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“Yes, I do.” His fingers tapped the keys as he inputted her details at the top of the spreadsheet. “Where would we be without roads, hospitals, schools? I’m not the bad guy here.”
She laughed incredulously. “You’re saying I am?”
“You don’t take your responsibilities seriously. Absentmindedness is no excuse for failing to file a tax return.”
“Humph.” She stood up in an indignant tinkling of bells, swished away a few paces then spun around, her skirt whirling. “You’re just like my family. That scatterbrained Lexie—she can’t handle her finances, she can’t take care of herself, much less a baby. Maybe I have different priorities. Maybe money and…and receipts…aren’t the most important things in life. Maybe people are.”
“That’s what I’m saying. People who need hospitals and schools and roads.” His hands rested on the keyboard as he stared at her. “What baby?”
“Pardon me?” Her skirts settled, her hands clutching the fabric. Color tinged her cheeks. “I didn’t say anything about a baby.”
“Yes, you did.”
“No, I didn’t.”
CHAPTER TWO
RAFE STARED after her as she hurried from the room, wondering if he’d imagined her saying that about a baby. There was no evidence of an infant or a husband about the house, at least that he could see at a glance. She’d actually mentioned a friend’s toddler, not her own. Maybe she was pregnant and didn’t have a partner. Maybe she was worried about her future and wasn’t sure what to do.
He shrugged and shook his head. Lexie’s baby—real, imagined or pending—was none of his business. Kids. He shuddered.
He could hear her banging pots around in the kitchen and glanced at his watch. It was already past noon. The smell of food emanating from the kitchen was making his stomach rumble.
Lexie returned, carrying a tray loaded with two white-and-blue Chinese soup bowls. Steam rose, spoons clinked gently. “My mother always says that a hungry man is a crabby man.”
She set the soup in front of him. Two-minute noodles with a few slices of carrot floating on top. He glanced at her bowl and saw that she’d given him the larger portion. Either she was on a strict diet or she was hurting for money.
“You didn’t have to feed me,” he said. “I planned to go into the village and find a deli for lunch.”
“I was cooking anyway.” Picking up her spoon, she concentrated on scooping up the slippery noodles.
This was awkward. Rafe didn’t usually dine with clients. That wasn’t the way for a tax auditor to “maintain an independent state of mind.” On the other hand, two-minute noodles weren’t exactly a sumptuous bribe that would turn his head.
Lexie herself was a challenge, though. The sensuous way she moved, her blue cat’s eyes, the aura of sexuality that set his nerve endings tingling.…
Aura? Had he actually thought that word?
She must really be getting to him. It was ridiculous. She wasn’t even his age. He couldn’t tell exactly how old she was but she was definitely older.
Picking up his bowl, he moved to the side of the table so he didn’t slop soup onto his computer and papers. Keeping his eyes down and not on the woman opposite, he tasted the bland, watery broth. “Mmm, good.”
She combed her hands through her hair, pushing it back. Despite the paint stains, she wore a lot of rings. How did she keep them clean? “You should try meditating. It might help your ulcer.”
“If I had an ulcer, acid-blocking medicine would help it more than New Age rubbish.”
“How do you know unless you try it?”
“How do you know I haven’t?”
A tiny smile curled her lips as she bent her head to her bowl. Rafe watched her full pink lips purse and her cheeks hollow as she sucked in the long noodles. He hadn’t tried meditating, of course, but he hated it when people made assumptions about him.
He wasn’t some weedy dweeb with ink-stained fingers bent over a ledger. In his heart he was a sea-faring man, hunting schools of plump red snapper. Snapper would have been nice right now.
Setting to with his spoon, he emptied the meager contents of his bowl. Then he pushed it away. “I’d better get on with your taxes.”
“Finished already? You’re like my father and brother. They inhale food.” She reached for his bowl. “Do you want more? I could open another packet.”
“No, thanks.” He patted his belly. “I couldn’t eat another thing. Now, Lexie, I really need those envelopes.”
She rose to gather the dishes. “I’ll go look in my studio. You have my permission to search the house for them. At this point, your guess is as good as mine.”
Rafe glanced around at the cluttered room crammed with pottery, books, paintings, notepads, sketch pads, flowers—including fresh, dried and dead—and all the rest of the flotsam and jetsam. No doubt every room in her house was similarly jam-packed. The thought of plowing through it—and on a curdled stomach—made him wince.
He had to get out of this job before it killed him.
LEXIE PERCHED on a wooden stool and studied the portrait of Sienna from across the room. To hell with looking for the envelopes, she needed to get this painting finished.
The canvas was large, six foot by four, and was executed in her signature style, so highly detailed it looked almost as real as a photograph but with a magical quality. Sienna was posed like Botticelli’s Venus, draped in royal-blue cloth to set off her Titian hair, which cascaded over her shoulders in abundant loose curls. Her clear grey-green eyes gazed out above a narrow nose very faintly dusted with freckles.
Lexie was satisfied she’d gotten the face right, was pleased she’d captured an expression of alert curiosity. Every hair was painted with attention to texture and color. Along with the creamy skin of Sienna’s shoulder and one exposed breast. Sienna looked…alive.
Yet the painting didn’t feel complete. Something was missing, Lexie knew it instinctively. She just couldn’t put her finger on what. She’d done six versions and this was the best. If she started mucking about again she might ruin what she’d already done.
She tried instead to concentrate on the theme. Sienna by the bay. The unseen half seashell. Borne on the waves. Born of the sea…
It was no use. Lexie glanced toward the house, wondering what Rafe was up to. Should she have allowed him to look through her things? He was a stranger, after all. He might be going through her underwear. Wouldn’t that be… Exciting.
Stop it. Why was she thinking like that? He was way too young for her, practically a boy in short pants. It must be because she was blocked. She always got antsy under pressure.
Sliding off the stool, she walked over to the tall cupboards at the back of the studio. She flung them open, hoping the tax envelopes would jump out at her. Nothing but painting supplies. Crouching lower, she looked through brushes, turpentine, old palettes, sketchbooks, flattened and twisted tubes of used oil paints.
From the doorway, Rafe cleared his throat. “Excuse me. I need to calculate the percentage of household expenses accounted for by your studio.”
Lexie stood up, shutting the cupboard. Rafe had walked across the lawn in his socks and a tuft of grass had caught between his bare toe and the torn sock edge.
“This space is roughly a quarter of the square footage of the house. I paint out here and do my framing,” she said, gesturing to the trestle table along the side wall piled with off cuts of mat board and empty frames. “But I also use the house to research things on the internet, read art books and magazines.”
“Since those are all deductible I’ll adjust the percentage upward.” He moved into the studio, glancing at Sienna’s portrait. “Is this your Archibald Prize entry?”
“It’s supposed to be. I can’t seem to finish it.”
He walked over to the canvas, peered up at Sienna’s face. “It looks finished.”
Picking a brush out of the jar of turpentine, Lexie cleaned it on a rag. “Something’s missing.”
Rafe adopted the classic pose of someone looking at a painting, arm across the waist, the other palm cupping the jaw, the studious frown. His broad shoulders stretched the fabric of his white shirt. Lexie’s gaze drifted lower. His cocked hip emphasized his butt muscles and the length of his extended leg.
“It’s very romantic,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t actually mean that as a compliment.”
“Why not?” she asked, frowning. With her brother Jack and Sienna falling in love it had been impossible to paint Sienna without an air of romance.
“It needs something to counteract all the beauty. To raise it above sentimentality.”
She tossed the brush onto the table with a clatter. He dared to give her advice? “Sentimental!”
He shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
Lexie forced herself to study the painting again. She worked hard at being objective about her own work and she had a pretty thick skin. But she’d never thought her interpretation of Sienna was sentimental. The very word conjured paint-by-number kits and kitschy paintings of doe-eyed children holding floppy sunflowers.
“The hair, the skin, the robe…all lush. The expression in her eyes is very emotional,” Rafe explained.
“I know,” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s what I was trying to achieve. It’s supposed to be emotional.”
In a series of sittings spanning several months, she and Sienna had talked about many things. A recurring theme had been Sienna’s yearning for another child besides Oliver, her teenage son from her first marriage. Now that Sienna was marrying Lexie’s brother, Jack, she probably would have a baby. Naturally, there’d been emotion involved. “There’s nothing wrong with portraying feelings.”
“I didn’t say there was.”
“It’s not sentimental.”
“No need to get defensive. I think it’s wonderful. I’m just trying to help.”
“It’s not your cup of tea, that’s all.”
“You’re wrong. I like it a lot,” he insisted. “I just think it needs a contrasting note.”
That stopped her dead. He turned to her, one eyebrow lifted. Damn. Her silence was starting to look like agreement. He was cocky enough as it was. She couldn’t let him think he’d solved her problem. Not that he had solved it. It was one thing to toss off the phrase “contrasting note” like he knew what he was talking about and quite another to figure out what form the contrast should take.
“It has occurred to me that it needs more interior depth,” Lexie mused aloud, trying to baffle him with bullshit. “Perhaps a smidgeon more archetypal mystery in her smile. The goddess within, juxtaposed with the beast, as manifested by the exposed breast.”
Rafe seemed skeptical at this display of gobbledygook. He studied her a moment then finally laughed.
Lexie lifted her chin, holding his gaze rather than admit she was full of it. Damn. He’d seen right through her.
His laughter faded, his amusement replaced by something intent, almost…hungry. Lexie felt herself growing warm, her breathing shallow.
What was happening here?
Rafe blinked. “I’ve got to get back to number crunching. I, uh…” He shook his head. “What did I come in here for? Oh, yeah. Would you say you spend eighty percent of your work time in the studio and twenty percent in the house? Less? More?”
Lexie thought for a moment. She’d never considered this before. “Make it seventy percent studio.”
“Okay.” He started to leave then paused at the door. “I’ll need copies of your utility bills for the past five years. Would they also be in the envelopes?”
“Er, probably.”
He nodded and left. Through the window, Lexie watched him walk back across the lawn to the kitchen door and disappear inside the house. He had a great ass. And great shoulders. Long legs. Narrow hips. Really, he was perfectly proportioned. She wouldn’t mind painting him nude….
Stop it. She was behaving like a…a cougar. She hated that term. It was so predatory.
She turned back to the canvas. Contrasting note, huh? He might actually have something there. The trick was hitting the right note.
Lexie mulled it over while she continued to search the studio for the envelopes. At the end of half an hour she had no further clues to her painting. Hadn’t located the envelopes, either. Giving up, she grabbed a pad of heavy paper and a handful of pencils and went back inside the house. Sometimes when she sketched at random, ideas came to her.
Rafe was carrying a large purple cardboard box over to the coffee table when she walked into the living room. “I found this in your hall closet.”
Lexie recognized the all-purpose box she’d bought at a stationery store. She tossed stuff in there to get it out of sight. Sinking onto the couch, she propped herself on a layer of cushions and tucked her legs beneath her skirt. She doubted he’d find any receipts in there but looking would keep him busy.
She opened the sketch pad, intending to play around with ideas, drawing things she associated with Sienna—a stethoscope, Venus on the half shell. Instead she found herself studying Rafe as he opened the box. As if anticipating treasure, his eyes gleamed.
With a 4B pencil she drew dramatic slashes of black, blocking in his thick eyebrows. Working quickly, she captured his face in a few bold strokes. Not satisfied with the jaw, she smudged out the line with her gum eraser and made it sharper, the angle steeper. Then she chose a finer pencil to work in the shading on the hollows of the cheeks, around the eyes, the black stubble.
As he leafed through the bits and pieces in the box he began to frown. No receipts. She hadn’t thought so. He rolled his shoulders, working out the kinks.
Lexie paused. He carried a lot of tension. She could see it in the lines of his face and the set of his neck. She was the one who should be tense; she was being audited. But she was good at putting unpleasant things out of her mind. Maybe a little too good.
He dug through the box, shaking his head as he lifted out nail clippers, a pencil sharpener, a broken pedometer, a small wooden bowl, assorted colored pencils, marbles, paper clips and matchbooks.
He had eyes that slanted down at the outer corner, an aquiline nose and a mouth that was far too sensuous for someone who worked with columns and rows.
Glancing up, Rafe noticed her sketch pad on her upraised knee. “What are you drawing?”
“Nothing. Just playing around.” Lexie started on his ear. Every person’s whorls were different, like fingerprints.
“Playing?” he repeated as he piled everything back into the box. “Perhaps you don’t understand the seriousness of your situation.”
Lexie stretched her legs along the length of the couch, wriggling her bare toes.
Rafe’s gaze, drawn to the movement, lingered on her bare calves. Their gazes met for a fraction of a second. Lexie’s mind flashed back to the outline of his thigh muscle under his pants. She drew her skirt down. Rafe glanced away.
He cleared his throat. “You need to—” He broke off, frowning. Apparently he was having trouble formulating the sentence. “You need to find those receipts if you want to offset expenses against the income from the paintings you sold to the American. If not, you’ll be charged the maximum amount of tax.”
Lexie stilled. “What would that be?”
He started piling things back into the box. “Tax on the forty thousand dollars, with minimal deductions, would be around fifteen thousand.”
Fifteen thousand dollars.
“Where am I going to get that kind of money?” she demanded. She may have sounded angry, but she wasn’t. She was scared.
He shrugged. Not his problem, in other words.
She had to find those envelopes.
But she also had to finish Sienna’s portrait. It was the best thing she’d ever done and she really thought she had a shot at winning the Archibald Prize and the fifty-thousand dollars that went to first place. Fear speared through her. She had to win the cash prize. She would need it to pay her tax bill.
