she might not let go. “Shall do.”
    “And remember, you must find out if your new friend is a Jack of all trades, okay?” Sandra asked.
    Tom bit his lip to stop himself from laughing and hunkered down behind the cab of his Ute. Freya shushed Sandra and, though Tom strained to hear her response, Maggie’s following words were regrettably muffled.
    “Come on, girls,” Ashleigh called out. “Our chariot awaits.” The three women waved, yelled their goodbyes and tumbled into a waiting taxi.
    After they had driven away, Maggie turned and looked straight at him. Tom stopped retying the ropes on the bed of his truck and simply looked back.
    Her hands shot into the back pockets of her jeans and she rolled up on to her toes, as though she was about to head down the hill to join him. But something held her back.
    He gave her a small wave, she nodded back and then she ducked inside at speed. And for the rest of the afternoon Tom had to remind himself he was there for a job, not to head in for a coffee and a chat and to test if he was in fact the reason behind that new resident blush in Maggie Bryce’s cheeks.
    CHAPTER FIVE
    Eight o’clock Friday night rolled around and Maggie wasn’t on her usual spot on the drop cloth.
    Tom sauntered over to the enclosed stairwell, which must have led up to who knew what. Huge bedrooms with high ceilings, or cramped and aching for a renovation? An attic room or two with fabulous canted roofs and quaint picture windows? Maybe one day she’d let him see them. And maybe one day he’d tell her