The man turned back and watched her walking toward him. In the flashing lights of the casino, his eyes changed color constantly, now blue, now gray, and now glittering with green and aqua.
As she neared him, she realized that oh yeah, this man was dang tall. Over six feet.
A lot over six feet.
She tilted her head way back as she approached, seeking to keep looking into his eyes. “You forgot your handkerchief.”
He waited and watched her trot toward him, teetering on her ridiculously high heels, but he wasn’t walking away.
“I don’t even know your name,” she said.
The man paused as he regarded her, finally saying with his voice raised just enough to be audible above the din of the slots and the gamblers, “You can keep the handkerchief.”
Oh, yeah. That was supposed to be the reason she was chasing after him.
She held out the white square, which was clean except for a small mascara smudge. “I only dabbed my eyes.”
He smiled, looking like he might almost chuckle, but his previous solemn demeanor rose again. He didn’t take the handkerchief she was holding out. “It was a pleasure to meet you, miss.”
“Are you a nice guy?” she asked him.
The smile fell away from his face, and his ash-blond eyebrows barely flinched toward the bridge of his nose. “Why do you ask?”
“I just, I don’t know, you seem nice.”
The man tilted his head again, and he seemed to evaluate the expression on Kylie’s face. “Are you going to break up with your boyfriend?”
“I already did,” she said.
He squinted at her. “No, you didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“You didn’t break up with him yet.”
Was this guy waiting to make sure she’d broken up with her previous boyfriend before he even asked her out for a drink? Most guys didn’t care. Most guys didn’t even bother to ask whether she was going to break up with the other guy or not. They just saw a vulnerable young woman who might be on the rebound or up for some revenge nookie because they just wanted the score, which was precisely what Kylie wanted them to think.
But jeez, this guy seemed to be going above and beyond in the morals department for someone who’d just yanked off his wedding ring, the hypocrite.
She said, “I told him it was over. I told him I never wanted to see him again.”
The man didn’t blink. “You haven’t had time to text him since I spoke with you.”
Oh damn, the guy was keeping track. She’d either been talking to or running after him since he’d offered her his handkerchief. This guy was sharp, probably too sharp.
Kylie rushed her words. “I’d already texted him and told him we were breaking up before you approached me. That’s why I was crying. I didn’t want to break up with him, but he’s broken my heart so many times.” She touched the bare skin of her chest above her dress’s low neckline, which was where her heart was supposed to be. “I know I’m loyal to a fault, too loyal, but he’d finally pushed even me too far.”
“What was his name again?” the man asked.
Kylie hadn’t said what the fictional boyfriend’s name was, she was pretty sure. Probably. She really hoped she hadn’t made up a name for him. “John?”
“So you broke up with ‘John’?” he asked.
“Yes, of course, I did.”
The guy said, “I don’t think you did,” and turned to leave.
“No! I did. Here, look.”
Kylie unlocked her phone and tapped the message string below where she’d been texting Rita.
The contact’s name at the top read Bae, and her text read, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep waiting for you when I know you’re not going to come. It’s over. You and Miranda deserve each other. Don’t call me. I never want to see you again.
Above her text, messages detailed the decline of their relationship, some of the messages supposedly from John begging her to take him back, some angry and abusive.
She’d used a disposable Internet VoIP phone number to set up the string of texts before going out that night and a spoofing app to make the timestamps appear correct. Manufacturing evidence to make it look real was just basic con strategy. She wasn’t a damned amateur.
The guy’s light eyebrows rose as he read her texts. “Authoritative. I like that.”
Kylie widened her eyes, going for a wounded-doe expression. “I would never cheat on anybody. Cheaters are the lowest forms of lowlife. And I’m not just saying that because John cheated on me. Anyone who cheats on someone they’re supposed to love or abandons them without a backward glance is just awful.”
“We certainly agree on that, and since you are newly single—”
“And you’re single, too?” she asked.
“Certainly. Perhaps you’ll let me buy you a drink.”
Liar.
Yeah, no mercy. She was definitely reeling this one in.
Kylie smiled up at him. “I’d love that.”
“Or perhaps dinner. It appeared that you were waiting on John at a restaurant.”
“Yeah, I haven’t eaten supper.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
He started walking, and Kylie followed his direction and caught up to walk beside him. As they strolled through the chattering mob and crackling lights of the casino, she felt the warmth of his hand on the middle of her back, a possessive move.
Yeah, she had him. Hook, line, and sinker. The only question now was how much she would take him for before she ditched him at the end of the night.
When they reached Angeline, an Italian restaurant within the Borgata casino that was always booked out months in advance, the man signaled to the maître d’. Kylie was sure she saw him slip a folded-up bill into the woman’s hand.
They were immediately shown to a table despite a crowd waiting near the entrance.
The horseshoe-shaped booth was soft brown leather under Kylie’s hands as she scooted in, stopping right at the edge like the guy did on the other side. They were facing each other over the gray-streaked marble table that chilled Kylie’s forearms, not snuggled up beside each other at the back of the booth.
He wasn’t playing it right. Kylie didn’t like that. The mark was supposed to be finding reasons to touch her and invade her personal space, not sitting all the way over on the other side of the booth like this was a damned business meeting.
She said, “I still don’t even know your name.”
The man said, “And I don’t know yours.”
“Delilah Corleone,” Kylie said.
A ghost of a smile eased his chiseled features, and he raised one pale brown eyebrow, a nifty trick. “Corleone? Like in The Godfather?”
“No, no. Not like that.” Dammit, she needed him to be relaxed, not suspicious or wary around her. Why had Corleone even popped out of her mouth? She shouldn’t associate herself with the frickin’ Mafia, even with a fake name. “I don’t know anything about the Mafia. I thought the author made up the name or picked it out of an internet search for random Italian names.”
She was probably thinking about the Mafia too much because Salvatore Grande had called her down to Philly yesterday to review the books and ensure that her “contributions” included the jewelry her little girl gang often acquired.
Kylie wasn’t stupid. The pawn shops they used to dispose of the jewelry also paid tribute to Salvatore for protection. They probably submitted their books for reconciliation, too.
So yeah, maybe she had Salvatore Grande on her mind.
She needed to distract this guy—her mark, her cheating cheater of a mark—and set him at ease, and she needed to assure him that she was absolutely not a threat in any way. Indeed, she needed to project that she was a defenseless little fawn, an innocent, and easy to take advantage of.
Because that’s when they let their defenses down, and that’s how Kylie got in.
The guy smiled a little at her, and Kylie had an odd instant of elation that she had earned the softening in his expression. He said, “I didn’t realize Mario Puzo made it all up. Fascinating.”
Either this guy was humoring her, or he was stupid. Kylie didn’t think he was stupid. “I mean, surely the author, whatever you said his name was, must’ve done some research about the Five Families. But I don’t know why he picked the name Corleone. We’ve never been involved in anything.”
“Oh? What do your parents do?”
Well, she couldn’t tell him that. “They were just normal people, you know?”
The guy leaned his elbows on the table and looked intently at her. “Were?”
She hadn’t meant to say that, but it was time to start the sob story anyway. “My dad died a few years ago.”
His expression shifted. “Your father is dead?”
“Yeah, and both of them are gone.”
The man sighed heavily. “My God. I’m so sorry.”
Kylie sighed, and real facts about her life popped out. “My dad died when I was twelve, and then my mom was gone when I was sixteen.”
In the warm light from the dark wood on the floor and booth around them, the man’s silvery eyes acquired flecks of gold as they drooped with pity. “He’s been gone for a while, then. And your mother, too. I’m so sorry.”
She flicked her fingers in the air. “It was a long time ago. I’m fine. Totally fine.”
“Are you?” he asked.
This was supposed to be a manipulative sob story, not psychoanalysis. Besides, she needed to get the guy talking about himself. “Yeah, sure. I’m tough. And it was a long time ago. But what about you? Tell me all about yourself.” She leaned her chin on her hands with her elbows on the table and looked adoringly at him like an orphan with daddy issues.
Because she was playing a part.
Just a part.
Because this was a con.
The man paused, waiting for her to continue.
Dammit, how had she not even gotten this guy’s name yet? He’d totally distracted her and had her flapping her gums about herself instead of eliciting information about him that she could either admire or use to create a false connection between them. “I don’t want to talk about it. So, what do you do?”
“I’m in business,” the man said, which Kylie damn well knew could mean flipping anything.
“That’s so interesting. What kind of business?” she asked.
He shrugged with a chuckle. “Manufacturing, mostly for export. And what do you do for a living, Delilah?”
“I’m a blackjack dealer over at the Ocean Resort.”
He tilted his head and looked at her a little from the side. “Funny, you don’t look old enough to be a dealer. I thought you had to be twenty-one,” the guy mused, and he trained his sparkling eyes on her like he was watching her for a reaction.
Kylie shrugged. “I’m twenty-seven. My mom was strict about sunscreen.”
All of that was a lie.
“You must have some interesting stories to tell about Atlantic City.”
“Oh, well, sure, but everybody who works here does. They’re all the same stories: celebrities behaving badly, high roller whales gambling obscene amounts of money, and bad decisions that regular people make because they’ve lost too much to the house.”
A slight frown creased the space between his eyebrows. “That sounds rough.”
She sighed because those cases were the worst. “The engineering graduate student who knows it’s statistically unlikely to lose ten times in a row at roulette if you bet on red, so he keeps doubling his bet until he’s a hundred large in the hole. The math or physics majors who put together a ‘blackjack team’ because they think you can still count cards in AC and don’t realize that dealers start a new shoe of cards way before the played ones become statistically relevant. It’s sad. You can’t beat the house here. All I see is people losing their money, but they have a good time while doing it. I guess that’s why they keep coming back. That, and an irrational hope that they’ll ‘win it back.’ All the dealers know it’s hopeless. But I’m not particularly interesting. You must have some fascinating stories about your manufacturing business.”
“Nothing to speak of. You have a soft heart.”
Oh, come on, man. “I’ve always been curious about business. What did you say the name of your company was again?”
The guy looked up. “Ah, here’s the waiter. What did you want to order?”
Kylie didn’t need to look at the menu for more than one second. “I’ll have the Mom’s Lasagna, side order of rapini, please.”
“Same,” he said, “and the tasting board and the eggplant caponata for the table to start. Are those good here?” he asked her.
“Yeah. Everything’s good. The arancini are better, though. The recipe is really authentic.”
“The arancini instead of the caponata,” he told the waiter. “And a Gronicello Negroni for me. Would you like a cocktail?”
He’d pronounced the appetizer and the cocktail with a perfect Italian accent, albeit one as neutral as his American inflection.
“A Borgata Bellini, thanks?” she asked the waiter.
The waiter looked her up and down. “Some ID, if you please?”
“Yeah, sure.” She dug in her purse and handed him her Kylie Miller driver’s license, keeping the front turned away from the man on the other side of the table.
The waiter glanced at the date. “Thank you, ma’am.” He handed it back.
She tucked it back in her purse quickly, but the guy seemed to still be holding out the menu for the waiter to take.
When the waiter left, she asked him, “Do you speak Italian?”
He turned back to her and rested his arms on the table. “So, the arancini are good, you said. That’s an unusual dish. Not a lot of restaurants serve it.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s a staple of Sicilian cuisine. This restaurant is Sicilian, not just generic Italian for the most part.”
“Just like grandma used to make?” he asked her.
Kylie sat back in the booth. “Why would you ask that?”
“You seem to know a lot about Sicilian cuisine, and you pronounced arancini and Bellini with a Sicilian accent. And your last name is Corleone, of course.”
Oh. Yeah. That. “That’s very perceptive of you.”
“Did your grandmother have an accent?”
“Yeah, and my father. He was born here—well, in Philadelphia—but he had an accent, too, at least a little bit of one. Being full-blooded Sicilian was a big part of his identity.” Because you had to be at least half-Sicilian on your father’s side to be a made man in the Philly Mob.
“Interesting. I am so sorry. It must have been hard on you, losing both your parents so young. Did your extended family take care of you?”
Not a goddamned bit. “Oh, yeah. I was fine, like I said.”
“How long ago did your mother die?”
She wasn’t dead.
That Kylie knew of, anyway.
But she’d left four years before.
No.
Delilah Corleone and Kylie Miller were both twenty-seven.
Math.
“Eleven years since my mom was gone,” she said. “See? It was a long time ago.”
“Right. Well, here’s the arancini.”
A plate of deep-fried balls the size of oranges was set on the table, along with the cheese and salsiccia alla pizzaiola, Sicilian sausage. The guy served her one of the deep-fried globes of arancini on her appetizer plate, and she broke the crust with her fork.
Arancini were balls of risotto rice stuffed with cheese, rolled in breadcrumbs, and deep-fried. Kylie broke off a chunk and dabbed it into the red ragu sauce.
It melted in her mouth, cheese and crunch and red Sunday gravy. Her eyes rolled in her head, and she muttered a moan.
The guy smiled a little more. “It’s good?”
“Just like Nonna used to make. Well, almost.”
“Did you spend a lot of time with your grandmother?”
“Oh, yeah. Nonna and Papa, everything was about the Familia, and her arancini tasted just like this. Maybe hers were a little more balanced with the cheese in the middle. Restaurants want you to think you’re getting more for your money, so they pack a big cube of cheese in the middle so you see the gooey strings of mozzarella. With my nonna’s, the risotto was food, and the cheese was a little prize in the middle.”
The guy was watching her and smiling. “Yeah.” He seemed to recover himself and said, “That sounds wonderful.”
“My Nonna loved to cook, like it was her art,” Kylie said. “She made everything. Sunday was red gravy day, of course, but every other day was a free-for-all.”
“You miss her,” he said.
“Yeah, I do. She passed away when I was ten, so she never knew my dad was going to pass two years later. I think God was being kind. She couldn’t have survived one of her kids dying before her.”
Tiny wrinkles gathered around the man’s eyes, like pain. “Perhaps that was the case.”
Hey, maybe Kylie was making inroads with her sob story. Her usual rule of never telling the marks anything true might have to be rethought if she got a lot out of this guy. Kylie had guessed her life was a sob story, even though other people had it way worse.
“So, I’ve been surviving. And I’m okay.” She tilted her head to the side. “But you’re not okay. Every time I talk about my parents being gone, you wince. There’s a lot happening behind your eyes. What happened to you?”