The Schemer (Harbor City 3)

KIKI: xoxo

EVERLY: *mwah*

She logged off and gathered up the stack of bills that were nearly due, sales slips, and bank statements. Promising herself that she’d finish up tomorrow, she stuffed everything back in its respective manila envelopes and laid them on top of her kitchen counter. Then, she grabbed the bakery fresh coconut cream pie—its box still wrapped up in a pretty blue ribbon—her keys, and her purse before heading out the door.

Fiddling with her phone in one hand while she held the pie in the other, she’d made it three steps before a flash of something in front of her forced her gaze up from her cell. Then she almost dropped everything.

Tyler stood in the middle of her hall in broken-in jeans that looked like they’d been made to hug his impressive thighs and a lightweight gray sweater that brought out the silver in his blue eyes. The look on his face as he watched her was as hungry as it had been in her dream followed by her solo sexting fantasy. Fuck. This was not what she needed.

Maybe, but you can’t deny he’s exactly what you want.

Straightening her shoulders, she shoved that super-annoying voice of self-awareness way back into the basement of her brain and added a little extra attitude to her strut.

“I didn’t smell anythin’ burnin’,” she said, adding some extra Riverside to her words. “So I figured ya were still in Denver.”

Chapter Eleven

If it

hadn’t been for that quick intake of breath followed by an appreciative slow perusal of him from head to toe as they both stood in the hall outside her apartment door, Tyler just might have believed Everly wasn’t totally happy to see him. It was almost enough to hurt a normal man’s ego. Good thing his was supercharged. What else had a little extra oomph today? His dick after seeing her for the first time in days—especially since she was in black heels, form-fitting jeans, and a long pink sweater that managed to cover her from shoulders to ass and yet highlight every single dip and swell of her body underneath.

“You’re in pink,” he said, proving once and for all that his IQ left the building whenever Everly Ribinski came within touching distance.

She shrugged, sending one side of the sweater’s scoop neck sliding down her arm and revealing her shoulder. It shouldn’t turn him on. It did.

“It’s my nunni’s favorite color.”

He forced himself to look away from the woman and instead focus on what she was carrying. “You bringing her pie?”

She flinched just the slightest bit but more than enough for him to notice. “The coconut cream is for her bingo buddies; she’s not so into pie right now.”

Whatever he’d said wrong, it had taken some of the punch out of her body language and the piss and vinegar out of her tone. He didn’t like it. It didn’t seem right that something could suck the personality out of Everly like that. He closed the distance between them in three strides, for once not with the goal of touching her but needing to comfort her.

Shit. He was screwed. So fucking screwed.

He stopped just out of arm’s reach because this was new territory for him, and if there was a chance that curling his arms around her would make the moisture in her dark eyes spill over, he knew she’d never forgive him. “Is everything okay?”

Everly’s chin trembled for a second before she inhaled a deep breath in through her nose and closed her eyes. When she opened them a moment later, there was resignation, stubbornness, and more than a little sadness reflected there. “She has dementia, and I go to visit her every week and then play bingo with the eighty-and-older set.”

He had no fucking clue what the protocol was here. He spent 95 percent of his talking time around other guys. Did he acknowledge the hurt? Did he brush over it? He didn’t think it was the latter. His friend Frankie, who he’d grown up next door to, had four sisters. They loved talking about their feelings. Okay, they loved shouting and laughing and crying and giggling about their feelings. He should ask her more, invite her to say what she wanted because she was obviously close to her grandma and dementia wasn’t a kind disease.

After taking in a steadying breath, he opened his mouth and said, “I kill it at bingo.”

Yeah, he’d totally chickened out.

Asshole, know thyself.

Her lips went from pressed hard together to curling upward. Looked like he’d assholed his way into saying the right thing.

Everly looked him up and down. This time, though, it was as if she were trying to decide if he was worthy of an important quest. “Are you angling for another invitation?”

He didn’t mean to press his luck, but being around her fucked with his head. “Not if you’re too scared to play with me.”

His dick liked that idea. Liked it a lot. He hadn’t totally meant the challenge to come out as a double entendre, but he had a dirty mind and judging by the way her dark-brown eyes turned nearly black and the pulse picked up in her neck, so did Ms. 3B. He’d been worked up after their conversation last night. Had she? The tip of her pink tongue snuck out and wet her bottom lip. Oh yeah, she had. He got dumb around her, but he didn’t lose all his brains.

Taking some pity on them both as the air crackled around them, he pulled his wallet out of his jeans and took out his lucky quarter. “Loser has to drive.”

“What makes you think I’m taking you to bingo?” she asked, her voice a little breathier than it had been before.