Graciella, page 2
“Investigation by the IRS?”
Now the storm thundered in his harsh, incredulous words and he stalked closer to her. She braced for the impact. “Explain,” he ordered.
“There have been hints of large-scale tax evasion, Mr. Brockman. You, or I’m guessing Jake, hired me to conduct an outside audit. We need to see how much this farm owes the government. Often in cases like this, it’s substantial, especially if it’s seen that taxes haven’t been paid properly in years. If you’re lucky, you’ll owe a lot of money. Just how much will be determined.”
“Lucky?” he said, unable to conceal the shock. “And if luck decides not to show up?”
She hesitated, caught for a moment at how different his face looked from only a few moments ago. His grin was gone and the stark lines of his forehead spoke of serious concern. “The government could seize all of your father’s or, rather, your assets and revenues until they’ve gotten what they’re owed. If that’s the case, everything could be shut down temporarily. It could also be permanent.”
“Jesus.” Cruz let out his breath. But he looked more like a bull getting ready to charge than someone breathing in relief. “How much time do we have?” His tension filled the room, reminding her of the moment before someone seriously loses their temper, the way her mother had done when Miranda had been a child and her father had lost all their money to another scheme.
“Less than two months. You can take longer than that to fully settle the estate, but the IRS and the Department of Justice want this matter solved first. Jake hired me to help you. An outside audit may benefit your case as we try to prove that, even if there was fraud committed, it was done with T.D.’s knowledge only, and that you’re willing to pay back the fines. The IRS will perform their own audit as well. Right now, they’ve only mailed you documents, which you’re responsible for filling out. If that goes smoothly, they won’t have to send anyone out here. I can help you with their paperwork. The audit’s due the third week in May. Sometimes they grant extensions, but it’s unusual.”
His eyes never wavered from hers as she explained, and his body calmed, although the heavy air still surrounded them like a too-long, extremely hot, humid summer, full of unwanted family secrets.
“I had no idea.” He walked even closer. Okay, maybe he hadn’t calmed at all. Maybe he’d channeled his energy in a different direction. All she knew was that she was in its path.
Miranda gathered her bag and purse in an attempt to put something between them, or protect herself—she wasn’t quite sure which. If he was truly unaware, it would be a huge shock to him, and she suspected he might like some time alone. “I’ll be back in the morning. Is eight a.m. too early for you to begin?”
“Where do you think you’re going, Ms. Jenks?”
So much for defusing his temper. “Siesta Hotel, off the highway. I have a reservation and since you said you weren’t ready for me, it doesn’t make sense for me to hang around today. I have preparation work I can get done.”
“You should stay here,” he said, looking at his watch, all business now. “We’ve plenty of room. There’s a guest house you could have to yourself. I’ll have Javier show you. He’s on his way here now. We’ll need to get started as soon as we can, and I’ll need to cancel some appointments for later in the week.”
“That’s all right. I already have a reservation—”
“By your calculations, we have about six weeks.” He cut her off again. “That means we don’t have time to waste. You’ll save yourself over an hour a day driving back and forth. That much should appeal to your sense of efficiency. Besides, I’ll bet you a beer that our guest house is much more comfortable than the Siesta Hotel. I’m surprised that shack is still standing. It was built in the early sixties and not that well to begin with. Anyplace would be more comfortable than that hole.”
Depends on what you mean by comfortable, she thought, staring at him. Because being in close proximity to you is anything but comfortable. What was he doing joking about a hotel and making beer bets? She’d told him his farm, his lifeline, was in jeopardy. He was vulnerable. She found herself searching for his smile, the way it made her feel. She wanted that feeling, that warmth again. But work and emotions did not go together, ever. So ignore the feelings he’s stirring.
Her body had other ideas. Every time Cruz spoke, something fine and delicate vibrated inside her, a violin being played with light fingers, the bow barely touching the strings, bringing the music to life. And it only got stronger the closer he’d gotten to her. Normally she had nerves of steel—nothing affected her. But Cruz Brockman was… God, even if she’d been able to find her breath, she wasn’t certain she’d know what word to use to describe him. Intense? Gorgeous? Fierce?
At over six feet tall, even in rumpled clothes his presence commanded attention. Although tall herself, Miranda felt completely overwhelmed by his height. His dark skin looked more like it had come from a hidden pirate bloodline rather than irresponsible days spent in the sun as she’d assumed. And the sharp look on his face paired with his piercing blue eyes hinted at danger.
The sooner she got the job finished, the sooner she could move on and the sooner she could add one more paycheck to her savings, which, for the first time in her life, she could do what she wanted with.
She stared at him as he threw out the offer to stay. Ha! It was more like an order, and her intelligent brain knew she should refuse, but a hotel sounded unbearably awful right about then, with the fatigue from the last month dragging her down. It was the beginning of the week, yet she felt like she’d been running for miles—days—until her limbs wouldn’t hold her up anymore.
“All right.”
Once more he extended his hand. She looked down at it then back up at him. No way was she touching him again. She was already unsteady enough in his presence.
“Normally in a bet you shake hands,” he said.
Right, I can do this. She reached for his hand and pleasure washed over his face. A minute earlier he’d been openly shocked and angry at learning his farm could be shut down. He didn’t hide his emotions, she thought, and she couldn’t predict his reactions to anything.
Lord, how she wished he’d go back to being angry. At least then she could keep him at a distance. An angry Cruz Brockman she could manage.
“Ah, Javier.” Cruz let go of her hand. “I’ve got Jake waiting for me. Would you do me a favor and show Ms. Jenks to the guest house?”
A handsome older man had walked into the room. He carried his cowboy hat and his silver-gray ponytail trailed down past his neck. Next to him was a woman, her arms overflowing with a flat of yellow pansies.
“Mom, what are you doing here?” Cruz kissed her cheek. “Here, let me take those for you.”
“No you don’t. I don’t trust either of you with my babies.” She smiled at Javier and Cruz. “Last week I set a flat down, and when I returned, I found half of them trampled by a boot print about your size.” She stepped back and noticed Miranda. “Hello, I’m Katie.”
She reminded Miranda of a sparkly, small, but not insignificant shooting star. Auburn hair with a hint of gray curled around her rosy cheeks and sky-blue eyes lit her face with joy.
“This is Miranda Jenks. She’s here to audit the farm’s books,” Cruz said, staring at her with that intense gaze again.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Miranda said.
“I offered her the guest house as she has an extremely tight deadline.”
“Oh, it’s quite lovely, Ms. Jenks. We recently updated a few things. I’m sure you’ll be comfortable there. You must be exhausted from your travels. Why doesn’t Javier walk you over, and I’ll set my flowers down in the garden and grab a few things from the kitchen to bring to you?” Katie was already walking away as she spoke. Light and warmth trailed behind her. Even Jake kissed her on the cheek as they passed each other in the doorway.
Silent, but no less intriguing, Javier nodded a greeting and gestured for Miranda to follow him. She didn’t like being dismissed, and she felt out of place and anxious when she wasn’t balancing books and calculating figures, yet was swept up in the current. With one glance back at Cruz, she turned and followed Javier down the long hallway and out of the back door. They walked through a garden quietly awaiting its plants, and down a wandering path till they arrived at a small red cottage.
She was grateful for the silence as Javier led the way and she used the walk to get a handle on her emotions. She’d been doing this job long enough that she’d learned to build a hard shell around herself to face her clients, to protect herself. Why now, all of a sudden, did she feel like she was losing it?
“The cottage is a special place. It has Katie’s touch.” Javier’s deep, gravelly voice had a strong Spanish accent curling around his words. “And this time of year, you should be able to smell the sea through the windows. It’s good for the soul.”
As if sensing her unease, he steadied her with his hand on her shoulder then handed her the key. With that he put his hat back on and left.
Well, as uncomfortable as she felt, there was no place else to go. Miranda took a deep breath and opened the door into the small entryway. She was hit by sunlight flooding in from the gorgeous windows. It was as if the whole place was designed to welcome the light, from the wall of windows in the back where the kitchen faced west to the blond hardwood floors and the soft white slip-covered sofa in the living room. It wasn’t large, but open and airy and absolutely wonderful.
Miranda soaked it in. She’d had no idea she’d been craving light, or how much her body had wrapped itself inward in her mother’s stuffy bedroom during these few last weeks.
Miranda set her purse on the coffee table and noticed the large photograph over the fireplace. It was a black and white photo of three girls kneeling at a river, washing clothes. Their baskets sat beside them, with one lone acacia tree in the distance and the cracked desert stretched out before them. She could practically taste the dusty landscape on her tongue. C. Cooper. Miranda would have recognized his work anywhere.
She remembered that day last year when she’d accidentally caught his showing of photographs from Africa. She’d never seen so much emotion expressed through only black and white before. The man was a genius with a camera. He told a whole story with one picture. The one that had caught her eye was the one she’d bought for herself that very afternoon. She’d gotten a raise and a promotion and had no one to share the news with. And there in the window had sat the photograph of the mother elephant and her baby. Her perfectly organized budget left almost no room for personal indulgence, but she’d tossed responsibility out of the window that day.
“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Katie said.
Miranda had been so lost in the photograph that she hadn’t noticed Katie’s arrival. “Yes,” she replied. “I love his work. There’s so much open emotion in each shot. To be able to do that in black and white is humbling, isn’t it?”
“Indeed.”
“I bought Mother and Daughter last year. I couldn’t seem to resist it.”
“Oh yes, I know that one very well, the elephants. Such love in that shot.” Katie turned toward the kitchen. “I brought over some homemade bread, a dozen eggs, wine, cheese and crackers, apples and a bit of leftover pasta salad. There’s a gem of a market at the southern edge of the farm where the town starts, and a small grocery store in downtown, but I thought you might like a few things to have on hand right away. Oh, and coffee. I made certain there was coffee.”
Katie began putting the groceries away. “I don’t know about you, Ms. Jenks, but the world would be an unhappy place for me without coffee in the morning. Now I’m off to plant flowers and lay down some compost. Let us know if you need anything else. There’s always someone around.”
“Please, call me Miranda. And thank you for this.” Miranda looked around the room. “It is quite lovely, Katie.”
“Enjoy yourself while you can, Miranda. I’m sure you’ll have plenty to keep you busy once tomorrow starts.”
And with that Katie was off again, out of the cottage and up the path back towards the main house.
A charming guesthouse on a coastal farm. Exhaustion, longing, confusion and something unknown all flowed open inside Miranda. And she couldn’t stop thinking about those fierce blue eyes.
What kind of an assignment have I stepped into?
* * * *
“Tax evasion? What the hell is going on?” Cruz asked Jake.
“I know it’s a shock, Cruz. I just found out last week when I notified the IRS about T.D.’s death. We need an accountant to help with the estate anyway, and I did some research. Her record for handling large business audits is impeccable. The IRS and the DOJ suspect T.D. of withholding taxes for the past few years. They’re not sure how he’s done it.”
“Unbelievable.” Cruz didn’t know whether to let out a breath or take a deep gulp of air for the battle that was to come. This was a disaster Cruz had never anticipated. “It never even occurred to me that T.D. was cheating the government. But hell, why not? The man cheated everyone else.” Cruz almost laughed. Once T.D. had died and Cruz had come home, he’d thought everything would be different. Here in Graciella was where he belonged, where he’d only ever belonged. Even though T.D. had never made him feel that way, the people had. Cruz felt a connection to the earth and to this community. Now everything he had, everything the workers and people of Graciella had, was in danger. He’d been wrong about the ghosts of his past. They still lingered.
“What do we do?” he asked, running his hands over his face, feeling weary now at the thought of losing what he’d waited so long to claim.
“We let her do her job, help her in any way we can and hope for the best.”
He looked at Jake, one of the few good friends he’d had since college. “Bet you never expected this kind of a mess when I asked you to help me settle the estate, did you? Knowing T.D., it’s probably bad. Hoping for the best could be a pipe dream.”
“True,” Jake said. “Maybe T.D. simply made some mistakes.”
“Not T.D.” Cruz rubbed the lines on his forehead one last time, as if he could massage away this unexpected disaster. “If T.D. hid money, he did it on purpose. And it looks like he left a nightmare behind for us.”
Chapter Three
Hours later, jacked up on frustration and adrenaline from trying to organize some of T.D.’s papers, Cruz headed toward the back yard, where he found his mother in the garden. He knew her presence would calm him. She walked through the raised beds, inspecting the small sprouts she’d transplanted as though they were her babies.
“Hello, darling,” she said when she saw him come down the steps.
“Mom.” He kissed her cheek. “How’s your day going?”
“Fine. Better than fine. I still can’t believe you’re back in Graciella. After all these years.” She searched his face and Cruz wondered what she might be looking for. Did she already know the trouble the farm could be in? She’d known and done so much more over the years than he’d been aware of as a kid.
It wasn’t until he and his brother Turner had left Graciella as teenagers that he’d begun to learn why she’d stayed, and why she’d stayed with a man like T.D. It wasn’t until then that he’d had the guts to ask her.
In the beginning she’d stayed out of fear, but also because she loved the land that had been in her family for generations. And behind T.D.’s back, she’d done what she could to help the workers, many of them migrant, many illegal. She’d brought them food and medicine when she could, shoes and clothing for their children and cared for them when they were sick.
It was from her dedication and spirit that Cruz had gotten his desire to travel the world as a photojournalist. He wanted to help others and bring their stories to light. But his mother had something he didn’t—bravery. She’d stayed here in the face of T.D.’s wrath to help the people closest to her.
“Cruz, Javier got called back down to the barns before he could get Ms. Jenks’ luggage in the foyer. Why don’t you take it over to her and see if she needs anything else?” Katie suggested before kneeling back down to work with the plants.
A successful, beautiful woman with lots of money would have luggage. Cruz was surprised when he saw only two small suitcases sitting inside the front door. He picked them up and walked the short distance to the guest house.
As if from someplace else entirely, the cottage welcomed and warmed. It was just as Cruz remembered, painted deep red with white trim. On the porch sat two ancient rockers and an old porch swing and yellow pansies spilled out of the window boxes.
For a moment it struck Cruz as sad that this cottage had the look of loving care, the way a home should look, where the main house didn’t. Perhaps it was the charm, and the way it felt hugged by the landscape, or maybe it was simply because it didn’t hold all the bitter ghosts of the big house.
He set the bags down and knocked. It took a moment for Miranda to open the door, and when she did, her appearance caught him off guard. She was still in her fancy blouse and skirt, but she’d shed her suit jacket and shoes. Her deep green eyes were a bit red and damp, and when she saw him she quickly crumpled a tissue into her fist.
“Yes?” she said. Her voice was clipped. It held a fine line between control and falling off the edge.
“Everything all right?” The question was out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying. He felt the need to comfort, to wrap his arms around her and make whatever it was that had made her cry disappear.
“I thought we agreed to get started in the morning.” Her voice sounded harsh, but her eyes revealed sadness and a long-hidden pain. Without thinking, he reached his hand up to her cheek and wiped away a tear.
She seemed frozen as a look of confusion washed over her face.
But her recovery was rapid. She stepped back brusquely. “Was there something you needed, Mr. Brockman? I could start billing my hours now if you’ve changed your mind and are ready to get to work.”
