Falling Hard (Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy, #1) by Blair Babylon Read Free Book Online Page A

and New
York. B-E-N-NY.”
    “Yeah, I remember that,” he said. “I usually
took the Northeast Corridor Line, but the last four stops are the
same.”
    “You’re from Jersey?”
    “Lived there for four years.”
    She drained her martini. “What exit?”
    “One-oh-five, but I usually took eight-A off
the Turnpike.”
    “Oh my God! You’re my homie! I was at exit
one hundred!” It felt good to exclaim something rather than
mope.
    He gestured to her empty glass and then the
bartender. “Then let me buy you another one of those, homie.”
    “I’m Lizzy.” She stuck out her hand.
    Now that he finally turned and looked at her,
Medium Guy was gorgeous-handsome.
    His lips were full and looked soft. His eyes
flicked toward her, and she saw that they weren’t so middling
brown. They were closer to gold, like a predatory lion’s, with a
thick, double-row of dark eyelashes framing them.
    In Biology for Non-Majors, the one science
class that Lizzy had ever passed, the professor had said that
double lashes was a rare mutation and that Elizabeth Taylor had it.
No wonder everyone had always talked about Elizabeth Taylor’s eyes.
Those double lashes made his eyes as hot as a fried egg on the
desert asphalt in July. Damn.
    If he tanned, those caramel eyes might turn
lighter than his skin.
    Lizzy almost couldn’t breathe for a second
because her heart was beating so hard in her chest that her lungs
fluttered from the force of it.
    Medium Guy said, “Theo.”
    The way that his tongue flicked into view
between his white teeth when he said his own name was kind of
fascinating.
    She sucked in a shuddering breath and went
sarcastic because otherwise she might lean over and lick him.
“Great. Theo the Guido.”
    He laughed again. He did that a lot. “I’m not
Italian, though a few people in Jersey kindly overlooked that
deficiency. My mother is Colombian, and my father was French. Are
you Italian?”
    “Not even a little. I stuck out like a very
small, blond thumb in Jersey.”
    The bartender set fresh drinks in front of
them. Theo lifted his beer. His hair was blonder on top than on the
sides, but it didn’t look streaky like it was bleached. It looked
like the sun had faded his hair, for real. Medium-blond lanks fell
over his forehead in places, not artfully tousled but like he had
been running his hands through it. He said, “Cheers to my fellow
non-Italian Jerseyan.”
    “You even know the right term. It’s such a
relief to talk with someone civilized.”
    “I only lived there for four years, but it
made an impression. What’s up with these people pumping their own
gas here?”
    “Yes! Yes! Oh my God. I feel like I’m
on the fricking moon sometimes with the amateurs pumping their gas,
and there aren’t enough trains out here.” She drank deeply from her
sugary drink. “So what do you do for a living, Theo?”
    “Don’t hold this against me, but I’m a
lawyer.”
    “Hey! My friend Georgie is pre-law. You guys
should talk. She’s right over there. I’ll just grab her.” Lizzy
slipped off the barstool, intending to snag Georgie for this guy.
Lizzy normally leapt off barstools, but she was wearing her
second-highest hoochie heels, which were black and only slightly
less like stilts than her red pair. Breaking an ankle falling off a
barstool would really suck.
    Just as she was about to dodge through the
crowd, Theo touched her bare shoulder. Lizzy looked up at him,
startled, as their skin made contact. He had stepped off his stool,
too, and he was really tall. Her head was nowhere near his
shoulder.
    Theo said, “If she wants to be a lawyer, she
shouldn’t talk to me. I’ll tell her to run as far and as fast as
she can in the other direction. I’d rather talk to you about
anything else, anything other than the law.”
    “Yeah, Georgie might not want to hear
that.”
    He looked off, over and above the crowd. “I
wouldn’t have wanted to hear it.”
    “Don’t you wish that someone had told you