Two Against the Odds. Joan Kilby

“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