Heroine Miranda Johansson has had a very bad day. The strait-laced, ultraconservative
stock-market analyst in Chicago’s LaSalle Street financial district just lost
eighty-seven million dollars of her clients’ money in a massive stock-market
implosion. And if that weren’t bad enough, she just had wild, no-holds-barred sex with a complete stranger on her coffee break----and that complete stranger turns out to be her new boss!
Can Miranda get control of herself without losing her job, and her mind? Or will
her sexy new boss completely derail her self-discipline, her stock portfolio, and her career? (Not to mention the sudden intrusion of his manipulative ex-girlfriend---a scheming, ruthless woman who controls half of Wall Street.)
stock-market analyst in Chicago’s LaSalle Street financial district just lost
eighty-seven million dollars of her clients’ money in a massive stock-market
implosion. And if that weren’t bad enough, she just had wild, no-holds-barred sex with a complete stranger on her coffee break----and that complete stranger turns out to be her new boss!
Can Miranda get control of herself without losing her job, and her mind? Or will
her sexy new boss completely derail her self-discipline, her stock portfolio, and her career? (Not to mention the sudden intrusion of his manipulative ex-girlfriend---a scheming, ruthless woman who controls half of Wall Street.)
Will Miranda survive the ups and downs of her new love life, which is just as volatile and unpredictable as the market? Or will her new romance go down the tubes along with the economy? Only time will tell.
book, and have a little fun peeking inside the unseen world of the sexy young
investment bankers who’ve been pushed to the edge along with everyone else.
Review by Janeane - ARC received for honest review
Ever had one of those days? A career ender? No light at the end of the work tunnel?
That's the kind of day Miranda has just had. In a crash on the stock exchange, she has lost $87 million of her clients money.
So what's a girl to do? Get coffee of course! Lots of it and strong. And her is where he day changes. In the coffee shop she has an altercation with the barista, which turns into an altercation with the guy behind her. The Drop. Dead. Gorgeous guy in line.
Not realising she might have looked a little like this
the sexy stranger offers her the use of his private office to clean herself up.
“I have access to a private
office suite on this floor,”
he said, his voice even and businesslike. “Private bathroom, too, which should also
have some better facial soap available.
You can clean up, take a breather, whatever you need to do. Follow me.”
Without waiting for Miranda’s
reply, the man took her by the hand and gently led her across the lobby. Before Miranda knew what hit her, she
was whisked into a small, luxurious office, complete with leather-on-mahogany
furniture, Oriental rugs, and a six-foot-high decorative fountain.
“The bathroom’s over there,”
the man said, pointing to a doorway just to the right of the fountain. “If
there’s anything else I can get for you, let me
know.”
“Umm,” Miranda mumbled again, and made a beeline
for the bath. Her eyes widened as she closed the heavy paneled door
behind her and took in the posh powder room. Everything was made of
marble—even the ceiling. The fixtures were spotless polished
white porcelain.
On the gleaming countertop was an array of high-end toiletries—and a few brands even the hopeless
shopaholic Miranda hadn’t
heard of.
There was a basket of clean, folded silk-terry washcloths, and another, smaller
basket full of cotton balls and cotton swabs. There was even a laundry pen for
removing clothing stains, a lint brush, and a miniature fabric steamer. After
some consideration, she chose a bottle of astringent and a cotton ball to strip
off her ruined makeup. It worked perfectly. It even helped exfoliate the
top layer of her skin, revealing a healthy glow she’d never been able to achieve with hundreds
of dollars’ worth of other cleansers. Miranda made a mental note to pick up
a bottle of the stuff next time she was at the mall. She used the laundry pen to clean the
makeup off the collar of her suit, and then applied some moisturizer to her
face, dabbing some extra around her eyes in hopes it would help reduce the
puffiness all her crying had caused.
Satisfied with her refreshed appearance, Miranda took a
deep breath and headed back out into the tall, super-sexy-yet-anonymous man’s private office.
He was waiting for her just outside the bathroom door
and when her brown eyes met his blue ones, her stomach did a flip-flop rivaling
that of any Olympic diving champion. “Oh!” she squealed as her hand jerked itself
onto her belly.
“Feeling all right?” he asked. “I
have some antacid in my desk drawer if you need it.”
“No, umm, that’s OK,”
Miranda replied, her voice still high-pitched and squeaky. “I
umm, I just hiccupped, is all.” A lie. The truth was, this man was making her
feel—well—quidgy.
Quidgy all over, but especially right between her legs. It was a
delightful feeling, but a scary one, too. She decided she needed to thank
him, guzzle her giant espresso, and make a graceful exit before anything got
out of hand. “I,
ahhhh, I really need to get back upstairs.”
“Suit yourself,” the man said. “But
you’re espresso’s
getting cold.
You’re welcome to have a seat and relax for a
few minutes while you finish it.” He indicated one of the heavy leather
armchairs, gesturing for her to sit.
Without thinking, Miranda did.
She noticed with surprise that there was a huge fireplace directly across from
her chair.
The tall, azure-eyed man flipped a switch, and a blazing fire appeared out of
nowhere.
“Gas fireplaces are the
eighth wonder of the world,”
he said as he sat down in the leather chair opposite her. “Don’t you think?”
“Umm,” was all Miranda could say. The quidgy feeling that was so
delightful in the nether parts of her body had a funny way of paralyzing her
from the neck up. After much concentration, she finally got her jaw and
lips to work. “I,
umm, never knew this place was here,”
she stammered.
“My company has several
floors of offices in this building,”
the man said. “The management gives me use of this little
private hideaway as thanks for all the money I drop here in rent. I can use it whenever I need some
privacy.”
He paused, smiled. “Or, when someone I know needs some privacy.”
“That’s nice,”
Miranda said, drinking the rest of her espresso in one gulp. The quintuple dose of caffeine hit
her bloodstream like a shot of heroin.
She could almost feel her pupils dilating.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
the man asked, his turquoise eyes meeting hers. “You seem kind of—agitated.”
“That’s because I am!” she blurted. The caffeine was working fast—too fast. Miranda felt
her heart start racing, felt her lips forming words faster than she could think
about what they might be. “I’ve had such a bad day! I lost
eighty-seven million dollars for my clients just this morning! I’m totally screwed! I’m
going to get fired! I
hate myself! I’m ….”
“Whoa!” the tall man said, holding up both hands. “Slow down. Like I said back at the coffee shop,
ingesting that much caffeine in the space of two minutes isn’t good for people your size. Or to be more specific, very
attractive young women of your size.”
“Are you coming on to me?” Miranda sputtered, her mouth going a mile
a minute. “Because if you are, you should really
stop. You know why? I’m a
walking disaster area. That’s
what my last boyfriend called me when we broke up. Plus ….”
The tall man’s
blue eyes were serious.
Miranda felt them drill into her, felt them penetrate the private, sensual part
of herself she’d kept carefully locked
away ever since her last boyfriend—a
dry-as-a-bone commodities broker named Paul--had dumped her more than four
years before.
And now, the attractive-yet-mysterious man sitting across from her didn’t just penetrate that most private part of
Miranda’s inner being. He downright melted it—hell, vibrated it—with just one ice-blue glance.
“You
don’t look like a walking disaster area to me,” he said.
“But I am! Didn’t
you hear what I just said?
My ex-boyfriend called me a walking disaster area, and he was
right. Because only a walking disaster area would lose
eighty-seven million dollars of her clients’
money in the space of fifteen minutes.”
The tall man’s
expression softened.
He loosened his green silk tie, stretched out his legs a little. “If there’s
one thing I’ve learned about the stock
market in my career, miss, it’s
that you can often earn money back just as fast as you lose it. If you know how to play the
game.”
The man’s
acute comment caught Miranda off-guard. “I ….”
“I bet your work has
something to do with the telecom sector,”
he said.
The accuracy of his guess shook Miranda to the core. “That
area’s taken quite a beating this morning, as I
understand it.”
“How did you know?”
Miranda’s voice trembled, just as she felt her
nether parts getting warmer and warmer.
“I have a live CNBC feed in
my limo,” he explained. “Plus,
by my calculations, that’s
the only market sector where it’s
possible for anyone to have lost, say, eighty-seven million dollars from their
fund portfolio just this morning. Am I right?”
Miranda nodded, unable to speak.
“I bet if you can make even
a portion of that money back for your clients by the end of the market day,
your boss won’t be too upset with you,” he went on. “In
fact, I’m sure of it.”
“B-but I’m an analyst!” she protested. “I’m not a broker! I have to do weeks and weeks of
research and analysis before I can recommend any stock to my clients. I can’t
day-trade!
It’s against the rules!”
“I never said you had to
day-trade,” the man said, leaning in
closer.
Miranda could feel the tiny stirrings in the air between them from his
breathing.
Those stirrings excited her.
Excited her a little too much, in fact.
“Then what can I do?” she sputtered. “The
SEC regulations on what analysts can and cannot do are pretty strict, you know.”
“I’m familiar with all the SEC regulations,
miss. I
did your job once myself.
What I can tell you--based upon my own past experience as an analyst—is there is quite a lot you can accomplish
in a short period of time if you’re
creative.”
Creative? Miranda
wasn’t creative. Not even close. She was a right-brained,
numbers-obsessed, stock-market-loving bean counter. That was the whole reason she had
gone into finance in the first place instead of say, oil-painting.
Miranda voted Republican, checked her stock portfolio every day, and always
wore gray or black pinstriped suits with pantyhose and high heels.
“Umm,” she stammered for the umpteenth time that
morning. “I’m not really--creative. I’m more of a ….” She trailed off. Suddenly her tongue felt too large
for her mouth.
“It’s all right, miss,” the tall, azure-eyed man said, taking her
right hand in his and squeezing it. “We
all have bad days in this business.
Goes with the territory.
As long as you can make up some of your losses, I’m
sure you’ll be fine.”
As long as you can make up some of your
losses. He made it sound so easy.
But it wasn’t. Anyone who’d ever invested a dime in the stock market
could tell her that. “Well,
um, I guess I should really be going!”
Miranda stood up, looking right and left for a wastebasket where she could toss
her empty espresso cup.
“I’ll take that,”
the tall man said, standing up. He reached for the empty, and their hands
touched again. Miranda felt a bolt of lightning streak right through her
body as his skin grazed hers. She’d
never felt these kinds of sensations before.
Not with Paul. Not even with her old college boyfriend Bradley--the man to whom
she’d given her precious virginity. Not with
anyone.
The entire lower half of Miranda’s body was in flames.
Her nipples had gone rock-hard, and the space between
her thighs was slick as melted butter. Her head throbbed, and her lips,
teeth, and tongue screamed for the feel of his mouth on hers.
What the hell was going on?
Miranda felt her cheeks flush. How could this be
happening? She was a prim, proper, and very strait-laced woman. She
didn’t go throwing herself with wild abandon at
total strangers--let alone total strangers she’d
met while on what was supposed to be a five-minute coffee break from work. And yet, her body was telling her
that throwing herself at this nameless man with wild abandon was exactly
what she had to do, right now, just to stay alive, just to keep
breathing.
Without giving the matter another thought,
Miranda leaned forward and kissed the tall, generous, anonymous man’s lips.
And it wasn’t just any kiss, either. It was a grab-his-ass, stick-her-tongue-halfway-down-his-throat
kind of kiss. It was a kind of kiss Miranda hadn’t known she was capable of giving
anyone--let alone a man she’d
met less than ten minutes ago, a man whose name she still didn’t know.
A man who was kissing her back with as much gusto as
she was kissing him.
Miranda has always been the prim and proper looking librarian type, boring suits and hair in a bun. But not today. What can it matter, things can't get worse, right?? And all that coffee - I am sure I would have been all over the place drinking what she did
Max has been in the background of his father's business since things went south while he was in his teens. Today is the day he takes control again. He has made some choices in the past that are still haunting him to this day, personally and professionally.
When an offer to use his office to clean herself up turns into something a lot more steamy, who is he to say no? He has always got what he wanted, and this is no different. But after the most earth-shattering sex of his life, things are about to change.
When Miranda realises that the sexy stranger is her new
boss, she turns cold and professional with him. Or tries. I like
that she is a Wall Street hard arse analyst, but when it comes to Max, she gets
all flustered and acts like a teenager with a crush.
I love that we see the softer side of her, and she becomes more human. She is attracted to Max, she wants him but knows professionally she can't have him.
Max is all alpha male, but does not know what to do when Miranda fights their attraction.
Add to the mix a vindictive ex and her family (seriously f&*ked up family there!!), a Wall Street scandal, hostile takeovers and a sexy as all hell couple and what you get is a great read.
Market for Love had me hooked from the first chapter and I did not put it down until I had finished.
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