Two Against the Odds Read online

  EYES CLOSED, Lexie burrowed deeper under the covers. Then she sniffed. Was she imagining things or was that fish frying? She threw the covers back and walked naked down the hall to the kitchen.

  Rafe was at the stove, his back to her, flipping a fish fillet. His damp pant legs were rolled up to mid-calf and grains of sand still clung to his bare feet.

  “So I wasn’t dreaming. There really is a man cooking in my kitchen.” She stretched languorously, pushing her hands through her hair.

  Rafe turned, did a double take. The piece of fish dropped off his spatula into Murphy’s waiting jaws. “Murph, no!” Rafe dropped the spatula, too, as she sauntered over and slid her arms around his neck to nibble on his ear. “That was your fault.”

  She rubbed her big toe in the sensitive hollow below his ankle. “How can I make it up to you?”

  It was ridiculously easy to lure him back to bed, even leaving his fish half-cooked.

  She was going to miss this when he was gone.

  After they made love Lexie lay on Rafe’s chest listening to his heart beating. Memorizing the texture of his skin and the way the dark hair grew in swirls. She lifted her head to see his face. His eyes were open and he was staring at the ceiling. “What are you thinking?”

  “That I can’t stay in bed all day.” A small smile curled his lip. “I have other fish to fry.”

  She groaned and hit him with a pillow. Then she rolled out of bed and went into the en suite washroom to turn on the shower. She stepped under the spray. A moment later, Rafe opened the shower door. They made love beneath the cascade of warm water. Then he soaped her back before sluicing it off with his hands.

  “Your turn,” she said, spinning him around. She smoothed soapy hands over his shoulders and down his back. Then she slipped her arms around his waist. His fingers twined with hers, clasped to his chest. For a moment they stood there, the water beating down, her head resting on his back, his head bowed.

  Not speaking. Not thinking. Just…being.

  Hell. This could get emotional if they weren’t careful.

  She eased back and reached to shut off the water. “How about that fish? I’m starving.”

  They ate fried fish coated in cornmeal, washing it down with herbal tea.

  Lexie got up abruptly after breakfast and went out to the studio, leaving the dishes in the sink and Rafe to tackle the last three envelopes and prepare her tax return.

  She took her painting smock off a hook and slipped it on. Then she squeezed worms of Viridian Green and Cadmium Yellow onto her palette and mixed them with a bit of ochre.

  The familiar smell of oil paint and linseed oil permeated the air as she mixed her colors. With a printed-out picture of the molecular structure of DNA to guide her, Lexie chose a brush with a fine tip and started painting in tiny hexagons. The ghostly genetic material took shape in shades of bronze against a pale green background, a modern foil for Sienna’s almost medieval blue robe and wild red hair. It gave the soft romanticism of Sienna’s portrait a scientific edge and conveyed the continuity of life through reproduction.

  Lexie put down her brush, a catch in her throat. Stop it. No reason to get emotional. It wasn’t as though she’d had a milestone birthday, like the big four-O. She was only thirty-eight, for goodness sake.

  Babies were a nonissue as far as she was concerned. She’d had nearly two decades to get pregnant if she’d wanted to. Why should she feel so upset that it hadn’t happened?

  “SO, THIS IS IT.” Lexie wore a determined smile.

  “I guess.” Rafe transferred his briefcase to his other hand, started to reach out, then gripped the handle with both hands. He’d completed the audit and now he was leaving. End of story.

  “In a week or two you’ll get a letter from the tax office telling how much you owe, and when and where to pay the bill,” he explained.

  “A letter from the tax office, or from you?” She straightened his collar, patted down the lapels of his suit. Then she ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it.

  “You’ve got to take this seriously.” Rafe captured her hand and held it tightly. “The letter will be from me. If you have any questions, just give me a buzz.”

  “Okay.” She glanced down at the business card he’d given her. “How long will the next part take?”

  “A couple of weeks. I have to consult with my supervisor…”

  “Over what?” She blinked her big blue eyes, entirely too trusting.

  Despite their bedroom antics, he couldn’t cheat the tax office for her sake. “How much the fine will be. Have you got any savings?”

  “A thousand dollars. Maybe. Why?”

  “Because you’re going to owe a lot of money,” he said. “I’m not sure you understand that.”

  “I’m not stupid. Don’t look so worried.” She flapped her hands. “I just can’t think about it right now. If anything throws me, I won’t be able to paint. And I have to focus on my painting.”

  “Just promise me you won’t forget to pay the bill. If you evade that, it will bring down criminal charges.”

  For the first time, she looked worried. “Criminal charges. I thought you were joking when you told me you could call in the Federal Police.”

  “This is no joke, Lexie.” He glanced away, checking that Murphy hadn’t run onto the road, then back at her. “I’ve got to go if I’m going to beat the rush hour.”

  She smiled wistfully. “When you buy your boat, I’ll paint the name on it for you.”

  “Deal,” he said. The chances of that ever happening were slim to none. If—no, when—he bought his boat, he wouldn’t be calling her up. She knew it, too.

  He kissed her for the last time. And then he left without looking back.

  RAFE KNOCKED on Larry’s open door. Hearing his boss grunt by way of invitation, he entered. The boxy office held a couple of potted plants, a bank of filing cabinets and credenza displaying Larry’s collection of miniature pistol replicas.

  Larry was tapping at his computer keyboard with four fingers. He glanced at Rafe over the half-glasses perched on the end of his long nose. “You’re back.”

  “Mission accomplished.” Rafe dropped Lexie’s thirty-two-page audit on Larry’s desk. “She was evading taxes, all right, although not with malicious intent.”

  Larry leaned back in his chair. “What was the reason?”

  Rafe shrugged. “She’s poor. Too disorganized to save money. Ditzy as they come. All of the above.” He felt bad talking about her like that, as if he was betraying her even though it was all true.

  Larry flicked through the stapled sheets, pausing to check a figure here and there, reading over the summation. “I see the total tax payment is $21,390. Plus penalties of $10,000.”

  Rafe nodded, pressing a hand to his stomach. There was no way she could pay that.

  Larry narrowed his eyes at Rafe. “Is this comprehensive? You haven’t left anything out?”

  “On my honor,” Rafe said, moving his hand to cover his heart. “As well as the two paintings the IRS brought to our attention, I found records of thirty-eight lesser works she hadn’t declared.”

  Larry smiled broadly. “Good man! I knew you would come through.” He sobered, tapping Rafe’s report with his pen. “Of course I’ll be checking this thoroughly.”

  “Get out your fine-tooth comb,” Rafe said. “It’s legit.”

  “In that case, congratulations. No more black marks,” Larry said. “And you’ll be eligible for a bonus.”

  Rafe shut his eyes briefly, relief washing over him. In its wake came a sense of hope. The end of this job was in sight.

  Smiling, Rafe backed out of Larry’s office. “Thanks, boss.”

  With a black coffee and a half-eaten hamburger at his elbow, Rafe sat in his cubicle and started to review the file for his next audit, a take-out fish-and-chip restaurant.

  He was finding it difficult to concentrate. He was worried, too, for Lexie’s sake. How would she pay? She was living off two-minute noodles for c
ripes’ sake. And she was counting on winning the Archibald to get the money to pay her taxes. To his inexpert eye her painting seemed pretty good but how realistic was she being?

  He caught himself with a shake of his head. Lexie was just an auditee. Not his problem.

  The main thing was, he’d kept his job. With a possible bonus.

  He could buy a boat.

  He threw down his pen and got to his feet. He paced a few steps away from his cubicle, thinking furiously. Why wait another year? He could live on the boat if he had to.

  He dropped back into his chair and quickly pulled up a boat brokering website he had bookmarked. There were three used Steber 47 fishing boats for sale in the greater metropolitan area. He was jotting down phone numbers and addresses when Chris strolled in from lunch sipping from a coffee take-out cup.

  “How was your jaunt to the seaside?” Chris put his cup on his desk and removed his glasses to polish them on the hem of his shirt.

  Rafe hesitated. He and Chris were the same age and shared a love of fishing and boutique beer. Even though they were friends, Rafe was wary of saying too much about Summerside, especially at the office.

  “I went there to work,” he said. “Not have fun.”

  “Who said anything about fun?” Chris said, putting his glasses back on. “You were going down there to nail some artist chick for tax evasion. How did that pan out?”

  “She’s going to have to pay penalties. As expected.” Actually, I did nail the blonde.

  Chris nodded to the computer screen. “Still drooling over the Steber, huh?”

  “I’m going to go look at a couple this weekend,” Rafe said. “Want to come?”

  “Can’t. Laura’s mum is looking after Jordon so Laura and I can go away for the weekend. First time alone since the birth.” Chris glanced at his watch. “Better get back to work. You’ll have to come over for dinner soon. Maybe we’ll fix you up with one of Laura’s friends.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  He wished he’d taken a photo of Lexie or something. Just to remember her by.

  Hang on. He quickly did an internet search for Lexie Thatcher. She had a website displaying her paintings. He clicked through the pages. It didn’t look as if she’d updated it for a while— He stopped. There was a photo of her next to one of her seascapes at some gallery. He clicked on it to enlarge it. For some minutes he just looked at her face. And remembered.

  IT WAS good Rafe was gone, Lexie told herself as she prepared for another day in front of her easel. She’d gotten a lot done in the weeks since he’d left.

  Yet, without that fabulous sex she wasn’t sleeping as soundly as before. It didn’t help that she was putting in long hours at the easel.

  This new version of Sienna’s portrait was taking longer than she’d anticipated because the DNA structure was so intricate and the area to be covered was large. She wasn’t a fast painter and she often painted a section out and started over. So even though she still had a couple of months until the Archibald Prize deadline, she would need every minute.

  Rafe’s business card was tucked into the corner of the notice board in her studio. There was no reason to call him, not until she got her tax assessment. But she thought about him every day.

  “Lexie!” Hetty knocked on the open door. She wore a long blue flowing dress and white clogs. She was holding a white plastic bag. “Are you busy?”

  “When I’m in my studio I’m always busy.” Lexie despaired of ever convincing her family that what she did was work. She carried on arranging her brushes and oils, deciding which colors to squeeze onto her palette.

  “I won’t stay long,” Hetty said, sweeping in with a rustle of plastic. “I brought you some lemons from our tree.” She put the bag on the long trestle table where Lexie framed her larger paintings. “Are you okay? You look pale. You should at least get out for a walk, sweetheart. You never see the sun.”

  “I’m fine. Thanks for the lemons.” Lexie mixed more of the bronze color for the sugar hexagons. “Have you heard anything from Jack and Sienna in Bali?”

  “No, but I got an email from Oliver.” Hetty placed the bag of fruit among the odds and ends of canvases and frames. “He’s snorkeling on the coral reef every day.”

  “That’ll give Jack and Sienna plenty of time to themselves,” Lexie said.

  Hetty peered at the painting. “Is that lace?”

  “No, it’s a DNA double helix.” When Hetty still looked perplexed Lexie gestured with her paintbrush. “Genetics, reproduction, biological clock…?”

  “Oh, I see.” Hetty hoisted herself onto a high wooden stool and propped her clogs on the rungs. “Have you heard from Rafe?”

  “No,” Lexie replied, trying not to express her impatience that her mother was still here. “I don’t expect to until I get my tax invoice.”

  “I don’t understand how you can be so calm about that.”

  “Getting upset isn’t going to do any good.” Lexie wiped her brush with a turpentine-soaked rag and dipped it in another color before resuming her detailed work. “If I win the Archibald then all that energy I spent worrying would have been wasted.”

  “No, I meant how can you be so calm about not seeing the man? I thought you two hit it off. Now he’s just…gone.”

  Lexie’s hand jerked, leaving a blotch of paint on the canvas. She reached for a toothpick to scrape it off. “How’s everything with you and Dad?”

  “That’s why I was hoping Rafe would be here. He gave me such good advice I wanted to ask him what to do about the other woman.”

  “What can a young man who’s practically a stranger tell you about your marriage? Anyway, what other woman? It was obvious at the reception that Susan Dwyer is just Dad’s mentor.” Lexie threw the toothpick in a bin. “You and he need to fit in with each other’s interests. Why don’t you ask him to come to one of your meditation retreats?”

  “He wouldn’t go.” Hetty dismissed that with a wave. “He thinks we’re a cult or some such foolishness.”

  “Tell him how important it is to you,” she said. “Make him understand that your marriage is at a critical point.”

  Hetty gazed unhappily at her fingers as she twisted her chunky silver rings. “What if he doesn’t love me enough to do that for me?”

  “It doesn’t seem like a lot to ask,” Lexie said gently, “after all the years you’ve had together.”

  Hetty was silent a moment. “I wonder sometimes if we have anything together anymore.” She slid off the stool and gave Lexie a hug. “I’ll see you soon. Take care of yourself.”

  She left and Lexie went back to her painting. This malaise, or whatever she was feeling, would pass. But Hetty’s parting words lingered. Lexie and Rafe had certainly shared something.

  An obsession with each other’s bodies.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “WHAT SEEMS to be the problem?” Dr. Natalie Higgins lifted her stethoscope to listen to Lexie’s chest. Natalie’s straight brown hair was pulled back from her heart-shaped face with a thin black headband, making her look even younger than her thirty-something years.

  “I’m tired all the time,” Lexie said. “I can hardly drag myself out of bed in the morning.”

  When Rafe had been around, both her energy and her creativity had been flowing full throttle. He’d been gone for four weeks now and she’d become increasingly lethargic.

  Natalie lowered her stethoscope. “Rest your arm on the desk, please.”

  Lexie planted her forearm next to a framed photo of Natalie’s smiling two-year-old daughter. “How’s Millie?” she asked, nodding at the picture. Lexie remembered when Natalie had married Deepra, the local pathologist, five years ago. She’d rejoiced with her GP when Natalie had gotten pregnant and had followed Millie’s progress through every stage.

  “She’s toilet trained,” Natalie said proudly as she strapped the blood pressure cuff onto Lexie’s arm. “One day she just decided she’d had enough of diapers and within a week she was using the toilet.”


  “That’s great,” Lexie said. “She’s so cute.”

  “Your heart sounds fine. Your blood pressure’s good,” Natalie said, hanging up the cuff. “I’ll order some blood work. You might be low on iron. Are you run-down for any reason?”

  “I’ve been working hard for months to get a portrait finished for the Archibald.”

  Natalie wrote out a lab request for blood tests. “Is that stressful?”

  “Yes,” Lexie admitted. “I’m happy with what I’m doing now but it’s touch and go whether I’ll get it done in time. The deadline is in ten days.”

  “How are your periods? Are they regular? Flow not too heavy?” Natalie started scanning through Lexie’s records on the computer.

  “Um. I think so. I can’t remember.”

  Natalie’s hands stilled on the keys. “Could you be pregnant?”

  “No, no. I have an IUD. Dr. Klein put it in a couple of years ago.”

  Natalie slanted her a glance. “You’ve been seeing me for six years. Hang on while I finish looking at your notes.” She clicked back through computer pages.

  Lexie waited patiently. Sienna worked here now, too, and Lexie saw her if she had something simple like a sinus infection, but she didn’t feel comfortable getting undressed in front of her sister-in-law.

  “It’s been longer than a couple of years,” Natalie said. “More like ten. IUDs should be replaced every five years or so. Would you like me to do that now?”

  “Ten years,” Lexie murmured. How had the time gone so quickly? “Sure, might as well while I’m here.”

  “IUDs aren’t generally inserted in women who haven’t had a baby.” Natalie rose and opened a cabinet full of medical supplies to look for an IUD. “Have you had a child?”

  The room was silent but for the quiet clink of metal as Natalie readied her instruments.

  “N-no.”

  “Was there a reason you went with an IUD?” Natalie asked, tearing into the packaging.

  “I—I didn’t want to have to worry about remembering to take a pill,” Lexie went on. “Dr. Klein said it would be fine.”