Title: The Bastard Billionaire
(Billionaire Bad Boys #3)
Author: Jessica Lemmon
Publication date: February 28th, 2016
Category/Genre: Adult Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Forever
Beauty and the Beastly
Billionaire . . .
Eli Crane is one tough bastard. After an explosion left him injured and honorably discharged from the Marines, all he wants is to be left alone. Yet his brothers insist he take a greater role in the family business. They've hired him ten personal assistants-and Eli sent each one packing as fast as possible. But when beautiful number eleven walks through the door, Eli will do anything to make her stay.
Isabella Sawyer's employment agency can't afford to lose Eli Crane's business. Her plan: to personally take on the role of his PA, and secure her reputation with the wealthy elite in Chicago. But this beauty and her hot billionaire bad boy soon find themselves mixing business with pleasure in the most delicious ways. And passionate, stubborn Isabella won't rest until she tames this wicked beast…
Standing, she smoothed
her hands down her pants and flipped her hair. She had planned to quietly
finish her work and leave without seeing him again. No such luck. And no hiding
that she was heading his way when her heels clicked along the concrete floor.
Well.
The kiss had happened.
The button incident had happened. There was no taking it back. Regardless of
how either of them felt about it, she was going to continue working here. So.
She would deal with the here and now.
Since the sun was
shining, Eli’s lair was welcome instead of foreboding. No fire cracked in the
hearth today. Also unlike his usual, he wasn’t at his desk. He was at the printer.
“This yours?” He offered
a sheet of paper.
“Yes.” She couldn’t keep
from explaining. “Pressed the Print button by accident.”
“Mi printer es
su printer.”
Isa accepted the
document and Eli sank his hands into his jeans pockets, his forearms flexing
with the movement.
“I wasn’t—”
“I shouldn’t—” they said
at the same time.
He pursed his lips and
she looked at her shoes. “Go ahead.” She was going to say, I wasn’t offended
when you kissed me, but now that she’d had a millisecond to think it
through, maybe she should pretend the kiss hadn’t happened. Which was . . .
impossible. Standing this close to him, it’s all she could think about.
“I shouldn’t have ruined
your shirt,” he said.
“I dared you to.”
“Why?” His eyebrows
compressed along with his lips.
“Because you have
accepted the role of beast, but I don’t believe that’s who you are.” She let
her gaze linger on his face before tracking down his body. “And because I like
a challenge.”
“Do you?” He took a wide
step toward her.
She matched his move and
took one step closer to him. “Yes. I don’t wilt easily.”
He threaded her hair
between his fingers, a look of longing and hurt mingling in his eyes. “I was
about to lie and say I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
Shivers climbed her
spine as she remembered how firm his lips felt against hers. “Maybe . . . you
shouldn’t have stopped.”
TOP 5 FAVORITE
LINES FROM TBB
#5~
Isabella Sawyer’s smart-aleck remark when Eli fires her for the umpteenth time:
“Apologies, Eli, but I’m not changing my shoes.” She came into his office, her hips swaying with each sure step she took toward him.“Fine. Then you’re fired.”“Oh, no, not again.”
#4~
Merina, the heroine from The Bastard Billionaire shows up as yet another feisty
woman who refuses to bow to Eli’s gruffness.
“I can go out into public, you know,” he grumbled, setting the beer bottle next to his plate—on the table, no coaster, thank you very much. “You guys don’t have to come in here and serve me.”He was skilled at his new role of miserable bastard, and since everyone expected it now, he was determined to excel.“Oh but we do, Lord Crane.” Merina smiled demurely as she leaned over and handed him a glass.
#3~ I
loved this line after Eli and Isa had sex—his honesty cracked me up!
“I like this.” She touched the corner of his mouth. “I’ve been trying to get you to smile since I started working here.”“Well now you know how to do it.”
#2~
Bold Isabella knows how to ask for what she wants!
“Is kissing you in my marching orders for tomorrow night?” he asked, his eyes picking up a trace of heat.She wasn’t going to pass up this opportunity. No way. No how.“Yes,” she answered. “Need to practice?”
#1~
Eli’s worry that he didn’t have what it took is my favorite line in the book.
He’d done what he needed to be a good soldier.Now that he wasn’t a soldier, he wasn’t sure what it took to be a good man.
The Bastard
Billionaire, #3
3.5 “Billionaire Beauty & the Beast” Stars
ARC via NetGalley
Thank you, Forever!
This is the third book
in the Billionaire Bad Boys series, and after reading all of them, I can
honestly say Jessica Lemmon can’t disappoint when writing sexy billionaires and
strong heroines.
As we get to the story
of Eli Crane, the third brother, we’re introduced to yet again to another
independent woman who’ll win the readers heart. Like Merina from book 1 and
Rachel from book 2, Isabella Sawyer came into the Crane’s life to make an
impression.
She’s a strong woman who
gave up a privileged position running her family’s company to pursue her own
dream. She wanted to start her own personal assistant company and she went for
it, even if it meant going against everything her parents wanted for her. This
journey made me like Isabella from the start, because it showed me she was a
woman willing to work hard to make her dream come true instead of conforming to
what other people thought her life should be like.
She’d need that strength
in order to keep one specific client happy: Reese Crane, the main character in
the first book and the brother of Eli Crane, a man her employees referred to as
a monster, among other things.
Eli Crane is an
ex-Marine discharged after an explosion left him injured and killed two of his
friends. He lost one of his legs and is learning how to adapt to his new life
now. For those who read book #2 in the series, Eli’s struggle and attitude won’t
come as a surprise. He’s having a hard time adapting to his new reality, so he
ends up taking it out on the wrong people. His family won’t leave him alone,
and I love them for it, and to try to help (a.k.a. force) him back to the
company, they hire Isabella’s firm to assist him.
The problem is Isabella has already sent every
employee she could to help Eli, and they all come back crying. So the only
solution she can come up with is to do the job herself. For a woman as strong
as Isabella, Eli might be a challenge, but one she’s confident she’ll overcome.
The thing I always love about Beauty & the
Beast-inspired tales is when they manage to portray the girl/woman as a strong
character, because that’s the only one to make the chemistry with the Beast
work. Isabella is just like that—she doesn’t
let Eli scare her, and that catches his attention.
The chemistry between them is instant and they’re hot
together. The obstacles to their romance are also well-portrayed, and I enjoyed
how once again Jessica Lemmon managed to make their inner battles bigger and
more powerful than any outside obstacle. This way, we get to see these
characters grow and learn how to deal with their feelings.
This is actually the main theme for Eli: dealing with
feelings. He’s a character filled with guilt, so he has to work on that before
he can move on and give Isabella the love she deserves. His journey is
well-developed and makes sense given everything he went through.
Writing the Beast-like character isn’t easy, either.
He can easily move into dangerous territory if the author isn’t careful to make
him likable and relatable. I didn’t have this problem with Eli, because I
understood where his fears were rooted. Besides, having him develop a charity
and work on a project that would impact so many lives also helped. I also thought Jessica Lemmon was respectable on her approach to Eli's disabilty, which is always nice to see.
I also enjoyed seeing
Merina and Reese and Tag and Rachel, the couples from the previous books.
Merina, Rachel and Isabella’s interactions were priceless, and the three
brothers together were swoon-worthy. I loved seeing them all happy and united.
After reading the three
books, I still think The Billionaire Next
Door (book #2) was the best of them, but The Bastard Billionaire felt like the perfect conclusion to this
series.
A former job-hopper, Jessica Lemmon resides in Ohio with her husband and rescue dog. She holds a degree in graphic design currently gathering dust in an impressive frame. When she's not writing super-sexy heroes, she can be found cooking, drawing, drinking coffee (okay, wine), and eating potato chips. She firmly believes God gifts us with talents for a purpose, and with His help, you can create the life you want.
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