The Return Of Jonah Gray

The Return Of Jonah Gray
Heather Cochran

Despite being attractive, intelligent and friendly, Sasha Gardner knows no man wants a phone call from her. Because Sasha is a tax auditor for the IRS.Every job has its downside. Auditing may interfere with her social life, but it's orderly. It makes sense. And she's very, very good at it. But when unexpected complaints draw her into the tax return of a man she's never met, nothing seems to make sense anymore.Using the information in Jonah Gray's return, Sasha begins to assemble his life story: a rising career as a respected financial reporter, a house in a posh seaside village, weekends sailing the coast–it all reads like a life Sasha herself had dreamed of living, down to the guy's itemized deductions. So why had he left it behind to cover school-board meetings in a one-newspaper town?What begins as a welcome distraction soon becomes a search for answers. Sasha knows it's ridiculous–she's never even laid eyes on him–but she wouldn't be the first woman to fall for a man who looks good on paper.

The Return of Jonah Gray

Heather Cochran

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

To David and our new tax deduction

Thanks are due to everyone who lent support and guidance throughout this effort—my parents for their consistent support and interest; my first-draft readers and thoughtful critics, David Allen, Zoë Cochran and Todd Laugen; all those who assisted with my research, including folks at the IRS and Dr. Bob Laugen; my wonderful and challenging editors, Farrin Jacobs and Selina McLemore, and my steadfast agent, Katherine Faussett.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter One

I MIGHT HAVE BEEN MORE DISAPPOINTED HAD IT NOT been so predictable. Martina and I were at the Escape Room, the dive bar where we’d meet after work, maybe one day in five. Martina would have gone there five in five, but she’d always been drawn to dark places and men of a certain unwashed quality. Me, I found significance in the fact that the bar was equidistant from my work and my house. Not precisely equidistant—wouldn’t that have been a fantastic coincidence though?—but within a tenth of a mile, assuming my measurements were correct. Having been an accounting major, I was trained to interpret the world through double-entry ledgers, where a debit on one side balances a credit on the other. At the bottom of the columns, if you add and subtract correctly, the totals match up. So I took symmetry as an encouraging sign, whether in a financial statement or bar location.

I was sipping my beer and leafing through the book I’d brought with me when Martina rushed back from the bathroom and practically leaped onto the bar stool beside mine.

“Sasha, I want you to meet someone,” she said.

“Well, I want you to meet someone, too,” I told her. “I want us both to meet men who are generous and kind and delight in who we are. I swear, my mother wants me to settle for any guy who will have me. But I’m not going to settle. So I’m thirty-one. That’s not old. Who says that’s old?”

“My God, would you please stop talking,” Martina said. “Sometimes, I don’t get the way you’re wired. I meant, I want you to meet someone specific. His name is Kevin.”

“Oh,” I said. I looked around. I didn’t see whom she was referring to. “And Kevin is?”

“In the bathroom. I just met him in line. He was asking me about you. He’ll be out in just a minute.”

“He was asking about me? And you’re giving me a minute warning?” I asked. She knew I needed more time than that. “You know I need more time than that. You know I like to be prepared.”

“Prepared for what?” Martina asked. “The most we’re talking about is bar chatter.”

“Prepared for everything. What to ask. What I want to know. What I’ll say. What he’ll say back, then how I’ll respond to what he says back.”