Listening to Kylie Miller talk about her parents’ deaths was excruciating, but Micah didn’t twitch a muscle.
He hadn’t known her parents were dead.
How the hell had Micah missed that her parents were dead? It didn’t sound recent, and it was odd that it had been hushed up so fast. Maybe it was a car accident or something. Something mundane that happened to regular people.
Dammit, Micah didn’t miss things. He watched everyone and knew what everyone was up to all the time.
His soul, however, was stricken, and he mourned for Kylie.
Both her parents, gone.
Orphaned.
Alone in the world.
Micah didn’t allow even a tremor of that horror to reach his face.
He could tamp any emotion down deep in his stomach and not make a sound. It wasn’t just that he’d attended a boarding school for the richest kids in the world, and those exceedingly wealthy kids had no reason to be polite or even cordial to the few kids who’d clawed their way in with a scholarship. The things they’d said to him and his scholarship friends had been breathtakingly cruel, and the scholarship kids had been the targets when the rich kids’ testosterone had slammed them during puberty and they’d wanted to fight.
If he responded to the taunts or attacks, most teachers assumed that it was one of those scholarship kids making trouble again.
Micah had tagged their group of four as the Scholarship Mafia because they had to stick together and form a mutual defense society, which was exactly how the Cosa Nostra had begun back in Italy.
While Kylie spoke wistfully about her Nonna’s arancini and her grandparents’ devotion to their Familia, her longing for family and connection swept through Micah.
But he didn’t show it.
Or he’d thought he hadn’t until she called him out.
Kylie looked straight into Micah’s eyes. “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?”
Micah had forgotten that he was dealing with a fellow professional, not merely an asset to be cultivated.
Micah didn’t look away from her sweet face or vulnerable brown eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Something happened to you.” Kylie reached across the marble table, scooting aside the dish of arancini and the cheese platter, and she took his hand. The table was too large to make this a delicate move, and she was practically lying on the tabletop to reach his hand, her generous breasts almost spilling out of her low-cut formal gown.
Micah reluctantly looked back at her eyes.
Kylie asked, “Did something happen to your parents?”
His arm twitched as he repressed the urge to yank his hand away and sit back in the booth. He was supposed to be the professional here, and she was just a small-time casino con artist.
And yet, in less than half an hour, she’d gotten under his skin. Despite his best efforts and never answering her questions, she knew more about him than anyone else still alive in the world.
If he allowed her to think she was correct, that was. The rule was to never tell an asset a true thing, or anything at all, preferably. Lies had to be supported with manufactured evidence if they were suspected of being false.
Micah smiled as he flipped his hand over to hold her cool fingers, leaned in, and gazed into her eyes as if he was seducing her. “For a woman like you, Delilah, I could pretend.”
She batted her eyes at him. “Whatever do you mean?”
It was so funny when she tried to play him, like a kitten attacking his foot and thinking she was going to tear his leg off.
And yet, as she’d just shown him, kittens have razor blades on their toes.
He said, “I’m so glad you broke up with your ex-boyfriend. He didn’t deserve you.”
She ducked her head and peeked at him from around the curling tendrils of her sable hair. “Oh, I don’t know.”
This “Delilah Corleone” was just the cutest, even if he thought so for an entirely different reason than she intended. “You deserve someone who cares for you and will give you what you need, what you want. Someone who will spend time and money on you like the treasure you are.”
Her dark eyes narrowed just a little, evaluating him, and Micah thought maybe he’d blown it by being a little too on the nose.
But she blinked again, batting her lush eyelashes at him with a shy smile. “Do you really think so?”
Micah poured all his sincerity into his eyes because he could fake that, and he squeezed her small hand that he held across the table. “You seem like the sweetest woman I’ve ever met, and I can’t believe a man would be so stupid as to cheat on you and stand you up.” Literally, he didn’t believe her story in the slightest. “If you were mine, I’d drape you in gems and couture clothes, take you to Paris and Milan on my private jet, and sleep all night with you in my penthouse.”
Ah, a hint of truth. He’d slipped.
She batted her kohl-lined eyes at him again. “Wow. You’d do that for me?”
“I like to spoil my women. It makes us both happy,” he said.
Her expression was adorable, like he was too good to be true.
Which he was.
Especially considering what he’d had planned for her, though he’d decided to up the ante a little.
His handlers had always said Micah’s ability to improvise in his single-minded pursuit of a goal was one of his strengths.
Another waiter arrived with their meals, and they released their hands so she could place the two lasagnas on the table. “Enjoy.”
Oh, the scents of basil and garlic emanating from the lasagna smelled just like Micah’s mother used to make. He inhaled deeply, trying to breathe and remember good moments before his energy diverted to keeping the other memories at bay.
The moment passed, the other images assailed him, and they dissolved into the nothingness of loneliness as he picked up his fork and ate the lasagna.
Kylie was also digging into her dish and again making little moaning sounds that sent his blood rushing. Something about this woman made every move and sound unbearably sexy, even more so than every other feminine-appearing person he’d ever met.
Micah did not behave like a testosterone-addled elephant in musth, even though sometimes, it required effort.
Yet, he watched Kylie place the fork with a bulge of lasagna in her open mouth. Her full, dark red lips closed around the head of the fork, and she sucked the lasagna off the tines with her eyes closed.
Micah managed to eat without spilling anything on himself and counted it as a victory.