up my laptop? Is there a table or desk I can use as a workspace?”
“Um…” The coffee table, an old trunk she’d painted white, was covered in assorted debris—a used teacup, her sketch pad and box of charcoal and cat toys. The side table at his elbow was obscured by seashells and pretty stones she’d found on the beach. The dining table was strewn with magazines, newspapers and junk mail. And a framed seascape ready to be delivered to the local Manyung Gallery, where she sold works on commission.
“I guess the dining table.” She got up and placed the painting on the floor, leaning it against the wall.
Rafe set his briefcase on the table in the space cleared and removed a laptop. Lexie moved around him, gathering the newspapers and magazines. She was aware of how tall he was, at least a head higher than her. And he smelled good, spicy and warm. He was emitting enough pheromones to set her blood humming again.
“Perhaps you have a computer spreadsheet detailing items purchased and the dates?” he asked. “I’d still need the receipts, of course, for verification.”
“No spreadsheet,” Lexie said. “My sister, Renita, is a loans officer at the bank. She tried to organize a bookkeeping system for me but I couldn’t be bothered filling in all those columns.”
He turned his incredulous gaze on her. “Did you read the letter my boss sent you a month ago? Or any of his emails?”
Shaking her head, she took a step back. Pheromones or no, she didn’t like an inquisition.
“Did you listen to the messages on your answering machine, at least?”
She rubbed at a spot of Crimson Lake paint on her knuckle. “I did. But when I’m working I tend to tune things out.”
“Tune out?” It all seemed too much for Rafe. With a grimace, he pressed a hand to his abdomen.
“Is your stomach bothering you?”
“It’ll pass.” His voice was tight, his shoulders slightly hunched.
“Is it an ulcer? My uncle had an ulcer.”
“I’m fine.” He lowered himself onto the chair in front of his laptop, the lines of his face pulled taut.
“I’ll make you a cup of peppermint tea.” Before he could object she strode out of the dining room into the adjacent kitchen. She filled the kettle at the sink. Crystals hanging in the window cast rainbows over her arms. People sometimes got exasperated with her for being scatterbrained, but she didn’t think she’d ever actually made anyone physically ill before.
“My stomach would feel better if you got me your records,” he called.
“I’m working on that.” While the water heated she looked in the cupboard beneath the telephone where she stored cookbooks. Not surprisingly, there weren’t a dozen large envelopes stuffed with receipts and tax invoices. Where had she put those things?
Ah, but here was a receipt for mat board that she’d bought last week. It was tucked inside the address book. Of course. Because she’d rung the gallery right after buying the materials for framing.
Sitting on the tiled floor, she pulled out cookbooks and riffled through the pages. She found a few grocery store receipts itemizing pitifully meager provisions.
“Can I claim food?” she yelled to the other room.
“No, it’s not a deductible business expense.” Already he sounded long-suffering and he’d been here less than an hour.
She was putting back her mother’s copy of Joy of Cooking, which she’d borrowed to make quince preserves, when an old photograph fell out of the pages. With paint-stained fingers she slanted it toward the light.
She, her brother, Jack, and sister, Renita, were playing on the front lawn of the dairy farm where they’d grown up. She couldn’t have been more than six years old. Jack would have been about four and Renita just a toddler. Lexie smiled, her eyes misting. They’d had good times as kids.
Now Jack was getting married again and Renita, too. Lexie was the only one of her siblings who hadn’t found a life partner. She’d never had the kids she longed for, either. A sharp pang for the baby she’d lost made her press a hand to her chest. She counted back the years.
Her boy would have been twenty-one years old now.
“The kettle is boiling,” Rafe said, right behind her.
Lexie tucked the photograph back in the cookbook and, rising, placed the mat board receipt in his open palm. “It’s a start.”
He stared at the crumpled slip of paper. Resignation washed over his face and his mouth firmed. He unbuttoned his sleeves and rolled them up over his forearms. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“You have no idea,” Lexie murmured.
RAFE TOOK a sip of peppermint tea and tried not to grimace. He would give his right arm for a strong cup of espresso—even if it did aggravate his gut. Carefully he set the delicate china teacup with the hand-painted roses in its saucer.
With Lexie’s records this disorganized he bet she had other undeclared painting sales. How was she going to pay her taxes? Anyone could see she had no money.
Not his problem. His job was to do the audit and get the hell out of Summerside.
Hopefully after he’d had a chance to sample the fishing.
Seated at the dining table, he went about setting up a spreadsheet for Lexie’s tax records. So far she’d managed to find a dozen receipts, gleaned from strange hiding places. The teapot had yielded a receipt for scented tea candles—naturally. Apparently Lexie sometimes meditated by candlelight to enhance her creativity. Too bad for her, the tax office didn’t consider them an allowable expense.
Lexie was moving around the living room, searching in decorative wooden boxes and flipping through the pages of books. Never in his six years of auditing had he come across anyone like her. She’d pick something up, carry it a few steps and put it down in another spot.
Nutbags, these artist types.
“Maybe instead of looking for individual receipts, you should concentrate on finding those envelopes you were telling me about,” he said.
“I’m deliberately not thinking about them in the hopes it’ll pop into my mind where I put them.”
Nutbag she might be, but she was easy on the eyes. With her straight back and graceful, sleek limbs she could have been mistaken for a dancer. Long tangled blond hair fell past her shoulder blades. She’d bend to search a low shelf then unfold, flipping that hair back, humming to herself as another book or a picture caught her fancy and she spent a few moments studying it. Completely unselfconscious, she didn’t seem to care if he watched her.
Not that he was watching her.
With a frown he dragged his attention back to his woefully sparse spreadsheet, labeling columns across the top.
“Do you mind music while you work?” she said, picking out a CD from the vertical rack.
“Go
