Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Prologue
Part I
Book 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Falling For Him
Khardine Gray
Bliss Romance
Contents
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Join my readers group
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
My little gift to you
When Beauty Met The Beast
Acknowledgments
Prologue
I. Book 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
About the Author
Books by Khardine Gray
Vandervilles Series
Author’s Note
HELLO GORGEOUS,
Thank you so much for grabbing my book.
I just wanted to make you aware that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18. It is super steamy.
Please also note that Falling For Him is a full length stand alone novel.
The book will end before you get to the 100% mark but that is just because I’ve included some bonus content with a little gift for you.
Thanks again and happy reading.
I hope you enjoy Falling For Him
Hugs xx
Falling For Him
Copyright © 2018 by Khardine Gray
All rights reserved.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The author asserts that all characters and situations depicted in this work of fiction are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Editing: Cassie Dess-Hearn
Acknowledgments
To my dear family, friends, and my readers.
Where would I be without you….
This one’s for all of you. Hope you enjoy it.
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Some men…
Some men should come with a warning sign…
Something like -
Caution Beware of Playboy!
And, an arrow pointing to the fine print which should say something like –
‘He's great if you want wild fun, and great sex but don't expect him to be committed to you.’
That was the sign I wanted to place on Tristan Bouchard, my best friend.
Yes, my best friend was the biggest playboy I’d ever met in my life, but he took care of me. We had this special relationship that somehow worked and we lived together.
I knew every single thing there was to know about this man. I'd had years of seeing him in action.
Him with his Hollywood good looks, incredible physique, fantasy muscles, and eyes of the purest blue that could make you melt.
He could charm the panties right off you, and you'd lose your mind before you knew what hit you.
I knew this all too well. So well I could write a book.
I knew it even as that stupid note in our friendship box made us cross the line and become more than friends.
I knew it even as I reminded myself that this thing that we had was just for fun.
I get it.
Some women like wild, no strings attached fun.
I understood perfectly that, that was what this was.
Fun.
So… all I have to do is repeat these words to myself every day, and ignore what my heart tells me.
Don't fall for him, Don't fall for him, Don't fall for him.
I'll be fine if I do that.
Right?
Chapter 1
Zoe
This had to be the perfect example of the blind leading the blind.
Or, maybe it was more like the brokenhearted.
Yes, that sounded more suitable because that was exactly how I felt.
Brokenhearted and definitely not the right person to sit with Denise as she poured her heart out to me, telling me how she thought she and Tristan were the perfect match and that she couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to be with someone like her.
We’d both been in the living room now for an hour. For one hour I’d had to be the listening ear she seemed desperate for, and I had to put on that understanding face most people expected when they were expressing their distress.
Denise was a nice person. Ticked the beautiful box and definitely had the kind of body Tristan liked, but I knew those weren’t enough to keep him interested. The nice part was a bonus. He wasn’t looking for nice. I knew the only thing that attracted him to her was her beauty. Her physical appearance.
That was all.
Even in her distress, Denise looked like she walked straight off the billboard of some Chanel advertisment for perfume. Or, like she’d materialized before me from one of the fashion magazines I had stacked up in corner by the bookshelf.
She had that long blonde hair that looked gold. He called it shampoo ad hair. Her eyes were bluer than his too, adding to her beauty. His types were all very beautiful. The most exquisite women you could imagine. It didn’t help that he didn’t have to work that hard to attract attention.
Working hard to attract the female species, as he called us, was not on his list of specialties. No, no. Tristan Bouchard was the kind of man who never wanted for a woman on his arm. And, when he got bored he’d simply move on to his next catch of the hour.
Or, it could be the minute depen
ding on which day and how much time he had on his hands.
I didn’t bother to tell her that, and there was no way I was going to tell her Tristan was definitely not exclusive to her. Denise would just be a number to him, a lady he’d schedule into his black book if he wanted to see her more than the one time, which he did, and then she’d eventually be phased out. Which it seemed like she had.
How did I know all this about the man of the hour? No, I’d never been his girlfriend. Gorgeous as he was with his Hollywood good looks, element of mystery, and dreamy body I’d always heard the women swoon over.
I was just Zoe Carter, the best friend.
People thought it was weird that he had a girl/woman for a best friend, but that was what I was. That was me, or rather what I became.
We each had our own separate friends who we considered close to us. I had Rachel and he had Gibbs. We’d been friends with each for more than ten years, having met them both through work and college, but Tristan and I had each other.
We had a different kind of friendship. The kind that made you inseparable for years, or a few weeks shy of nineteen years.
He was three years older than me. I was fourteen when I met him.
We were both from Chicago, but we now live together here in this luxury four-bed beach house on Malibu Beach. It was our bachelor/spinster pad that had everything we could possibly want and an endless view of the ocean. We each have a master-size bedroom and a private office. There was a gym downstairs in the basement equipped with state of the art exercise machines for Tristan. There was sauna, a swimming pool, a hot tub room and a terrace with a rose garden.
We were thrown together in high school when our principal made me tutor him so that he could play football. As beloved as he was, he’d taken on the attitude some athletes had in thinking that if they played well grades didn’t matter. Thinking that way only landed him in the situation where if he didn’t make the grades he wouldn’t be able to play.
I would never profess to being some sort of genius, but I’d never had to worry about grades and always exceeded my classmates. I even skipped two grades in high school and our principal took that to mean me being the perfect candidate to help Tristan. I helped, and by the time I was done with him he no longer had to worry about grades. The extent of my help also secured him several scholarship offers from the best colleges.
He was the typical jock, and I supposed I was by most people’s standards a geek for my academic success. But that was where we began. Although he hated me teaching him and hated having to focus on anything that wasn’t football, he saw me as the person who helped him to get where he wanted to go.
Our friendship grew to the strong bond that it was today.
He doesn’t play football anymore, but when he did he was a force to be reckoned with. Today he used his fame and talents in his role as director of personnel to scout the best players for the Los Angeles Centaurs, a very, very prestigious team.
As for me, I became a teacher. I’m a high school English teacher, although I didn’t plan for that to happen. I just kind of fell into the profession and absolutely loved it. I worked at Malibu High and loved it there too.
He’s always been famous and renowned in football, and we couldn’t be more different if we tried, but we get along and we work together as friends.
Except when he did things like this.
Denise.
This breaking of her heart. It wasn’t the first time that I’d had to sit with one of his many dumpees. It was a regular thing with him. The women that ended up talking to me saw me as a way back to him.
I wasn’t.
“I don’t know what I did wrong. We seemed okay last week and then he just stopped returning my calls,” Denise cried as a fresh bout of tears took her.
I wondered just how many times she called him. Tristan hated constant phone calls. He felt that if he wasn’t responding to a woman then they should get the message that things were over.
We argued over this constantly with him trying to tell me it made sense and it was less awkward to stop contact, and me telling him it was a heartless, cruel thing to do.
“I’m sure it’s nothing, but Denise, you have to pull yourself together.” I was trying to offer the words I thought would help, words that were supposed to help and I wish I had someone to tell me the same.
Denise only broke down. Seriously broke down and now I felt stuck. I couldn’t do this right now. I had my own shit to deal with and I wasn’t strong enough to help someone else with their heartbreak when my own heart was shattered.
It was to be expected after finding out that Brian, the man I’d been dating for nearly two years, was married and had two children. Both under the age of five.
God, I still couldn’t believe it. I pressed my lips together to keep from crying out. I had to stop myself from screaming, and I had to forget the embarrassment I felt from the encounter I had with his wife today.
It was hard, so, so, hard, but I had to push the horrible names she called me out of my mind, and I supposed I had to be grateful that she’d approached me at lunchtime when I went to get some things from my car and not anywhere else.
There were only a few students passing by, and hopefully the news that Miss Carter was a homewrecker wouldn’t spread around the high school.
Jesus.
I didn’t know what I did to deserve this, or why it was that I always ended up with the wrong guy.
I just didn’t know, and right now I couldn’t figure out what was worse. The bad relationship history or this recent bad relationship.
Whichever was worse, it got to me and I didn’t think that I could deal with it.
I looked at Denise, feeling sorry for her. The poor thing looked as distraught as I felt. I was barely holding myself together. I was here in body sitting opposite her on the loveseat while she sat on the armchair leaning forward and crying. My mind, however, was elsewhere. I’d been crying all afternoon and just managed to get myself home. My hands shook and my vision was barely there as I drove but here I was. I came home to fall apart properly and never expected to find Denise here in practically the same state as me.
Though, I think I would have to grab dibs on my situation being a little bit worse. Mine was a long-term relationship of just practically two years, and I’d been with a married man. Me, Miss Goody Two Shoes. I’d become a homewrecker, the other woman, the mistress, the side piece.
Me.
It made me feel sick to my stomach to think of it.
Denise, on the other hand, had been seeing Tristan for less than a month and she seemed to be one of those women that fell in love at the drop of a hat. Those ones that held on to everything and every moment, making a big deal out of something as simple as a kiss. I didn’t do that, ever, and never would.
I came from a single-parent family. My mom was a strong woman, who learned the hard way after my father walked out on her, my two sisters and myself when I was ten.
I was the youngest, but I remembered the day with perfect clarity. I also remembered how heartbroken my mother was. But in the end, it hardened my mom and turned her into a no-nonsense woman.
I took on the trait from her, and I was tough with most things but just kept picking up assholes, like I was picking up dog shit from the street.
I wasn’t like Denise. I was sure of that, but I guess today we felt the same pain that the men in our lives had caused us.
“Denise, maybe you should go home and get some rest,” I suggested. Staying here wasn’t going to help her, and I was also getting very aware of the time. Tristan would be back soon. It was nearly six, and he didn’t have much planned today. If he came home and saw her here, he’d rip into me for allowing her to come in the house, and I’d give what I got because I was furious with him too for being such an asshole.
“I’m so upset.” She wailed. “I just wish I could understand what I did.” She looked up at me with huge sad eyes. The sapphire blue that I thought made her eyes striking looked dist
orted from the redness that surrounded her irises.
“Sometimes that’s how things work out,” I offered. “Sometimes they just don’t.”
“I know. But, you know when you meet someone and they get you, and you think oh good, this is it? I thought I had that with him.” Denise dabbed at her eyes. “Maybe you could speak to him.”
Shit, what should I say? If I said yes then maybe I could get rid of Denise sooner.
“We don’t get involved in each other’s relationships,” I decided to say. That was the best thing to say, especially since I didn’t want to get involved in this mess. “It’s a boundary we just don’t cross.”
“Okay. I understand.” Denise tilted her head and gave me a pitiful nod.
“You’ll be okay.” I smiled a smile I didn’t feel.
She ran her hands over her hair and twisted the ends of her ponytail around her finger. “Thank you for being so nice to me and listening.”
“That’s okay.”
“I’ll go—I know you just came from work. I didn’t mean to pounce on you. I was just hoping I’d see him.”
That was the worst idea ever, and I didn’t see how Denise thought it was okay. Sure, I didn’t agree with Tristan’s breakup methods or whatever he called them, but I would never go to a guy’s house if I suspected he was dumping me.
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