“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.