Page 36 of Conning the Billionaire
Kylie went back to staring at her red scamming dress. Trying her luck in public when she’d recently had a con go so spectacularly wrong was risky.
She wouldn’t go over to the Borgata, of course.
Also, as far as she knew, the blond Italian was still at the poker tables. Going out there dressed to scam would be like waving this sparkly red dress in front of a bull.
But what a bull.
Memories of his musclebound body moving above hers, deep, slow thrusts in a sinuous motion that ground against her clit, drifted through her mind.
Going onto the floor that night was just a spectacularly bad idea. She shouldn’t.
Kylie strode through the casino, her scarlet dress swishing around her thighs, and she pushed through the crowd and took a seat at the blackjack table where the blond Italian was playing cards.
He didn’t glance over at her as she sat down, his blue-flecked eyes staring at his cards and then looking up at the dealer.
She didn’t stare at the blond Italian either. Let him make the first goddamn move. She wasn’t afraid of him.
But she checked his ring finger on his left hand, where it had seemed like he’d slipped off a wedding ring.
His hand was bare, and Kylie was questioning everything she’d thought she’d seen.
Her leg jiggled under the table.
Kylie looked up at the dealer, Zola, who’d been a cocktail waitress with Kylie before she went to dealer school last year. Kylie had met Zola’s three kids at her thirtieth birthday party the year before. “Hit me.”
Kylie and the blond Italian played hand after hand of blackjack, both of them studiously ignoring each other, until Zola went off her shift and the pit boss, Inessa Utkin, closed the table.
Inessa was a statuesque brunette who towered over the table, eyeing the patrons with authority as she dispersed the gamblers to other tables before they got the idea that maybe they’d been in the casino too long. At Inessa’s black belt party last year, Kylie had been the “demonstration dummy” and got the giggles as Inessa had stopped her punches and kicks just inches from Kylie’s face.
The blond Italian swiveled on his high-top chair and turned to Kylie. “Let’s get out of here.”
Con artists don’t make scenes in public unless it’s part of a game. Drawing attention increased the chances of becoming known to the casino management or the police.
Kylie fell in beside him as they walked through the casino. “I’m not going up to your hotel room. I learned that lesson the hard way.”
He raised his eyebrows and continued staring straight ahead. “How about my car in the parking garage?”
“Is it your car, or am I going to get arrested for grand theft auto?” she asked.
He flashed a half-smile at her. “It’s mine.”
“Acceptable.”
They rode an elevator down a few floors, and then Kylie followed the man as he wove between the cars in the huge parking garage.
Overhead fluorescent lights drew glowing lines on the cars’ glossy paint. Late October air chilled her face and arms, stinging her nose with acrid gasoline exhaust and cigarette smoke that never seemed to entirely blow out of the structure.
The blond Italian walked down the line of cars and stopped beside a blue-black BMW. Silver trim spelled out 840i on the trunk. He stuck his hand in his pants pocket, and the BMW beeped.
“Nice ride,” she said.
He shrugged and opened the passenger-side door for her. “It’s a rental.”
“Because you don’t live here?” she asked as she stepped into the car.
He closed her door and walked around the back to get in the driver’s side.
Outside the front windshield and past the cement wall, the lights of Atlantic City were a carpet of glitter in the darkness, and the ocean beyond was unfathomable black until it met the faintly glowing night sky.
