Yesterday's Love

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—”