Falling for Fitz Read Online Free PDF

with, it broke her heart a little. His lips tilted up just a
touch, as they used to when she’d surprise him with some outlandish
idea, and they’d banter back and forth before he agreed to go along
with it.
    “ Wouldn’t you like to
know?” he asked, searching her eyes like he was remembering
something from a long time ago.
    “ Oh, I would,” she said, an
old rhythm coming easily to their conversation.
    “ It’s very scintillating.”
    She tried not to grin back, but
couldn’t help herself. “I’m all ears.”
    “ We buy companies,” he
said, pressing a finger to his lips like he was sharing a
secret.
    “ Companies! The mind reels.
Edgy stuff?”
    “ Oh, very. Shocking,
even.”
    “ Do tell!” she demanded,
trying not to giggle, but the happy, alive feeling bubbled up
inside of her anyway.
    “ We may—or may not—dabble
in… shipbuilding .”
    He said it conspiratorially, and she
put her hand over her heart, pretending to gasp. “Not shipbuilding!
Oh, the humanity!”
    “ Yes. And sometimes? Steel manufacturing .”
    “ Be still my beating heart!
The glamour, the…the excitement!”
    He chuckled lightly, like he didn’t
enjoy himself very often, and this was the most fun he’d had in
ages. “And once in a while… Are you sitting down?”
    “ I am.”
    “ Hold onto your seat.” He
was trying not to laugh, and finally won the fight to take himself
very seriously. He looked grim and important as he announced,
over-enunciating every word, “Once in a while, we
buy… human resource
software .”
    Emily put the back of her hand to her
forehead and pretended to faint against the back of her chair.
Fitz’s voice was soft in her ear a moment later.
    “ Shall I get Dr. M. over
here to give you mouth-to-mouth?”
    She turned her head toward his voice,
but didn’t give him a chance to lean away first and his lips
brushed softly across her cheek as she faced him. When she opened
her eyes, his mouth was inches from hers, and she could feel the
heat of his breath on her skin.
    How about you give me
mouth-to-mouth instead? she thought,
flicking her eyes to lips. She must have inadvertently telegraphed
her thoughts because he sucked in a breath as his eyes dilated and
darkened.
    He leaned away from her sharply,
placing his hands on the table and staring at them as if he needed
to know exactly where they were to be sure they didn’t
misbehave.
    She gulped softly, taking a deep
breath and sitting up straight in her chair.
    “ You always were fun,” he
conceded quietly.
    “ So were you,” she
answered, and without thinking, she placed her hand over
his.
    She touched him because
their bantering had reminded her of the best parts of falling in
love with him. She touched him because he was her first love and
somewhere deep inside she still loved him. She touched him because not touching
him when he was finally so close to her after so long was almost
unbearable.
    Almost immediately he flipped his hand
so they were palm to palm, flush against each other. As he laced
his fingers through hers, he looked up slowly to meet her
eyes.
    He flinched at what he saw there.
“Daisy. Daisy, I’m so damned—”
    “ I like this ,” said Josh, who was suddenly
standing in the space between their chairs. He reached for Daisy’s
hand and jerked it away from Fitz’s, depositing it in her lap, then
shoved his face into hers until they were nose-to-nose. “Holding
hands with some other guy on the side, eh?”
    “ Jo— Honey ,” said Daisy, softly,
surprised by Josh’s sudden appearance and his commitment to the
role he was playing. “It isn’t what you think. We’re just old
frie—”
    “ What I think ? Are you going to tell me what I think?”
    She tried to signal him with her eyes
that he was getting a little too over-the-top, but Josh and Stanley
Kowalski had become one. She peeked around Josh for a second to
check out Fitz’s reaction, but all she could see was Fitz’s hands
on the table. He had one hand