Seducing Wall St: Seduction In The City, #4

By J.F. Lowe

Callum couldn't help but remember that single split-second image of her that he'd caught. Beautiful, no beautiful wasn't enough to describe how truly stunning she was but then there was the sheer terror on her face… if he was any other man, he'd say that it filled him with a desire to protect her and make that fear go away.

But he wasn't any other man. He was Callum Buffet, investor extraordinaire, playboy who didn't get attached. Being a playboy didn't mean he couldn't begin to list the number of things that he would give up for a chance to f*ck her curvy brains out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seduction and Sin Publishing
• Release date: Dec 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9780645351606

J.F. Lowe

USA Today bestselling author, J.F. Lowe is renowned for writing spine-tingling thrillers, heart-Wickedly Innocent military romances with laugh-out-loud dialogue, alpha males, and absolutely sizzling sex scenes.

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Acknowledgements

I want to say a special thanks to the people who make this series work. As my husband and I traveled around the United States of America in 2019, we were lucky enough to go to some of the amazing places and to meet some absolutely fabulous people. These places and people were my inspiration. Like the other books in this series Seducing Wall St was brought about by our week in New York and from standing outside the New York Stock Exchange. 

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is the largest securities exchange globally, hosting 82% of the S&P 500, as well as 70 of the biggest corporations in the world. It is a publicly-traded company that provides a platform for buying and selling over nine million corporate stocks and securities a day.  The New York Stock Exchange is the busiest and most important financial market in the world, and its stocks are traded by investors worldwide.

In 1792, the NYSE was established at 68 Wall Street, where 24 brokers and merchants outlined the rules for trading securities in the Buttonwood Agreement. The organization was initially named New York Stock & Exchange Board, and it became the New York Stock Exchange in 1863. At that time, only male traders took part in the NYSE, and it was only in 1967 when a female trader named Muriel Siebert was allowed to participate in trading.

In 1971, NYSE became a not-for-profit corporation, and in 2006, a publicly-traded company. During this time, traders and the public started using an electronic system to trade stocks. In 2007, NYSE merged with Euronext, and in 2008, NYSE acquired the American Stock Exchange. The Intercontinental Exchange later purchased the NYSE for $8.2 billion.

All trades on the New York Stock Exchange follow a continuous auction format. Brokers trade stocks as buyers and sellers auction securities for the best price. Though famous for its trading floor, most stock transactions are now electronic, with computers matching buyers and sellers.

Despite most transactions now happening through electronic platforms, the NYSE is still a hybrid market. This allows stockbrokers to send orders through either the electronic platform or to the trading floor, where orders are carried out by floor brokers.

The NYSE originally used a gavel to signal the start and end of trading, but in 1870, it switched to a Chinese gong. When it moved to its present location, the gong was replaced by a brass bell. The opening bell rings at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time, while the closing bell can be heard at 4:00 p.m.

A significant part of the stock exchange's brand, the opening, and closing bells, are also used to mark a financial-related event or celebrate an important event in New York City. It is an honor to be invited to ring the bell on the NYSE. While many who are asked to ring the bell are business executives, many celebrities have rung the bell. The privilege was also given to the police and fire departments of New York City, who answered the call of duty during the 9/11 attacks. The sound of these bells from outside the NYSE during our New York City trip inspired this story.

To add a little interest to the novella, the character Callum was inspired by news reports we would hear about in the 1990s of the Warren Edward Buffett. Buffett is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is currently the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and is considered one of the most successful investors globally. With a staggering net worth of over $105.2 billion as of November 2021, making him the world's tenth-wealthiest person.

About this Book

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Callum couldn’t help but remember that single split-second image of her that he’d caught. Beautiful, no, the word not nearly enough to describe how truly stunning she was, but then there was the sheer terror on her face... if he was any other man, he’d say that it filled him with a desire to protect her and make that fear go away.

But he wasn’t any other man. He was Callum Buffet, billionaire’s nephew, investor extraordinaire, and playboy who didn’t get attached. Being a playboy didn’t mean he couldn’t begin to list the number of things that he would give up for a chance to f*ck her curvy brains out.

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Chapter 1

Olivia Michaels had thought herself a cultured, sophisticated woman. She’d thought that visiting New York would be a walk in the park, just one more item to cross off her bucket list. However, as she stood at the intersection of what felt like a thousand cars and a million people, she was willing to accept that she might have been a tad overconfident in her own worldliness.

The sights and sounds were beyond overwhelming, a cascade of neon signs and flashing headlights. Twilight was just beginning to fall, and far from quieting down, the city was really just starting to come alive. It was her first day in town, and it already felt like it might be her last.

Her feet ached, but she couldn’t find anywhere to sit down. Everywhere looked crowded and bursting at the seams, with people waiting outside every single restaurant she saw. Were they just socializing or waiting for a table? Back in Australia, she would have had the confidence to ask, but after an unfortunate little run-in with some surely wonderful people in the airport that hadn’t been able to shut up about how exotic her accent sounded, she was a little leery about opening her mouth unless absolutely necessary.

She found herself drawn to the front of a massive department store, with sprawling window displays showing off every sort of fashion and accouterment that she could have imagined and then some. Of course, since she took more than two seconds to stare, Olivia was then promptly jostled by the human tide that surged around her. A chorus of Quit standing around! echoed in her head, though she was pretty sure that nobody actually said such a clichéd thing aloud.

Sorry, sorry, the Australian tourist mumbled as she tried to make herself as small as possible, though that was a fairly tall order given how curvy she was. A blessing at times, but a curse far more often.

And then her belly started to rumble. Again.

Shit, she muttered under her breath as she tried to peer over the heads of the crowd, but to no avail. She hadn’t considered herself particularly short, but this little adventure was quickly proving her wrong about a lot of things.

She really did need to eat. The last time she’d eaten had been on the plane, and that had just been the smallest of snacks. Nuts couldn’t keep a girl fed forever.

But where to go? Everywhere looked so busy, and maybe she just needed to find somewhere that was a little less swamped.

And so Olivia joined the human river on the sidewalk and let it carry her past mouth-watering possibility after mouth-watering possibility.

That pizza looked so delicious! And everyone was folding it in half, with its thin crust and stretchy, molten cheese.

But then there was Chinese food! And Greek! And hot dogs!

Olivia had never imagined that she would get excited about hot dogs, but here she was, being pushed and pulled past a food cart where people were getting the most luxurious and opulent of sausage-based concoctions, towering with toppings and nearly too big to fit in a person’s mouth.

However, she was spared from having to actually march up to the stand and yell her order by the tumult of the crowd. Clearly, she wasn’t being consulted on where she wanted to go, so she just had to hope that it ended up being somewhere that she could grab a decent bite to eat. Ideally, it would be somewhere that was a little quieter than the terrifyingly large street that she was currently on.

Suddenly, Oliva tripped and nearly stumbled over, but a hand reached out to steady her, then vanished as quickly as it had appeared. While her initial reaction was that maybe New Yorkers weren’t quite as abrasive and apathetic as they first appeared, the sentiment was definitely tainted by the possibility that they just hadn’t wanted her to become even more of a hazard and irritant than she already was, and if there was any way that she could become even more of a burden to all these busy people, it was by collapsing and getting trampled.

And then, as Olivia pulled herself out of those admittedly dreary thoughts, she realized that everyone was gone. Well, not everyone, for there were still dozens of people milling around and past her, but there was no longer a suffocating force threatening to crush her at every second. She was no longer being forced to go with the flow just to stay alive. There was now plenty of room for people to meander on their merry way.

She took a deep breath, then mildly regretted it. The air was... not pristine. Still,