BURN FOR YOU
Series: Slow Burn #1
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Author: J.T. Geissinger
Release Date: October 17, 2017

The marriage is fake. But for a sassy chef and an arrogant billionaire, the sparks are real…

Jackson “The Beast” Boudreaux is rich, gorgeous, and unbelievably rude to the staff at Chef Bianca Hardwick’s New Orleans restaurant. Bianca would sooner douse herself in hot sauce than cook for Jackson again, but when he asks her to cater his fund-raiser, Bianca can’t refuse, knowing the cash will help pay her mother’s medical bills. Then Jackson makes another outrageous request: Marry me. The unconventional offer includes an enormous sum—money Bianca desperately needs, even if it does come with a contract—and a stunning ring.

The heir to a family bourbon dynasty, Jackson knows the rumors swirling around him. The truth is even darker. Still, he needs a wife to secure his inheritance, and free-spirited, sassy Bianca would play the part beautifully. Soon, though, their simple business deal evolves into an emotional intimacy he’s built walls to avoid.

As the passion heats up between them, Bianca and Jackson struggle to define which feelings are real and which are for show. Is falling for your fake fiancé the best happy ending…or a recipe for disaster?

AMAZON 

She was my religion. My north and south, my heaven and earth, the axis of rightness around which everything had suddenly aligned. For the first time in my life, all my polarized parts worked as one, humming happily along in harmony with the universe, finally understanding their place. 

Looking for a perfectly paced slow burn romance? Well, I’ve got your fix right here! This series is so appropriately titled, and for this slow burn lover? I gobbled it right up.

Bianca Hardwick is a talented chef that’s determined to get her restaurant off the ground and make her mother proud. Her signature menu created around her favorite bourbon is keeping her restaurant packed, but it also brings the attention of a particular brute apply known throughout Louisiana as “The Beast”. And after being on the receiving end of his attitude, Bianca can see that title is more than earned.

The first time I laid eyes on the man known throughout the state of Louisiana as “the Beast,” I thought he couldn’t possibly be as bad as his reputation. As it turned out, I was wrong. He was worse.

Jackson is the name behind the Boudreaux bourbon that is his family’s legacy. But what starts as a look at a woman that’s using his family’s bourbon to get guests in her restaurant, actually turns into something else. At first it’s an offer to cater his fundraiser dinner. Next? A proposal of marriage.

Jackson needs to be married by the time he’s 35 in order to receive the rest of his trust. The problem is? His birthday is quite literary right around the corner. Knowing he’ll never trust a woman with his heart ever again, he knows the best alternative is Bianca. She needs money for her ailing mother’s medical care and he needs a wife in name only. What’s a mutually beneficial arrangement between two people that can barely stand to be in the same room together?

But the more you get to know Jax, the more you see beyond the grumpy and brusque personality to a very broken and vulnerable man beneath. The more time he and Bianca spend together, the more he yearns for what could be but likely never would. Bianca goes from hating him to tolerating him to something so much deeper. This is a slow burn in every sense of the word. It takes these two a while to finally see beyond their assumptions of each other. It takes a while for Jax to really open up and let Bianca in to the dark crevices of his heart and memories. But when she gets in there? There’s no turning back.

No one calls me Jax. No one but you.” When her lips curved up at the corners, I felt like I’d been living my life up to then at the bottom of a dark well filled with trash and slimy water, and someone had just lifted the lid and lowered me a ladder.

With a colorful cast of secondary characters, a sweet and sassy romance, plenty of emotions, and an enemies to lovers trope unlike many I’ve read lately, Burn For You was one fantastic read.