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“Yeah.” I take a deep breath. “I called my accountant, but he’s on vacation. What’s your normal hourly rate for accounting work? I was wondering if maybe…”
“I’ll help you. Of course I’ll help you,” she interrupts. “I can even give you a family-and-friends-and-scary-grandmother discount. You want to start tonight? We can go through her tax return and get all her records organized. Typically they’ll only want to see the year they’re auditing, but they can ask for up to six years’ worth of records. As long as she’s filed her taxes every year and kept the records, it shouldn’t take too long.”
I stare at the dark maw of the storeroom, breathing in the dank air, and let out a huff. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
Lily arrives at the bookstore after I’ve flipped the sign on the door to “closed.” She’s wearing loose, peach-colored pants and a fitted white blouse. Her dark hair is tied up in a loose ponytail with tendrils falling out to frame her face. In the fading summer sun, she looks like a goddess on the bookstore doorstep.
“Hey,” I croak. Every second we spend together makes it harder to keep my distance.
“Hi.” She smiles and gestures to the door. “May I?”
We walk through the stacks to the back of the store, through the door marked “Staff Only” into the tight space at the back of the shop. I turn to the storeroom door and arch an eyebrow at her. “Are you ready?”
“Why am I suddenly nervous?”
I grin and open the door, letting it jam against the chair leg. Reaching over the mass of old furniture, I pull the string to turn on the single lightbulb in the center of the room.
Lily rears back and covers her nose and mouth with a hand. “Smells…interesting,” she says, her nose wrinkling under her fingers.
I laugh. “That’s one word for it.” I blow out a breath. “It’s not too late for you to back out.”
Lily drops her hand and shakes her head. “I’m here, aren’t I? Let’s get these things out. Did Agnes file her returns electronically?”
“Yeah, but that’s the only electronic thing about her system,” I say with a grin. I point to a few boxes lined near a wall behind me. “I’ve started removing some boxes of receipts, but I know she renovated this place three years ago. The storeroom became a dumping ground, and everything got shuffled around. Some of the boxes I’ve pulled out are receipts from 1983, and they were right beside the door. I have no idea where the more recent stuff is.”
“Probably buried at the very back under a mountain of rat poop,” Lily says with a wry grin. “No wonder you warned me it wouldn’t be so easy.”
I chuckle. “I was thinking we could haul this stuff to my house. I’ve got a spare bedroom that has no furniture in it, and we could use it to store the boxes. A staging area.”
Her eyes dart to mine, a flush sweeping over her cheeks. Then Lily nods. “Sure.”
It takes us the better part of an hour to load my car up with boxes. Then we load her car up until all that’s left in the storeroom are dust bunnies and broken furniture. I pull the cord to turn the light off, then we head out.
When we get to my place, I’m slightly embarrassed. I’m supposed to be a real estate professional, but I live in a fixer-upper that hasn’t ever been fixed up. Lily doesn’t seem to notice, just helps me haul boxes inside. We joke around, laugh, banter, and get to work.
“There are receipts from the eighties in this box right beside receipts from last year.” She waves a bright white receipt and a distinctly yellow one. “What’s up with that?”
“I’d have to ask my grandmother,” I say, lifting a water-damaged box to inspect the damage underneath. I huff. “She’d probably just growl and tell me to figure it out.”
Lily grins. We work until the sunlight has disappeared and turn on some lights. When Lily’s stomach growls loud enough for me to hear, I suggest we order pizza.
And that’s how I end up leaning against the counter in my kitchen, eating pizza beside Iliana Viceroy.
I jerk my chin at her vegetarian pizza. “You don’t like pepperoni?”
She swallows a bite. “I, um… I’m avoiding processed meat right now.”
“No drinking, no processed meat…you on a health kick?”
Her eyes slide away from mine and she ducks her head as if to avoid my gaze. “Something like that,” she says, wiping her hands on a paper napkin. “I need water. You want anything?”
I almost growl in pleasure when I watch her flick open a couple of cabinets until she finds the glasses. I like having Lily in my house, barefoot and helping herself to food and drinks like she lives here.
She leans against the counter and sips a glass of water while I crack open a beer from the fridge. I nod toward the hallway. “How long do you think the paperwork will take?”
Lily blows out a breath. “When’s the auditor coming?”
“Wednesday.”
