Irreversible Decision

by Heidi Stark

In a whirlwind of passion and danger, they shared a night of unforgettable connection. Little did they know, fate had more surprises in store.

She won a coveted spot at the chef's counter, expecting a culinary delight. What she got was an unexpected bonus—an older, attractive man with an undeniable spark. Amidst the chaos of gunmen and danger, he became her hero, leading to a night of unbridled passion.

Fast forward six months, and the twists keep coming. Her company is taken over, and the confident figure striding into her office is none other than her one-night stand—Blake Turner, now revealed by name. But this isn't the man she remembers. He's not the kind soul from the restaurant; he's transformed into an arrogant, powerful force.

As they're thrust together in a high-stakes corporate game, the chemistry from that fateful night is overshadowed by his cruel demeanor. Blake revels in control, and she's just become a pawn in his empire. Can she navigate this unexpected turn, or will the sparks that once flew ignite a different kind of fire—one that threatens to consume them both? Get ready for a sizzling tale where passion collides with power, and love is anything but predictable.

This is a grumpy sunshine billionaire boss romance. Reader discretion is advised.

Genres: Contemporary Romance

256 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 22, 2022

About the author

Heidi Stark writes contemporary dark romance with a twist of danger, desire, and the occasional sports scandal.

Known for her badass heroines and irresistibly morally grey men, Heidi has captivated readers with 20+ titles, including the gripping Blood and Sand series, the fiery Volcano of Pain, and her highly anticipated new release, Beautiful Terror.

Originally hailing from the lush landscapes of New Zealand, Heidi now calls the U.S. home, where she shares her creative chaos with her feline sidekick, Fang.

When she’s not crafting heart-pounding stories, Heidi is a whirlwind of energy—hitting up barre classes, devouring true crime podcasts, dabbling in roller derby, people-watching, or indulging in her guilty pleasure: reality TV binges. Always on the hunt for inspiration, she’s probably plotting her next book—or her next travel adventure.

Dark, daring, and deliciously addictive—Heidi’s world is one you’ll never want to leave.

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Reviews

[Jess Morgan · Rating 1 out of 5]

While my husband and I are compatible in countless ways, there's one thing we've never quite managed to agree on: the line between "bad enough for a hate read/watch" and just plain bad. He insists on either Ed Wood-level incompetence or a critical research failure before he can find it amusing. I prefer stories that are set on Earth, circa now, with a recognizably human backdrop, but whose characters' terrible actions face zero real-life consequences. I enjoy seeing how much the author lets her hero(ine)(s) get away with before they cease to be people and start to be a package of tropes made flesh. That's more fun for me than any "monster" costume that's just a diving helmet on top of a gorilla suit.

So, other than the OG Fifty Shades series—for which my husband provided delightful audio commentary, available for listening on an old laptop that I really need to retrieve the files from—I've had to take on quite a few billionaire romances all by myself. No subgenre has ever provided a richer seam of terrible men and women who are too mindless for punishment. And no entry within that subgenre was smelted into more valuable base metal than Heidi Stark's Irreversible Decision, which sadly does not apply to the anesthetic-free peenectomy that the hero would have received in a just universe.



We open with a woman meeting a hot suit guy at some tasting menu event, which is interrupted by masked and armed robbers. These masked and armed robbers have absolutely nothing to do with the main story and will never come back. You could have had the dinner spoiled by a herd of rampaging bison, or a meteor, or an uncontrollable grease fire, and nothing would change. The point is that it's an intense moment from which sex ensues once the woman and hot suit guy, who doesn't get a name yet, escape unscathed.



Six months later, we learn that even though the heroine introduced herself as Stephanie, her real name is Lisa.



She's an HR coordinator at some company that's "disrupting e-commerce" somehow but hemorrhaging money, making them a prime buyout opportunity for private equity vultures. And the vulture at hand? OH MY GOD IT'S HOT SUIT GUY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



His name is Blake, by the way. He schedules a private meeting that day with Lisa, and nobody asks why a PE vulture would require a private meeting with someone at the coordinator level. In that meeting he refers to how she already "learned about some of [his] other talents"; implies that he'll fire a ton of people, including her if she doesn't "make [him] [her] top priority"; and doesn't "base [his] business decisions on how good somebody feels when I'm inside them."

Lisa? Now would be a good time to make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date.

But she doesn't. Instead she listens to her work friend Dabney prattle on about how hot he is. The "work friend prattling on about how hot he is" scene is a common billionaire-romance feature that I've never experienced in 11 years of working full-time. Maybe I haven't worked with enough hot people. Dabney gushes about how she's going to "rub one out" to Blake later. So as much as he's setting up a hostile work environment, it's already pretty hostile. Who the hell talks like that at the office?



Lisa goes out to dinner with Blake at his insistence. After she helps him figure out who might be worth firing first, he now propositions her for sex. She refuses, saying she wants to keep their dealings professional. And he says: "Okay, well, I'll let you think that you have a say for now."

Let's recap the Title VII violations taking place in this one scene. His request is overtly sexual. She's making it clear that it's unwelcome. She interprets that last sentence as an implication that she doesn't "have a choice" but to have sex with him again. She only went to dinner with him because she felt turning his demand down would be "career-limiting."



We get a brief glimpse into Blake's twisted mind. In short, money is God and Lisa is hot. And also this: "She'd better do exactly as I say as long as I'm her boss. Because after all, she's dispensable. Just like everyone else that I control."

Why do I feel like he has a closet containing a vast supply of heavy-duty garbage bags, replacement circular saw blades, and bleach?

Then we meet Lisa's friends. First there's Tara.



And then there's Skyler.



They're useless. The horny gal pal and the horny gay pal are always, always useless. I'm just making their presence known in case you happen to be playing Billionaire Romance Trope Bingo. Which I really should make.

The next day, Blake threatens Lisa's job security—or, as she puts it, "threaten[s] my job security"—twice before calling her "[his] little office slut" and ordering her to put on a little black dress, get picked up in his chauffeured car, and taken to his place for "dessert" on Friday night.

I should mention that as much as Lisa finds this "outrageous" and desperately wants to "come up with a way to get out of it," she's also mega-horny. And as we all know, as long as he's a hot suit guy, the horniness will win. But when she does attempt to get out of it, he threatens her job security again, orders her into a closed-door meeting, tells her to break up with the guy she's just started seeing, and gropes her.



She tells this to Skyler later. "It sounds like he really likes you," he remarks. See? Useless.

Lisa does end up dumping that other guy, who we meet for the first and last time while he's being dumped. But not because Blake told her to. Because the other guy has an annoying mother and Lisa's not that into him anyway. How convenient. She decides to hide the dumping from Blake, who reminds her AT WORK that he has the cock to end all cocks and the other guy probably doesn't.

The next conversation is between Lisa and Vanessa, the head of HR. Don't get your hopes up. Vanessa never hears about any of this. Because Lisa. Doesn't. Tell her.



JESUS W. CHRIST. Need I remind you what actually happens in cases like this? Either the junior woman acquiesces to the senior man's demands out of fear, or she flips her shit and gets him MeToo'd out of there. Because in real life, he'd look and/or smell like Harvey Weinstein and SHE WOULDN'T BE INTO IT.

But because he looks like himself, she abruptly stops being offended, makes herself up all sexy-like, gets in the car, and heads on over. When she gets there, he abruptly stops being an all-out assgoblin and turns into an open, smiling, complimentary, unmaterialistic family man (he has three sons not appearing in this scene). And then they abruptly eat spaghetti and have sex.



No kidding. The whole sex scene, from entering the bedroom to snuggling into the afterglow, takes about one page. I've been conditioned to expect chapter-length tedium from billionaire-romance sex scenes. The first one in this book even had a section break in the middle of their undressing.

I've been a professional copywriter and editor for 11 years. I've spent my entire professional life agonizing over every punctuation mark. It must be nice to be Heidi Stark and give absolutely no fucks.

Back at work, Blake slips immediately back into assgoblin mode. That is, until his one of his two aging business partners gets a little mouth-breathy with Lisa. Then, from what she can tell from outside the room, Blake gets shouty and slammy. She even wonders if he's getting violent... y. This is her cue that he's dangerously unpredictable and she shouldn't be with him, which may be the second-smartest thought she's had since puberty. I say "second" because she later starts applying for new jobs. Awesome.

Then again, we're only 56% of the way through the book.



A conversation that happens:

Dabney: Are you okay? You're always focused, but you're on a whole other level today.

Lisa: Yeah, just in the zone.

Dabney: I get in the zone sometimes. It's usually when I'm boning a hot guy.

Please tell me it's not crazy to think that every coworker Dabney's ever had wishes she'd just shut the fuck up. PLEASE.

Throughout the story, Blake has been convinced that the company is bleeding cash because there's some sort of fraud or embezzlement going on. He's been making Lisa get to the bottom of it, because "HR coordinator" and "forensic accountant" are apparently the exact same job. I would have argued that they're still kind of a startup, and successful startups often get overhead bloat before realizing how fragile their success is (hello, Meta!). But it turns out he was right, and Lisa found the embezzler. Whoopety hoopety. And she's about as excited as I am, because all she cares about is the fact that Blake is being enough of an assgoblin to bring her to tears. About time.

So she has a heart-to-heart with Anastasia.



No, no, not that one, thank God. This one is Blake's "chief advisor," who despite her title is basically his girl Friday, and also a smokeshow who makes Lisa jealous. Anastasia assures Lisa that Blake totes <3 her 4ever and is just being an assgoblin because business is hard. She also adds that she's no threat to their happiness because she likes girls. Glad that obstacle's out of the way. Did I say obstacle? No, that's not right. "Obstacle" would imply that it mattered.

More of Blake's POV:

I know I'm a catch. I'm a very attractive man by any standard, and then there's the fact that I have far more money than I could ever hope to spend. It's clear that I could have as many women as I want, all at the same time, if that's what I desire.

And he's so humble, too! Unfortunately for the "smorgasbord" of women who are lining up to get into his turquoise-inlaid Roman bath full of whipped cream, the only one he wants now is Lisa. But if she keeps being an "infuriating" "bitch," he'll have to end it.



Really, Blake? She's the infuriating one? That's like Sarah Palin accusing Lauren Boebert of being white trash.

Lisa hangs out with Skyler one evening. They end up at the same bar as Blake and his partners. He catches them snuggling. He marches up to them and yanks Skyler's arm off Lisa. So now we can add battery to his list of offenses. But she's infuriating.

After Lisa assures Blake that Skyler shits rainbows, she takes him back to her place, where he apologizes and they have sex.



But she still feels the need to see if their relationship, such as it is, is built to last. Her heuristic: Can they enjoy themselves together at Skyler's Halloween party?

I'm completely serious. She's testing the potential of their coupledom by making him wear a thrift-shop costume and have fun at someone else's animal-ears-and-booze do. (She's a "sexy skeleton," which I guess means she's dressing up as Kate Moss, and he's SpongeBob. She should have gone for the two-person horse costume.) But they have sex at this party, so... I guess the experiment was successful?

Not so fast. Some rag snapped a photo of Blake, his ex-wife-to-be, and their kids, speculating that the fam is back together. Lisa doesn't take it well.



Now I was worried that the introduction of vomit would lead to an unexpected pregnancy, because birth control always stops working when the plot demands it, but THANK FUCKING GOD we're not going there. What Lisa doesn't know is that Blake's ex-wife cheated on him with a former business partner, and she already signed off on his new relationship. He has to stalk her all the way to the reception-free island where she's vacationing to tell her that. She tells him off for this, calling it "pathetic" (damn straight), and delivers this bit of narm:

In my haste, I accidentally knock over my glass and it falls to the ground.... it shatters on the concrete floor and red liquid oozes onto the ground. It's symbolic, like a knife that has been plunged into a heart. My heart. And his actions are the knife.

Somewhere out there is an English lit teacher who has read an essay Heidi Stark wrote about Lady Macbeth's "Out, damned spot!" soliloquy. I will bake that teacher a cake in exchange for a copy of that essay.

Blake apologizes. Again. They have sex. Again. A woman who Lisa mistook for a threat assures her that Blake lurves her for realsies. Again. They make up. Again. They get engaged a few weeks later.



I think we've all had a boyfriend whose only redeeming qualities were his looks and bedroom prowess. That real-life boyfriend deserved to be dumped, deleted, and never spoken to again. And so does this book boyfriend. Except through lawyers.

[Coco.V]

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