It Could Be Fun by Shayla McBride

Carl Tanner, retired Navy helicopter pilot, pushing forty hard. Lean, lanky and laconic. Lucky in a firefight, not-so-lucky in love, but giving up isn’t part of his psyche.
New to the high-functioning Omega Team, Tanner goes undercover at Crave, a ladies strip club. His legend: California surfer-dude living down some trouble with the law. His assignment: find out why the owner thinks he’s being cheated. Still recovering from a disastrous assignment with a previous security firm, Tanner believes he has a lot to prove.
Club manager Richie Agostino gives his unwanted new bouncer a cold welcome. “Who the fuck are you,” he asks, giving him a hostile up-and-down. Much as he wants to, he can’t over-ride the boss’s new hire.

Agostino, a pro football star fired for sexual assaults, runs the club like a personal dating site. His prime task appears to be schmoozing the clientele for easy sex. An ex-cop and a dull-witted muscle man, both long-time bouncers, back up Agostino’s haphazard management style.

Tanner’s sent to a remote back hall where the only reminder he’s even in the club is the deafening music. His sole interaction with guests is when, too drunk to notice the ladies room is in the other direction, one enters the hall. In no time, he discovers new ways to say no without barking a direct I-outrank-you order, as well as innovative techniques for dodging guests who’d like to personally measure him for a g-string. Rescuing downed-at-sea pilots was a helluva lot easier than dealing with a club full of feisty, argumentative women.

Until January Jones, petite and unaware of how incredibly sexy she is, slips through the curtain for relief from the noise. Unaccountably charmed, Tanner’s protective instincts go wild as they talk in the cozy intimacy of the hall. Could Jan be the woman he’s been looking for so long? Certainly sparks fly the minute they meet and subsequent meetings just get hotter..
But Tanner discovers that, underneath the winning facade, there’s a serious problem with this feisty, mesmerizing woman: from the start she has misrepresented herself and why she’s come to Crave. Jan’s not a very competent liar, either. Caught out and confronted, she’s unapologetic. She’s got her reasons and she thinks they’re good ones. No amount of raw desire and incendiary sex persuades her to trust her new lover and come clean.

Until it’s almost too late. When Jan finally does reveal her secret, Tanner begins to put the pieces together, uncovering a dark, deadly secret.
Can Tanner finish his now-lethal assignment without compromising his own deeply-rooted code of honor? Can he keep the woman he’s coming to love off the suspect list and out of harm’s way? And at the violent showdown, will he be able to keep her safe?