What You Need by Lorelei James Series: Need You #1
Series Rating:
Published by Signet on January 5th 2016
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 368
Format: Paperback
Source: Purchased
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New York Times bestseller Lorelei James introduces a new family for readers to fall in love with in the Need You series. The Lund name is synonymous with wealth and power in Minneapolis-St. Paul. But the four Lund siblings will each discover true love takes a course of its own…
As the CFO of Lund Industries, Brady Lund is the poster child for responsibility. But eighty hour work weeks leave him little time for a life outside his corner office. His brothers stage an intervention and drag him to a seedy night club...where he sees her, the buttoned up blonde from the secretarial pool who's starred in his fantasies for months.
Lennox Greene is a woman with a rebellious past—which she carefully conceals beneath her conservative clothes. She knows flirting with her sexy, but aloof boss during working hours is a bad idea. So when Brady shows up at her favorite dive bar, sans his usual snappy suit, and catches her cutting loose, she throws caution aside and dares him to do the same.
After sparks fly, Brady finds keeping his hands off Lennox during office hours is harder than expected. While she makes him feel alive for the first time in years, a part of him wonders if she’s just using him to get ahead. And Lennox must figure out if Brady wants her for the accomplished woman she is—or the bad girl she was.
Brady Lund was attracted to Lennox Greene the first time he saw her. In fact, he walked into a wall. Unfortunately, despite being the CFO of Lund Industries, it takes him another ten months to even learn her name. In some ways, he’s a typical billionaire romance hero. He works too much and doesn’t have time for social niceties or dating. But he’s a lot more down to earth than most billionaires. His family is close, not backstabbing or petty. He gets along with his siblings and his parents; in fact, they all attend football games together when the team is at home. (His youngest brother plays for the local pro football team, and they all go to support him.) He recognizes that even though he works hard to maintain his position and his wealth, he received them initially due to nothing more than lucky circumstances.
Lennox is a good heroine. She’s smart and grounded and a good match for Brady. She respects him as her boss and employer without feeling intimidated or thinking of herself as less-than when she’s around him. She recognizes that we all have parts of ourselves that we hide away at work, but she knows how to let those parts out to breathe outside of the office, allowing her to have a work-life balance that Brady hasn’t figured out yet. She has a crappy past that she works hard to move on from, and she’s afraid to lose that. Even though Lund Industries doesn’t have a specific no-fraternization rule, it’s still a sticky situation when an executive as high as Brady begins dating someone in the secretarial pool. Lennox knows that if their relationship turns sour, she’s the one who will lose her job and her security, not him.
For his part, Brady isn’t initially convinced that Lennox isn’t using him for his name and his money. This hasn’t ever happened to him, he’s the rare billionaire hero without a conniving ex in his past, he’s just concerned that it could happen. It’s not an invalid concern, but it quickly becomes apparent to him and everyone else that Lennox isn’t playing games like that, despite the difference in their current circumstances.
These two made sense together. They balance each other out and complement each other the way the best couples do. I never questioned what one saw in the other beyond great sex. The great sex was a byproduct of how they felt about each other, not the other way around.
Speaking of the sex, I will say that the heat level was significantly lower than Lorelei James’ other series. This definitely comes in as contemporary romance, not erotic romance. The characters are no less real, and the story no less compelling, but there was a lot less sex than I usually expect from James.
About Lorelei James
Lorelei James is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of romances in the Rough Riders series, the Blacktop Cowboys® series, the Mastered series, the Need You series and the Legacy series.
Lorelei also writes dark, gritty mysteries under the name Lori Armstrong. Her books in the Julie Collins and Mercy Gunderson series have won Shamus Awards and the Willa Cather Literary Award. Lorelei lives in western South Dakota.
