The Schemer (Harbor City 3)

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

“There’s a fire in my building.”

After giving the operator her address, she hustled down the stairs with only one thought in mind—getting the hell out of there before she got stuck in some sort of towering inferno situation.

“Fire!” she hollered on her way down, knowing her voice was loud enough to carry back to Riverside.

She made it to the second-floor landing when someone called out her name. Acting on instinct, she turned and immediately regretted the too-fast movement. Her four-inch heel caught in the carpet, and she flailed forward, gravity yanking her downward at the same time. Moments before she could stop her fall with her nose, a strong arm wrapped around her middle and yanked her back against something unyielding and—she sniffed—smelling of burned baker’s chocolate.

“You okay?” Tyler asked, letting her go once she’d regained her balance.

“We gotta go.” She grabbed his hand and yanked him toward the stairwell—well, she tried to yank him, but he was too solid and muscular for her to move an inch. “The place is on fire!”

“What? No. I was cooking and set the heat too high in the oven,” he said, as if it were no big deal to almost burn down a building. “It was smoking up my whole apartment when I got out of the shower.”

She looked around, noticing that the smoke was indeed lessening. That’s when the first blare of the sirens sounded, barely louder than the fear pounding through her body. “The fire department.”

“Tell me you didn’t call them,” he groaned. “They’ve already been out three times this month.”

“For your cooking?” she asked, not thinking about her question, just concentrating on calming her breathing before she hyperventilated. After the apartment complex next to hers had burned to the ground when she was a kid, even the idea of a building fire freaked her out.

He crossed his arms across his chest. “Yeah.”

Any other time and she would have checked out the way his biceps looked in his short-sleeve shirt and the sinewy lines of his forearm. Arm porn was usually her weakness. As it was, she was too busy giving herself a pep talk to do more than barely notice. In. Out. In. Out. Don’t lose your shit. Stay in control.

“Ever think of cooking lessons?”

His jaw squared and the vein in his temple bulged. “Ever think of checking things out before you overreact?”

“Overreact?” And whoosh, the panic came roaring back along with the memory of the screams coming from that burning building. “I came out of my apartment and the hall was filled with smoke.”

He looked up the stairwell, and even with the anger dueling with her panic, she couldn’t help but take advantage of the perfect opportunity to take a long look at his face without being observed. The man was too good-looking for her taste. Square jaw. Model-perfect nose. Dark hair that could work in a shampoo commercial. And his eyes? That shade of blue should be outlawed for what it did to a woman’s heart rate—not to mention her panties—when he stared right at her.

They hadn’t run into each other since the day she’d moved in. When she’d gotten over her annoyance at his rude suggestion for voice lessons, she’d remembered the fatigue she’d seen around his eyes. Another neighbor had mentioned he’d just gotten back from Europe, and she’d been prepared to let the mishap go and start fresh. She’d reminded herself that just because a man is rich and would go to the lengths of taking voice lessons to shed his blue-collar upbringing did not make him like her father. The fact that he’d wanted her to lose her accent too though was a red warning label in neon lights that she would do well to pay attention to.

But they were going to be neighbors for a while, so it was prudent to not create avoidable situations.

Nothing to do with how his hand had felt holding hers or that ridiculously sexy half grin he’d tried to use on her. Of course, her second impression of him was not faring any better than the first.

“I barely see any smoke,” he grumbled.

She jerked her gaze upward and saw…nothing but air. “It must have dissipated.”

“Sure it did,” he said, sounding exactly the way her nunni had whenever she’d called Everly out in a lie without actually using the words “liar, liar, pants on fire.” The sound of sirens blared outside, followed by the thunder of booted footsteps on the stairs. “Tell that to the firefighters.”

She did. They weren’t convinced. By the time the firefighters had checked the building, specifically Tyler’s apartment, and left, she was more than ready for that drink with Kiki. Before she could head back upstairs, though, Tyler appeared next to her with a bakery box that he handed to her with an apologetic grin. Inside was a plate of burned-to-hockey-puck-hardness brownies. And that solved the mystery of what in the hell had been smoking up the building.

“And then he just left?” Kiki asked a few hours later while they were tucked away in a corner booth of their favorite wine bar.

“Yep,” Everly said, still trying to wrap her brain around it. “He walked back into his apartment and closed the door.”

Peering at her over the top of her wineglass as she took a drink, Kiki gave her friend a questioning look. “This is the hot one you talked to in the hallway who made the crack about your accent?”

“Yep.” God, she got sick of people thinking someone with her accent needed to change it or she wouldn’t be taken seriously. All through college that had been the number one piece of advice from people in the art department. She’d told them to take a flying leap then, and she would now, too. She was proud of where she was from, and even people from Riverside could appreciate art.

“And today he gave you inedible brownies?” Kiki asked. “Do you think he’s crazy?”

She shook her head. “Just pissy.”