The Schemer

by Avery Flynn

  It wasn’t a bad idea. Who wanted to go to war with their neighbor as if they were urban Hatfields and McCoys? “Suggestions?”

  “Here.” Kiki reached into her purse and whipped out a gift certificate for her company, Be Merry Catering. “The guy obviously can’t cook. I can provide a week’s worth of meals. All he has to do is call and tell me what he wants from our at-home menu.”

  It was brilliant. “You’re the best.”

  “True story.” Kiki lost some of her teasing humor. “So how did your last visit with Nunni go?”

  A heaviness invaded Everly, and her limbs felt like concrete blocks. “About as well as could be expected with the dementia. She thought I was my mom again.”

  Kiki winced in sympathy. “So you got the lecture?”

  “Yep.” Just like nine out of ten visits. It wasn’t unusual for dementia patients to pick one life event to circle back to over and over again, but that didn’t make it any easier to hear—especially when it always cut straight through to Everly’s heart. “Every time I thought she’d let go and move on, she circled back around to warning me about all the evils of men who promised heaven and delivered hell.”

  “Your dad sure was a piece of work.”

  “That’s putting it mildly.” The man was a narcissistic, lying, abandoning asshole of the highest order.

  Kiki raised her glass again. “To getting over your daddy issues.”

  “What daddy issues?” she asked, but clinked their glasses anyway, ignoring the little voice that told her she was full of shit.

  “Girl, don’t even pretend.” Kiki rolled her eyes. “You judge every guy who even looks at you like he has to pay the sins of your father.”

  That may be true, but who could blame her after what her father had done, what had happened to her mother after, and the fact that the whole episode had so scarred her nunni that it was the one thing she fixated on most as she spent her days in the assisted living center. The whole thing was a shit show, and Everly got to live it every single day of her life. Still, there was no denying one very important fact.

  “Just because Nunni has dementia,” she told Kiki, “doesn’t mean she’s wrong about self-entitled rich assholes.”

  …

  The next day, Tyler woke up without a trace of jet lag to find an envelope had been slipped under his door. Since it wasn’t ticking, he opened it up.

  Be Merry Catering

  Gift certificate for one week’s worth of at-home meals. Please call for more information.

  It was signed Everly Ribinski.

  What. The. Fuck. A guy burns one tray of brownies—okay, it was like his millionth time he’d failed at cooking, but she didn’t know that—and he gets told to just give up? If he’d given up, he never would have made it out of Waterbury. He’d be in some boring dead-end job instead of raking in millions doing what he loved.

  He glanced down at the paper in his hand. He’d never had salt poured in a wound via gift certificate before. So that’s how it was gonna be, huh? War by passive-aggressive gift certificate?

  He tossed the paper on his kitchen island and paused, considering his options. Was he overthinking this? He’d been making brownies for her to apologize for his shitty comment about her accent, and she’d called the Harbor City Fire Department. Then, she’d followed up by telling him he was so bad at cooking he needed to hire a caterer. Okay, he did suck in the kitchen, but he was learning. Plus, even after only talking to her twice he knew that woman never had a simple thought in her life. She was layers of intelligence and motives—like a fucking parfait.

  The clip-clop of the passive-aggressor in question’s heels made its way across his ceiling. He listened to her catwalk her way from one end of the apartment to the other, each step sounding as self-satisfied as he was sure she was feeling.

  Fine. Two can play this game.

  Grabbing his phone off the island, he shot off an email to his assistant.

  …

  Fuzzy pink foot-shaped monstrosities with googly eyes glued to the top looked up at Everly like a deranged stalker. She held them to her phone so Kiki could see what had arrived in the package along with a note from Tyler wondering if her high heels hurt her feet as much as they hurt his ears.

  “Slippers?” Kiki asked, pressing her face closer to her camera as if she really wanted to get a better look at the hideous things. “He sent you ugly-ass slippers?”

  All Everly could do was nod. She took another look at the slippers, shivered involuntarily, and dropped them into the trash.

  “Just how cute is he?” Kiki asked.

  Drop-dead gorgeous. “Not enough for this.”

  “So what’s your plan?”

  Her best friend knew her so well. She always had a plan. “Avoid him as much as possible.”

  “And when that’s not possible?”

  It was a small building with only a handful of apartments and a small parking garage. Total avoidance was probably a fantasy. It was best to be prepared. “Not give him an inch.”

  “So you’re going all Riverside all the way?” Kiki asked with a laugh.

  Growing up poor and in a shitty neighborhood meant growing up with a code. “We don’t back down. Ever.”

  “Girl.” Kiki shook her head in amusement. “I love you, but not everything in life is a competition to the death.”

  “Of course it is.” What would her life be if she just gave in to every asshole who crossed her path? Not one in which she owned her own gallery, that was for sure.

  Kiki giggled. “This is going to get interesting.”

  Interesting was the last thing Everly needed in her life right now, but backing down from a fight just wasn’t in her nature.

  Chapter Two

  “You’ve got ta be kiddin’ me.”

  Tyler kept his attention on his copy of Investor’s Business Daily. He didn’t need to look up to identify the speaker or her car, which was why he’d kept his eyes on the words he wasn’t reading as she’d driven closer. It wasn’t like he needed to actually watch her. Much to his annoyance, he never had any trouble picturing the woman who went with that thick Riverside accent, with its dropped Ts and Gs at the ends of words and saying cawfee instead of coffee. Everly Ribinski was a high-heeled addict who clip-clomped her way across the apartment above his loud enough to wake the dead.

  But that had been just the beginning of their little war two months ago, which explained why he was sitting in a folding lounge chair parked in the building’s primo parking spot in the middle of a Tuesday, waiting for his evil upstairs neighbor to come home and try to park there. That wasn’t going to happen. He’d make sure of it.

  “Are you gonna move so I can park, or do I get to run you over?” she asked.

  He looked up. It was a mistake. From his spot on the lounge chair, gazing up at her as she stood next to the open door of her car, she was all curves and attitude. Hell, who was he kidding? Everly looked that dangerous no matter where he was sitting. Jet-black hair that ended in a curl that barely brushed her shoulders and that lush body encased in a form-fitting ebony dress and leather jacket, full lips begging to have the red lipstick kissed off them, and a heart-shaped ass that made his cock take notice every damn time he saw her. Right now was no exception, even though he couldn’t see her ass from this angle. Pity that.

  Slowly, Tyler lowered his gaze, closed his paper and folded it in half, then laid it on his lap. He picked up the longneck bottle of beer next to him and looked back at her. Everly didn’t seem happy to see him. That wasn’t a shocker. She never was—not that he gave her a reason to be.

  He took a long sip from the cool bottle, watching as she narrowed her dark-brown eyes at him. He could practically see all the ways she was considering offing him running through her mind. Of course, she never would. He knew people. Knew how they thought. Knew all their plots and plans. Knew how to outmaneuver them and come out on top. Always.

  Well, except since he’d met her. But where they’d been locked in a
draw, he was sure this latest maneuver would put him on top once and for all.

  He set the bottle back down on the concrete and forced himself not to imagine all the things those cherry lips of hers could do. “You wouldn’t run me over.”

  She jiggled her keys. “Guess again, 2B.”

  “Well, 3B,” he said, playing along with her we-don’t-know-each-other’s-names game. “They don’t allow high heels in prison.”

  “I have faith in the penitentiary black market,” she said without a second’s hesitation.

  “Speaking from experience?” he asked, knowing that she wasn’t.

  Everly Ribinski might come from a shady side of town, but she wasn’t a mafia princess or a badass looking to make her mark in a very rough part of town. She was an art dealer with a shoe fetish and a killer ass.

  She raised her chin even higher with arrogance. “You have no idea.”

  “We need to settle this.”

  “Your thing for gas fumes and shadowy parking garages?” she asked. “I totally agree. It’s weird.”

  Getting up from the lounge chair, he opened his arms to encompass the eight and a half feet wide by nineteen feet long area marked by yellow paint nearest to the resident elevator entrance. Also, it happened to be directly next to where Mrs. MacIntosh parked her ancient Chevrolet, usually taking off a layer of paint from whoever had the bad luck of being parked in the next spot, which was why his car was three blocks away in the garage of another building he owned. That’s why he’d kept everyone out of this spot. Although he’d never tell Everly the real reason. He preferred to let her think he just liked to harass her. Which just happened to be a real fringe benefit. “This parking spot is mine.”

  She gave him a squinty look as if he really was on her very last nerve, only the laughing gleam in her dark eyes gave her away. “It goes to whoever gets it first.”

  He stood and swept his arms out. “And I’m here.”

  She laughed, a loud, astonished sound that echoed in the garage. “You’re sitting on an ugly pink lounge chair. Where did you even get it?”

  The building’s lost and found, but she didn’t need to know that.

  “You don’t even park here,” she said, her voice bleeding with exasperation.

  “I do now. I decided to buy a bike. I’ve had my eye on this Harley, and today I pulled the trigger. They’re delivering it later this afternoon, and I’ll need a place to store it near the building, where it’ll be less likely to get stolen. So see, I need the spot more than you.” True story. Well, except the part where he’d been eyeballing a bike. He didn’t even know how to ride one, hence the need to forevermore store it in this spot. He refused to examine the fact that he’d bought a $50,000 bike to save his nemesis from getting her pride and joy dinged up on a regular basis. He’d seen her financials during the review process to rent the art gallery space, and he knew she was cutting it close every month. He also knew what it was like to work hard for a symbol of that success and to see someone else take shots at it. He shook his head. No, he dropped fifty large because he liked to win, plain and simple. If he also saved her car, well, that was a fortunate side benefit for her.

  “I’ll flip you for it. And when I win, you lose the heels when you’re in your apartment.” It was a game he played often enough to take the emotion out of certain decisions. Of course, him being him, he’d learned just the right technique to increase his odds of it landing heads or tails because he wasn’t a guy who ever really left things to chance. And as much as he enjoyed their war of wits, he was dying to get those shoes off her one way or another. She really was keeping him up all hours of the night, and he was positive it was those clip-clopping fuck-me heels and not images of her fiery gaze and her wearing them and nothing else. So considering the current circumstances, he wasn’t above finessing a flip to find out.

  “I’m calling building management.” But she didn’t make a move for her phone. “You’re nuts.”

  “What’s wrong?” He arched an eyebrow, issuing the challenge without saying the words. After the back and forth for the past few months, he didn’t have to. “You don’t trust fate?”

  She crossed her arms and cocked out one hip. “I’m from Riverside,” she said, matching her streetwise pose with a deliberate thickening of her accent so it sounded like Riva-side. “I don’t trust anything.”

  They both knew the game they were playing, neither giving an inch. He burned his food and stank up her apartment. She stomped on his ceiling. He claimed the best parking spot with a folding chair. She threatened to run him over. If she knew he owned the building, she’d back off. And while at first he’d have liked nothing better, well, now it would take all the fun out of things because the queen of the high-heel promenade made moves he couldn’t predict. And that was a total oddity in his world. One he wasn’t ready to give up, and if judging by the heat in her gaze, neither was she.

  “One flip of the coin and the winner gets the parking spot. Otherwise, I’ll just sit here and drink my beer until my bike arrives. Your call. At least with a flip, I’m giving you a fifty-fifty shot at the spot.”

  She held up her keys. “You do realize I’ve got the keys to Germany’s second-most impressive export, and it has enough horsepower to squash you like a bug, right?”

  Glancing over at the Beemer, he decided it fit her. Black. Sleek. A little mean-looking but with a massive purr when you turned the motor right. “What’s the most impressive export?”

  “Anselm Kiefer.”

  His brain skidded to a stop. “Who?”

  “Only one of the most thought-provoking German artists of the post–World War II era,” she said, challenge filling her voice as if she was just daring him to disagree.

  Gauntlet picked up. “And here I thought you were going to say black forest cake. I was thinking of baking you one, too.”

  She cut him a glare. “Funny.”

  He shrugged. “What can I say? Art doesn’t do it for me but cake does.”

  “Of all the idiotic things to say.” Her eyes went wide and she pulled herself up to her full height, indignation coming off her in hot sparks that burned his skin. “Art is better than cake. Art is as necessary to living as breathing. And if we’re honest, no one can breathe when you bake anything.”

  He took the hit on the chin. Well played. “I do like some art, like those old-school velvet Elvis paintings or the dogs playing poker,” he said, goading her.

  The curse that flew out of Everly’s mouth sounded Italian, but he couldn’t be sure. “You’re an animal.”

  “News flash, all humans are animals.” He pulled out the quarter he’d swiped years ago out of his dad’s dresser from the special pocket in his wallet and held it up for her to see. It had been with him for decades, and the choices he’d made with it had gotten him out of Waterbury. Some might call it a lucky coin. For him, it was so much more. “Heads or tails?”

  “You’re not serious.” She shook her head, making her dark hair dance against her shoulders.

  He held up his hand, making the Boy Scout salute. “Like a book nerd at the library.”

  “You mocking the book nerds?”

  “Honey, I am a book nerd.” Growing up, the library had been his refuge during his parents’ many fights, especially the ones where the screaming was followed by plates breaking against the walls.

  Everly glanced down at the dingy quarter in his hand. “One with a Two Face obsession?”

  Oh yeah, here was a talk-nerdy-to-me conversation he could have. “Batman or Superman?”

  She smirked at him. “Wonder Woman.”

  Yeah. He could see it—maybe a little too well. The mental image of Everly in Wonder Woman’s outfit flashed in his head before he could stop it, and he had to adjust his stance to accommodate his dick’s oh-I-like-that reaction. “Heads or tails?”

  “Tails for the parking spot.”

  She made the choice, and Tyler felt no qualms about tweaking the flip. He was saving her car either way, e
ven if she’d never see it that way. And he’d get to watch the spark in her eyes set ablaze when she lost. Win-win.

  “Sugar,” he said, tossing the coin with a hard flick at just the right angle, “get ready to park at the end of the garage for the foreseeable future.”

  …

  Everly dropped her keys the moment the coin went airborne. It flew up into the air, flipping end over end several times before she snatched it out of the air, turned it, smacked it down on the top of her hand, and held her palm over it. 2B—okay, Tyler Jacobson, she knew his name—just stared at her bug-eyed and slack-jawed.

  Boys. They are so fucking easy.

  Well, he hadn’t been up until now, anyway. The dark Adonis who looked like a rich woman’s David Gandy with his black hair, blue eyes, and perfect body—my God, how much time did he spend in the gym getting hot and sweaty? She could picture his biceps flexing with every curl. His thighs straining with each weight-bearing squat. His back glistening as he—Girl! Focus! Where was she? Oh yeah, shocking Mr. Cocksure Know-It-All by not following his playbook. Deal with it, 2B.

  “What? You don’t flip so it lands on the ground like some kind of heathen, do you?” she asked as he stared at her like she was a Rubik’s Cube that needed to be solved. “You toss. I catch. That’s only fair, right?”

  Tyler recovered quickly, she had to give him that. The black-haired, blue-eyed devil snapped his mouth shut, ending the motion with a cocky smile that didn’t affect her at all. Liar.

  “Tit for tat, huh?” He held out his hand, palm up, obviously wanting his quarter back.

  She shrugged. What could she say, she was Italian via Poland, and she’d picked up the eye-for-an-eye habit from her nunni.

  “Holding a grudge isn’t good for your health,” he said, taking a step closer, his stride as sure as a man who was always six moves ahead on the chessboard.

  She nodded her chin toward the chair behind him. “Neither is sitting in my parking spot.”

  Determined to ignore the delicious scent of his cologne teasing her senses and just how sexy his forearms looked in that navy-blue button-down rolled up to his elbows, she went through a few of Tyler’s greatest cooking misses. Burned curry. Scorched grilled cheese. Blackened eggs. Incinerated popcorn.