Title: Under The Surface
Series: Alpha Ops #4
Author: Anne Calhoun
Publisher: St Martin's Press
Release Date: 31 May 2016
Synopsis
Welcome to Eye Candy, the East Side’s hottest nightclub where the bartenders are hot, the cocktails are fancy, and danger lurks just under the surface…
Eve Webber, the gorgeous and savvy owner of Eye Candy, knows better than anyone that growing up on the wrong side of the tracks comes with certain complications. Determined to run a clean business and fix up the East Side, Eve’s plans get temporarily stalled when a potential new hire walks into her bar. The sexual chemistry crackling between them is a potent distraction…even if she refuses to mix business with the promise of pleasure.
Detective Matt Dorchester lives by strict rules that have kept him alive in impossible situations. When his latest undercover assignment has him playing a bartender, his desire for the passionate owner has him breaking every single one. Eve is in danger and her life depends on his secrecy. But once their attraction reaches a climactic conclusion, Matt must make a desperate choice: Tell her the truth about who he really is—or risk a once-in-a-lifetime love to save her life?
*Can be read as standalone
Review
The first full length novel in the Alpha Ops series, is book
four but is my first read of Ann Calhoun. This can be read as a standalone. There is nothing like a good romantic suspense
and this lives up to the hype.
Eve Webber is a sassy go-getter of a woman, and having tried
to live up to her family’s request to go for a staid career in insurance, she
has finally achieved her dream of owning a nightclub – Eye Candy. Set up in the
East Side, Eve is wanting to bring in new business to the area to help the
local community. But having lived in the wrong side of town she has grown up
with the people who are now making business on the shady side. When she is
approached by a friend of the family to help him launder drug money, she takes
it on herself to start cleaning up the area by going to the police.
Matt Dorchester is assigned to go undercover in Eye Candy to
investigate Eve and if she is kosher with her reporting of money laundering but
also to protect her if she is. After all the bigger picture shows some
dangerous activity that is linked to the laundering. So firmly established as
the new bartender, Matt takes his role serious but trying to clamp down on his
attraction to Eve is playing a major ball ache to his well-established focus.
This was a little slow to start but then in the long run
this aided to build up the tension and atmospheric darkness of the danger both Eve and
Matt are involved in. The chemistry between the pairing was firmly embedded
from the start and I liked that even when Eve found out she had been hoodwinked
which brought out her hatred for the cop, she did not deny her carnal lust for
him. She was a really likeable character and was not one of these feeble and
weak heroines we are usually met with in romance. She was headstrong and
determined which was a welcome change.
Matt was deliciously broody and detached. His upbringing
resolute in his standoffish behaviours and not revealing his true feelings.
This helped his ability to portray different characters in his undercover work.
He was like an onion that was waiting to be peeled, one beautiful layer after
beautiful layer to reveal the amazing and gorgeous man underneath. It took Eve
to push his boundaries and unleash the passion within when the sparks spectacularly
exploded between them.
I would have liked just a little more danger infused with
the romance but overall an enjoyable and involving read. Four Stars.
*ARC kindly provided by the publishers St Martin's Press via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review
Excerpt
One of the most basic components of police work was learning to control a situation. A good undercover cop adjusted his personality and attitude to manage the situation according to his objectives. Matt was as good as they came, and that bluff should have worked.
Except Eve Webber raised the stakes without blinking an eye, and suddenly white-hot, explicit images of exactly how they’d finish what she’d started flashed in his brain . . . the skirt that barely covered her upper thighs, her desk, and that sleek mass of black hair she kept tugging free from the glossy color on her mouth. Heat flashed through him, the sensation shockingly intense.
Your job is to keep her alive, not get her into bed.
Eve emerged from her office around seven, iPhone in hand, and once she started working the room the vibe punched up several notches. Watching her smile and talk to the customers triggered something he couldn’t put his finger on.
During a brief lull, he turned to Tom, the steroid-buffed player working the station next to his. “She looks familiar.”
Tom hit the button on the blender to mix a raspberry daiquiri. “She won the newspaper’s sexiest female bartender contest two years running before she switched over to events management at the Met.” “Fucking moron” was implied at the end of that sentence.
A niggling memory surfaced of the newspaper’s Arts and Culture section getting passed around before the shift briefing a couple of years ago, right before he made the leap to detective and started working long-term undercover assignments. The article’s text meandered
alongside a full-length picture of Eve, hair tumbled into her face, hands braced on the bar behind her, wearing a white blouse unbuttoned deep in her cleavage, a tight, short black skirt, black stockings, and heels. Her slim legs were crossed at the ankle, and the angle of the shot made them seemed endless. He should have been focused on the briefing, but he’d given the photo a good thorough look before handing it to his partner, who’d looked even longer.
The provocative shot actually masked what won Eve the contest. In person she radiated vitality, a sheer visceral force that drew light, glances, attention. Even more surprising was the way she didn’t hoard the energy but rather turned it back on whomever she was talking to. Like that person was the only person in the room. Like she heard what they were saying, and maybe even what they weren’t saying.
Life flowed into this woman. She amplified it and sent it back out into the world, and he couldn’t stop watching her.
She checked in with her bouncer, the size of the Hulk, with gang ink disappearing into the sleeves of his T-shirt.
“That’s not an off-duty cop,” he said.
“Friend of the family,” Tom replied over the music. “Someone her dad knew.”
“Bars this busy usually hire the pros,” Matt said as he pulled out a fresh rack of glasses.
“You know what those assholes charge? They’re fucking expensive,” Tom said as he handed the drink across the bar. “And they’re nosy. Hot Stuff doesn’t like strangers in her business.”
Matt would bet his Jeep that Eve wouldn’t like being called Hot Stuff, but if Tom hadn’t figured that out, Matt wasn’t about to enlighten him. He watched as she cleared a couple of abandoned glasses off the bar in front of him and handed them to a passing busboy, then came around the corner of the bar, trailing her fingers along the polished wood. He handed the drink to a customer and gave her his full attention.
“How are you doing?” she asked, scanning his station.
“You tell me,” he replied, and if he got a little closer than necessary to hear what she was saying over the thumping dance music, well, he was just doing his job. Given the heat in the bar, he expected perfume, something musky and sexy. Instead the faintest scent of mint and rosemary drifted into the air between them when she tucked her hair behind her ears.
“I’m satisfied,” she said, not backing away. “The job’s yours if you want it.”
She was less than a breath away from him. A shift of his weight and a deep inhale, and they’d be breathing together like they were naked and horizontal. The heat sizzled and popped between them and it didn’t take training in body language to read the signals. Eve Webber wanted him.
Chad Henderson. His undercover identity, the man he was pretending to be. Not him.
No matter who he was today, neither he nor Chad could have her. He was supposed to keep her safe, make sure she didn’t change her mind about working with the department, monitor any appearances Murphy made in Eye Candy.
He wanted her.
“I want the job,” he said, not bothering to hide what he really meant.
She looked at him through the layered, sweeping fall of hair he wanted to brush back so he could see her eyes, her mouth. “Hang around after close. I’ll give you the paperwork to fill out and bring back with you tomorrow.”
He leaned in, as if he needed to speak with her, employee to employer, but didn’t want to shout over the music. “See you later, boss,” he rasped.
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