The Schemer (Harbor City 3)

“Nope,” Everly said as she stamped her six cards with the marker in a clockwise motion her nunni had taught her. “You got scammed by an old man.”

“I thought old people were supposed to be sweet and bake cookies,” Tyler grumbled, missing the G48 on the bottom left of his bingo card collection.

“These are Riverside seniors,” she said amid another fit of giggles as she marked the card for him. “You might be from Waterbury, but you look like an uptown Harbor City mark, and Bernie is one of the best.”

She couldn’t testify to it in court, but she was pretty sure she heard the sound of “damn right” off to her left before Mary called out O70.

Bringing Tyler here could have been a huge mistake. Inviting him to come meet Nunni? A total disaster. Instead, Nunni and her friends at the assisted living center had welcomed him even if they were shooting her questioning looks. Everyone wanted to know who he was to her, and she didn’t have an answer for that. Just trying to think up a definition for them made her chest tight and her nerves jangly.

Tyler stamped the space on one of his cards and turned to face her, totally missing the O70 on the card next to it. “You know some people are actually intimidated by me, right?”

“Oh yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes as she searched her last card for O70. “The ones who’ve never been smoked out of their apartment by you.”

He snorted, trying for offended, but the twitch to his lips gave him away. “That hasn’t happened in days.”

“You’ve been out of town, remember?” Not that his being half a country away had stopped her from thinking about him.

“How could I forget after your text?” His lips curled into a sly smirk that did things to the panties she was wearing for once, and he pivoted in his seat, their knees brushing.

Even that mere touch was like a match to a can of hairspray, setting every nerve in her body ablaze. Mary called out I19, but Everly didn’t bother with her marker, since she was white-knuckling it as the fantasy she’d had earlier that morning about him played out in her mind. Were his hands really that talented? His tongue that sure? His cock that fucking hard? She clenched her thighs together, needing some sort of relief. Damn. She had to get him out of her system because this was nuts. She didn’t fuck around with men like Tyler Jacobson. He might be from the wrong neighborhood, but he was all upscale Harbor City now. And while the whole across-the-tracks thing may work in the movies, it sure didn’t in real life as her own family’s history attested. So why did her pulse tick up the second his gaze dipped down to her mouth?

“Are ya two going to kiss already or keep up ya yammerin’?” Bernie asked, his voice pulling her away from the fall that had too often ended up with her mouth planted on Tyler’s. “I have my hearing aid turned up all the way, and I can still barely hear Mary call out the numbers over the sound of ya hormones.”

Embarrassment slapped her cheeks, but she knew better than to duck her head or show any hint of weakness. “Seems that finicky hearing aid of yours is working well enough tonight.”

The old man just grinned at her. “I’m still waiting for an ans

wer.”

Oh, she had an answer, and as soon as she could clear her brain a little, she’d get it out.

Tyler didn’t seem to suffer from the same problem. He threw his arm across the back of her chair and trailed a finger along the column of her neck, scattering the few basic words she’d strung together in her head.

“Don’t worry,” Tyler said to the older man. “I’m going to kiss her.”

Jana Milbank, who’d taught her the tricks of buying groceries on a budget from the corner store, looked up from her bingo card, squinting in their direction because she’d forgotten to take her glasses from their perch on top of her head, and put them on. “Who’s he kissing?”

“That cute fella is gonna kiss Patrice’s granddaughter,” Catherine responded, never looking up from her bingo cards, as focused on them as she’d been on teaching Everly the basics of a well-placed elbow to the sternum or the heel of her palm to the nose before she’d gone out on her first date.

More than a little flustered, Everly fought to keep her cool as her nunni’s friends continued to chatter about something that so was not going to happen—again. “I am not kissing him.”

“Well not now she’s not,” Tyler said, playing up to the crowd. “But she has before and she will again.”

“I don’t blame her. If I were thirty years younger, I’d be kissing him, too,” Jana announced.

“Thirty? Try fifty, Jana,” Catherine shot back.

Oh. My. God. This was just… There weren’t even words for it because while one part of her was counseling her to resist, the other part was setting up a cheer routine rooting for her to get in the game and go all the way. She knew which way the crowd of seniors at the table would vote as they watched Tyler and her as if they were characters on the screen during movie night.

“Bingo!” a woman cried out from two tables over.

Everyone at their table groaned their disappointment—except for Tyler and her. He leaned in close and dipped his head so his lips almost touched the shell of her ear. Pulse jackhammering loud enough that she just knew he had to be able to hear it, she held her breath, anticipation stringing her whole body tight. But he didn’t turn and kiss her. Didn’t whisper a teasing word. Instead, she felt the vibrations of his soft chuckle against her skin before he sat back in his chair, a satisfied expression on his too-handsome-for-his-own-good face and picked up his bingo marker right as Mary called out the first number in the next round.

And, for once, she had to scramble to mark all her cards before Mary drew the next number. Tyler Jacobson would pay for this.

Chapter Twelve

Everly wasn’t any more settled a few hours later when she pulled her car into the spot at the back of the garage. She turned off the engine, and Tyler unbuckled but didn’t move from the passenger seat. There wasn’t another person in the garage.