Two Against the Odds (3 page)

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.

Lexie closed her eyes and slowly breathed out all the way. Calm. Peace. Light.

“Utility bills?” Rafe reminded her.

Ooh.

“I'll go look for them now.” She set her sketch pad aside and rose. He was going to be in her house for days, possibly the rest of the week. Even without being blocked it was hard to see how she was going to get any work done.

Lexie went down the hall, past her bedroom to the spare room where she kept a small whitewashed desk and a single bed covered in a patchwork quilt. Her early paintings, seascapes mainly, covered the walls. Rifling the desk drawers, she came up with…nothing. This was ridiculous even for her. She knew she didn't have five years' worth of household bills, but she'd
kept some. They must be with her tax envelopes. Where were they?

She opened the double doors of the closet. Piles of old clothing she would never wear again, jigsaw puzzles—mostly with one or two pieces missing—and the hair dryer that sparked. What was wrong with her that she couldn't throw away broken and useless items? It was no wonder she could never find anything. Pretty soon she'd have to rent another house just to store the things she didn't use.

What was this? She pulled out a small antique clock. She'd forgotten she had this. It had a hand-painted white enamel face and was mounted on a rosewood base. She'd been attracted to it originally because the mechanism was exposed. Every cog, wheel and spring was visible and could be seen moving. When it worked.

“That's a skeleton clock.”

She leaped back and almost dropped the thing. How long had he been standing in the doorway? “You have to stop sneaking up on me.”

Rafe ignored her reaction and moved closer to get a better look. “Quite a nice example, too. My father repairs clocks for a living. He's taught me a bit over the years. Where did you get that one?”

“I must have picked it up at a flea market years ago.” She looked underneath and found a tiny key taped to the base. She inserted it into the slot and
wound it. Nothing happened. “It's broken,” she said, disappointed.

“Let me see.”

While he inspected the mechanism of springs and cogged wheels, she studied the thick black hair that fell over his forehead, the way his mouth compressed in concentration.

Suddenly, he stilled, as if aware of how close they were standing. “Speaking of time, it's getting late.” He handed the clock back to her, cautious about making contact, either by skin or by eye.

Rafe walked back to the dining room. Lexie followed carrying the clock. He began packing up his briefcase. His movements appeared casual, but she noticed he was cramming papers in any old how.

“I'll be back tomorrow,” Rafe said. “I suggest you keep looking—”

Someone knocked.

Before Lexie could answer it, the front door opened. Her mother, Hetty, stood on the step in a long tunic top and flowing cotton pants, a suitcase in either hand. Her spiky gray hair stood up from her head.

“Mom,” Lexie said, going forward to embrace her. “What are you doing here? Is everything all right?”

“No, it's not,” Hetty said tartly. “Your father and I had a terrible fight. I'm moving in with you.” She
stepped inside, and noticed Rafe. “Sorry. I didn't know you had company.”

“He's not company, he's—” Lexie broke off.
“Moving in?”

 

R
AFE SLIPPED OUT
while Lexie bombarded her mother with questions and Hetty made vague and weary responses. He got behind the wheel of his ten-year-old Mazda and had to slam the door twice before it would stay shut.

He glanced at his fishing rod lying across the backseat. That would have to wait another day. He was tired and Murphy, his dog, would be waiting for him. As it was, he had to drive home in the late-afternoon heat through the tail end of rush hour traffic. With the windows rolled down because the air-conditioning didn't work, he headed north, away from Melbourne's bayside suburbs and into the Dandenong Mountains.

Mulling over the day, he found himself worrying about Lexie, if she would find her envelopes, if she could pay her taxes—

He was doing it again. Getting involved, feeling compassion.

Hell.

 

“Y
OUR TAX AUDITOR
is rather gorgeous.” Hetty dumped her suitcase on the antique quilt covering
the single bed in Lexie's spare room. “Where did you find him?”

“He's not mine, he belongs to the government. And he's turning my house upside down,” Lexie said from the doorway. “I wish he was never coming back.”

Did she? Or was she already thinking she'd wash her hair tonight.

“It's no fun being audited but surely it's just a matter of letting him do his job.” Hetty opened her suitcase and started to unpack.

“The problem is, I can't find the envelopes that have all my tax receipts in them. They're somewhere in the house but I have no idea where. Plus I'm going to have to pay back taxes with money I don't have. Plus I have to finish Sienna's portrait because the deadline for the Archibald is coming up and I can't tell what's missing but something is. Something crucial.” Lexie's voice seemed to have risen an octave. She sucked in a breath. “I've been blocked for ages. All I can do is paint stupid beach huts and make pencil sketches—”

She broke off, thinking about the sketch of Rafe and how there was a hint of something tragic in his eyes. She would try to capture that tomorrow. No, she wouldn't. Tomorrow she would work on Sienna. Or find the envelopes.

“Oh, God. My life is unfolding like a Greek tragedy.”

“Don't overdramatize. Everything will be fine.”
Hetty draped a cotton blouse over a hanger. “I know you. You get blocked and it feels as if it'll be forever. Then one day something clicks and away you go again.”

Lexie slumped onto the bed. “I hope you're right.”

Hetty went to hang the blouse and clicked her tongue at the crowded closet. She pushed through the hangers and brought out a faded pink dress. “Honestly, Lexie, I recognize this from when you went to art school. Why not get rid of it?”

Lexie's mouth dried as she recalled being seventeen and living away from home in her first year at art school. She'd bought the dress because the cut was loose and hid her thickening waist. No one in her family knew, then or now, that she'd been pregnant.

“It holds memories. I—I can't throw it away.” The crush of soft fabric between her fingers brought a sudden rush of grief and guilt. Why did she torture herself by keeping it around? She should get rid of it. In fact…

What if it was all the excess stuff in her house that was blocking her? Declutter. Wasn't that what all the women's magazines were telling her to do?

“On second thought…” Lexie grabbed the pink dress and an armful of hangers and hauled them out of the closet.

Seeing space open up felt good. With a burst of
enthusiasm she took down the folded piles of clothes from the shelf and threw them into the hallway along with the clothes on hangers. This might be another form of procrastination but at least it would achieve something.

“What's going on with you and Dad?” she asked, standing on tiptoe to reach the jigsaw puzzles. “I thought you wanted to get back together with him. I thought you were going to give him another chance.”

“He's not giving
me
another chance,” Hetty said, hanging up her blouses in the space Lexie'd created. “Even though Smedley is fine, Steve still blames me for the dog eating fox bait.” Hetty's voice wobbled. “Steve wouldn't even look at me at the Fun Run. It's been two weeks now and we barely speak. While I was at the yoga retreat in Queensland he converted our house to a bachelor pad complete with car parts on the kitchen floor and a pool table in the living room.”

“Get him to change it back.”

“He's never home to do anything! He's out all the time, volunteering at the Men's Shed Jack founded, at Toastmasters meetings….”

“You wanted him to find a hobby,” Lexie reminded her.

“He's found a hobby all right.” Lexie read the anger in Hetty's gray eyes. “Her name is Susan Dwyer.”

Huh?
Lexie dropped the puzzle boxes on top of the
pile of clothes. Steve, her stolid conservative father, the man who'd been dependent on Hetty for years, had another woman? “No way. Dad wouldn't have an affair.”

Hetty lifted her shoulders, her mouth twisting. “What do you call it when he's out with her three nights of the week? He
says
they're on a committee to organize some speech contest or other. And he
says
she's his mentor and is helping him with his entry. But he's not the type to get caught up in committees. He has to be doing it because of her.”

“Not necessarily,” Lexie said, trying to be fair. “Renita and I went to the Toastmasters meeting the night he did his Icebreaker speech. It was obvious he enjoys the meetings and
everyone
there, not just Susan Dwyer.” She paused before adding, “He really has changed while you've been in Queensland. Maybe you don't know him as well as you think you do.”

“I don't know him at all anymore.” Hetty burst into tears. “Lexie, what am I going to do?”

“It'll be all right.” Dismayed, Lexie pulled her mother into a hug. “You wanted him to be more self-sufficient.”

“I didn't want him to stop needing me.” Hetty hiccupped on a sob. “Or loving me.”

“He loves you. He needs you,” Lexie said helplessly. Her father had been through a lot in the past six months, including being diagnosed with type two diabetes. Renita had encouraged him to join the gym
and start jogging. Steve had taken up Toastmasters of his own accord as a way to get out and meet people. He was a completely different person from the over-weight depressed man who couldn't adjust to retirement. Everything should have been great for him and Hetty.

“You changed when you took up yoga,” Lexie reminded her mother, easing back to meet Hetty's gaze. “You need to let him change, too.”

“You're right.” Hetty blinked, sniffed, dragged in a shuddering breath. “I need to learn to accept him as he's becoming. Even if it means that from now on we follow different paths.”

“Wait a minute.
No,
” Lexie said, alarmed. “You'll get back together. You have to. You can't throw away forty years of marriage.”

“I don't want to,” Hetty said. “But right now, I can't live at home.”

Lexie gave her mum another hug. “Stay here as long as you want. You could help me look for my receipts.”

She didn't want to mention she was low on groceries or that she had a cash flow problem. With luck she would sell a painting this week. The seascapes she did were bread and butter between the odd commission she got for portraits.

“I'll pay rent, of course,” Hetty said, somehow reading her mind.

“Don't even think about it,” Lexie said. “But I'd
love you to show me some of the new yoga techniques you learned at the retreat.”

“Gladly.” Hetty gave her a watery smile.

Lexie released her mother. She picked up the bundle of clothes in the hallway and carried them to the front door. First thing tomorrow she would donate them to the thrift shop.

She was already beginning to feel lighter. It was good to start afresh. With a clearer mind she might find the key to finishing Sienna's portrait.

But as she walked toward the spare room her footsteps slowed.

Lexie reached the box of clothes and removed the pink dress. She took it to her bedroom and hung it at the back of her closet.

“W
HAT THE HELL'S
going on, Murph?” Rafe said as he pulled up in front of Lexie's house the next morning. Bulging plastic garbage bags were piled along the path. Boxes of odds and ends were stacked behind her car. The front door was propped open. Was she turning the house inside out in her search for the envelopes?

He parked at the curb and unloaded his briefcase and a couple bags of groceries. Murphy, his black-and-white mutt, scampered at his heel, sniffing boxes, relieving himself on the gardenia bush, barking at the brown cat that hissed at him before darting into the shrubbery.

Rafe stopped. The skeleton clock was in one of the boxes clearly destined for rubbish. He tucked it under his arm and knocked on the open door. Soft music was playing and vanilla incense drifted through the house. “Lexie?”

“Come in.” Her voice sounded constricted.

Rafe slipped off his shoes and walked through the hall, turning left into the living room. The coffee table and armchair had been pushed back so Lexie
and her mother had space for yoga. Hetty was in a deep lunge, arms outstretched. Lexie was standing on one leg, doubled over and touching the floor. Her other long and shapely leg straight up in the air, toe pointed. Her hair hung in a curtain around her head.

It was rude to stare but he couldn't help it. Lexie's aqua blue tank top and low-slung cropped pants fit her like a second skin, molding to every slender curve. Man, she could bend.

Cool it, Ellersley. Independent state of mind, remember?

Positioning his briefcase in front of him, he began to recite the Taxation Administration Act of 1953 in his head. Murphy settled onto his haunches at Rafe's feet.

Lexie lowered her leg with exquisite control and straightened, flipping her hair back. “Rafe, I found the envelopes!”

“Excellent.” His name on her lips, her excitement…
Pursuant to Schedule A, Section D, the party of the first part shall pay a portion of their income to the Commonwealth of Australia, calculated for the financial period from the first day of July to the thirtieth day of June…

Then, before he could ask where the envelopes were, Lexie noticed Murphy. “Oh, my God, a stray followed you in. Quick, get him out before he goes
after Yin and Yang.” She came at him, making shooing motions. “Go on, bad doggy, out!”

Murphy started licking her hands. She snatched her hands away.

“This is Murphy,” Rafe said. “Sorry, I should have asked first if I could bring him here. I couldn't leave him home alone for days on end. He's a good boy. He likes cats.”

Likes to annoy them. The truth was, Rafe had forgotten all about Lexie's Burmese cats.

“All right,” Lexie said reluctantly. “But if they get stressed, he'll have to stay in the backyard.” She noticed the grocery bags. “What's this?”

“I thought I'd pick up a few things since I'll be around a lot this week. You know how crabby I get when I'm hungry.” His conscience wouldn't allow him to go out to eat knowing she was lunching on two-minute noodles.

Hetty straightened out of her yoga pose. “Hello,” she said, extending her hand. “I'm Hetty. I arrived yesterday just as you were leaving.”

“Pleased to meet you officially,” he said, shaking hands.

Lexie peeked inside the grocery bags at the meat, cheese, eggs, fruit and vegetables he'd bought. She gazed at him, her eyes so dazzling they were hard to look at and impossible to turn away from. “You didn't have to do this.”

“So,” he said, rubbing his hands together like some
cartoon character because otherwise he'd reach out and touch her or do something equally inappropriate. “Show me to the envelopes.”

“Ta-da!” She gestured grandly to the dining table.

Rafe's heart plummeted to the soles of his croc skins.

Holy shit.

Manila envelopes full to bursting were stacked four high and five or six wide. There must be dozens of them. As he looked, a precariously balanced envelope slid off the top of the pile and fell on the floor.

“I'll put away the groceries.” Hetty picked up the bags and carried them to the kitchen.

“Thanks, Mum,” Lexie said.

Rafe walked over to the table and picked up one of the bulging envelopes. “Where did you find them?”

“In the garden shed,” she said excitedly. “I remembered where they were in the middle of the night. You know how sometimes you wake up and the answer to something that's been puzzling you is right there, clear as a bell? I woke up with a picture in my mind of me shoving them on the potting table.”

The woman was certifiable.

And she was standing too close. Her perfume combined with the scent of her warm skin was stirring his hormones. Occasionally he was attracted to women he audited, but until Lexie they'd always been easy
to resist. All he could think of right now was wanting to grab her and kiss her breathless.

He'd never encountered anyone like her—sexy and exasperating in almost equal measures. “Why would you put them in the garden shed?”

“They were driving me nuts. I had to paint.” Her gaze seemed to get stuck on the open neck of his shirt. “Out of sight, out of mind.”

“What if you needed to garden?” And didn't that just make him picture her kneeling in the garden bed, her ass in the air?

“It was the middle of the summer.” She gathered her hair in a bunch and let it fall down her back. He followed the line of her upraised arms with his eyes. “The, um, grass doesn't even need mowing. Because…it doesn't get enough water. To grow.”

“That's…logical.”

With difficulty, Rafe dragged his eyes back to the envelope. Opening it, he pulled out a handful of loose pieces of paper. “You must spend a lot on art supplies.”

“They're not all from buying art supplies. I'm never sure what's allowable and what isn't, so just to be on the safe side, I keep every receipt I get.”

“O-kay. Every receipt?” he echoed faintly, feeling a sharp twinge in his stomach. He put the envelope down and opened his briefcase. He found that if he avoided looking at her, it was easier to concentrate.

“I'll go through them with you,” Lexie said. “But
first, I've got to take a load of stuff to the thrift store. I've got to declutter. I can't think.”

“I'll help,” Hetty volunteered, returning from the kitchen.

“Thanks, Mum.” Lexie abandoned the receipts, grabbed her purse from the table and headed for the front door. She yelled over her shoulder, “I'll be back.”

Hetty took a seat at the table and gazed expectantly at Rafe. “What would you like me to do?”

Rafe scanned the slips of paper in his hand and shook his head. Lexie had put receipts from different years in the same envelope. “You could start sorting these by year.”

Murphy was doing the rounds of the living room, sniffing at every chair. Yin watched him through slitted green eyes from the arm of the couch. “Murphy, here.” The dog trotted over and lay at his feet under the table.

Hetty started separating the receipts into piles. “I don't mind telling you the family has been worried about Lexie's finances. Ever since she quit teaching to paint full-time she's had trouble making ends meet. But she refuses to accept help. She says she made the decision to be an artist, and she's willing to live with the consequences. It's nice of you to come to her house and do this for her.”

“It's my job.” He wondered if he should mention
that Lexie would likely cop a fine. He felt bad about that—

Not his problem.
Feeling sorry for the taxpayer was how he'd gotten into trouble over his last audit.

He heard Lexie return for another box. A moment later he heard her car start.

Rafe called up the spreadsheet onto the screen. He pulled a calculator out of his briefcase and began entering numbers. When he'd done all he could, he reached for an envelope and began sorting. There were receipts for the hairdresser (not deductible), art gallery entry (deductible), a car battery (debatable)—

“Do you live locally?” Hetty asked.

“Sassafras, up in the Dandenongs. But I'm booked into a bed and breakfast just down the road.”

“Myrna Bailey's, right?” She waited for him to nod then went on, “Do you have family?”

Rafe suppressed a sigh. What was it about middle-aged women that they had to know everything about a person? That they couldn't sit at the same table without making conversation. “My parents live in Western Victoria, in Horsham. I have a sister in Brisbane.”

“Do your parents farm?”

It was a natural enough question given the location but he hated answering it. His parents, Darryl and Ellen, had moved to the country years ago, after Darryl's accident, because it was cheaper than the city. Rafe always wanted to explain that although his
father was in a wheelchair, there'd been a time when he'd had bigger dreams.

“No, my father has a home-based business repairing clocks and watches.” He should go see them. It had been months since he'd last been out there.

Rafe continued sifting through Lexie's receipts. He came across an application form for an artist's society. He noted down the amount of annual dues and saw she'd filled in her birth date.

Before he could censor himself, he blurted, “Is Lexie really thirty-eight years old?”

“Yes,” Hetty said. “It was her birthday last month.”

Twelve years older than him. He'd figured she was older but not by
that
much.

“She looks a lot younger.”

“It's the yoga and the meditation,” Hetty said. “Plus she has a naturally serene disposition. Nothing bothers her.”

“The portrait she's painting is bothering her.”

“Well, yes,” Hetty conceded.

Rafe sat back in his chair, still staring at the year Lexie was born. She could have easily passed for thirty. If that was the result of meditation and yoga maybe he ought to take it up. Or not.

Twelve years.

He added the art society annual dues to the column. Afternoon sun shone through the crystals hanging from the window frame, making rainbows on his page of numbers. There seemed to be crystals
everywhere in the house. He'd noticed them in the kitchen, too. From below the table, Murphy snored.

“Do you have a wife or girlfriend?” Hetty asked.

Rafe stifled another sigh. “Never married. No girlfriend at present.”

“You're young yet,” she said comfortably. “There's plenty of time to marry and have children.”

The other thing about middle-aged women was, they wanted to marry a guy off and tie him down with kids before he'd had a chance to enjoy life. What was up with that?

He stabbed at the keypad on his calculator. “How are you doing with the sorting?”

“Don't you like kids?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I
said,
you have plenty of time to marry and have kids,” Hetty recapped patiently, as she dealt out receipts like playing cards at a bridge game. “
You
didn't reply. So then I asked, don't you like children?”

How did she get child-hater from silence? There'd been nothing to say in response to her statement so he hadn't bothered with meaningless chatter. “Kids are fine, I guess. As long as they're other people's.”

Tamsin, his ex-girlfriend, had made him gun-shy. They'd been together nearly a year when she'd gotten clucky. Then he'd discovered she'd “accidentally” forgotten to take her birth control pills and the huge fight that ensued had killed their relationship. Fortunately, she hadn't got pregnant.

Feeling Hetty's gaze on him, he could sense the questions forming in her mind. “I've got plans, okay? I'm not ready to get married
or
have children. Maybe in ten years I'll think about it. But first I want to start my own fishing charter business.”

“That's interesting,” she said, leaning forward, chin on her palm. “When are you going to do that?”

“Next year, if all goes well.” Then he pointedly began entering numbers into his calculator. He'd had enough soul baring for one day. And he'd jeopardize his job if he didn't do this audit properly.

Hetty went back to sorting receipts. The only sound was the clicking of the keys as Rafe entered data.

After a few minutes her hands stilled. Out of the blue she said, “I've lost touch with my husband.” She stared at the receipts in her hand.

Fresh pain stabbed his stomach. Now she expected
him
to ask
her
questions. News flash! He wasn't a woman. Hell. Why did she have to look so unhappy? “What happened?” he asked heavily.

“We grew apart when we weren't looking,” she said, launching into what was sure to be a long-winded explanation. “We'd been up and down for six months or more, ever since we retired. Then I went away to Queensland for a yoga retreat. He didn't like that. Now that I'm back, well, he doesn't seem to need me anymore.”

She paused, apparently waiting for another response.

“Has he said he doesn't need you?” Rafe asked gruffly. “Sometimes women read stuff into things that guys don't mean.”

“No, but—”

“Did he tell you to leave?”

“I told you, I left him. I share the blame, I do.” She waved a veined hand weighted with silver rings. “But I'm ready to try again. Only he has a whole new life and there doesn't seem to be any place in it for me.” Her large gray eyes swam with tears. “He doesn't care if I'm here or not. He won't talk to me, barely looks at me. Forty years of marriage and it's over. I'm pretty sure there's another woman. I don't know what to do.”

Rafe just nodded. Why was she confiding in him? He was no marriage counselor.

“If I was your husband,” he improvised, hoping that a solution would shut her up. “I'd want you to prove you would never go away again before I took you back.”