MASQUERADING WITH THE CEO by Dawn Chartier: Review

Masquerading with the CEO by Dawn Chartier
Series: What Happens in Vegas #4
Published by Entangled: Lovestruck
Publication Date: July 21st 2015
Genres: Contemporary Romance
Pages: 130
Source: Publisher
Format: eARC
Goodreads
Buy Online: Amazon ♥ B&N ♥ Kobo

Disclaimer: I voluntarily reviewed a copy of this book. All opinions stated are solely mine.

After catching her fiancé cheating on their wedding day, interior designer Kylie Edwards swore off high-powered men. But before she can drown herself in wedding cake, she’s dragged to a Vegas romance conference by her friends. At least she’ll be able to meet the hotel’s owner and pitch her new design idea. And maybe attend the elaborate masquerade ball, where business unexpectedly becomes pleasure with the hotel’s oh-so-hot head of security.

Jake Royale’s no security guy—he owns the hotel and casino. The masquerade ball gives him the perfect opportunity to drop his high-profile identity and blend in. To be seen as a man, not his money. But when one hot night with Kylie becomes more, Jake knows he’s screwed. Not only will his fake identity cost him the design that will catapult his casino back to the top, it might just cost him the one thing money can’t buy.

 

I can never pass up a chance to read about how a woman who’s been betrayed by those closest to her finally finds her happiness, so I was immediately interested when I read the blurb for MASQUERADING WITH THE CEO.

When Kylie Edwards finds out on her wedding day that her fiancé has been cheating on her with her maid of honor and best friend, she calls off the wedding and holes up in her apartment until her friends whisk her off to Vegas for a weekend of fun. Before Kylie can begin the fun part of her trip, she has one assignment: as an up and coming designer in her father’s interior design firm, she has pitch her ideas to casino CEO Jake Royale, who is looking to spruce up his casino. With her fiancé ‘s deceit and her father’s emotional disinterest in her since her mother’s death, Kylie has come to the conclusion that CEOs are emotionless and wants nothing to with any of them, so once her meeting is done, she plans to kick up her heels and enjoy herself, Vegas-style.

Kylie’s first memorable encounter in Vegas is with an attractive guy making off with some tic-tacs from the hotel shop and even though she is attracted to him, thieves rank as high as cheating CEOs on her list of dislikes and she’s determined to ignore the attraction until she discovers that the casino CEO is a tic-tac junkie and his craving is always satisfied by his chief of security, Macon. The guy actually is Jake and when he overhears her expressed dislike for CEOs and she mistakes him for his chief of security, he decides to take advantage of the misconception and explore his attraction to her without his job and wealth getting in the way. He takes the deception too far when he proceeds to wine, dine and bed her under an assumed name but will Kylie walk away from the best thing to happen to her because of that deception? Especially when she had also lied about her identity initially and had already pre-judged him?

Ms. Chartier is a new-to-me author and I enjoyed MASQUERADING WITH THE CEO because of the cute and sweet story and her writing style. Even though the story is short, Jake and Kylie were well-developed and likable characters and she was able to pack quite a lot into it. In addition to the romance playing out between Kylie and Jake, there is the competitor trying to sabotage Jake’s casino by stealing his employees and also Kylie’s dysfunctional relationship with her father and her fruitless desire for his approval.

I only wish the book had been longer because there are a few things I would have loved to see the end of, like her relationship with her father and what happened to her ex-friend, Jan. I still enjoyed it because in the end, she found her HEA with Jake and got the professional validation she always wanted.

 

 

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