Page 20 of Conning the Billionaire
Her whole body oriented on him, her skin sensitive under her silk dress.
He stepped back, whispering, “Later,” and turned to lead her through the bustling crowd that closed around them, a thousand voices clamoring in the air.
Kylie needed to stay professional about this guy. Just because her mark was hot didn’t mean that she should drop her game.
Her friends needed her to produce money that night and every night.
Salvatore Grande would be pissed if her contributions to his enterprise dropped.
The blond Italian led her to a Texas Hold’em table, where he set the ostentatious stack of poker chips on the table and pushed half of them toward her. “You can keep anything you win.”
“Oh, no,” Kylie protested. “They’re your chips.”
She always voiced the opposing argument and let the marks convince her to accept the money or jewelry, which always worked.
The man winked. “Of course, you can. Since you’re a blackjack dealer, I assume you know how to play Texas Hold’em.”
Kylie grinned at him. She was pretty sure she knew how to play this variation on seven-card draw. After all, she was an Atlantic City native, born and bred. How hard could it be?
It could be hard.
When Kylie drew a card on the turn when maybe the odds were such that she shouldn’t have, the guy next to her got pissy because she “took his card.”
Kylie, an Italian girl raised in an Italian family who took no shit from anyone unless they were made men, opened her mouth because she was ready to tell that jackass off.
Her new friend, the blond Italian, straightened in his chair and looked over Kylie, making eye contact with the pissy guy. “That’s not how statistics work, and now I know you have a jack in your hand.”
The guy rose from his seat, his face bloated from long-term alcohol abuse, and turned red around his pasty gills. He looked ready to step behind the chairs and fight.
The blond Italian stood behind her and looked down at the jerk.
The jackass looked way up at him.
The blond Italian shrugged off his suit jacket and laid it on the back of his chair, saying, “Apologize to my lady.”
The dark fabric of his vest nipped the blond Italian’s waist, and the white fabric of his tailored white shirt clung to his massive shoulders and biceps.
Wow, he was built.
The bully gambler returned to his seat, his eyes looking away to the side.
Kylie felt the blond Italian lean over her. “I said, apologize.”
The guy muttered, “Yeah. Sorry.”
The blond Italian returned to his seat and peeked at the two cards in his hand again.
The dealer was staring at the three of them, her hand hovering near the edge of the table where she could press the security button.
The blond Italian said to her, “Please resume. We were drawing cards.”
After the next hand, the bully jerk left. Good riddance.
They played cards for a few hours. Kylie thought she was losing more than she was winning, but her chip stack seemed higher than she’d estimated.
The blond Italian’s stack of chips seemed slightly lower than she’d remembered from a few hands before.
She knew she hadn’t won that orange oversized thousand-dollar chip.
