Page 28 of Conning the Billionaire
Banging.
Not inside her head like a hangover, but outside her head.
More banging.
A man’s voice yelling from far away.
Softness and warmth around her, and her mouth tasted like morning breath and garlic.
The diamond earrings were still heavy in her earlobes.
Knocking thudded through the hotel suite.
Kylie slitted open her eyes to look around, muttering, “Hey, dude, I think someone wants to talk to you.”
But no one answered.
And the blond Italian was nowhere in sight.
Kylie crawled over to the edge of the wide bed and stood up, her blue evening gown falling around her ankles. “Hey! Guy! Someone’s knocking!”
The door to the bathroom was ajar, and Kylie pushed it open, wincing at invading the blond Italian’s privacy while he was taking a poop or something.
But the bathroom was empty. The towels were still folded, unused.
She stumbled to the living room, taking off the diamond earrings and dropping them in her purse as she passed it on the coffee table. “Just a minute! Coming!”
When Kylie angled her eye and looked out the peephole, one bellhop and two men in suits stood outside the suite. One of them was huge and muscular, like a bouncer.
The guy in the middle was dressed like a manager in a cheap suit and pounded on the door with the side of his fist. “Kylie Miller! We know you’re in there. Open up!”
Those guys should not know her name. This was wrong. There was no way that the blond Italian guy from last night, whatever his real name was, could have gotten the name Kylie Miller from anywhere.
Unless they had a warrant for her arrest.
But there shouldn’t be a warrant out for her. Cops don’t arrest con artists. She wasn’t stealing from people. She was just very convincing, and she got people who were doing a wrong thing to do one more dumb thing. It was all on them. She told them a good story and made them feel like they were part of the action while she did it. That wasn’t illegal, or it shouldn’t be.
Unless someone was framing her.
Dammit. That son of a bitch.
But Kylie was confident she could talk her way into or out of anything because that’s what she did.
She opened the door. “Can I help you?”
The three guys barged past her, shoving the door farther open.
The manager-looking one said, “We need you to put down another credit card on your suite now.”
Kylie made her astonished face. “This isn’t my suite.”
The manager guy looked at a tablet he was holding. “You’re Kylie Miller,” he stated.
She squinted at him. “Who’s asking?”
The guy flipped his tablet around. “You’re Kylie Miller,” he repeated.
The tablet’s screen showed a driver’s license with Kylie’s face, and her body went as cold as if she’d plunged into the Atlantic Ocean surf in January. She slapped her best stone face over her expression.
