Falling Hard (Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy, #1) by Blair Babylon

useful.”
    “All right, then getting your soul sucked out
your left ear must be a useful model, too. Ethics in the law mostly
deal with money. In general, you owe your loyalty to whomever you
took the money from.”
    “So to whom do you owe your loyalty, Mr.
No-Soul?”
    “The county, I guess. My boss, the County
Attorney. I thought it was to the law, the courts, and the ideal of
justice, but that’s not how it works.”
    Lizzy sipped her drink and realized that she
was getting buzzy. Even though she had trained her liver hard, she
was still eighty-two pounds, and the alcohol just had nowhere to
go. “Do you really believe that you have no soul? That’s what the
really creepy guys say, like the psychos.”
    His quick shrug made it look like he was
kidding. “I prosecute those guys. They were born without souls. I’m
just a lawyer.”
    She glanced over at Theo while the crowd
chattered around them and the DJ played the waltz. His ironic
expression looked like it covered some serious gloom. Lizzy reached
over with one finger, touched his chin, and turned his face toward
her.
    It was an intimate gesture, far too intimate
for two people who had just met at a bar, but all this no-soul crap
was poking Lizzy’s soft, well-hidden heart.
    Theo startled at her touch but allowed her to
turn his head. Wariness fluttered in his eyes, but his full lips
curved up like he was preparing to smile. He didn’t pull away.
    Yes, his gold-flecked honey eyes held humor,
but gentleness lived there, too. “I think you have a soul.”
    “Why do you say that?” he asked.
    “I can see it in your eyes.”
    Theo blinked a couple times, and his very
long, dark lashes touched his cheeks. That was why his honey-hazel
eyes were so startling: those dark, lush eyelashes practically
rimmed his eyes with kohl, like actors in old movies. She had seen
plenty of guyliner smudged on Guidos wearing colored contacts at
clubs, but she was so close to him, almost nose-to-nose, that she
could see Theo’s eyes were perfectly natural, no contacts, no
guyliner, just gorgeous.
    Wow.
    Blond little Lizzy would kill someone to have
eyelashes like that. Even tonight, she had crusted two coats of
mascara on her pale, stubby lashes just to make them visible.
    “What else can you see?” The inflection
around his question was neutral, allowing her to make it a joke or
not.
    “A lot.” Her fingers still held his chin. His
light stubble-beard was soft under her thumb and finger.
    All he had to do to break their contact was
lift his head, but he didn’t.
    If she leaned in, she could kiss him, but she
didn’t.
    One of his eyebrows flicked up, beginning to
take this into the realm of joking around. “Everything?”
    “No one can see everything.”
    “I can see something in your eyes,” he said.
“I see that you’re just about to tell another dirty joke.”
    She had been thinking about kissing him,
because what the hell, but she couldn’t after that.
    His lips were pinker, flushed. He might joke
that he wasn’t getting turned on, but his body told her that he
was. That was interesting.
    Lizzy dropped her fingers away from his face
and rolled her eyes in mock exasperation, leaned over again, and
pressed her tiny boobs together with her arms, nearly making
cleavage. “What’s six inches long, in a guy’s pants, that women
love to blow?”
    Theo had grabbed his beer stein and was
sipping, and he choked. “Pray, tell.”
    Lizzy licked her lips, and in a voice
brimming with sex and sin, said, “Money.”
    He laughed a full-throat laugh. “That’s
terrible. I shouldn’t laugh.”
    She licked her upper lip in a truly slutty
manner. He laughed harder and leaned back on the barstool.
    “So you tell me a joke,” she said.
    “All I know are lawyer jokes, and they all
end with ‘Professional courtesy’ or ‘One is scum-sucking
bottom-dweller, and the other is a fish.’ What do you do when
you’re not telling jokes or being bait?”
    “College.” She leaned