The Schemer (Harbor City 3)

Carlo shrugged. “We both know this whole marriage was just a business arrangement, and with that performance piped in over the speakers, you know it’s not going to work out anymore.”

“So you are leaving me at the altar?” Irena asked, all preten

se of the Harbor City sweetheart part she played to a T gone and the actual harpy she was on full display.

Carlo glanced back at the chapel, relief apparent on his face even from where Tyler was standing.

“Technically,” Carlo said, “you’re in the vestibule.”

“And you think that matters?” She grabbed her voluminous skirt with both hands. “You…you…Italian asshole.”

With that, she stormed off, her attendants scurrying after her. Everyone in the church sat watching as Carlo made his way back up the aisle to the halfway point where Alberto was waiting, a huge smile on his face. The two men conferred for a minute before Carlo strode up to the front of the church and the minister waiting there, his hand on his Bible, and turned to address the crowd.

“I’m sorry to tell you that the wedding is off,” Carlo said, his voice sounding happier than Tyler had ever heard it before. “Thank you all for coming.”

The church erupted with chatter. Irena’s family marched out, their chins high and their gazes locked straight forward. Everly and Nonna marched up to Alberto and Carlo in the front, offering their support and solidarity. Tyler remained standing near the back, desperate for a plan to appear in his mind fully formed as to how he was going to get Everly to listen to him plead his case. The place was deafening with everyone talking at once. No doubt those with friends who weren’t there were busily texting them to let them know what had just happened at what was supposed to be the society wedding of the year. It was exactly the kind of gleeful reaction at someone else’s expense that he’d dreaded being at the center of for as long as he’d been around these people. It almost made him feel bad for Irena. Almost. And it reminded him that in Waterbury, this wouldn’t be happening. Oh, people would be having a shit fit, but there’d be a lot more sympathetic faces than those he saw in the church.

Damn, he’d been lucky to find the Carlyles. He never would have made it in this piranha pit without them. And he couldn’t make it—anywhere—without Everly.

There was no way either of them was leaving this church without settling things between them. Life without Everly wasn’t one he wanted to lead and he didn’t care what kind of public fool he had to make of himself to get her to understand that.

“Hey, 3B,” he hollered over the buzz of the crowd, loud enough to silence them. “You still interested in that parking spot?”

Everly turned in slow motion, hands on her hips, a queen-of-not-putting-up-with-your-shit look on her face. “What are you talking about?”

A Harbor City man would have run from her don’t-fuck-with-me attitude, but he was from Waterbury and he had stones the size of watermelons. He pushed through the ushers and started to make his way up front. “The closest to Mrs. MacIntosh’s Chevy—even though I’m sure no one can afford that ding insurance.”

She cocked her head. “I don’t live there anymore, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right.” He halved the distance between them. “Guess I need to sweeten the deal. How about you get the whole building? It was my first, you know. The one I love more than any other, so it’s only right that the woman I love should have it.” Taking advantage of her shocked silence, he grabbed his wallet from inside his tux jacket and pulled out the grubby quarter that he’d had since he was twelve. The one he’d used to take the emotion out of decision-making, the one he’d let guide his life for way too long. “Flip for it?”

Oblivious—or more likely not giving a shit—to their rapt audience, she strutted over to him, all badass woman from the tips of her black heels to her ebony hair pulled back in some kind of fancy bun. “Are you trying to buy your way back into my pants with a building?”

“No.” He wanted more. He wanted all of her.

“Thank God,” she said, the hard upward curl of her lips looking nothing like the smile she’d given him the first time he made her pasta. “I thought you’d—”

“I’m trying,” he said, cutting her off, “to worm my way into your heart by making a complete and utter ass of myself in front of the most powerful people in Harbor City, the ones I’ve spent my life trying to get to see me as something other than I was.”

She blinked in surprise, and there was no missing the nervous way she razed her bottom lip with her teeth. “Oh yeah, and what’s that?”

“A fool.” Yeah, that about summed it up.

She let out a shaky breath, and there was just enough interest in her gaze to give him hope.

“Keep talking,” she said.

“You were right.”

“About what?”

The only answer he could give was the real one, the one that cost him everything. “It all.”

She didn’t say anything. She just stared at him without blinking. His hands turned clammy and a line of sweat slid down his back. Then something changed. Her face softened. Her chin trembled. And her mouth—that lush red mouth that did such dirty, dirty things—curled up on one side.

“You’re so infuriating,” she said, her voice trembling just the slightest bit. “And you can’t cook.”

“Not true. I can make pasta,” he said, pulling her in close. “You drive me nuts, too, with your loud clomping shoes and love of German painters when I like paintings of dogs playing poker.”