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He sat on one of the high-backed chairs, tilted it on two legs and surveyed the room. It had a cheerful, homey feel to it. It was nothing like the pretentious glass and high-tech kitchens he was used to. In fact, he had a feeling Victoria Marshall had never heard of a food processor, much less used one. She’d probably squeezed every one of the lemons for this lemonade with her own hands. The thought proved disturbingly intriguing.
“Slow down, McAndrews. This woman is strictly off-limits,” he muttered aloud. Not only was Victoria Marshall the subject of an official IRS investigation, she was totally inappropriate for him. He liked his women sophisticated, fashionable and, most of all, uncommitted. From what he’d seen of Victoria she was about as worldly as a cloistered nun. As for her fashion sense, it would have been fine about one hundred years ago. And, worst of all, she was definitely the type of woman who needed commitments. She’d been reading Sonnets from the Portuguese, for crying out loud.
But she was gorgeous. Fragile. Like the lovely old porcelain doll he remembered his mother keeping in a place of honor in her bedroom. That doll had been his great-grandmother’s and would be passed along to his daughter if, as his mother reminded him frequently, he would only have the good sense to marry and settle down. He was suddenly struck by the fact that his mother probably would approve thoroughly of someone like Victoria.
“Uh-uh,” he muttered emphatically, irritated at the direction his thoughts had taken. He’d better get this over with now before he did something absolutely ridiculous and totally out of character, such as asking Victoria Marshall for a date. His mother might cheer, but Pete Harrison would have his hide for that breach of ethics.
“Where the hell is she?” he groused, lowering the chair to all four sturdy legs with a thud and stalking out of the kitchen. As he went from room to empty room looking for her, his dismay grew. How could she live like this? The place was a shambles. No wonder she’d left him in the kitchen. The wallpaper in the rest of the downstairs was peeling, the floors were warped and weathered, as though they’d spent weeks under floodwaters, and there wasn’t a stick of furniture in any of the rooms, unless you counted the old Victorian sofa which had stuffing popping out through holes in the upholstery. It looked as though it would be painfully uncomfortable under the best of repair.
“Victoria!”
“I’ll be right down. I’m just trying to get everything together.”
“I’ll come up.”
“Don’t do that,” she shouted back and he sensed an odd urgency in her voice. “The stairs—”
But before she could finish the warning, Tate had already reached the third step. As soon as he put his weight on it, he felt the stair wobble and heard the wood crack. His ankle twisted painfully and he fell backward, landing with a thud. The crash echoed throughout the house, followed by an explosion of exceptionally colorful curses as Tate lay on the floor, his ankle throbbing, his ego even more bruised than his body.
“Damn Pete Harrison and his so-called breeze of a case!” he growled ominously, completely undone by the emotional and physical shake-up of his life ever since he’d found Victoria Marshall in that damned tree. “I have a feeling I’d be in less danger checking out the head of the mob.”
Chapter Two
Upstairs, Victoria listened to the cacophony of explosive sounds and winced. Obviously, her incomplete warning had been far too little, too late. Cautiously, she poked her head out the door of her makeshift office-storeroom and peered down into Tate McAndrews’s scowling face.
“Are you okay?”
He was getting gingerly to his feet, testing his ankle. “Nothing’s broken, if that’s what you mean.”
“I’m sorry. I tried to warn you.”
“So you did,” he admitted dryly. “How can you live like this?”
“Like what?” she asked, honestly puzzled by the question. She loved this old house and she’d never been happier anywhere else. It was exactly the sort of home she’d always dreamed of owning, a place with character, with all sorts of interesting nooks and crannies. It would be a terrific place for hide-and-seek.
“This place is falling apart.”
She looked at the wobbly stairs, the tattered wallpaper and the dangling light bulb that Tate could see from the downstairs hall. Even she had to admit it didn’t give the very best impression of the house. “You have to think in terms of potential,” she suggested.
“Potential?”
“Like the kitchen,” she explained, deciding that he needed concrete images. Men like Tate McAndrews always did. They seemed to have trouble dealing with the abstractions, with feelings and moods and ambiance.
“You mean the kitchen looked as bad as this?”
“Worse,” she admitted. “It was my third project. It turned out rather well, don’t you think?”
“You did the kitchen yourself?”
She wasn’t sure whether she should be pleased or insulted by his incredulous tone. She decided to remain neutral. “You’ve seen my tax return. Does it look like I could afford to hire somebody?”
“I guess not.”
“Well, then. Of course, if I’d gotten that refund….” Her voice trailed off forlornly.
“Forget it,” he advised. “You said the kitchen was your third project. What were the others?”
“The bedroom and bathroom.”
Despite himself, Tate was intrigued. Knowing he was going to hate himself later for allowing yet another distraction to keep him from wrapping up this audit and escaping to the relative safety of Cincinnati, he asked, “May I see?”
“Are you sure you want to risk the stairs?”
“Just tell me what the secret is.”
“I’ve fixed every other one,” she explained brightly, as though that were a perfectly sensible thing to do.
He looked down and saw what should have been obvious to him in the first place: every second step was made of new wood, polished and solid looking. The ones in-between were broken planks that looked no better than the floors he’d seen in the downstairs rooms. The third one was splintered where his weight had been too much for the dry-rotted wood.
“I should have guessed,” he said, taking giant-sized steps to join her. “Lead on. You can warn me where the booby traps are.”
“Careful,” she whispered conspiratorially. “You’ll hurt its feelings.”
“Houses don’t have feelings.”
“Of course they do. They have feelings and personalities all their own.”
“This one’s obviously split,” he murmured.
“What?”
“You know…a split personality. Repaired in some parts. Disastrous in others.”
“Very funny.”
“I thought it was.”
“You would. You obviously have a cruel streak.”
“I’ll admit I’m not quite as tolerant as you appear to be,” he retorted, giving her a grin that shattered her indignation into a thousand pieces. Victoria found herself smiling back at him helplessly.
“Do you want to see the rest or not?” she asked softly, her flashing blue eyes more challenging than her words. A flicker of desire had flared to life in Tate’s eyes and Victoria felt a matching tremor of excitement so intense it startled her. So, she thought, this was what the fuss was all about. One minute you’re leading a perfectly ordinary, placid existence, and the next minute some thoroughly impossible, sexy man turns up and turns your insides into warm honey. The sensation was both thrilling and frightening.
“Oh, I want,” he replied in a low voice, his gaze drifting down over her slender neck and bare shoulders before halting in apparent fascination at the swell of her breasts. There was no doubt in her mind that he wasn’t referring to a tour of the house. Victoria suddenly realized with a flush of embarrassment that her nipples were clearly visible beneath the light cotton of her blouse. Worse than that, they seemed to be responding merely to the appreciative warmth of his examination, swelling to an aching tautness. She suddenly felt claustrophobic and had the strangest desire to run. At the same time, she wanted very much to stay right here and see exactly what Tate Mc-Andrews had in mind and whether he meant to follow through on that dangerous glint she thought she’d read in his eyes.
Almost hesitantly, he reached toward her and her heart thundered in anticipation, while her head seemed to be shouting to her to get a grip on herself. Sighing regretfully, she decided that just this once she’d better listen to her head. Before Tate’s fingers could touch her cheek, she whirled neatly around and stepped away from him.
“This is the bathroom,” she said briskly, determined to keep the shakiness she felt from her voice. Just because Tate McAndrews was the sexiest creature she’d seen since her last viewing of Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind, that was no reason for her to go all wobbly and woolly-headed. The man was here to audit her, after all. It wasn’t as though he’d asked her for a date. He’d only looked at her as though he’d wanted to…what? To kiss her senseless? And that was what had made her go weak in the knees. It was not a good way to begin a business relationship with an IRS agent, not unless you planned to follow through, which she most certainly did not.
With determinedly cool detachment she showed him the bathroom with its lovely old tiled walls and floor, its huge tub and the circular leaded window that let in shattered streams of bright sun during the day and soft moonlight at night. When they reached her bedroom, her composure slipped a little as she wondered idly what it would be like to have this virile man sharing her huge brass bed, the colorful, handmade quilt tossed anxiously aside in a tangled heap as a desperate, urgent passion made them oblivious to anything except each other. The prospect sent a disturbing shiver racing down her spine, and she blushed and turned away, avoiding his speculative gaze.
“Very nice,” he murmured softly, and for one very disconcerting minute she wasn’t sure whether he was talking about the bedroom or whether he had read her mind. The possibility that he, too, was looking at that bed and wondering who-knew-what unnerved her. She turned back to study him, a quizzical expression on her face, but he was looking innocently around the room.
“How long do you suppose it’s going to take you to do the rest of the house?” he asked with nothing more than casual interest. Victoria wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed.
“At the rate I’m going, it should be finished by the twenty-first century,” she admitted bleakly.
Her response seemed to make him angry for some reason. “You can’t go on living like this.”
“Of course I can,” she retorted. “What’s wrong with the way I live?”
“It’s not safe.”
“It’s perfectly safe. Just because the wallpaper is peeling doesn’t mean the 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 kept track of that? I’m impressed,” he said, opening the purse. He pulled out a Popsicle stick with “2/M.D.” scribbled on it, followed by a button from the heart fund drive clipped to a scrap of paper that said 50 cents. There were also stubs for at least a dozen charity raffles and the ends from three boxes of chocolate mint Girl Scout cookies. He groaned.
“What’s wrong?” Victoria demanded. “It’s all very clear.”
“Yes. I suppose it is,” Tate admitted. “It’s just that I’m used to…”
“You’re used to nice, tidy books with columns of numbers that all add up.”
The way she put it sounded insulting, as though there was something wrong with believing in order. “I can’t help it if I’ve been trained to respect reliable accounting methods. This is…it’s…” He couldn’t even find a word to express his utter dismay at her lackadaisical approach to record keeping.
“Mr. McAndrews,” Victoria said, her cheeks flushed and her blue eyes flashing. “I have better things to do with my time than write a bunch of figures down in some book. They all add up the same whether they’re in a book or in that shopping bag.”
Tate’s head was starting to pound. He was beginning to feel the way he had earlier when he’d understood her logic in expecting that ridiculous tax refund. “I suppose,” he agreed without very much conviction. He stood up and tried to balance the stack of shoeboxes in one arm, while grabbing the two shopping bags and the purse with the other. He motioned toward the envelopes. “Can you get those?”
“Where are you going with this?”
“I’m going to take it into the office and try to make some sense of it. That’s what an audit is all about. I have to assure the IRS that you haven’t tried to cheat them.”
Victoria sighed. “I haven’t, you know,” she said softly, her voice filled with something that sounded like disappointment at his continued disbelief.
Tate nodded. Ironically, he did believe her. No one whose head was as high in the clouds as Victoria Marshall’s would ever dream of cheating on her taxes. And even if the thought had crossed her mind, he doubted if she could figure out how to do it.
Victoria followed him down the stairs and out to his car, noting that it was what she would have expected him to drive: a very conservative, American made, four-door sedan. Anyone with his precise, orderly mind definitely would not be into flash and dazzle. She was a little worried, though, about the effect the afternoon seemed to have had on him. He did not look like the same determined, self-confident man who’d walked into her life a few hours earlier. He appeared defeated somehow, though his brown eyes did twinkle a little when he said goodbye.
“What happened to dinner?” she taunted. “I did win the bet, you know.”
“As soon as I figure this out, I’ll be in touch,” he promised with a sizzling, sensual smile that sent her blood pressure soaring. “And we’ll celebrate your victory over IRS with champagne, caviar and beef Wellington.”
As he drove off, Victoria sighed. If he threw in candlelight and roses, she’d be a goner.
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