The Schemer (Harbor City 3)

Everly glanced down at the dingy quarter in his hand. “One with a Two Face obsession?”

Oh yeah, here was a talk-nerdy-to-me conversation he could have. “Batman or Superman?”

She smirked at him. “Wonder Woman.”

Yeah. He could see it—maybe a little too well. The mental image of Everly in Wonder Woman’s outfit flashed in his head before he could stop it, and he had to adjust his stance to accommodate his dick’s oh-I-like-that reaction. “Heads or tails?”

“Tails for the parking spot.”

She made the choice, and Tyler felt no qualms about tweaking the flip. He was saving her car either way, e

ven if she’d never see it that way. And he’d get to watch the spark in her eyes set ablaze when she lost. Win-win.

“Sugar,” he said, tossing the coin with a hard flick at just the right angle, “get ready to park at the end of the garage for the foreseeable future.”

…

Everly dropped her keys the moment the coin went airborne. It flew up into the air, flipping end over end several times before she snatched it out of the air, turned it, smacked it down on the top of her hand, and held her palm over it. 2B—okay, Tyler Jacobson, she knew his name—just stared at her bug-eyed and slack-jawed.

Boys. They are so fucking easy.

Well, he hadn’t been up until now, anyway. The dark Adonis who looked like a rich woman’s David Gandy with his black hair, blue eyes, and perfect body—my God, how much time did he spend in the gym getting hot and sweaty? She could picture his biceps flexing with every curl. His thighs straining with each weight-bearing squat. His back glistening as he—Girl! Focus! Where was she? Oh yeah, shocking Mr. Cocksure Know-It-All by not following his playbook. Deal with it, 2B.

“What? You don’t flip so it lands on the ground like some kind of heathen, do you?” she asked as he stared at her like she was a Rubik’s Cube that needed to be solved. “You toss. I catch. That’s only fair, right?”

Tyler recovered quickly, she had to give him that. The black-haired, blue-eyed devil snapped his mouth shut, ending the motion with a cocky smile that didn’t affect her at all. Liar.

“Tit for tat, huh?” He held out his hand, palm up, obviously wanting his quarter back.

She shrugged. What could she say, she was Italian via Poland, and she’d picked up the eye-for-an-eye habit from her nunni.

“Holding a grudge isn’t good for your health,” he said, taking a step closer, his stride as sure as a man who was always six moves ahead on the chessboard.

She nodded her chin toward the chair behind him. “Neither is sitting in my parking spot.”

Determined to ignore the delicious scent of his cologne teasing her senses and just how sexy his forearms looked in that navy-blue button-down rolled up to his elbows, she went through a few of Tyler’s greatest cooking misses. Burned curry. Scorched grilled cheese. Blackened eggs. Incinerated popcorn.

“The spot’s not yours,” he said. “I believe you called tails.”

Her stomach did a shimmy as she lifted her hand. She didn’t have to glance at the coin. The look on the smug bastard’s face said it all. It was heads.

Everly glanced over her shoulder at the dim gloom of the rest of the small underground parking garage. It had only six spots in the long narrow garage, each spot requiring parallel parking except the front two, one for each of the six large apartments above Black Heart Art Gallery. She’d learned from Mrs. MacIntosh that Clyde Fester in 1C had spent a fortune two years ago to buy the rights to three of the spots for his classic GTO he took out only on special occasions. That left the spot by the door next to Mrs. MacIntosh and the one in the rear of the garage. Everly had heard tales of Mrs. MacIntosh dinging the cars parked beside her from time to time, but Everly had ding insurance and a soft spot for anyone older than sixty. That’s what happened when your grandma, along with her circle of cutthroat bingo partners, practically raised you from seventh grade on. So Everly would squeeze her aging German metal baby, Helga, as close to the line away from Cecilia’s land yacht as possible and cash in on her insurance policy one week at a time. She’d also save herself from the mile-long hike from the back of the garage in her four-inch stilettos. As any woman with sense would agree, what’s a ding compared to walking a mile in high heels?

“Aww. Too bad. Best two out of three?” Tyler asked, his smooth voice pulling her attention back to the matter at hand.

She picked up the coin off the top of her hand and looked at both sides. It was grimy, the kind of coin that had been through a million vending machines, but the weight was good. It had a heads and a tails side. There wasn’t anything off about it that stood out. Still, she couldn’t shake the nugget of disbelief in the pit of her stomach. Of course, Tyler always jumbled her up that way. It was part of the reason why she got so snarly around him. He made her nervous—no, she self corrected, he made her excited, hopeful, aroused. Three things she couldn’t afford to be if she was going to keep her focus on making her borderline failing gallery a go and keeping her dementia-suffering nunni in the well staffed, caring senior residence instead of a state-run nursing home.

What would Nunni say at the moment? To pick her battles. “Nah, I’m good.” She gave her building nemesis an evil smirk. “Anyway, carrying all my extra heels from my new parking spot will be good exercise.”

The grin slid off his face. “I won. No heels inside your apartment.”

“I never agreed to that part. Anyway, everybody’s got a vice.” She flipped the coin to him, relishing the small victory.

He swiped it from the air and shoved it in his pocket. “Your vice couldn’t be underwater basket weaving?”

“And miss out on my salsa practice to the beat of you pounding a broom against your ceiling? Where’s the fun in that?” Yeah, she was taunting him, but he deserved it after this stunt.

“I expected an answer like that from a woman who believes in the healing power of art and always wears head-to-toe black probably right down to your panties that are always in a twist,” he scoffed.