SkintightSkintight by Susan Andersen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4.5

This was a fantastic contemporary romance.

Treena McCall is a dancer in the show la Stravaganza on the Strip in Vegas. She has recently been widowed, but her husband Big Jim had been sick, so the year they’d been married had been taking care of him.
Jax Gallagher is a professional poker player whose father Big Jim married a Las Vegas showgirl. As if that didn’t strain his already strained relationship with his father even more, he found out 2 months after his father’s death that Big Jim had died. The night he found out, he got drunk and ended up wagering and losing a World Series signed baseball to a Russian mobster. Unfortunately that ball was now in the hands of his father’s gold-digging widow.

So Jax has a plan-he will sweep into the showgirl’s life, offer her money and a place in his bed, and then find the ball and give it to Elvis wannabe Sergei. But his plans go to crap when it turns out that Treena is not only not a slutty, gold-digging Showgirl, but she is actually a sweet, generous caring person, and OOPS! Jax kinda likes her.

One thing I really loved about this book was that Jax and Treena were real. They weren’t the steroetypes of a showgirl and a gambler. I live in Vegas so it was great for me to see local places featured, but more than that it was nice to see Treena and Jax do nice normal things off-Strip. Their tour of the dam cracked me up.

I also loved how Jax figured out that Treena wasn’t a gold-digger just by getting to know her, and her friends. I absolutely loved Treena. And when she found out that Jax was actually her late husband’s son, she was as betrayed and hurt as I would have been. When she asked him how long he’d known who she was and he told her since before he met her, and then told her his whole plan. Oh man, she kicked him out and curled up on the floor and cried til she had nothing left. I think anyone who has had her heart broken knows what that feels like.

And when Jax apologized and gave her back the baseball, the speech he gave? Even I’d have taken him back after that! But when he left her? Oh, I felt everything Treena felt. What a great couple. And I think that anyone who wants a great contemporary romance will really enjoy this one.

My favorite line: He could wait…He wanted her to come first; then, like the Marines, he was going in.

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