Total pages in book: 18
Estimated words: 17220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 86(@200wpm)___ 69(@250wpm)___ 57(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 17220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 86(@200wpm)___ 69(@250wpm)___ 57(@300wpm)
When marketing consultant Veronica accidentally crashes the wrong Zoom meeting and brutally critiques their presentation, she’s shocked to receive a job offer from the company’s intriguing CEO. Their professional email exchanges quickly turn flirty, but Veronica’s mind keeps drifting to her reserved but gorgeous new neighbor. As Valentine’s Day approaches, she’ll discover that sometimes the most improbable meet-cute can lead to the perfect match.
Christina Lauren’s Accidentally Yours is part of The Improbable Second Chances, stories for star-crossed lovers and hopeless romantics. They can be read or listened to in one sitting. Let’s do it again
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
January 14, 2026
iMessage
Veronica C.
Story time.
Clara C.
Yes!! I was just looking for an excuse to stop working.
So you know how I had that job interview today
Haven’t you already had like seven this week??
Well yes my adorable and fully employed sister, that’s how it goes in this market. Anyway, I had another one today, ostensibly for Chief Marketing Officer at BioLight
Is that like Bud Light, but by biologists, so it’s like actually good beer?
They use bioluminescence in their biochemical assays to determine ATP levels. But I like your answer better so let’s go with that.
You really did your research.
So, the interview is at 10am. Of course I’m at my desk ten minutes early, mouse hovering over the zoom link.
Such a Virgo.
And also very Virgo of me is to keep my camera off until everyone else has turned theirs on. I’m very glad I do this
Because
Somehow I ended up in a Zoom room with a bunch of tech bros, having a meeting in progress that I wasn’t actually invited to
So wait.
It wasn’t BioLight?
No, I have no idea what the company was
That’s freaking hilarious
It was a marketing meeting, and one of the bros was presenting
And when I say it was the worst slide deck I’d ever seen
I mean it was the worst, and that includes slides that Daniella made when I was babysitting her and she randomly opened PowerPoint on my laptop and started key smashing
lol I still feel guilty that my child broke so many keys on your laptop
Who uses the T and E and space keys? Come on.
Anyway, I listened to the presentation for a few minutes
Because in my head I’m like
These guys need marketing help
And there you were
There I was
Just an uninvited black box on the screen
Little did they know how much I could do for them
Alas, I remembered that I spent the last four years working with these same kinds of guys, saving them from their bad graphics and terrible pitches and watching them be promoted over me until, finally, I was let go with a paltry six-month severance
Preach it, sis
And I just got so mad suddenly that I gave so many ideas to the company and they took them, signed accounts, handed out bonuses to everyone at the level just above mine, and then let me go when I complained to HR that I was overdue for a promotion.
I’m just over here cheering out loud
Like screw these guys and their basic Keynote template slides and their recycled ideas!
I don’t think anyone noticed I’d joined, so I carefully changed my username from my email to just my initials and unmuted and told them their slides were absolute garbage, but about ten times more brutal, and then logged off.
My younger sister: my hero.
Chapter One
Veronica
Ihaven’t felt this good in weeks.
It’s pathetic, maybe, that it’s not because I have a job offer on the table—even better would be two offers I could pit against each other—but simply because I gave some tech bros a lashing and then peaced out. Whatever, I’m putting a tick in the win column anyway.
I’ve been carrying so much pent-up frustration and bitterness about the terrible years I spent at my previous job and how they then ended my four years of employment: in a flaccid HR meeting with a representative expressing all the concern of a bot reading a script, which concluded with me sighing a defeated, “Thanks for the mehpathy, Chad.” The resentment had been building and building, but after today’s Zoom mishap it’s just . . . evaporated.
My sister, Clara, says I could maybe have anticipated that a job with a marketing firm douchily named PitchSlapped would go south, but I swear it wasn’t terrible at first. I was spring green out of my MBA and was the dangerous combination of idealistic and buried beneath student loans when they offered me a marketing associate position. PitchSlapped came to me with a six-figure offer, including free lunches for all employees, a game room for break time, an in-house gym, company ski retreats to Vail, and five weeks’ vacation. No other job offer even came close.
They promoted me quickly to marketing manager and then associate vice director of marketing, a meaningless title created by some idiot being paid way too much money and which I hated seeing on my business cards. I languished there, giving all my best ideas in the higher-level meetings while not being invited to the higher-level salary, stock options, or bonuses. Company retreats turned out to be full of coke and misogyny. Vacation time was granted but not expected to be taken. The game room had a pool table, a Grand Theft Auto arcade console, and a pinball machine called Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons.
It begs the question: “But, Veronica, you stayed for four years?” Perhaps not the best evidence of self-preservation skills, but even if I have a chip on my shoulder from the experience, at least after those four years with the PitchSlapped salary, I don’t have any student loans.