The Schemer (Harbor City 3)

He didn’t laugh, but one side of his mouth went up in a crooked smile that did funny things to her stomach. “You are the epitome of restraint.”

Hoping to cover the shakiness jumbling her insides because of the uncharacteristic easy camaraderie flowing between them, she laid her accent on thick. “Don’t you fuckin’ know it.”

They laughed, just two people from the wrong side of the tracks, trying to make it in a foreign land. They might be unlikely allies, but for the moment that’s exactly what they were—and it felt good…right. This wasn’t the time to unpack what that might mean, though, so she started to walk toward the dining room where the others were waiting—or at least tried to. Tyler hadn’t taken a step, and he hadn’t let go of her hand.

She glanced back at him. He stood there, staring at her—the look on his face all but screaming that he was plotting all sorts of devious schemes that would leave her naked, sweaty, and satisfied. Her stomach did the flippity-flop thing again with the addition of her thighs going quivery and a rush of electricity going straight to her core. Fuck. What in the hell had she been thinking? She hadn’t been. And that was the problem.

Tyler stepped closer, his eyes stormy with a predatory want that made her breath catch. Her lips parted of their own volition and her nipples puckered in anticipation. But all he did was look at her. Not that it mattered. She was still on the edge of falling over into pure unadulterated trouble of the naked kind.

“We’d better catch up,” Tyler said as he tucked a hair behind her ear that had fallen from her French knot.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice barely audible over the thundering in her chest.

Neither of them moved for a second as the world skittered to a stop around them. Anticipation thick as a cotton ball encased them, and her core clenched. Then, just when she was ready to kiss him or pass out, he shook his head, mumbled something under his breath that she couldn’t catch, and let go of her hand.

The tightness was back in his jaw. “Come on, before they send a search party back for us.”

Nodding her agreement, she fell into step beside him as they walked toward the dining room, passing the portrait of a woman in Regency garb looking out very judgmentally as if she couldn’t believe Everly’s life choices.

You and me both, sister.

…

The next day, guilt was messing with Everly’s ability to down her regular pot of morning coffee. There was no way she could let Carlo marry Irena without letting him know about what the woman had done to Tyler. She didn’t want to. Really, who wanted to have that conversation, but she and Carlo had been friends for too many years for her to wimp out on him because she had to spill information that was not going to go over well.

If she said nothing, she’d be no better than how Sawyer had treated his best friend. And she knew firsthand how that kind of betrayal could hurt someone far worse than the person in question.

After pouring one more cup of java for good luck, she picked up the phone and hit Carlo’s name on her contact list.

“Ciao, Everly,” he answered on the first ring.

Of course he couldn’t have been underwater basket weaving or something else that made having his phone on him an impossibility. “Do you live with your phone attached to your ear?”

“Will you be mad if I say yes?” he asked, his accent giving the question a roguish charm.

What she wouldn’t give to just play along, but she couldn’t. Squeezing her eyes shut, she stood in the middle of her living room, the soft Ikea rug tickling her bare toes, and pressed forward. “You might be mad at me after this call.”

There was a beat of silence in which every single horrible possibility of how this conversation could end played through her

head.

“What’s wrong?” Carlo asked.

“It’s about Irena.” There you go. Suck it up, girl.

“Is this about how she tried to sleep with Tyler’s best friend the night she was supposed to marry Tyler?” Carlo asked with an easy chuckle.

Her eyes popped open in surprise. “You knew?”

“My father and I share more than just our genes. We have the same private investigator, too.”

Needing to get out the stored-up adrenaline that built while she was giving herself a mental pep talk to make this call, she started pacing from one corner of the rug diagonally across the middle and back again. “And you’re okay with all this?”

Carlo made a noncommittal sound. “Considering that this marriage is more of a business deal than anything else, yes, I’m okay with it.”

Just when she thought it couldn’t get weirder. “What are you talking about?”

“In Italy, things go smoother in the business world if you’re married. It’s old-fashioned but it’s true.”