Page 46 of Conning the Billionaire
“I am, now,” Micah admitted. “Come on. You can interrogate anyone you want about me. The room is rented with my credit card and under my name.”
“And Micah Shine is your real name?’” she asked.
“Yes,” he lied.
14
WHEN NUMBERS DON’T LINE UP
KYLIE
Kylie asked the front desk what name Micah’s hotel room was registered under.
The receptionist guy took her very seriously and made a big show of looking it up before announcing the name was Micah Shine.
Yeah, she felt like an idiot, but she wasn’t going to let a little embarrassment make her a sucker twice.
The suite was large and airy because the Ocean Resort was hoity-toity, and Kylie flung her backpack on the dresser in the bedroom.
She’d grabbed some clothes and basic toiletries from her apartment. Having Micah Shine sitting on the trash couch she’d found on the sidewalk with her unmade twin bed in one corner of the room and her hot plate and buzzing half-size fridge in the other, wearing his tailored designer suit and swinging the car keys to an expensive car around his finger while she stuffed her thrift shop clothes into a ratty backpack from high school, was just so damned mortifying that she could barely see.
In the bedroom of Micah’s suite, a much larger suitcase occupied the luggage stand. When Kylie flipped it open, it was half-filled with men’s socks, tee shirts, and underwear.
Four suits in dry cleaning bags hung in the closet.
A toiletry bag sat beside the sink in the bathroom, and a shaver was plugged in and charging.
She emptied his toiletry bag on the counter and shook it, spilling floss, toothpaste, and matte hair pomade on the marble counter.
No wedding ring.
She went through the pockets of his suitcase and found poker chips from three other casinos but no wedding ring.
Back in the suite’s living room, Micah was pouring himself a drink at the wet bar beside the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the dark, glittering view of Atlantic City. “Satisfy yourself that I’m really staying here?”
“You can’t blame me,” Kylie said. “I’m probably going to sleep with one eye open to make sure that you don’t try to run out on me again.”
“What can I fix for you?”
“Vodka tonic?” she inquired.
“I can do that.” He bent and removed a bottle of soda water from the bar’s refrigerator. The bottle hissed in the quiet hotel room when he unscrewed the cap. “Don’t sleep with one eye open. We’re allies now.” He walked over to her, holding out her drink and one of his own. “Accomplices. Partners.”
“Going into crime together is the oldest con in the book. I have ample evidence to suspect that you might try to ditch me again. Don’t gaslight me.”
“I’m reassuring you. Do you want me to sign a contract or something?”
She stared at him before cracking, “I am not going to sign a contract that says we are going into crime together. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, do you think I’m that much of an amateur?”
Micah laughed. “I can have my business lawyers draw up a contract that says you’re my traveling secretary, but the money would be the same.”
Kylie was still trying to shoot laser beams out of her eyes at him to pin them against the wall, but it wasn’t working. His loose posture was absolutely relaxed as he stuck one hand in his pocket and used the other to bring his highball glass of dark liquor to his lips. She asked him, “Why would a con man have business lawyers?”
“I’m not a con artist,” he said.
“Could have fooled me.”
“I really am in business.”
