Two Against the Odds Read Free Page A

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 andRenita 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.
    â€œThe 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.”
    â€œYou have no idea,” Lexie murmured.
    Â 
    R AFE 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 shegoing 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.
    â€œMaybe instead of looking for individual receipts, you should concentrate on finding those envelopes you were telling me about,” he said.
    â€œI’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 tangledblond 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.
    â€œDo you mind music while you work?” she said, picking out a CD from the vertical rack.
    â€œGo ahead.” He gritted his teeth and braced himself for whale songs or some such New Age thing.
    â€œI think you’ll like this. It’s Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu.” She inserted the CD and a soft haunting voice began to sing in another language.
    Yep, just as he’d thought. Rafe tuned out and started tapping in numbers. The sooner he got through this, the sooner he could get down to the pier with his fishing rod.
    â€œOoh, here’s a whole bunch,” she said, peering into a carved wooden