house will fall down.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Well, I am.”
“Okay. Okay,” Tate said resignedly. Obviously, there was no point in arguing. Besides, it was definitely none of his business how she lived…unless, of course, it happened to be beyond her reported means. From what he’d seen today, that was hardly likely.
“Where are those records you came up here to get?” he asked. “I think we’d better go over them and finish this up.”
“They’re in here,” she said, walking down the hall to the door she’d pulled shut as he came up the stairs. “Why don’t you go back down to the kitchen and wait for me?”
“Why? Do you have something to hide?” he asked, his highly trained and very suspicious mind instinctively surging into action.
She glared at him. “Of course not. It’s just that I’m not sure you are ready for this.”
“Ready for what? The room can’t be in any worse shape than some of the others I’ve already seen. I think my system had become immune to the shock.”
“It’s not the room I’m concerned about.”
“What then?”
“I have a feeling you have an orderly mind.”
“I do. What does that have to do with anything?”
“My records aren’t…” She hesitated. “…Well, they aren’t exactly…orderly.”
“What are they exactly?”
Victoria sighed and opened the door. “See for yourself.”
Tate stepped into the room and immediately his eyes flew open, his eyebrows shooting up in horrified disbelief.
“Holy…!” His voice trailed off, and he stood there, seemingly unable to complete the thought. It was the cry of a wounded man and, for a fraction of a second, Victoria almost felt sorry for him.
“Maybe it would be better if you went back to the kitchen,” she repeated in a consoling tone, pulling on his arm. “Have some more lemonade. I’ll get what you need and bring it down.”
“How? It would take an entire office of accountants to bring order to this…this chaos,” he said weakly. He still seemed to be suffering from some sort of professional shock.
“It will only take me a little while,” Victoria reassured him. “I know exactly where everything is.”
He shook his head disbelievingly. “You couldn’t possibly.”
“Of course I do. I have a system.”
He eyed her wonderingly. “This I have to see,” he said, plucking a stack of old magazines off of the room’s only chair and settling down to watch. “If you can locate the records you need for last year’s tax return, I will buy you dinner in the most expensive restaurant in Cincinnati.”
It seemed like a reasonable challenge, though Victoria wasn’t at all sure it would be wise to spend an evening in the company of Tate McAndrews. Without even trying, he’d already stirred up all sorts of desires that only this afternoon she’d despaired of ever feeling. What on earth would happen over an intimate dinner? She’d probably fall head over heals in love with the man, and he’d go blithely along to his next audit. It was not a comforting prospect.
Still, she couldn’t very well lose the bet on purpose. She had to prove to him that while her system of accounting might be a bit unorthodox by his standards, it was as effective as ledgers and computerized spread sheets.
“Okay, Mr. McAndrews, you’re on,” she replied determinedly. “How long do I have?”
Tate grinned at her complacently. “Oh, I think I can afford to be lenient. Take as long as you like.”
“You really don’t think I can do this, do you?”
“No.”
“You haven’t said what happens if I lose.”
“You hire an accountant and get your finances straightened out.”
“My finances are fine, thank you. I’ve never missed a mortgage payment. My electricity’s never been turned off. And I don’t even own a credit card.” She absolutely refused to tell him that she’d lost them and never gotten around to obtaining replacements.
“Thank God,” he murmured fervently under his breath.
She regarded him indignantly. “Are you insulting me?”
“Heaven forbid!”
“Then why did you say that?”
“Let’s just say that individuals more organized than you seem to have gotten themselves in way over their heads by haphazardly buying with plastic.”
To be perfectly truthful, that was exactly why Victoria had decided not to replace the credit cards. It wasn’t that she’d overspent. It was that she had this silly habit of misplacing the bills so that she never knew whether they’d been paid or not. By buying with cash she was relatively certain that she, not the credit card company, owned her possessions.
She did not, however, intend to stand here and discuss the relative merits of plastic money with Tate McAndrews. Not when he’d just bet her that she couldn’t turn over the receipts she needed to back up her tax return. Taking a deep breath, she surveyed the room and went to work, picking up, studying and then discarding stacks of paper that had been stashed in boxes and bags of every size and shape. Every so often, she triumphantly dumped something new in Tate’s lap or at his feet, gloating at his increasingly bemused expression.
“There,” she said at last, standing in front of him with her hands on her hips. “I think that’s everything.” It had taken her exactly twenty minutes.
Tate looked at the four shoeboxes, two bulging shopping bags, three manila envelopes and one beat-up purse that she’d deposited with him. “This is it?” he said skeptically. “Price Waterhouse would be impressed.”
“Don’t be sarcastic.”
“Sorry. What exactly do I have here?”
“These two boxes have the receipts for everything I bought for the shop last year. These two are all the bills for fixing it up, the mortgage payments on the shop and so on.”
“The shopping bags?”
“My cash register receipts. The envelopes have all of my other stuff. Medical bills. Interest payments. Insurance.”
“I know I’m going to hate myself for asking, but what’s in the purse?”
“Contributions to charity. You know like when you’re driving along, and somebody’s on a street corner collecting for muscular dystrophy and you give `em a dollar.”
“You actually
