Two Against the Odds. Joan Kilby

she didn’t think she’d made enough money to pay tax. This was all a misunderstanding that would be cleared up quickly once he’d had a look at her accounts.

      “Okay,” she capitulated, opening the door wider. “Come in. Let’s get this over with. Shoes off, please. I have a friend with a baby who’s still crawling.”

      Color tinged his cheeks as he bent to remove his croc-skin loafers. Avoiding her gaze, he placed the shoes neatly beside her sandals, making them look tiny by comparison. Then she saw the reason for his embarrassment. His fourth toe poked through a hole in the left sock.

      Suddenly Rafe Ellersley seemed less daunting, more human. She would have preferred to see him as the enemy.

      Lexie led him into the sunny living room. Visible through the big window was the backyard containing a trampoline, her detached studio and, in the corner, a koi pond beneath a red-flowering camellia tree. She moved some art books off an armchair. “Have a seat.”

      He lowered himself onto faded chintz covered in overblown pink roses, like Ferdinand the Bull in a field of flowers. Lexie sat opposite on the matching couch beneath the window, squished in between her sleeping Burmese cats, Yin and Yang. She tucked her legs up cross-legged and pulled down her full skirt.

      “Why am I being audited?” she asked. “Is it random or are you guys targeting starving artists this year?”

      “The tax office is focusing on small businesses,” he explained with a shrug. “This is an election year. The government wants to be seen to be doing its job.”

      “But why me?” Lexie asked. “I’m a small fish.”

      “Small fish, big fish, they all get caught eventually. As I said, you haven’t filed a tax return for the past four years.” He whipped out a small notebook and consulted it. “Yet last financial year you sold two paintings to an American tourist for forty thousand dollars.”

      “Oh, right.” Lexie pressed paint-stained fingers to her mouth. They’d been her best sales to date. How could she have forgotten them? “I meant to declare them, honest.” She paused. “Er, how did you find out?”

      “The man hung them in his office and declared them as a tax deduction. The American Internal Revenue Service, doing a random check, cross-referenced with our tax department. And here we are.”

      “I don’t have any of that money left,” she said. “It’s gone. On rent, clothes, food…” Trivial things like that.

      “Why didn’t you declare it?”

      Procrastination again. “I was planning to average my income over five years.”

      “Yet you didn’t do that, either.”

      Lexie fidgeted, disturbing Yin, who looked up through green slits of eyes and twitched her creamy tail. Lexie stroked her, soothing her back to purring slumber. “I missed the cutoff date.”

      “You had seven months from the sale of the painting in which to file.” Rafe Ellersley consulted his notebook again. “I understand you were an art teacher at Summerside Primary School until five years ago. Presumably you know how to file an income tax statement.”

      “As a teacher with a fixed income, preparing a statement was easy. Since I quit my regular job I haven’t figured out all the ins and outs of what I need to do as a self-employed artist.”

      “So you’ve simply ignored the problem, hoping it will go away.” Rafe wrote a few lines in his notebook.

      “In a nutshell.” She glanced out the window, calculating the angle of the light slanting through the trees onto her detached studio. She’d hoped to have meditated her way into a creative state and be working by now. Instead, she was stuck here, talking to a tax agent. “How much time will the audit take?”

      “That depends,” he said. “If your records are in order and easily accessible it could take only a few days.”

      “Records?” Her fingers pleated the soft fabric of her skirt. She hadn’t been able to find her “filing system” for over a month.

      “Tax receipts. As in, when you purchase paints and canvases you keep a receipt.” His dark eyes bored into her. “You do keep your receipts, don’t you?”

      “Of course. I save everything in big manila envelopes.”

      “I’d like you to get them for me, please. Everything for the past five years. Plus bank statements, utility bills, home and contents insurance, et cetera.”

      “I would but there’s a small problem. I put the envelopes away for safekeeping and now I can’t find them.” When his black eyebrows pulled together, she added quickly, “Oh, don’t worry. I never throw anything away.” As anyone could guess just by looking at her house.

      “What have you been doing with your receipts since then?” he asked.

      “They’re around,” she said vaguely. Tossed in a drawer, tucked inside a novel as a bookmark, stuffed into a shoe box.

      “You’ll need to locate them and the envelopes, of course.” He glanced about the room. “Where can I set up my laptop? Is there a table or desk I can use as a workspace?”

      “Um…” The coffee table, an old trunk she’d painted white, was covered in assorted debris—a used teacup, her sketch pad and box of charcoal and cat toys. The side table at his elbow was obscured by seashells and pretty stones she’d found on the beach. The dining table was strewn with magazines, newspapers and junk mail. And a framed seascape ready to be delivered to the local Manyung Gallery, where she sold works on commission.

      “I guess the dining table.” She got up and placed the painting on the floor, leaning it against the wall.

      Rafe set his briefcase on the table in the space cleared and removed a laptop. Lexie moved around him, gathering the newspapers and magazines. She was aware of how tall he was, at least a head higher than her. And he smelled good, spicy and warm. He was emitting enough pheromones to set her blood humming again.

      “Perhaps you have a computer spreadsheet detailing items purchased and the dates?” he asked. “I’d still need the receipts, of course, for verification.”

      “No spreadsheet,” Lexie said. “My sister, Renita, is a loans officer at the bank. She tried to organize a bookkeeping system for me but I couldn’t be bothered filling in all those columns.”

      He turned his incredulous gaze on her. “Did you read the letter my boss sent you a month ago? Or any of his emails?”

      Shaking her head, she took a step back. Pheromones or no, she didn’t like an inquisition.

      “Did you listen to the messages on your answering machine, at least?”

      She rubbed at a spot of Crimson Lake paint on her knuckle. “I did. But when I’m working I tend to tune things out.”

      “Tune out?” It all seemed too much for Rafe. With a grimace, he pressed a hand to his abdomen.

      “Is your stomach bothering you?”

      “It’ll pass.” His voice was tight, his shoulders slightly hunched.

      “Is it an ulcer? My uncle had an ulcer.”

      “I’m fine.” He lowered himself onto the chair in front of his laptop, the lines of his face pulled taut.

      “I’ll make you a cup of peppermint tea.” Before he could object she strode out of the dining room into the adjacent kitchen. She filled the kettle at the sink. Crystals hanging in the window cast rainbows over her arms. People sometimes got exasperated with her for being scatterbrained, but she didn’t think she’d ever actually made anyone physically ill before.

      “My stomach would feel better if you got me your records,” he called.

      “I’m working on that.” While the water heated she looked in the cupboard beneath