Page 21 of Conning the Billionaire
And yet, her friends were counting on her to take some money out of this guy, so she didn’t say anything.
After a while, the blond Italian stood and pulled his coat back on. “We seem to have more than broken even, and I believe I promised a trip to a store somewhat better than the Scholastic Book Fair. Shall we?”
Kylie stood. “Nowhere is better than the Scholastic Book Fair.”
Oh, but it was.
Instead of taking her to the Shoppes in the Water Tower where most marks wandered over to when they wanted to buy jewelry for her, the blond Italian led her to an out-of-the-way corridor where, again, he flashed his titanium player’s card. A guy who looked like a walrus in human form unclipped a velvet rope for them to pass.
So he knew where the good stores were. Interesting. Kylie usually had to show the marks where to shop for the good stuff.
The jewelry store was Tiffany & Company, which had a stack of teal blue boxes with silver bows in the window.
The guy asked, “Do you think they’ll be open this late?”
“Oh, yeah,” she told him. “They don’t close until midnight. We’ve got an hour.”
Inside the store, Kylie stared at the diamond earrings in the case. The diamonds looked like ice chips, clear, colorless, and huge, and she almost expected the glass to be freezing cold.
The clerk, who just happened to be Priyanka Mehtani working a shift at her part-time job, hovered near the other end of the glass case, watching them but letting them get comfortable before pouncing.
The blond Italian perused the jewelry in the case. He seemed mildly amused but serene, like this expenditure was a little bit of fun in his life.
Must be nice.
He looked up at her, his eyes sparkling in the lights like diamonds, and smiled.
Kylie considered again what the blond Italian might be like in bed.
Not just whether or not his body under that slimly tailored suit was as muscular as it looked, or if he had shredded his normal, human layer of insulation down until you could see the striations in his muscles, but just what he would be like.
Maybe he would be primal, an animal and a force of nature.
Perhaps he would want her to tie him up and be in charge.
Maybe he would be so thoroughly vanilla that she got bored.
But whatever he was like, Kylie kind of wanted to know.
But she shouldn’t.
Man, she had to remember that this guy was a mark, not a date.
The blond Italian asked, “Which earrings do you like?”
Kylie said, “They’re all so beautiful,” and gravitated toward the far end, where she knew the most expensive ones would be.
The blond Italian gravitated right behind her. He even reached past her, pointing to a pair of earrings she had not dared to look at. “Those are nice.”
Two rosettes of diamonds as clear as pure water hung on the little T, the center stone in each earring as large as her thumbnail.
The price must be astronomical.
“They’re gorgeous,” she said.
The blond Italian encroached, slipping his arm around her waist. A subtle, woodsy cologne, like oak and spices, slipped out of his suit jacket.
He whispered above her head, “They’d look beautiful on you.”
