The Schemer (Harbor City 3)

“Bellissima.” Ferranti took Helene’s hand, brushing a kiss across her knuckles. “I’m so glad you decided to join us.”

For her part, the older woman glared at the Italian until his head was bent so he couldn’t see her, and then a small little smile curled Helene’s lips. It was enough of a thaw that Tyler opened his mouth to say something, but just at that moment Alberto stood up and the icy frost returned to Helene’s face.

If Alberto noticed the change, he didn’t show it.

Interesting. Tyler tucked away the little factoid about Alberto’s interest in Helene. While there was probably some business use for the information—weak spots could always be exploited—he wouldn’t go that way with it. The Carlyles may not be his family, but they were close, and he wouldn’t pay their kindness back like that. Now if it had been anyone else, he would have taken the information and found a way to use it to further his aims. Great minds weren’t lying when they said that knowledge was power.

Instead, he turned to Tyler and Everly with a huge, welcoming smile. “Please, let’s go into the dining room. Carlo can’t wait to introduce you to his soon-to-be bride, Everly.”

The sun seemed to follow them as they walked from the foyer through a window-filled hall that looked out onto the ocean and into a dining room with gleaming floors, exposed beams, and—of course—massive windows that showed off the best feature of the house, the beach. As they crossed into the room, a tall man who looked like a younger, leaner version of Ferranti hurried over while a woman with a phone pressed to her ear and long dark hair tied in a high ponytail stood near the windows with her back to them. Thanks to the bright rays, he got more of an outline than a full picture of the woman, but something about her set off his warning sirens. It had to be the hair. Ever since he’d walked out of that church

, he’d stayed away from any woman who reminded him even vaguely of his ex-fiancée—right up until he stopped being able to keep his lips to himself around Everly.

“It’s been too long. I’m so glad you’re here. I was afraid with my work schedule I wouldn’t get to see you before the wedding,” Carlo said, kissing Everly on both cheeks in a perfectly normal way that still made Tyler want to deliver a Waterbury-style hands-to-yourself message. “You must be Tyler. I’m so happy to meet you after all the good things Papà has said. Let me introduce you to my fiancée, Iren—”

Tyler didn’t need to hear the rest of the name. The dark-haired woman near the windows turned. Her practiced smile cracked the moment she spotted him, but ever the actress, she recovered quickly. Tyler’s palms turned clammy as the rest of him went ice-cold.

“Well, if it isn’t Tyler from across the harbor,” Irena said, her hips swaying as she strutted over from the window. “Why, last I’d heard you’d left Harbor City behind and gone back home. It’s so nice to have you visit us so we can catch up.”

A divot of confusion formed between Carlo’s eyes. “You two know each other?”

“Yes.” It was all he could get out from between his clenched teeth.

For a man who made his living out of seeing what was coming next, he’d never imagined crossing paths with Irena in Alberto Ferranti’s beach house. And she was engaged to his son? Oh, this just got better and better.

There were two ways Irena could go in this situation: be her natural born shrewish self or play the sweetheart. Both had advantages. She could say that he’d done her wrong, which would give her a reason to be a bitch so she could jab the knife in as many times as possible and ruin any hope of Tyler making a deal with Alberto. The advantage for acting as if it had all been mutual and was water under the bridge is that she got to keep her true nature under wraps and keep playing whatever game she had going with Carlo, because there had to be one. He’d been fooled by Irena once, but he’d learned. She’d been born with every advantage money could offer, but a lifetime of being overindulged by her jet-setting parents had turned her selfish and mean early, and she had no interest in being any other way. The truth of it was, Irena liked being a bitch. It really was her happy place.

“Tyler and I were engaged about a million years ago,” Irena said as she hooked her arm through Carlo’s waist and drew in close to him, looking up at the other man as if he were her guardian angel instead of the meal ticket to the land of the rich for the poor heiress who’d burned through her trust in record time. “But don’t get jealous. It was eons ago and it didn’t work out, which was for the best because all that heartbreak led me to you.”

Heartbreak? It took everything he had not to laugh out loud at that bit of theatricality. All she needed was some fake tears and Alberto’s sucker of a son would wrap her up in his arms and carry her off. What a load of crap. Laying out all of Irena’s dirty laundry was tempting, but that wasn’t the Harbor City elite way. As much as he hated seeing the bitch, he couldn’t let it show. That would only endanger the deal. He knew it. She knew it. Movement to his left caught his eye. Helene stood next to Everly looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. The grande dame of Harbor City high society hadn’t ever steered him wrong before. He’d follow her example again—the deal with Alberto was worth more than the satisfaction of causing a scene. He may have grown up with parents who reveled in public spectacle, but he didn’t cause scenes. He’d left that part of his history in Waterbury.

“You’re the ex-fiancée?” Everly asked, stepping away from Helene and toward Irena, her accent thick with disgust and a look on her face that screamed, “You are dead meat.”

Irena’s dark eyes went wide. Obviously, her bitchy cat-fighting skills weren’t up to getting a stomp-walk challenge from an Amazon from a neighborhood in Harbor City that made his blue-collar roots look like a shining beacon on a hill. Okay, there was a part of him that was dying to see what would happen next—maybe a bigger part than he wanted to admit—but it couldn’t happen.

He intercepted Everly before she could make Irena pee in her pants, slipping his arm around her waist. “Everly Ribinski, may I introduce you to Irena Iverson.”

Irena held out her hand, the left one with the gargantuan diamond solitaire on her ring finger. “Is that a Riverside accent? I just love it. Too bad it’s so unusual for this area.” The women shook hands like enemies on the battlefield. It was polite, but just. “Carlo has told me so much about you that I was a little worried, but I see that you’re with Tyler and that’s just perfect. I’m sure you two have so much more in common than Tyler and I ever did.”

Yeah, things like not trying to sleep with your fiancée’s best friend on your wedding night. God, he hoped Carlo didn’t have friends who were richer than him—or then again, maybe he did. The idiot had the same made-stupid-by-love look Tyler had worn before he’d figured out what a deceitful hag Irena was. That’s what happened to a person when emotion and passion mixed: temporary insanity, which was why keeping emotion out of it with the flip of a coin was the right move to make on the chessboard of life.

Everly must have sensed the tension locking his body tight because she softened her own stance, stretched to her tiptoes, and brushed a kiss across his cheek.

“We’re like pasta and sauce; we go together,” she said, her tone as light as the look she sent him was serious. Then she blinked, her face muscles relaxed into an easy grin, and she turned toward the others. “So I guess it was lucky that you two didn’t work out because of…”

Tyler’s heart stopped.

“Reasons,” Everly finished after a pause that lasted a heartbeat longer than necessary.

Alberto may not know the reasons for that extra breath of Everly’s, but he sure picked up on it. He stood next to Helene, his gaze going from Everly to Irena to him. It might take a little digging, but the older man would figure it out. He hadn’t created a hotel empire by being dumb—or letting the rest of the world in on what he was thinking, it seemed, because the expression on his face went back to that of happy host.

“Come, everyone.” He opened his arms and gestured toward the table, already laid out with food. “Let’s sit. Mangia, mangia.”

Tyler made sure to sit directly across from Irena. As Michael Corleone put it, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. It made sense—just as long as he could keep his inner impulse to go all Waterbury tapped down and distract Everly from going into attack mode, then they’d make it through lunch without sinking the mission of connecting with Ferranti. It couldn’t be easier. The devil on his shoulder laughed. Yeah, and Everly isn’t kissable at all.

Chapter Nine

After lunch, when Alberto suggested a tour of the house to see his collection, Everly had to fight not to let out a sigh of relief. The meal had been awkward to put it mildly. Judging by the stilted conversation, everyone—with the exception of Carlo, who was on another business call—had noticed the negative undercurrent of what was supposed to be a fun, casual meal among friends and family. Never had baked ziti tasted so much like cardboard paper.