Looking Real Good
C. Morgan
BrixBaxter Publishing
Contents
Description
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Epilogue
More Good Reads
Come Swoon With Us
About the Author
Copyright
Description
I’m the guy every woman wants to go home with at the end of the night.
One problem though. I don’t have time for romance.
Hell, I can barely squeeze in a one-night stand here and there.
As a self-made billionaire in the tech space, my work is my life.
Unfortunately, my reputation as a rich jerk precedes me and isn’t entirely off.
Thankfully, my sister is a successful public-relations consultant and has an idea, a way to soften my image a little.
Her best friend is the answer.
But the woman that shows up to help me with philanthropy looks nothing like the girl I remember.
She’s rocking her jeans and T-shirt in ways that leave me wanting far more than I should.
Pretty soon, the lines are blurred between me wanting to help my company and me wanting to help myself to another serving of her.
I’m all for looking like a good guy to help my profits soar, but I’ve got bad boy things on my mind.
This woman is stealing my attention. She’s looking real good.
God help us both.
Dedication
To my awesome readers! I’m so blessed by you guys. Never in a million years would I have thought I could spend my life telling stories and reminding people that love is always the answer. And I’m only able to do it because of you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you a million times! I love you guys.
C. Morgan
Chapter 1
Lukas
My public-relations consultant flicked off the lights in the conference room. She held a remote in her hand and pointed it at the projector at the far end of the conference table. She clicked through a couple of slides, each one lighting up the room in the predominant color of the slide. Red, blue, white, green. Finally, she stopped clicking, and she read the words aloud on the presented screen.
“The negative shift in media and public opinion toward tech billionaires,” she said. Lisa’s tone was monotonous but assertive, and her gaze slid toward me as if to double-check that I was in fact paying attention.
I nodded for her to continue.
Lisa, my PR consultant and younger half-sister, clicked past the index page of the slideshow she’d created to inform me just how out of favor I had fallen. According to her, wealthy men and women like myself were being seen more like villains than successful business people. She’d been breathing down my neck about how I needed to do better.
Better than building my own empire from the ground up? Better than providing a stable work environment for my employees with full-ride benefits and generous salaries? Better than the property and the mansion I owned? Better than pulling myself out of the slums and becoming one of Seattle’s wealthiest and most eligible bachelors?
Not that I had time to date.
We’d bickered about this nonsense for weeks now—possibly months. She wouldn’t relent, and neither would I, so she’d not so subtly sabotaged me in my own damn conference room this morning with a slide show she’d prepared. Her intention, it seemed, was to showcase how disliked I was.
It was a great way to start my Monday.
A picture of dozens of families leaving a rundown apartment somewhere downtown filled the screen. Lisa didn’t flip to the next slide. She turned to me with one hand on her hip. She set the remote down on the conference table and stared expectantly at me.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Your kind are seen as responsible for this.” She gestured at the screen. “Money-hungry elites are driving up rents in big cities. Consequently, low-income or no-income tenants and their families are driven out onto the street with nowhere to go. The consequences of this are severe, Lukas.”
“I haven’t evicted anyone.”
My half-sister carried on like I hadn’t even spoken. “Perhaps not directly. Regardless, other millionaires and billionaires are portrayed as making fortunes and then failing to give back to their communities. They’re instead choosing to continue lining their pockets. They disregard any and all negative repercussions of them pursuing yet more wealth and—”
“Lisa,” I said dryly, “are you trying to tell me I’m a jackass?”
My sister blinked impassively at me. “Perhaps.”
“You’ve been telling me the same thing since we were kids.”
“And I was right all along. Imagine that?”
I scoffed without humor.
Lisa sighed. “Lukas, just let me get through my presentation, okay? I know you don’t want to sit around and listen to this, but please try to learn something from it. I’m not telling you this as your sister. I’m telling you this as your PR rep. I’m doing my job. You know, the job you hired me to do?”
I sighed. “Fine.”
Lisa flipped through a couple more slides. They flashed images of more people being evicted from low-income housing apartments and townhomes. Next came pictures of wealthy CEOs, many of whom I knew in the flesh, who had bank accounts as overflowing as my own. She stopped flipping through slides and landed on a picture of my face.
I recognized the picture. It was of me sitting in my office in this very building. Across the top of the image were the words “Success at Whose Cost?”. In the picture, I wore a bespoke dark gray suit and a smirk. The Seattle skyline sat behind me against a backdrop of blue skies. The article had not reflected well on me, and Lisa had been doing damage control over the last three months since it had been published.
“That was a good suit,” I said as I stroked my chin.
Lisa huffed. “Focus, Lukas. Articles like this have swayed public opinion. You’re being lumped in with bankers, oil barons, and Wall Street tycoons. Tech CEOs like yourself
