BEAUTIFUL LAWMAN

A reluctant stripper gives her first lap dance to a small-town sheriff in this old-school tongue-in-cheek romance.

Piper Walsh doesn’t want to work at a strip club, but it’s the only job she can get in the small town of Sweet Hill, where everyone knows that her brother was arrested for murder. She’s embarrassed when Hale Walters, the town’s new sheriff, summons her to the police department to collect her teenage sister after a night of mischief. She’s even more embarrassed when a bachelor party brings Hale to Piper’s club—and she lands right on his lap. But their attraction is undeniable, and this good boy might be better for the bad girl than she thinks. Although the story addresses issues of poverty and sexual harassment through a contemporary lens, it does so without losing the joy of a woman finding a chivalrous man (aka a male ally) right when she could use a change of scenery. When Piper says something wonderful like “you don’t own me...or my vagina” but moves in with him anyway, and Hale grabs her and says “this is mine” soon after agreeing not to pursue her romantically so as not to ruin her employment options, readers will be right there with her. No explanation needed. Sure, Hale “saves” her a couple of times, but he’s a cop; it’s his job. Piper throws a couple of good punches in this story, and that’s what counts. There’s a scene in which the wife of a lap-dance recipient confronts Piper that is laugh-out-loud funny, and the moment when Piper realizes people are rooting for her rather than judging her is something every woman, at some point in her life, has needed to hear.

Hilarious, sexy, and great fun.