The Schemer (Harbor City 3)

Kiki carried the box the six steps to the other room and left it sitting on the three feet of counter space (total) in the galley kitchen.

“So you know I’m gonna kick your former downstairs neighbor’s ass, right?” Kiki said as she made her way through the maze of boxes in the living room/dining room/bedroom combination.

“He has a name.” And his head up his ass.

Kiki scoffed. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s Dead Man.”

She couldn’t lie; the image of Kiki going after Tyler made her smile in that deep, dark, fuck-you-and-the-horse-you-rode-in-on kind of way. It was the first thing to knock the been-hit-by-a-crosstown-bus look off her face since she’d used every ounce of pride and Riverside bluster to walk out of the gala as if her heart hadn’t just been put through a garbage disposal.

“Thanks for the offer,” she said as she shoved another book onto the shelves the moving guys had put next to the single window. “But I made the call to end things, not him.”

“Why are you being so nice about this?” Kiki sliced open another box, this time revealing the shoes Everly had just thrown in there. Her friend looked around the sparse surroundings. “Where do you want these?”

“There’s a shoe rack hanging on the inside of the closet door.” She’d sacrifice space for her winter coats for her babies. “Anyway, I can be cool about it because”—she was too numb to feel anything but the occasional flash of anger or sadness—”none of it mattered. I’ve told you eighty billion times already that it was just for fun.”

“And that’s why you had to hotfoot it out of his building where you had twice the space for almost the same price?” Kiki asked as she loaded a fourth pair of black shoes onto the shoe rack.

Okay, that hadn’t been her most brilliant moment, but she’d needed space away from Tyler more than she needed space in her apartment. “I was month to month, and this place is in the heart of the art district for the same price. How could I not grab it? Gotta think with your head not your heart.”

At least, that’s what she was telling herself. Repeatedly. Day and night. Maybe even in her sleep.

Kiki crunched the now empty box and added it to the pile the super would cart away tomorrow. “Solid life advice there.”

Yeah, if only she could follow the wise words she spouted. Needing to move and to change the direction of this conversation before she confessed that she hadn’t stopped thinking about Tyler since the gala—sometimes it was fantasies about laughing as he groveled at her feet and sometimes it was banging him against the wall after he’d sufficiently groveled—Everly stood up, pressed her palms to her lower back, and arched. God, that felt good. Hauling boxes sucked. Then, she took the four steps over to her bed where her purse sat in the middle. She grabbed her wallet from the bag and fished out the check she’d written this morning thanks to the return of her outrageous security deposit from her old super.

“Well, the good news is that because of the move, I can finally give you this.” She handed over the check to Kiki. “It’s everything I owe you for the catering you’ve been doing at the shows.”

Kiki took the check, looked at the figure written on it, and immediately tried to hand it back. “You know there’s no time limit on this. With the move, I know things have to be tight right now.”

“Friends don’t take advantage of each other.” She shoved her hands in her pockets. “You helped when I needed it, and now I can finally pay you back. That was our agreement, and I’m sticking to it.”

“You’re good people, Everly,” Kiki said. “That asshole didn’t deserve you. Especially not with the crap he pulled about that Irena chick. That was a ginormous load of crap.”

“True.” Of course, that didn’t make the hole in her chest close up any faster.

“You know you matter, right?” Kiki enveloped her in a hug, squeezing tight before letting her go. “To the people who count, you matter, and we’d fight right beside

you even if it meant causing a scene in the middle of some crazy Harbor City high-society event because you’re worth fighting for.”

Everly pressed her lips together and fought to make her chin stop trembling. “That’s the nicest, most unhinged pep talk anyone’s ever given me. I just wish I didn’t need it.” Cue the waterworks. Damn, she hated not being able to stop the tears and for having tears for him. “I fell for him. I knew I shouldn’t have. I didn’t mean to but…” The rest of the words wouldn’t come.

“Oh honey,” Kiki said, hugging her again.

Everly just let the tears that she’d been holding onto for the past four days fall. It wasn’t a pretty cry. Her nose ran. Her face went flush. It was an ugly cry over a man she never should have been with anyway. One who thought she didn’t matter because she was a Riverside woman through and through.

“So much for just being about fun,” she said, once she could finally form words again. “I fell for him. I thought he was different. I made the exact same mistake my mom made even though Nunni warned me almost every day growing up to watch out for men like Tyler.”

“I’m gonna kill him.” Kiki grabbed the open bottle of wine sitting on the end table still wrapped in plastic next to the couch and poured a good measure into a red plastic cup and handed it to Everly. “For you, I’d wear orange.”

“But if you go to jail, who would cater my next gallery show and provide the horrible wine?” she asked as she downed a gulp of the wine that may not taste great but it had alcohol in it and that would make things temporarily better.

“Shit.” Kiki poured herself some wine. “Looks like we have to let him stay breathing.” She held up her glass. “Up with good friends and down with assholes.”

Everly cracked a smile and tapped the top of her plastic cup to Kiki’s. She would drink to that—probably all night long. And tomorrow, when she woke up with a mouth full of cotton and a head full of aches? Well, she’d deal with what came next then, even if she had no idea how.

Chapter Twenty-Six

A last-minute call from Alberto a week later had Tyler scrambling. The Italian was still rooting for him to get the consulting job and figured the best way to help make that happen was a do-over meet and greet with the board, which was how Tyler had ended up outside Helene Carlyle’s penthouse for an informal pre-wedding dinner with a guest list that just happened to include several key members of the Ferranti Hotel Group board who’d crossed the Atlantic to attend Carlo’s wedding.