Review: Fantastic short story
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 24, 2012
This short story hit all the right notes and immediately pulled the reader in. It was by turns sweet, sexy, hot and erotic and had a surprisingly strong emotional vibe. As another reviewer noted, this would make a fantastic full length novel. Ok, first up: I loved the whole idea of Evangeline and her 1nightstand company. She came off as a very business savvy lady who truly had the best interests of her clients at heart. Think of someone like Mr. Roarke of Fantasy Island, where a client makes their needs known and the ultimate fantasy can be had for a price. At any rate, Evangeline gives the Castillo Hotel chain massive amounts of business via her matchmaking services, and the owner of it's flagship hotel in Vegas, Jack Castillo,  meets all the requirements of Eve's latest client, Leah. Eve leans on Jack to do her a favor and meet Leah but she has an ulterior motive, too. Eve suspects that Jack needs Leah just as much as Leah needs Jack. Jack, being no dummy, knows that it's not simply a meet and greet, but that Leah is looking for a one night stand with lots of hot, sweaty, grinding sex and he has mixed emotions about being a stand in for her deceased fiance so Leah can get closure. Leah is a pocket barbie, a tiny Californian who was on her school's surf team, who is now a tiny airline flight attendant with her long blond hair, big blue eyes and  delicate bone structure. Leah has been to counseling, but finds she needs closure regarding the loss of her fiance. She decides the best way to put the past in its place is to create new memories with someone else, but she also wants someone that looks like her fiance did to have that final goodbye.  She's not the type of woman that Jack usually squires around, but Eve knows her business and when Jack sets eyes on Leah, he is by turns exasperated and turned on by this pixie of a woman with her luminous eyes and fragile emotional state. Jack's two heads battle it out: the head with the brain that says no sex with a woman still dealing with the fallout from the death of her fiance(that suspiciously looks like him) and the other head making a permanent dent on his zipper begging to be let out into the wild. This is a M/F romantica that does have some vanilla sex and what I would term a HEA in Evangeline's matchmaking book.