Opposites attract in this unforgettable favorite from New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods

Victoria Marshall was an incurable romantic with her antique shop and rustic farmhouse, love poems and yesterday’s fashions. She was yearning for a Prince Charming to sweep her off her feet. The dashing Tate McAndrews fit the bill, but alas, the IRS representative overseeing her audit had the soul of a stuffy realist.

Tate was so…sensible, so practical…without an impulsive bone in his gorgeous body. How could she yearn with such heated longing for a man her mind knew was wrong for her? Could they share more than a brief romance without driving each other crazy? Love, Victoria knew, would find a way.

Yesterday’s Love

Sherryl Woods

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Copyright

Chapter One

Tears streaming down her pale cheeks, Victoria flipped off the television by remote control and reached blindly for the box of tissues beside her on the huge brass bed. When her groping fingers met the empty slot, she muttered a soft expletive, tossed the useless container across the room and wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. Now, Voyager always did this to her.

“You’d think by now I’d be prepared, wouldn’t you?” she said to the fluffy gray cat that was purring contentedly in her lap. How many times had she sobbed as a resigned Bette Davis pleaded with Paul Henried not to ask for the moon, when they already had the stars? Surely more than a dozen.

Of course, it wasn’t just this movie that affected her that way, she noted ruefully. She’d cried through everything from Jane Eyre and Camille to Terms of Endearment. She’d even been known to sniffle a little when two obviously long lost lovers were reunited in a shampoo commercial.

Being a sentimental, hopeless romantic in a world of hardened cynics sometimes seemed to be a wretched curse. She recalled with more than a little dismay the number of times her embarrassed dates had exited a movie joking that they might be able to buy her diamonds, but they doubted they could afford to keep her supplied with Kleenex. Well, to hell with the emotionally uptight men of the world, she thought darkly. They’ll all probably wind up with much deserved ulcers.

Climbing out of bed, she ignored Lancelot’s outraged cry of protest at being displaced from his comfortable spot in her lap. After she pulled on the long, old-fashioned skirt and scoop-necked blouse she’d found during her last secondhand store excursion, she wandered barefoot into the kitchen. The fragrant scent of lilacs and freshly mowed grass was drifting in with the spring breeze that ruffled the curtains on the open windows. This was her favorite room in the decrepit old farmhouse she’d bought and begun remodeling bit by bit the previous year. Her parents had nicknamed her home Victoria’s Folly, but once they’d seen what she’d accomplished with the kitchen, even they had to admit there was hope for the place.

Like the rest of the house, the kitchen had wide-plank hardwood floors, but in here she had stripped away layers of paint and wax and had polished the wood to a soft gleam. The huge windows, cleansed of the thick grime that had accumulated during years of neglect, now let in so much light that the room seemed bright even on the grayest Ohio winter day. She had scoured the once disreputable looking white tile countertops until they sparkled. The crumbling walls had been patched and painted a cheerful yellow, against which she had hung shiny copper pots and pans. She had refinished the round oak table and chairs in the middle of the room herself. And in the center of the table stood an antique blue-and-white water pitcher filled with daffodils from her garden.

“Okay, old guy, what shall we do about lunch?” she asked the cat who was now staring at her patiently from the sun-warmed windowsill. “Tuna? Liver? Chicken?” She waited for a responding meow. There was none. “You’re not helping, Lancelot.” She opened a can of the liver he seemed to love, wrinkled her nose in disgust and put it in his dish.

“You have no taste, cat,” she said, as he arched haughtily and then made his way slowly to the dish of food she’d placed on the floor.

While Lancelot methodically devoured the liver, Victoria searched in the back of the huge, walk-in pantry for her picnic basket. The day was too incredibly gorgeous to waste one more minute of it indoors. She filled the wicker basket with chunks of Gouda and cheddar cheese, two freshly baked poppy seed rolls she’d bought at the bakery on her way home from her antique shop the previous afternoon, a bottle of chilled mineral water and a container of strawberries. She tossed a dog-eared volume of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry in on top, took her floppy, wide-brimmed straw hat from the peg by the back door and set out across the rolling field behind the house. Lancelot, through with his meal, trailed at her heels sniffing hopefully amid the buttercups for the scent of a field mouse.

When she reached the huge, ancient oak tree that shaded the back corner of her property, she spread out her red-checked tablecloth and settled down for her picnic, barely noticing the taste of the food as she lost herself in the sad, poetic spell Browning had woven.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

For the second time that day, she felt misty-eyed. Would she ever love someone this much, she wondered despondently. Nothing in her twenty-eight years indicated that she had the potential for such deep emotion. Certainly none of the men she’d met up until now had ever stirred a passionate response from her. Their kisses, their practiced touches had been mildly enjoyable, but nothing more. Maybe she was doomed to a life of lukewarm relationships. The thought was incredibly depressing, especially for someone who truly believed it was love that made the world go around.

Sighing heavily, she glanced up from the sonnet she’d been reading just in time to see Lancelot spring into the tree above her with surprising agility for a cat his size and age.

“Lancelot, no!” she shouted futilely, as he landed on a limb high above her head. “Lancelot, you know you’re terrified of heights. Now what are you going to do?”

She shook her head as the cat uttered a pathetic meow.

“You got yourself up there,” she reminded him unsympathetically. “Now get yourself down.”

Lancelot seemed to shiver, then meowed again more loudly. He sounded pitiful, far too pitiful to ignore.

“Okay. Okay. I’m coming,” she said resignedly, dropping her book onto the tablecloth and hiking up her skirt. She shinnied up the tree in the awkward, uneasy manner of someone who’d done this often in the past but never grown accustomed to it. To be perfectly truthful, she wasn’t one bit fonder of heights than Lancelot was. To top it off, the minute she got near him, the cat backed out of her reach. “Lancelot, how can I rescue you if you keep moving away from me?”

She tested the strength of the limb and shifted until her body rested along the length of it. Stretching as far as she could, she tried again to grab the cat, whose cries had grown more shrill. Taking a deep breath, Victoria crept another few inches. “Here, Lancelot. Come on, fellow,” she whispered encouragingly, just as she heard the branch creak and felt it waver beneath her. The tremor shook her confidence and her patience. “Lancelot, get over here right this minute!”

The cat didn’t budge, but the limb dipped precariously and Victoria glanced nervously down at the ground. It seemed much farther away than she’d remembered. Clinging tightly to the branch while she tried to decide whether to risk a retreat or spend the next fifty years of her life right here living on bark, acorns and oak leaves, she looked off in the distance and spotted the welcome sight of someone heading in her direction.

With his determined, long-legged stride and squared jaw, the unfamiliar man looked like someone with a definite and probably unpleasant mission. Even from this distance and this crazy, sort of upside-down angle, she could tell he was physically impressive. His broad shoulders, beneath a pale blue shirt that was shadowed with perspiration, were obviously well formed and muscular. The tan slacks were slung low on slim hips, the fit emphasizing the curve of his thighs, the length of his powerful legs. His tie was askew, and he was carrying a tan jacket slung over his shoulder. He was definitely not dressed like someone who’d planned to go for a stroll in the country.

She shaded her eyes and squinted into the sun, studying what she could make out of the chiseled features of his face and the dark brown hair that needed cutting. Her breath caught in her throat.

“Good Lord, if I’m dreaming, don’t let me wake up,” she murmured under her breath as he approached, his expression growing puzzled as he noted the tablecloth, the picnic basket and the book.

“Hi,” she said cheerfully, trying to keep a nervous tremor out of her voice. The last crack of the limb had tilted it until her head seemed nearly perpendicular to the blanket. As soft as the ground had seemed when she’d been sitting on it, she had no particular desire to land on it headfirst and test its resiliency.

Startled by the husky, whispered greeting, Tate McAndrews looked around for the person whose entrancing voice had seemed to come to him from the heavens.

“Up here.”

He gazed up and stared into a pair of very wide, very blue eyes that glinted with suppressed laughter. His heart took an unexpected lurch.

“Hi, yourself,” he said, his irritation at the rotten way the day had gone suddenly vanishing in the presence of such unabashed, impish humor. Perhaps this wild-goose chase he’d been sent on would have an unexpected dividend after all. “Do you always perch in trees after lunch?”

“Hardly,” she said with a grimace that wrinkled her pert nose in a delightful way. “By the way, my name’s Victoria Marshall and I’m very glad to see you. I seem to have gotten myself into a bit of a predicament.”

Tate groaned and a pained expression replaced the quirk of amusement that had played about his lips. So much for any thoughts of pleasant diversions. His wild-goose chase had ended. “I should have known,” he muttered.

“Is something wrong?”

He shook his head. “No. In fact, I was looking for you.”

“You were? Do I know you?”

“Not yet, but you will,” he mumbled ominously. “I’m Tate McAndrews. Internal Revenue Service.”

Usually people panicked at the mere mention of the IRS, but Tate had to give Victoria Marshall credit. She didn’t even flinch.

“Oh, that’s nice,” she said brightly and with such sincerity that Tate had to believe she had no idea what he was doing here. “But do you suppose you could help me get down before we continue this conversation? My head is beginning to spin.”

“What are you doing up there in the first place?”

“Lancelot saw a squirrel.”

“Lancelot? A squirrel?” He felt strangely light-headed, as though he were rapidly losing the capability of rational thought. It was either this unseasonably warm weather or this perky woman he’d discovered hanging upside down in a tree with her skirt hitched up in a decidedly provocative way. He preferred to think it was the weather.

“Lancelot is my cat. He’s twelve and he mostly just lazes around now, but a squirrel will get to him every time.”

“I see.” Actually Tate didn’t see at all. But he was beginning to understand that this assignment that Pete Harrison had foisted off on him was not going to be quite as easy and straightforward as he’d anticipated. He berated himself for not guessing that any woman who would demand that the IRS send her a refund for 15,593.12 more than she had paid in taxes was not exactly your run-of-the-mill evader. She was a kook. Everything that had happened in the last few minutes only confirmed the fact. She might be very attractive in an offbeat sort of way, but she was a kook nonetheless.

Still, she was also up in the tree, and he couldn’t wrap up this absurd business about the refund until she came down. It would probably be best if she didn’t do it headfirst and shake any more of her screws loose.

“Let go of the branch,” he suggested.

“Are you crazy?” she replied in a horrified, hushed whisper, her eyes widening as the branch tipped a bit more. “I’m twelve feet off the ground. I’ll break every bone in my body.”

“Don’t worry. I’m going to catch you.”

“Then I’ll break every bone in your body.”

“I’ll take my chances,” he retorted. “Come on. Just let go and drop down.”

“But what about Lancelot?”

“I don’t think you need to worry about him,” Tate replied dryly.

Victoria followed his gaze and saw that the traitorous cat was sitting serenely in the middle of the tablecloth eating the last of the Gouda cheese. “Lancelot, how could you?” she muttered.

“You might as well jump.”

Sighing nervously, Victoria swung her legs around, allowing them to dangle as she clung tightly to the increasingly unsteady branch. She glanced down uneasily into Tate McAndrews’s upturned face. “Are you sure about this?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay,” she said, closing her eyes as she let go. There was no point in looking. It was up to Tate McAndrews to make good on his promise to catch her. She tried to think of herself as weightless, a butterfly floating on air, but it wasn’t working. She felt as though she were plummeting like a rock. Her heart thudded against her ribs in anticipation of the crash landing that would leave them both in a tangle of broken bones.

Suddenly, just when she was sure it was too late, that she’d only imagined someone was going to save her from cracking her skull, she felt strong arms break her fall. As the breath whooshed out of her, her own arms instinctively circled Tate’s shoulders. She hung on for dear life.

“You can open your eyes now,” he said, his husky, laughter-filled voice a whisper of disturbing warmth against her flushed cheek.

Victoria wasn’t sure she wanted to if it meant he would put her down. She was surprised to discover that she rather liked his tangy male scent, the rippling strength of his arms, the warmth that radiated through his clothes. He appealed to so many of her senses: touch, smell and—most definitely she decided, peeking at his chiseled profile—sight. The man was even more gorgeous than he’d appeared from her perch in the tree. Definitely romantic hero material, she thought, sighing unconsciously.

Tate heard the sigh and realized with a sense of shock that he was apparently having a very similar reaction. It was a reaction that was both unexpected and totally inappropriate. Ten years with IRS had hardened him, made him cynical about human nature in general and especially about the type of people who tried to bilk the government. They were thieves, and it was his job to catch them and see that they paid. Nothing more, nothing less. It was all very businesslike, very impersonal. Sometimes he spent months on a case, shadowing a subject’s every move, getting to know the most intimate secrets of his or her life, but never before had he responded to one of them on a personal level.

Then again, he had to admit that none of his previous subjects had ever looked like Victoria Marshall. He lowered her gently to the checked tablecloth, then sat down beside her, unable to shift his gaze away. She was like no woman he had ever seen, except, perhaps, in a Renoir painting. She was wearing a long, ruffled cotton skirt in a bright shade of pink that made her seem daringly oblivious to the long red hair that framed her face in a profusion of untamed, golden-highlighted curls. Though those incredibly blue eyes met his gaze with an appealing, interested expression, she was fiddling nervously with a floppy, white straw hat. Her off-the-shoulder white blouse revealed an extraordinary amount of creamy flesh, he noted breathlessly before glancing quickly away only to encounter the enticing sight of her slender, bare feet peeking from beneath the folds of her skirt.

He drew a deep, shuddering breath. This wouldn’t do at all. Obviously, Victoria Marshall was smarter than he’d thought. She was probably deliberately trying to appeal to him, to seduce him so that he’d forget all about the little matter of her bizarre tax return. She wouldn’t be the first woman to try that. True, most of them were considerably more worldly than she seemed to be, but perhaps this wide-eyed innocence was all an act.

Victoria watched the play of expressions on Tate’s face and wondered about them. Warmth. Anger. Determination. She had the feeling that he’d just made a decision about something or someone. Was it her? She didn’t want to think so, because his brown eyes were glittering now with a cold hardness that she found almost frightening in its dark intensity.

“Did you bring my check?” she asked hopefully.

He shook his head. “Sorry. The IRS doesn’t underwrite bad business debts. Why haven’t you answered any of our letters?”

Victoria was puzzled. “I haven’t seen any letters.” She brightened. “Of course there is a stack of mail on the desk in the shop. They must be there. What were they about?”

“We’re auditing you. You were supposed to report with all your records.”

“Oh, dear. When?”

“Last week.”

“Oh, dear,” she repeated contritely. “Would you like some cheese?”

“What?”

“I asked if you would like some cheese,” she explained patiently, holding out a chunk of the cheddar that Lancelot hadn’t discovered during his raid on the picnic basket. “It’s very good.”

“Sure. Thanks. About the audit—”

“Couldn’t we talk about that later?”

“Look, Ms. Marshall—”

“Call me Victoria.”

Tate closed his eyes. His head was beginning to reel again. “Victoria. I drove all the way up here from Cincinnati to straighten out your tax problems. I don’t have time to sit under a tree and eat cheese and make small talk with you.” She blinked at him rapidly and his determination wavered.

“Much as I might like to,” he added to soften the harsh effect of his very firm words. She’d looked as though she might cry and he couldn’t stand that. He had come here to find out how much she’d been holding out on the government, not to make her cry.

“But I don’t have any tax problems,” she insisted stoutly. “I’ve always sent my return in right on time.”

She hesitated, her very kissable pink lips pursed thoughtfully. “At least I think I have. I’m not sure. Paperwork is so boring, don’t you think? Anyway, I’m almost certain that I haven’t missed a single deadline. I make it a point to put a big red circle around April 15 on my calendar so I won’t forget.”

“But you asked for a refund of money you’d never paid.”

She regarded him indignantly. “How can you say that? I’ve paid year after year. This last year, when I opened my shop, I lost more money than I earned.”

Tate, to his dismay, was beginning to follow her logic. That scared the life out of him. Unleashed on an unsuspecting world, this woman would be dangerous. Beautiful, but kooky as they come. “So you figured the government should reimburse you out of funds you’d previously paid?”

Her eyes sparkled, and she gave him a smile that could light up a skyscraper. “Exactly.”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“It doesn’t?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Her smile wavered. “Oh. Well, I guess I’ll get by. Business has been picking up lately. Now that it’s spring more people seem to go for drives in the country. Most of them can’t resist browsing through antiques.”

“Do they buy anything?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes. More often than not, they drink a cup of coffee, chat awhile and then go on. That’s part of the fun of owning an antique shop…meeting new people.”

“You give your customers coffee?”

The look she gave him was withering. “Usually I have a homemade cake, too,” she said defensively. “Yesterday I had apple pie, but the crust was soggy. I haven’t quite mastered pie crusts yet. I’m not sure what the problem is. Maybe the shortening.”

Tate shook his head. He’d obviously been dealing with powerful, cold-blooded corporations too long. He was not prepared to deal with someone who spent more money most days feeding her customers than she took in and then worried about the quality of her cooking on top of it.

“Do you suppose we could take a look at your records?” he said, suddenly impatient to get this over with. He was getting some very strange feelings from this woman and, unfortunately, most of them were very unprofessional. Right now she was looking at him with wide, cornflower-blue eyes filled with hurt, as though he’d rejected her or worse. His pulse rate quickened, and he had the oddest desire to comfort her, to hold her and tell her he’d take care of everything. He drew in a ragged breath and reminded himself sternly that IRS agents, especially those with his reputation for tough, relentless questioning, did not comfort individuals they were about to audit.

“Of course,” Victoria replied stiffly. Her first impression obviously had been correct: this man did have a mission, and it seemed he wasn’t the type to be dissuaded from pursuing it. It was such a waste, too, she thought with a sigh. With his dashing good looks and trim build, he’d seemed exactly the sort of man she’d been waiting all her life to meet, the type who’d sweep a woman off her feet in the very best romantic tradition. Instead, he seemed to have the soul of a stuffy realist. He was going to wind up with ulcers by the time he hit forty, just like the rest of them.

Disillusioned and disappointed at having to abandon her fantasy so quickly, she gathered up the remnants of her picnic, perched her hat on top of her head and took off across the field, her long skirt billowing in the breeze. She didn’t wait to see if Tate McAndrews followed. She knew instinctively that he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight. He apparently thought she was some sort of criminal. She huffed indignantly at the very idea. A criminal indeed! Well, he could look at her records, such as they were, from now until doomsday, and he wouldn’t find anything incriminating. Once he’d finished, he could apologize and go on his way.

She glanced over her shoulder and caught the frown on his face, the hard, no-nonsense line of his jaw. On second thought, he probably wouldn’t apologize.

When they reached the house, Victoria opened the kitchen door and stood aside to allow Tate to enter.

“Why don’t you have a seat? I’ll get the papers and bring them in here,” she suggested. “There’s lemonade in the fridge, if you’d like some.”

Lemonade? The corners of Tate’s mouth tilted up as he watched her disappear into the main part of the house, the long skirt adding a subtle emphasis to the naturally provocative sway of her hips. He couldn’t recall the last time anyone had offered him lemonade. Most of the women he knew had a Scotch on the rocks waiting for him when he walked in the door. He picked up two tall glasses from the counter by the sink, went to the refrigerator and filled them with ice. He found the huge pitcher of fresh-squeezed lemonade and poured them each a glass. He took a long, thirst-quenching swallow of the sweettart drink. It was perfect after that damnably hot trek through the field. He’d forgotten how good this stuff was. Maybe he was getting a little too jaded after all.

He sat on one of the high-backed chairs, tilted it on two legs and surveyed the room. It had a cheerful, homey feel to it. It was nothing like the pretentious glass and high-tech kitchens he was used to. In fact, he had a feeling Victoria Marshall had never heard of a food processor, much less used one. She’d probably squeezed every one of the lemons for this lemonade with her own hands. The thought proved disturbingly intriguing.

“Slow down, McAndrews. This woman is strictly off-limits,” he muttered aloud. Not only was Victoria Marshall the subject of an official IRS investigation, she was totally inappropriate for him. He liked his women sophisticated, fashionable and, most of all, uncommitted. From what he’d seen of Victoria she was about as worldly as a cloistered nun. As for her fashion sense, it would have been fine about one hundred years ago. And, worst of all, she was definitely the type of woman who needed commitments. She’d been reading Sonnets from the Portuguese, for crying out loud.

But she was gorgeous. Fragile. Like the lovely old porcelain doll he remembered his mother keeping in a place of honor in her bedroom. That doll had been his great-grandmother’s and would be passed along to his daughter if, as his mother reminded him frequently, he would only have the good sense to marry and settle down. He was suddenly struck by the fact that his mother probably would approve thoroughly of someone like Victoria.

“Uh-uh,” he muttered emphatically, irritated at the direction his thoughts had taken. He’d better get this over with now before he did something absolutely ridiculous and totally out of character, such as asking Victoria Marshall for a date. His mother might cheer, but Pete Harrison would have his hide for that breach of ethics.

“Where the hell is she?” he groused, lowering the chair to all four sturdy legs with a thud and stalking out of the kitchen. As he went from room to empty room looking for her, his dismay grew. How could she live like this? The place was a shambles. No wonder she’d left him in the kitchen. The wallpaper in the rest of the downstairs was peeling, the floors were warped and weathered, as though they’d spent weeks under floodwaters, and there wasn’t a stick of furniture in any of the rooms, unless you counted the old Victorian sofa which had stuffing popping out through holes in the upholstery. It looked as though it would be painfully uncomfortable under the best of repair.

“Victoria!”

“I’ll be right down. I’m just trying to get everything together.”

“I’ll come up.”

“Don’t do that,” she shouted back and he sensed an odd urgency in her voice. “The stairs—”

But before she could finish the warning, Tate had already reached the third step. As soon as he put his weight on it, he felt the stair wobble and heard the wood crack. His ankle twisted painfully and he fell backward, landing with a thud. The crash echoed throughout the house, followed by an explosion of exceptionally colorful curses as Tate lay on the floor, his ankle throbbing, his ego even more bruised than his body.

“Damn Pete Harrison and his so-called breeze of a case!” he growled ominously, completely undone by the emotional and physical shake-up of his life ever since he’d found Victoria Marshall in that damned tree. “I have a feeling I’d be in less danger checking out the head of the mob.”

Chapter Two

Upstairs, Victoria listened to the cacophony of explosive sounds and winced. Obviously, her incomplete warning had been far too little, too late. Cautiously, she poked her head out the door of her makeshift office-storeroom and peered down into Tate McAndrews’s scowling face.

“Are you okay?”

He was getting gingerly to his feet, testing his ankle. “Nothing’s broken, if that’s what you mean.”

“I’m sorry. I tried to warn you.”

“So you did,” he admitted dryly. “How can you live like this?”

“Like what?” she asked, honestly puzzled by the question. She loved this old house and she’d never been happier anywhere else. It was exactly the sort of home she’d always dreamed of owning, a place with character, with all sorts of interesting nooks and crannies. It would be a terrific place for hide-and-seek.

“This place is falling apart.”

She looked at the wobbly stairs, the tattered wallpaper and the dangling light bulb that Tate could see from the downstairs hall. Even she had to admit it didn’t give the very best impression of the house. “You have to think in terms of potential,” she suggested.

“Potential?”

“Like the kitchen,” she explained, deciding that he needed concrete images. Men like Tate McAndrews always did. They seemed to have trouble dealing with the abstractions, with feelings and moods and ambiance.

“You mean the kitchen looked as bad as this?”

“Worse,” she admitted. “It was my third project. It turned out rather well, don’t you think?”

“You did the kitchen yourself?”

She wasn’t sure whether she should be pleased or insulted by his incredulous tone. She decided to remain neutral. “You’ve seen my tax return. Does it look like I could afford to hire somebody?”

“I guess not.”

“Well, then. Of course, if I’d gotten that refund….” Her voice trailed off forlornly.

“Forget it,” he advised. “You said the kitchen was your third project. What were the others?”

“The bedroom and bathroom.”

Despite himself, Tate was intrigued. Knowing he was going to hate himself later for allowing yet another distraction to keep him from wrapping up this audit and escaping to the relative safety of Cincinnati, he asked, “May I see?”

“Are you sure you want to risk the stairs?”

“Just tell me what the secret is.”

“I’ve fixed every other one,” she explained brightly, as though that were a perfectly sensible thing to do.

He looked down and saw what should have been obvious to him in the first place: every second step was made of new wood, polished and solid looking. The ones in-between were broken planks that looked no better than the floors he’d seen in the downstairs rooms. The third one was splintered where his weight had been too much for the dry-rotted wood.

“I should have guessed,” he said, taking giant-sized steps to join her. “Lead on. You can warn me where the booby traps are.”

“Careful,” she whispered conspiratorially. “You’ll hurt its feelings.”

“Houses don’t have feelings.”

“Of course they do. They have feelings and personalities all their own.”

“This one’s obviously split,” he murmured.

“What?”

“You know…a split personality. Repaired in some parts. Disastrous in others.”

“Very funny.”

“I thought it was.”

“You would. You obviously have a cruel streak.”

“I’ll admit I’m not quite as tolerant as you appear to be,” he retorted, giving her a grin that shattered her indignation into a thousand pieces. Victoria found herself smiling back at him helplessly.

“Do you want to see the rest or not?” she asked softly, her flashing blue eyes more challenging than her words. A flicker of desire had flared to life in Tate’s eyes and Victoria felt a matching tremor of excitement so intense it startled her. So, she thought, this was what the fuss was all about. One minute you’re leading a perfectly ordinary, placid existence, and the next minute some thoroughly impossible, sexy man turns up and turns your insides into warm honey. The sensation was both thrilling and frightening.

“Oh, I want,” he replied in a low voice, his gaze drifting down over her slender neck and bare shoulders before halting in apparent fascination at the swell of her breasts. There was no doubt in her mind that he wasn’t referring to a tour of the house. Victoria suddenly realized with a flush of embarrassment that her nipples were clearly visible beneath the light cotton of her blouse. Worse than that, they seemed to be responding merely to the appreciative warmth of his examination, swelling to an aching tautness. She suddenly felt claustrophobic and had the strangest desire to run. At the same time, she wanted very much to stay right here and see exactly what Tate Mc-Andrews had in mind and whether he meant to follow through on that dangerous glint she thought she’d read in his eyes.

Almost hesitantly, he reached toward her and her heart thundered in anticipation, while her head seemed to be shouting to her to get a grip on herself. Sighing regretfully, she decided that just this once she’d better listen to her head. Before Tate’s fingers could touch her cheek, she whirled neatly around and stepped away from him.

“This is the bathroom,” she said briskly, determined to keep the shakiness she felt from her voice. Just because Tate McAndrews was the sexiest creature she’d seen since her last viewing of Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind, that was no reason for her to go all wobbly and woolly-headed. The man was here to audit her, after all. It wasn’t as though he’d asked her for a date. He’d only looked at her as though he’d wanted to…what? To kiss her senseless? And that was what had made her go weak in the knees. It was not a good way to begin a business relationship with an IRS agent, not unless you planned to follow through, which she most certainly did not.

With determinedly cool detachment she showed him the bathroom with its lovely old tiled walls and floor, its huge tub and the circular leaded window that let in shattered streams of bright sun during the day and soft moonlight at night. When they reached her bedroom, her composure slipped a little as she wondered idly what it would be like to have this virile man sharing her huge brass bed, the colorful, handmade quilt tossed anxiously aside in a tangled heap as a desperate, urgent passion made them oblivious to anything except each other. The prospect sent a disturbing shiver racing down her spine, and she blushed and turned away, avoiding his speculative gaze.

“Very nice,” he murmured softly, and for one very disconcerting minute she wasn’t sure whether he was talking about the bedroom or whether he had read her mind. The possibility that he, too, was looking at that bed and wondering who-knew-what unnerved her. She turned back to study him, a quizzical expression on her face, but he was looking innocently around the room.

“How long do you suppose it’s going to take you to do the rest of the house?” he asked with nothing more than casual interest. Victoria wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed.

“At the rate I’m going, it should be finished by the twenty-first century,” she admitted bleakly.

Her response seemed to make him angry for some reason. “You can’t go on living like this.”

“Of course I can,” she retorted. “What’s wrong with the way I live?”

“It’s not safe.”

“It’s perfectly safe. Just because the wallpaper is peeling doesn’t mean the house will fall down.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Well, I am.”

“Okay. Okay,” Tate said resignedly. Obviously, there was no point in arguing. Besides, it was definitely none of his business how she lived…unless, of course, it happened to be beyond her reported means. From what he’d seen today, that was hardly likely.

“Where are those records you came up here to get?” he asked. “I think we’d better go over them and finish this up.”

“They’re in here,” she said, walking down the hall to the door she’d pulled shut as he came up the stairs. “Why don’t you go back down to the kitchen and wait for me?”

“Why? Do you have something to hide?” he asked, his highly trained and very suspicious mind instinctively surging into action.

She glared at him. “Of course not. It’s just that I’m not sure you are ready for this.”

“Ready for what? The room can’t be in any worse shape than some of the others I’ve already seen. I think my system had become immune to the shock.”

“It’s not the room I’m concerned about.”

“What then?”

“I have a feeling you have an orderly mind.”

“I do. What does that have to do with anything?”

“My records aren’t…” She hesitated. “…Well, they aren’t exactly…orderly.”

“What are they exactly?”

Victoria sighed and opened the door. “See for yourself.”

Tate stepped into the room and immediately his eyes flew open, his eyebrows shooting up in horrified disbelief.

“Holy…!” His voice trailed off, and he stood there, seemingly unable to complete the thought. It was the cry of a wounded man and, for a fraction of a second, Victoria almost felt sorry for him.

“Maybe it would be better if you went back to the kitchen,” she repeated in a consoling tone, pulling on his arm. “Have some more lemonade. I’ll get what you need and bring it down.”

“How? It would take an entire office of accountants to bring order to this…this chaos,” he said weakly. He still seemed to be suffering from some sort of professional shock.

“It will only take me a little while,” Victoria reassured him. “I know exactly where everything is.”

He shook his head disbelievingly. “You couldn’t possibly.”

“Of course I do. I have a system.”

He eyed her wonderingly. “This I have to see,” he said, plucking a stack of old magazines off of the room’s only chair and settling down to watch. “If you can locate the records you need for last year’s tax return, I will buy you dinner in the most expensive restaurant in Cincinnati.”

It seemed like a reasonable challenge, though Victoria wasn’t at all sure it would be wise to spend an evening in the company of Tate McAndrews. Without even trying, he’d already stirred up all sorts of desires that only this afternoon she’d despaired of ever feeling. What on earth would happen over an intimate dinner? She’d probably fall head over heals in love with the man, and he’d go blithely along to his next audit. It was not a comforting prospect.

Still, she couldn’t very well lose the bet on purpose. She had to prove to him that while her system of accounting might be a bit unorthodox by his standards, it was as effective as ledgers and computerized spread sheets.

“Okay, Mr. McAndrews, you’re on,” she replied determinedly. “How long do I have?”

Tate grinned at her complacently. “Oh, I think I can afford to be lenient. Take as long as you like.”

“You really don’t think I can do this, do you?”

“No.”

“You haven’t said what happens if I lose.”

“You hire an accountant and get your finances straightened out.”

“My finances are fine, thank you. I’ve never missed a mortgage payment. My electricity’s never been turned off. And I don’t even own a credit card.” She absolutely refused to tell him that she’d lost them and never gotten around to obtaining replacements.

“Thank God,” he murmured fervently under his breath.

She regarded him indignantly. “Are you insulting me?”

“Heaven forbid!”

“Then why did you say that?”

“Let’s just say that individuals more organized than you seem to have gotten themselves in way over their heads by haphazardly buying with plastic.”

To be perfectly truthful, that was exactly why Victoria had decided not to replace the credit cards. It wasn’t that she’d overspent. It was that she had this silly habit of misplacing the bills so that she never knew whether they’d been paid or not. By buying with cash she was relatively certain that she, not the credit card company, owned her possessions.

She did not, however, intend to stand here and discuss the relative merits of plastic money with Tate McAndrews. Not when he’d just bet her that she couldn’t turn over the receipts she needed to back up her tax return. Taking a deep breath, she surveyed the room and went to work, picking up, studying and then discarding stacks of paper that had been stashed in boxes and bags of every size and shape. Every so often, she triumphantly dumped something new in Tate’s lap or at his feet, gloating at his increasingly bemused expression.

“There,” she said at last, standing in front of him with her hands on her hips. “I think that’s everything.” It had taken her exactly twenty minutes.

Tate looked at the four shoeboxes, two bulging shopping bags, three manila envelopes and one beat-up purse that she’d deposited with him. “This is it?” he said skeptically. “Price Waterhouse would be impressed.”

“Don’t be sarcastic.”

“Sorry. What exactly do I have here?”

“These two boxes have the receipts for everything I bought for the shop last year. These two are all the bills for fixing it up, the mortgage payments on the shop and so on.”

“The shopping bags?”

“My cash register receipts. The envelopes have all of my other stuff. Medical bills. Interest payments. Insurance.”

“I know I’m going to hate myself for asking, but what’s in the purse?”

“Contributions to charity. You know like when you’re driving along, and somebody’s on a street corner collecting for muscular dystrophy and you give `em a dollar.”

“You actually kept track of that? I’m impressed,” he said, opening the purse. He pulled out a Popsicle stick with “2/M.D.” scribbled on it, followed by a button from the heart fund drive clipped to a scrap of paper that said 50 cents. There were also stubs for at least a dozen charity raffles and the ends from three boxes of chocolate mint Girl Scout cookies. He groaned.

“What’s wrong?” Victoria demanded. “It’s all very clear.”

“Yes. I suppose it is,” Tate admitted. “It’s just that I’m used to…”

“You’re used to nice, tidy books with columns of numbers that all add up.”

The way she put it sounded insulting, as though there was something wrong with believing in order. “I can’t help it if I’ve been trained to respect reliable accounting methods. This is…it’s…” He couldn’t even find a word to express his utter dismay at her lackadaisical approach to record keeping.

“Mr. McAndrews,” Victoria said, her cheeks flushed and her blue eyes flashing. “I have better things to do with my time than write a bunch of figures down in some book. They all add up the same whether they’re in a book or in that shopping bag.”

Tate’s head was starting to pound. He was beginning to feel the way he had earlier when he’d understood her logic in expecting that ridiculous tax refund. “I suppose,” he agreed without very much conviction. He stood up and tried to balance the stack of shoeboxes in one arm, while grabbing the two shopping bags and the purse with the other. He motioned toward the envelopes. “Can you get those?”

“Where are you going with this?”

“I’m going to take it into the office and try to make some sense of it. That’s what an audit is all about. I have to assure the IRS that you haven’t tried to cheat them.”

Victoria sighed. “I haven’t, you know,” she said softly, her voice filled with something that sounded like disappointment at his continued disbelief.

Tate nodded. Ironically, he did believe her. No one whose head was as high in the clouds as Victoria Marshall’s would ever dream of cheating on her taxes. And even if the thought had crossed her mind, he doubted if she could figure out how to do it.

Victoria followed him down the stairs and out to his car, noting that it was what she would have expected him to drive: a very conservative, American made, four-door sedan. Anyone with his precise, orderly mind definitely would not be into flash and dazzle. She was a little worried, though, about the effect the afternoon seemed to have had on him. He did not look like the same determined, self-confident man who’d walked into her life a few hours earlier. He appeared defeated somehow, though his brown eyes did twinkle a little when he said goodbye.

“What happened to dinner?” she taunted. “I did win the bet, you know.”

“As soon as I figure this out, I’ll be in touch,” he promised with a sizzling, sensual smile that sent her blood pressure soaring. “And we’ll celebrate your victory over IRS with champagne, caviar and beef Wellington.”

As he drove off, Victoria sighed. If he threw in candlelight and roses, she’d be a goner.

Chapter Three

The following morning, Victoria sat at the kitchen table for a long time, dreamily sipping a cup of tea and trying unsuccessfully to push disturbing and unexpectedly lusty thoughts of Tate McAndrews from her mind. The rumpled tan sports jacket he’d forgotten and left draped over the back of a chair was not helping matters. When she’d run her hand over the fine material, her fingers had picked up the lingering, tangy scent of his cologne. The clean, outdoorsy odor had brought back a sharp image of that brief, tantalizing moment when he’d caught her and held her in his arms.

Of all the men who might have wandered into her life and stirred up her untapped passions, Tate McAndrews was the worst possible choice. Tate was so…sensible, so practical. She had the distinct impression that he would never do anything impulsive. He would examine all the implications, evaluate the possible consequences and then, if it didn’t seem too costly, he might indulge in a few minutes of simple fun.

She, on the other hand, was constantly getting sidetracked by interesting, unexpected things. Not once could she ever recall going from point A to point B without wandering off to explore along the way. She saw life in glorious, spectacular Technicolor. If what she’d seen yesterday was any indication, Tate seemed to view it in black and white, without the benefit of any grays.

Victoria sighed. It was definitely a mismatch. And yet…. She glanced over at the bright yellow wall phone, dared it to ring, then shook her head.

“You are losing it, Victoria,” she muttered aloud. “It’s barely 8:00 a.m. No man, however enchanted he might be, is likely to call at that hour, and Tate McAndrews did not seem the least bit enchanted.” She paused thoughtfully, recalling those one or two looks that could have sizzled bacon to a crisp. She shook her head and dismissed them. “Uh-uh. The man thinks you are a certifiable nut. There is a very good chance he will not call at all…unless he remembers his jacket or decides to haul you in for income tax evasion. Forget about him.”

Deep down she knew this was good advice. She also knew she wasn’t likely to follow it. Unfortunately romantics never listened to their heads. Lancelot, who had finished his breakfast and retreated to the windowsill for his morning sunbath, meowed softly as though in complete agreement with her analysis of the absurdity of her behavior.

“Oh, shut up, cat! Don’t you start on me,” she grumbled irritably, slamming down her teacup and grabbing the morning paper. She turned the pages with a vengeance that caused more than one of them to tear. When the phone shrilled a moment later, she jumped nervously and stared at it, almost afraid to pick it up.

“Hello,” she said at last, her voice soft, low and unintentionally sexy.

“Victoria? Is that you? You sound like you have a cold.”

“Oh. Hi, Mom,” she said, unconsciously trading sexiness for disappointed grumpiness.

“My goodness, that’s certainly a cheerful greeting. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” she denied, trying to inject a little spirit into her voice before her mother rushed over with chicken soup and parental advice. “I’m fine. What’s up?”

“I was just wondering if you’d like a little company at the shop today. I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Three days.”

“Well, it seems like longer.”

Victoria chuckled. She knew how her mother loved to help out at the shop. She enjoyed meeting the people, and she absolutely loved haggling with them over a price. She said it made up for the frustration of having to pay outrageous prices without question in the local stores.

“Come on over, Mom. I should be there about ten.”

“Why don’t I stop by and pick you up? There’s no point in driving two cars.”

“I gather you’re planning to spend the day?” Victoria teased.

Katherine Marshall refused to rise to the bait. “I thought I might as well. Your father had to go up to Columbus on business, and you did say you wanted to do some refinishing work in the back on that new washstand you bought last week.”

“Why don’t you say it, Mom?”

“Say what?”

“That you think you’re better at the business side of running the shop than I am.”

“Dear, surely even you must agree that you are a bit casual about making the best possible deal. I swear, sometimes I think you’d give something away just because someone admired it.”

“I like my pieces to go to people who’ll treasure them,” she said defensively. “Not just to the highest bidder.”

“Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that the highest bidder must like something very much to pay so dearly for it?”

“I suppose. But it seems so…”

“Businesslike?”

“Okay, okay. You’ve made your point,” Victoria said, wishing her mother didn’t sound quite so much like Tate McAndrews. She had a feeling if the two of them ever joined forces, her life would become a boring, organized regimen of computerized bookkeeping. The very thought made her shudder. “If you promise to drop the lecture, you can come on over and pick me up.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” her mother replied tartly. “But I won’t promise to keep my mouth shut.”

She hung up before Victoria could respond.

As Victoria dressed in a pair of oversized, paint-splattered coveralls appropriate for the refinishing work she needed to do, she thought about her shop. Located just outside of town in the front of a large, converted barn, it had been open less than a year. She’d started the venture at her parents’ enthusiastic urging. She’d accumulated so many interesting odds and ends at garage and farm sales that she’d run out of space to store them. In fact, her parents’ garage had become so cluttered that for three months in the dead of a very snowy winter they’d been unable to get their car inside. At first they had dutifully admired the battered, scratched treasures she had dragged home. But after digging the car out of snowdrifts more than once, they had begun dropping subtle hints that these wonderful finds of hers would look much better “someplace where they could be displayed to advantage. Perhaps even sold.”

The idea of selling something she’d discovered in a dusty old attic or in the back corner of some other shop had vaguely disturbed Victoria. She’d bought these things because she’d loved each and every one of them. Only after her mother had reminded her that she couldn’t very well afford to hoard every antique in southern Ohio had she agreed to consider the idea. The more she’d thought about it, the better she had liked it.

Once the plan had taken hold in her mind, she went about it with her usual high-spirited enthusiasm, spending a small inheritance from her grandmother to rent the perfect, old, unused barn on the Logan property and to renovate it. At first she’d only been open on weekends, continuing to teach history during the week. Soon she had quit her job at the high school and kept the shop open Tuesdays through Sundays. Her mother willingly filled in whenever she needed to go to an auction or wanted to take some time off.

“Victoria!” Her mother’s shouted greeting broke into her reverie.

“I’ll be down in a minute, Mom.” She ran a brush hurriedly through her hair, then twisted it into a loose knot on top of her head. Golden-red curls promptly escaped in every direction. She tried taming a few of them, then gave it up as a lost cause. “So, I look like Little Orphan Annie. I’m going to refinish a washstand, not try out for Miss Ohio.”

When she ran down the stairs and skidded to a halt in the kitchen a few minutes later, her mother was holding Tate’s jacket out in front of her as though it were a live snake.

“This is not your father’s,” she said emphatically.

Victoria couldn’t help grinning at her puzzled expression. “Nope,” she said, opening the door of the refrigerator and sticking her head inside to scout around for some yogurt to take along for lunch.

“Victoria!”

She peeked around the side of the door. “Yes, Mother?”

“Whose jacket is this?”

Somehow Victoria did not want to explain about the IRS audit or about Tate. Her mother would want to hire an entire office of attorneys to defend her, and she wasn’t quite up to fighting with her about it. “A friend’s,” she replied vaguely, sticking her head back in the refrigerator. She wasn’t sure how long she could spend deciding between black cherry and lemon yogurt, but she was hoping it would be enough time to chill her mother’s questions.

“What friend?”

She sighed. Obviously, her mother did not intend to drop the topic until her curiosity had been fully satisfied. Victoria gave up the idea of hiding and slammed the refrigerator door. Her nose had been getting cold anyway. “A man, Mother.”

“I can tell it’s a man, young lady. What are you trying to hide? Are you involved with someone? Is it serious? Why haven’t your father and I met him?”

“Mother, I only met him myself yesterday.”

Her mother’s eyes widened. “You only met this man yesterday, and he’s already leaving clothes lying around your house?”

“It is not what it seems.”

Katherine Marshall looked at her skeptically. “Are you quite sure?”

“Now you sound disappointed, Mother. Are you that anxious to be rid of me?”

“I am not anxious to be rid of you. I would like to see you settle down with some nice, sensible young man who could take care of you.”

The description certainly fit Tate, but Victoria was not about to get her mother’s hopes up. Given the slightest provocation, her mother was capable of planning maneuvers that would terrify and subdue an entire company of marines, much less a lone IRS agent. “I do not need someone to take care of me. I have a home—”

“Such as it is.”

Victoria shot her a reproachful glance. “I have a business—”

“Which you run like a front yard lemonade stand.”

“And I have my friends—”

“Who are all nuttier than you are.”

“Mother, I’m so glad you are on my side.”

Katherine Marshall beamed at her, ignoring her sarcastic tone. “You should be dear. But I won’t be around forever, and I’d like to know there’s someone who’ll look after you and keep you out of mischief when I’m gone.”

“You’re healthier than I am, so I don’t think that’s something we need to worry about today. Now could we drop this subject and get over to the shop? You may be missing a sale.”

“Oh, dear. Of course, you’re right.” She put the jacket back on the chair. “But Victoria, I want you to promise me that you’ll bring this young man of yours over to meet your father and me.”

“Mother, I solemnly swear that if this man ever becomes my young man, you and Dad will be the first to hear. Just so you know, though, you will not have the power of a veto.” Not that that was likely, she thought dryly.

When they pulled into the driveway at the shop a few minutes later, the young man in question was pacing around the barn much to her amazement and dismay. His very neat and very flattering navy pin-striped suit looked totally out of place in the rural setting. Victoria wondered curiously if he even owned a pair of blue jeans. Then she caught sight of the mud caked on his expensive leather shoes and winced. If Tate planned to keep up these visits, he obviously needed to get a new, more practical wardrobe before he destroyed the one he had.

“Is that the young man?” Katherine Marshall hissed, as her daughter opened the car door and got out. Victoria rolled her eyes heavenward. These were not the circumstances she’d had in mind for a second meeting with Tate McAndrews.

“Do you always show up for work an hour late?” he was demanding irritably, a scowl on his handsome face.

“I have an ‘in’ with the owner,” she responded tartly, as she unlocked the door and stalked inside.

“That is no way to—”

“Run a business,” Katherine Marshall chimed in. “I’ve been telling her that very thing myself. Hello. I’m Victoria’s mother.”

She held out her hand and waited expectantly. Tate took it, then looked in amazement from this trim, tidy woman with the firm handshake and no-nonsense style to Victoria in another one of her outrageous getups. He’d never have believed it. This woman seemed perfectly…normal. She would never keep her bills in shopping bags.

“Tate McAndrews,” he told her. “I’m from—”

“Tate is a friend from Cincinnati,” Victoria interrupted quickly, shooting him a warning glance. “I’m surprised to see you again so soon.”

“I needed to talk to you about—”

“Dinner.”

“Oh, is Victoria making you dinner tonight, Tate?” Katherine Marshall asked cheerfully. “How lovely. Why don’t the two of you drop by the house for dessert?”

“Mother!”

“We’d love to, Mrs. Marshall.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Victoria snapped at him, marching into the back room with Tate trailing after her.

“What’s wrong with you? I was just trying to be polite.”

“Don’t you realize that if we go over there for dessert tonight, my mother will have the church reserved by next weekend? She already thinks we’re involved,” she told him, her brows lifting significantly. “That’s in capital letters, by the way.”

“Involved?” Tate repeated, his expression completely baffled. “You mean…?” His eyes widened as the implication finally registered. “Why on earth would she think that?”

“Your jacket.”

“My jacket?” Tate was getting that spinning sensation in his head again.

“You left it in the kitchen. My mother, the protector of my virtue, found it there this morning. She’s assumed the worst.”

Tate burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it. “You’re kidding!”

“I do not kid about matters such as marriage and murder, particularly when they’re my own.”

“Can we expect to find your father on the front porch with a shotgun?”

Victoria gave him a withering glance. “Okay,” she warned. “Make fun of me. But I’m telling you, before you know it, that woman in there is going to have you marching down the aisle.”

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