RELEASE TOUR - Skin Game by Elle Keaton
Length: 68,000 words
Series: Subtle Deceptions, #3
Prior Reading: required (previous books available)
Genre: small-town, mystery, romance
Tropes: opposites attract, amateur sleuth, small town, ace and bisexual, older MC, found family
Trigger/Content Warnings: n/a
Designer: Kanaxa
It’s a new year. The former con artist has a permanent-for-now address, even Keith-the-cat seems to like it there. No more rickety sailboats and living out of go-bags for Gabriel Karne. No surprises. No dead bodies.
Romance-wise, he and Ranger Man are easing into being a couple. A lifetime of habits is hard to break—for both of them.
Gabe has a job. Will he regret agreeing to it? The eight ball says, maybe.
Another damn letter--this time from a stranger--shows up, the author claims they have some of his late mother’s belongings. Great.
Additionally, a strange young woman appears on his new doorstep. She claims to be his long-lost daughter, and has completely sketchy documentation to prove it. It’s not impossible, and yet… Gabe wasn’t born yesterday, and Heidi Karne was his mother, after all.
The next time Gabe sees the young woman, she’s dead.
It will be fine. Everything will be fine.
Gabe was fucking freezing. But a favor was a favor, and Gabe was particularly suited to this one.
The address he was focused on sat across the street and to his right, at about one o’clock, maybe one fifteen, and Gabe was just a guy, sitting in his car, watching a house. As one does. Doing his best to appear unremarkable and commonplace. Not casing the joint. Not waiting for the creep inside to leave.
“Come on already. You’re going to be late for work, dude.”
Maybe Gabe’s idea of being on time and this guy’s were wildly different. Possibly it was fine for Randy to show up whenever he dragged his ass in. Gabe’s own job history was not the nine-to-five version, and he suspected that he also might not have excelled on a set schedule, but one thing Heidi had impressed upon him was being on time. A few more cold minutes passed before the front door opened with a loud scrape and rattle, as if it didn’t fit the frame properly.
“Finally,” he whispered.
A youngish man Gabe recognized from a selfie that Althea Mortine had shared with him emerged. Gabe lifted his cell phone to his ear, pretending he’d pulled over to answer a call. Randy Witherspoon didn’t appear to notice that he was being watched from the Honda.
In his early thirties, Witherspoon was of average height and carried a not-quite-to-term paunch that bulged under his blue Mariners hoodie. This was the springtime uniform for many of the less fashion-forward in the Pacific Northwest. The only things missing were sandals and black socks. Instead, he wore a pair of battered leather sneakers and socks that were possibly gray.
Gabe hoped he wore socks because wearing sneakers with no socks was truly disgusting and having that color of ankles was even more so.
Who did Gabe think he was kidding? That guy probably never wore socks. Gabe shuddered.
It’s my grandmother’s fault! She bribed me to read with a Nancy Drew box set—and changed my life forever.
It was love at first binge read.
Is there anything better than a character who by the end of the story manages to redeem/heal themselves enough to fall in love? No, there isn’t.
What else? I love both cats and dogs. Star Wars and Star Trek. Pineapple on pizza, and have a cribbage habit my husband encourages. We live in a log cabin near Hood Canal in Washington State, if the sky is clear at night the milky way is visible. But most often I’m inside plotting yet another mystery/romance.
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