Two Against the Odds. Joan Kilby
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have a baby. Naturally, there’d been emotion involved. “There’s nothing wrong with portraying feelings.”
“I didn’t say there was.”
“It’s not sentimental.”
“No need to get defensive. I think it’s wonderful. I’m just trying to help.”
“It’s not your cup of tea, that’s all.”
“You’re wrong. I like it a lot,” he insisted. “I just think it needs a contrasting note.”
That stopped her dead. He turned to her, one eyebrow lifted. Damn. Her silence was starting to look like agreement. He was cocky enough as it was. She couldn’t let him think he’d solved her problem. Not that he had solved it. It was one thing to toss off the phrase “contrasting note” like he knew what he was talking about and quite another to figure out what form the contrast should take.
“It has occurred to me that it needs more interior depth,” Lexie mused aloud, trying to baffle him with bullshit. “Perhaps a smidgeon more archetypal mystery in her smile. The goddess within, juxtaposed with the beast, as manifested by the exposed breast.”
Rafe seemed skeptical at this display of gobbledygook. He studied her a moment then finally laughed.
Lexie lifted her chin, holding his gaze rather than admit she was full of it. Damn. He’d seen right through her.
His laughter faded, his amusement replaced by something intent, almost…hungry. Lexie felt herself growing warm, her breathing shallow.
What was happening here?
Rafe blinked. “I’ve got to get back to number crunching. I, uh…” He shook his head. “What did I come in here for? Oh, yeah. Would you say you spend eighty percent of your work time in the studio and twenty percent in the house? Less? More?”
Lexie thought for a moment. She’d never considered this before. “Make it seventy percent studio.”
“Okay.” He started to leave then paused at the door. “I’ll need copies of your utility bills for the past five years. Would they also be in the envelopes?”
“Er, probably.”
He nodded and left. Through the window, Lexie watched him walk back across the lawn to the kitchen door and disappear inside the house. He had a great ass. And great shoulders. Long legs. Narrow hips. Really, he was perfectly proportioned. She wouldn’t mind painting him nude….
Stop it. She was behaving like a…a cougar. She hated that term. It was so predatory.
She turned back to the canvas. Contrasting note, huh? He might actually have something there. The trick was hitting the right note.
Lexie mulled it over while she continued to search the studio for the envelopes. At the end of half an hour she had no further clues to her painting. Hadn’t located the envelopes, either. Giving up, she grabbed a pad of heavy paper and a handful of pencils and went back inside the house. Sometimes when she sketched at random, ideas came to her.
Rafe was carrying a large purple cardboard box over to the coffee table when she walked into the living room. “I found this in your hall closet.”
Lexie recognized the all-purpose box she’d bought at a stationery store. She tossed stuff in there to get it out of sight. Sinking onto the couch, she propped herself on a layer of cushions and tucked her legs beneath her skirt. She doubted he’d find any receipts in there but looking would keep him busy.
She opened the sketch pad, intending to play around with ideas, drawing things she associated with Sienna—a stethoscope, Venus on the half shell. Instead she found herself studying Rafe as he opened the box. As if anticipating treasure, his eyes gleamed.
With a 4B pencil she drew dramatic slashes of black, blocking in his thick eyebrows. Working quickly, she captured his face in a few bold strokes. Not satisfied with the jaw, she smudged out the line with her gum eraser and made it sharper, the angle steeper. Then she chose a finer pencil to work in the shading on the hollows of the cheeks, around the eyes, the black stubble.
As he leafed through the bits and pieces in the box he began to frown. No receipts. She hadn’t thought so. He rolled his shoulders, working out the kinks.
Lexie paused. He carried a lot of tension. She could see it in the lines of his face and the set of his neck. She was the one who should be tense; she was being audited. But she was good at putting unpleasant things out of her mind. Maybe a little too good.
He dug through the box, shaking his head as he lifted out nail clippers, a pencil sharpener, a broken pedometer, a small wooden bowl, assorted colored pencils, marbles, paper clips and matchbooks.
He had eyes that slanted down at the outer corner, an aquiline nose and a mouth that was far too sensuous for someone who worked with columns and rows.
Glancing up, Rafe noticed her sketch pad on her upraised knee. “What are you drawing?”
“Nothing. Just playing around.” Lexie started on his ear. Every person’s whorls were different, like fingerprints.
“Playing?” he repeated as he piled everything back into the box. “Perhaps you don’t understand the seriousness of your situation.”
Lexie stretched her legs along the length of the couch, wriggling her bare toes.
Rafe’s gaze, drawn to the movement, lingered on her bare calves. Their gazes met for a fraction of a second. Lexie’s mind flashed back to the outline of his thigh muscle under his pants. She drew her skirt down. Rafe glanced away.
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