Page 66 of Conning the Billionaire
Micah knew precisely where his own sister was, but if he hadn’t, he could see where someone might be desperate for that information.
Desperate enough to do anything.
Desperate enough to sell out anyone else when it came to protecting their family, if they needed their family.
Micah didn’t need anyone.
He said, “Sounds like a plan.”
She dropped her gaze and stared at the carpeting under their feet. “And no matter what happens, I need all the money you owe me by Saturday night. This Saturday night. All five hundred grand because I want that deal.”
“That contract is for a month of you,” he reminded her.
“Yeah, I know. And I agree to it. But I need the money by Saturday.”
So she was bolting on Sunday. Good to know. “If you want to renegotiate the contract for just the introduction, we can. But for the full half-mil, I get it all.”
She glanced up at him and nodded. “I know, and I accept.”
“Deal.”
“This seems like a crazy amount of effort just to get him to hand over a painting,” she said.
“Yes,” Micah agreed, keeping his expression pleasant and neutral.
It seemed like she was starting to calm down, though Micah didn’t trust even one bat of her eyelashes.
She said, “I’m sorry that I, um, got upset.”
This whole routine might have been a con to throw him off the scent if she had already sold him to Salvatore Grande.
On the other hand, if her goal had merely been to pry some money out of him, then she should be moving into the stage of cooling down the mark, where the con artist reframed the interaction in such a way that the mark then viewed the entire thing in a positive light. Sometimes, they see it as an adventure afterward. Sometimes, they think that they got the better end of the deal. That’s what made it a con and not stealing. The mark thinks they’re the winner.
Kylie toyed with his fingertips and then slipped her hand into his. “Did you mean it when you said you couldn’t get me out of your head?”
Micah turned her hand and pressed her knuckles against his beating heart, a move he’d used many times before.
“I am obsessed with you,” he said before he could stop himself.
She stepped toward him so that their bodies were mere inches apart.
Micah’s skin responded to the nearness of her soft flesh, and he ran his knuckles down her other arm.
“I don’t want to change the deal,” she said.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” His voice rumbled from his throat, gravelly and low. “You can have the bedroom. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
She said, “I made a deal to do anything you wanted for a month.”
Even as his flesh burned with the thought of having her again, his body plunging into hers, a hovering piece of his consciousness was aware that this was all part of the con.
She was offering something he wanted to gain his confidence. It was the oldest trick in the book.
Micah pulled her against his chest, her voluptuous curves a decadent temptation for him. “And you’ll do anything I want for that additional three hundred grand.”
She leaned in and whispered, the warmth of her breath fluttering over his ear and trickling inside, “Anything.”
Kylie Miller had definitely betrayed him.
