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, even 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.
“The spot’s not yours,” he said. “I believe you called tails.”
Her stomach did a shimmy as she lifted her hand. She didn’t have to glance at the coin. The look on the smug bastard’s face said it all. It was heads.
Everly glanced over her shoulder at the dim gloom of the rest of the small underground parking garage. It had only six spots in the long narrow garage, each spot requiring parallel parking except the front two, one for each of the six large apartments above Black Heart Art Gallery. She’d learned from Mrs. MacIntosh that Clyde Fester in 1C had spent a fortune two years ago to buy the rights to three of the spots for his classic GTO he took out only on special occasions. That left the spot by the door next to Mrs. MacIntosh and the one in the rear of the garage. Everly had heard tales of Mrs. MacIntosh dinging the cars parked beside her from time to time, but Everly had ding insurance and a soft spot for anyone older than sixty. That’s what happened when your grandma, along with her circle of cutthroat bingo partners, practically raised you from seventh grade on. So Everly would squeeze her aging German metal baby, Helga, as close to the line away from Cecilia’s land yacht as possible and cash in on her insurance policy one week at a time. She’d also save herself from the mile-long hike from the back of the garage in her four-inch stilettos. As any woman with sense would agree, what’s a ding compared to walking a mile in high heels?
“Aww. Too bad. Best two out of three?” Tyler asked, his smooth voice pulling her attention back to the matter at hand.
She picked up the coin off the top of her hand and looked at both sides. It was grimy, the kind of coin that had been through a million vending machines, but the weight was good. It had a heads and a tails side. There wasn’t anything off about it that stood out. Still, she couldn’t shake the nugget of disbelief in the pit of her stomach. Of course, Tyler always jumbled her up that way. It was part of the reason why she got so snarly around him. He made her nervous—no, she self corrected, he made her excited, hopeful, aroused. Three things she couldn’t afford to be if she was going to keep her focus on making her borderline failing gallery a go and keeping her dementia-suffering nunni in the well staffed, caring senior residence instead of a state-run nursing home.
What would Nunni say at the moment? To pick her battles. “Nah, I’m good.” She gave her building nemesis an evil smirk. “Anyway, carrying all my extra heels from my new parking spot will be good exercise.”
The grin slid off his face. “I won. No heels inside your apartment.”
“I never agreed to that part. Anyway, everybody’s got a vice.” She flipped the coin to him, relishing the small victory.
He swiped it from the air and shoved it in his pocket. “Your vice couldn’t be underwater basket weaving?”
“And miss out on my salsa practice to the beat of you pounding a broom against your ceiling? Where’s the fun in that?” Yeah, she was taunting him, but he deserved it after this stunt.
“I expected an answer like that from a woman who believes in the healing power of art and always wears head-to-toe black probably right down to your panties that are always in a twist,” he scoffed.
Walk away, Everly. Just walk away.
It was great advice she was giving herself, but there was no way she was taking it. Challenges, thought-provoking art, and the smell of a bingo card marker were her kryptonite—and Tyler Jacobson, Mr. 2B, was a walking, talking, panty-melting challenge.
She lifted her chin and looked him in the eyes, not backing down an inch. She may have lost the coin toss but she wasn’t going to lose the battle. “You’re wrong.”
“No. I’m not,” he said, cocky as ever. “I’m never wrong.”
“You are this time.”
They stood so close together that she could see the varying shades of blue in his eyes and feel the electricity coming off him in waves that fried her badass circuitry and turned her hot and expectant. This was why she should have walked away—because fighting with Tyler felt a lot like foreplay. And she liked it.
“You don’t believe in the healing power of art?” He didn’t step back. He didn’t touch her, either, but he didn’t need to.
“No,” she said, barely over the sound of her pulse thundering in her ears. “I’m not wearing black panties.”
She shouldn’t have said that. She shouldn’t have even put the idea into his head. But it was too late. His bright-blue eyes darkened a few shades, followed by the slow upward curl of his lips. “Soft. Girlie. Pink.”
She leaned in close. “Nothing.” Her lips were only millimeters from his ear. “At.” A delicious shiver ran up her spine. “All.”
Satisfied she’d taken his game board and shaken all the pieces into new positions, she took a step back, but not far enough. The raw heat in his gaze, all semblance of cockiness or confidence wiped clean to reveal nothing but honest, naked desire, was like a tractor beam to her clit. Her heartbeat galloped in her chest as her body realized exactly where it wanted to be. And for once in her life, without thinking, she took a step forward. Quick as lightning, he moved forward to meet her, his mouth crashing down on hers. It was like touching a match to an oil painting—everything caught fire. The next thing she knew, her ass was pressed against her used BMW’s hood, her hands were in Tyler’s dark hair, and she was still using her tongue to duel with him but in a totally different way. She’d thought she’d been hot before—she was wrong. This was the-face-of-the-sun hot and all she wanted was more.
Her legs were spread as far as they could in the form-fitting stretch jersey dress, and he stood between them, the hard length of his cock rubbing against her stomach as he kissed her dumb. The temptation to wrap her legs around his hips and hook her ankles together just above his perfect ass was nearly overwhelming. It would feel so good. She wanted it. Bad. Which was exactly why she couldn’t do it. Man-size frat boys and moneymen like Tyler ate up women like her and spit them out. They promised the moon and stars but delivered only tacky glow-in-the-dark stickers you stuck to your bedroom ceiling. She knew firsthand. She’d grown up staring at the pale-yellow stars, one more cheap gift from a man who never could tear himself away from work to cross from the fancy part of Harbor City to Riverside, where beat-up, older model cars lined the streets, to see someone as unimportant as his bastard daughter.
It didn’t take any effort to push Tyler away—well, at least once she was able to force herself to put her hands to his muscular chest and shove. He backstepped, stopping just out of arm’s reach, his chest heaving, his hair messed up by her fingers, and his bright-blue eyes dark with lust.
“We can’t do that again,” she said between harsh breaths, sounding to her own ears as if she’d finished a marathon. Nunni had warned her one or a billion times how that way lay danger and trouble and all the bad shit in the world.
“That kiss was…” The words faded out, and he shoved his fingers through his thick hair. “You can have the parking spot. I’ll get the building super to repaint the lines to make the space bigger so it’s not so near Mrs. MacIntosh’s car.”
That was a bucket of ice dumped right into her nonexistent panties. Transactional. That’s how guys like Tyler saw passion. She may have fucked up fighting and foreplay in her head, but at least she didn’t mix up a bad idea with payment for services rendered.
“Fuck you,” she said, strutting from the hood to the driver’s door and yanking it open.
As she turned to slide behind the wheel, she caught the confusion making the corners of his eyes crinkle. Yeah. He’d probably never thought anyone would tell someone like him to fuck off. Life was always a shock to the system for the privileged. Without another word, she got into her car and guided Helga into her new parking spot in the back. By the time she’d given herself enough pep talks to walk across the parking garage to the residents’ elevator, Tyler was gone, taking his pink lounge chair, beer bottle, and cocksure attitude with him.
Good. He was the last man she needed to be dealing with right now. Her life was enough like a trailer park in the middle of a tornado as it was without adding a man like Tyler into the mix.