Yesterday's Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

breath.
    She regarded him indignantly. “Are you insulting me?”
    â€œHeaven forbid!”
    â€œThen why did you say that?”
    â€œLet’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.
    â€œThere,” 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.”
    â€œDon’t be sarcastic.”
    â€œSorry. What exactly do I have here?”
    â€œThese 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.”
    â€œThe shopping bags?”
    â€œMy cash register receipts. The envelopes have all of my other stuff. Medical bills. Interest payments. Insurance.”
    â€œI know I’m going to hate myself for asking, but what’s in the purse?”
    â€œContributions 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.”
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” Victoria demanded. “It’s all very clear.”
    â€œYes. I suppose it is,” Tate admitted. “It’s just that I’m used to…”
    â€œYou’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.
    â€œMr. 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