The Great Recession. Reality TV. Luxury cosmetics. And a basset hound named Botox. What do all these things have in common?
They’re all essential story components in BEAUTY SECRETS, a sexy romantic comedy novel, written in a style best described as “Jennifer Weiner meets E. L. James.”
Amanda Brown is a high-flying cosmetics executive for Revina Corporation, the oldest and most venerable cosmetics company in America. She comes from a good "old money" family, she went to Swarthmore, and she lives in a beautiful penthouse apartment in NYC’s Meatpacking District. But she's only successful on the surface----like many New Yorkers, she's also financially overextended. Her parents are dead, her trust fund is gone, and when the Great Recession hammers her company, like millions of people across America she suddenly finds her job hanging by a thread.
Enter George Watson, a hedge-fund manager and self-made man from the Midwest who swoops in from Indiana to rebuild Revina Corporation from the ground up. Even if he fired everyone else at the company, he decides to keep Amanda on for her expertise. The two of them are from different worlds, and they can't stand each other. But that doesn’t stop them from having wild no-holds-barred sex on their first meeting----for reasons neither of them fully understand.
But this is no ordinary corporate takeover, and the unlikely romance between George and Amanda is no ordinary love story. It involves corporate greed, undercover investigative reporters, a sleazy reality TV producer who puts George and Amanda's sexual relationship on national television, dark family secrets----and a dog named Botox.
They’re all essential story components in BEAUTY SECRETS, a sexy romantic comedy novel, written in a style best described as “Jennifer Weiner meets E. L. James.”
Amanda Brown is a high-flying cosmetics executive for Revina Corporation, the oldest and most venerable cosmetics company in America. She comes from a good "old money" family, she went to Swarthmore, and she lives in a beautiful penthouse apartment in NYC’s Meatpacking District. But she's only successful on the surface----like many New Yorkers, she's also financially overextended. Her parents are dead, her trust fund is gone, and when the Great Recession hammers her company, like millions of people across America she suddenly finds her job hanging by a thread.
Enter George Watson, a hedge-fund manager and self-made man from the Midwest who swoops in from Indiana to rebuild Revina Corporation from the ground up. Even if he fired everyone else at the company, he decides to keep Amanda on for her expertise. The two of them are from different worlds, and they can't stand each other. But that doesn’t stop them from having wild no-holds-barred sex on their first meeting----for reasons neither of them fully understand.
But this is no ordinary corporate takeover, and the unlikely romance between George and Amanda is no ordinary love story. It involves corporate greed, undercover investigative reporters, a sleazy reality TV producer who puts George and Amanda's sexual relationship on national television, dark family secrets----and a dog named Botox.
Excerpt:
Amanda took a brief tour of the store. It had been so long
since she’d done her own shopping — she even had her groceries delivered, not
that she cooked very often — that the very act of trolling the aisles was a
novelty. She walked up and down past racks of shampoo and conditioner (not her
brand), bins of empty plastic spray bottles (what on earth were those for,
anyway?) and the baby-formula section, finally ending up at a display of
condoms next to the pharmacy counter.
Condoms?
Amanda stared at the rows of brightly colored packaging in
wonder. She’d never considered the idea that people actually went into stores
and bought condoms. All the men she had dated over the past several years
produced them as if out of thin air when they were already naked in her bed.
Her college sorority house had kept a jar of them in the communal bathroom,
though she’d never taken any. Condoms were something that just seemed to appear
when required, not something that you went out and purchased like batteries and
pantyhose.
Her eyes scanned the racks, noticing that some of the
selections on offer featured silhouettes of slender, naked couples in sensual
embraces, while others had “special vibrating rings for extra fun.” There were
even flavored lubricants and serums that promised to add “heat” and “wow
factor.”
Wow factor?
Amanda closed her eyes and felt herself blush. What kind of
place was this? She felt like she’d stumbled into some kind of X-rated store on
the side of the interstate, not a respectable-if-low-end Duane Reed. How on
earth was stuff like this sold out in the open? Shouldn’t it be locked behind a
counter or something?
Still, she couldn’t help but be
intrigued, even a little titillated. Amanda’s sex life was nil at the moment,
not that she cared all that much. But one should always be prepared, right? You
just never knew what might happen. She selected a magenta box of Trojans with
Vibrating Ring For Extra Fun and a tube of Wow Factor. Then she walked straight
to the pharmacy counter to pay for them, too embarrassed to be seen carrying
the racy items around the store. Once they were safely tucked in a plain white
paper bag (stapled shut, for extra privacy), she headed to the front of the
store to conduct a little market research.
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