The Schemer (Harbor City 3)

“Just how cute is he?” Kiki asked.

Drop-dead gorgeous. “Not enough for this.”

“So what’s your plan?”

Her best friend knew her so well. She always had a plan. “Avoid him as much as possible.”

“And when that’s not possible?”

It was a small building with only a handful of apartments and a small parking garage. Total avoidance was probably a fantasy. It was best to be prepared. “Not give him an inch.”

“So you’re going all Riverside all the way?” Kiki asked with a laugh.

Growing up poor and in a shitty neighborhood meant growing up with a code. “We don’t back down. Ever.”

“Girl.” Kiki shook her head in amusement. “I love you, but not everything in life is a competition to the death.”

“Of course it is.” What would her life be if she just gave in to every asshole who crossed her path? Not one in which she owned her own gallery, that was for sure.

Kiki giggled. “This is going to get interesting.”

Interesting was the last thing Everly needed in her life right now, but backing down from a fight just wasn’t in her nature.

Chapter Two

“You’ve got ta be kiddin’ me.”

Tyler kept his attention on his copy of Investor’s Business Daily. He didn’t need to look up to identify the speaker or her car, which was why he’d kept his eyes on the words he wasn’t reading as she’d driven closer. It wasn’t like he needed to actually watch her. Much to his annoyance, he never had any trouble picturing the woman who went with that thick Riverside accent, with its dropped Ts and Gs at the ends of words and saying cawfee instead of coffee. Everly Ribinski was a high-heeled addict who clip-clomped her way across the apartment above his loud enough to wake the dead.

But that had been just the beginning of their little war two months ago, which explained why he was sitting in a folding lounge chair parked in the building’s primo parking spot in the middle of a Tuesday, waiting for his evil upstairs neighbor to come home and try to park there. That wasn’t going to happen. He’d make sure of it.

“Are you gonna move so I can park, or do I get to run you over?” she asked.

He looked up. It was a mistake. From his spot on the lounge chair, gazing up at her as she stood next to the open door of her car, she was all curves and attitude. Hell, who was he kidding? Everly looked that dangerous no matter where he was sitting. Jet-black hair that ended in a curl that barely brushed her shoulders and that lush body encased in a form-fitting ebony dress and leather jacket, full lips begging to have the red lipstick kissed off them, and a heart-shaped ass that made his cock take notice every damn time he saw her. Right now was no exception, even though he couldn’t see her ass from this angle. Pity that.

Slowly, Tyler lowered his gaze, closed his paper and folded it in half, then laid it on his lap. He picked up the longneck bottle of beer next to him and looked back at her. Everly didn’t seem happy to see him. That wasn’t a shocker. She never was—not that he gave her a reason to be.

He took a long sip from the cool bottle, watching as she narrowed her dark-brown eyes at him. He could practically see all the ways she was considering offing him running through her mind. Of course, she never would. He knew people. Knew how they thought. Knew all their plots and plans. Knew how to outmaneuver them and come out on top. Always.

Well, except since he’d met her. But where they’d been locked in a

draw, he was sure this latest maneuver would put him on top once and for all.

He set the bottle back down on the concrete and forced himself not to imagine all the things those cherry lips of hers could do. “You wouldn’t run me over.”

She jiggled her keys. “Guess again, 2B.”

“Well, 3B,” he said, playing along with her we-don’t-know-each-other’s-names game. “They don’t allow high heels in prison.”

“I have faith in the penitentiary black market,” she said without a second’s hesitation.

“Speaking from experience?” he asked, knowing that she wasn’t.

Everly Ribinski might come from a shady side of town, but she wasn’t a mafia princess or a badass looking to make her mark in a very rough part of town. She was an art dealer with a shoe fetish and a killer ass.

She raised her chin even higher with arrogance. “You have no idea.”

“We need to settle this.”