Page 16 of Conning the Billionaire
Kylie was also digging into her dish and again making little moaning sounds that sent his blood rushing. Something about this woman made every move and sound unbearably sexy, even more so than every other feminine-appearing person he’d ever met.
Micah did not behave like a testosterone-addled elephant in musth, even though sometimes, it required effort.
Yet, he watched Kylie place the fork with a bulge of lasagna in her open mouth. Her full, dark red lips closed around the head of the fork, and she sucked the lasagna off the tines with her eyes closed.
Micah managed to eat without spilling anything on himself and counted it as a victory.
7
THE BLOND ITALIAN
KYLIE
“You know,” Kylie said as she tore off another bite of the lasagna with her fork, “you look just like a guy I used to date in high school.”
The ash-blond man looked amused for a moment as he poked the green stalks of his rapini with his fork. “Do I?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Vincent Bertolini. I dated him for six months my sophomore year. He was the son of my second-grade teacher, which means of course he was a wild guy. He had to live down being the kid of a Catholic school teacher. He was part Sicilian, too.” He was also the hottest guy in her high school and the starting quarterback for three years.
He looked up at her with one eyebrow raised. “I look Italian to you?”
“You look like Vincent Bertolini.”
“That’s funny. Not a lot of people think I look Italian.”
“Aren’t you?” Not that she knew his name, so she couldn’t even figure out if he was Italian that way. Maybe this would make him tell her his name to prove that he was or wasn’t Italian.
He shrugged and waved his hand in the general direction of his face. “With the blond hair and light eyes, no, most people wouldn’t think I look Italian. Blond Italians exist, of course. The Italian Alps are part of the same mountain range as the Swiss Alps, and there is certainly a lot of intermingling between the northern Italians with the Swiss and thus the rest of Europe. Italian is even one of the four national languages of Switzerland.”
“You sure know a lot about Switzerland. Are your parents Swiss, then?”
“I’ve just never been mistaken for Sicilian before.”
Kylie laughed. “Well, I said Italian. You don’t look Sicilian.”
The guy looked up at her again, the metallic glints in his eyes catching fire in the candlelight from the stubby votives on the table between them. “So, I look like one of your old boyfriends, do I? Does that mean I’m your type?”
She ducked her head, trying to look shy again. “I didn’t know I had a type, but I think you’re amazing.”
He smiled at her again across his lasagna. “I think you’re amazing, too.”
“But it doesn’t really matter. I mean, just because you’re my type, it’s not like I would hop into bed with you or anything. I’m not that kind of girl.”
“I never thought you were.”
Good, so Kylie certainly wouldn’t feel bad about taking advantage of him. She’d warned him that this wouldn’t end with them in bed.
He set down his fork and paused before he asked, “What about me reminds you of Vincent Bertolini?”
Kylie laughed. “You’ve really never heard that you look Italian before, have you? Vince wasn’t a Jersey short king like the other guys at St. Jude’s. He was tall like you. Just how tall are you, anyway?”
“Around six-four,” he said.
Wow, this guy was so evasive that he couldn’t even answer a straightforward question about his height. But that estimation was the first piece of specific information she’d gotten out of him about himself. Nice. Maybe she could get on a roll and learn his damned name. “And, you know, mannerisms.”
He dropped his chin and raised his eyebrows. “Like what?”
“He was courtly like you, you know? He opened doors for me, he was always fun to be around, and he bought me a lot of little presents all the time.”
