by Macy Beckett
“It’s so . . .” Ella began.
“Salty,” Allie finished.
What had she done wrong? In her sleep-deprived state, had she incorrectly measured her ingredients? No, that couldn’t be right. She’d made this recipe so many times she could do it in a coma. She lifted the steel bowl from its industrial-sized mixer and peered at the remnants of apple filling smeared on the inside. After running her finger along the rim, she brought it to her mouth and sucked it clean.
It was horrible.
Allie returned to her workstation to inspect the ingredients she’d used. One by one, she sampled the flour, cornstarch, and apples, finding them satisfactory. When she dipped the tip of a clean spoon into the sugar bin and brought it to her mouth, she found the problem. It was salt. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed.
She rotated the plastic container until she found its label: Granulated Sugar. Allie knew for a fact there was real sugar in this cylinder yesterday when she’d made berry cobbler and chocolate-chunk cookies, because she’d sampled the finished products. That meant someone had sabotaged her workstation last night after she’d left—and ruined every single one of the turnovers she’d spent the last four hours preparing.
Who would do something so malicious?
“Look alive, people,” Chef yelled, loudly clapping his hands as he strode into the room. When his gaze fell on Allie, a slow grin curled across his lips, telling her exactly who would do something so malicious. Looking right at her, he shouted, “Someone tell the captain’s pretty little squeeze to get her breakfast pastries on the serving line. We’ve got early birds out there.”
The staff shared uneasy glances, unwilling to pass along the message. Finally, a teenage boy asked Allie, “You want me to take them out?”
That’s just what Chef wanted—for her to serve the guests contaminated food and ruin her reputation, and thus her career. What a coldhearted cochon. Allie’s whole body scorched with fever, sending heat rushing into her face. She tried to steady her pulse, but her heart pounded so fiercely she felt it in her fingertips. The tingly burn of tears pressed her eyelids, but she forced them back.
She would bathe in acid before she’d let Chef see her cry.
“No,” she said, glaring at Regale to let him know he hadn’t won. Her own voice sounded foreign to her ears, eerie in its smoothness. “I changed my mind. I’m making coffee cake instead.”
“Uh . . . Allie,” Ella-Claire stammered, tossing aside her clipboard with a loud clang. “Let me help you.”
“That’s not your job.” Allie had a small staff to assist her with the baking, and by God, they were going to back her up. “The pastry team will—”
“Be helping me,” Regale finished. “I need all hands to run the omelet and Belgian waffle stations. Why don’t you serve your pastries, sweetheart?” he asked with a sneer. “Something wrong?”
That did it.
Allie’s tenuous hold on her temper snapped in half like a brittle lace cookie. Her vision went black for a moment, and when it returned, all she could see was Regale’s smug smile and the hulking, bearlike set of his folded arms. She went deaf to everything but the rush of blood in her ears while an electric charge buzzed over her skin. Someone must have turned on the kitchen fan, because her hair blew behind her in waves that tickled the back of her neck. She felt her body trembling.
To calm herself, Allie closed her eyes and recited the Creole serenity prayer her mama had taught her. She chanted the words of peace, feeling her blood pressure drift down a few notches, and by the second verse she felt composed enough to open her eyes.
That’s when she noticed the whole staff was staring at her in openmouthed horror.
Allie flashed a tight smile to defuse the tension in the room. “I’d better get to work on that coffee cake.”
Ella’s typically tanned cheeks had turned pale. She pointed at the teenage boy who’d offered to haul the turnovers into the dining room. “What’s your name?”
The boy couldn’t seem to tear his gaze from Allie’s face. “Uh, Bobby, ma’am.”
“Okay,” Ella said in a voice a few decibels too loud. “Bobby, you assist Miss Mauvais with breakfast.” When Chef geared up to complain, Ella cut him off with a lifted palm. “If you can’t manage without him, I’ll pitch in.” Then she cocked an eyebrow, daring him to admit that he needed the head purser to assist him in making waffles.
Regale’s mouth tightened, but he recovered quickly. “Thanks for the offer. I’ll make do. Now, if you don’t mind . . .” He swept one hand toward the door, basically telling Ella to get out.
Ella-Claire grabbed her clipboard and stalked from the galley with her head held high. She really was good people.
“Let’s get to it,” Allie said. She started by dumping over one hundred beautiful, flawlessly baked apple turnovers into the garbage.
That really hurt.
During the next hour, she and Bobby worked in a frenzy to mix, assemble, and bake three shallow pans of crumb cake. All the while Chef barked orders to her staff and resumed bullying her with comments like, “Tell the captain’s voodoo squeeze that magic won’t turn off her goddamned oven timer!”
Allie punched the END button, silencing the timer as she pulled her last pan of cake from the oven. She had to finish up and get out of here. A steady pressure had been building inside her head all morning, and she knew she couldn’t hold it together much longer.
Once the pans cooled, she helped Bobby carry them out to the breakfast buffet, then thanked him for his hard work and dismissed him for a break. She didn’t make eye contact with anyone inside the dining room. In strides a bit too quick, she made for the stairwell and took the steps two at a time to her room on the third floor.
After unlocking her door with trembling fingers, she stripped down naked, right there in the entryway, and stepped over her pile of clothes into the bathroom to run a hot shower. Safely behind the barriers of two locked doors and a plastic curtain, Allie hung her head beneath the steaming jets and finally let herself cry.
• • •
“You need to find her, Marc.” Ella-Claire’s big blue eyes grew impossibly wider as she slapped the purser’s desk and leaned forward. “This is a full-on SOS.”
“Now, calm down,” Marc told her. “Chef’s fine. I saw him ten minutes ago. And I’m sure Allie’s fine, too. She probably needed some space.”
Ella shook her head, setting her ponytail in motion. “You don’t get it—you weren’t there. Regale kept pushing and pushing, and then it was like someone flipped a switch. The lights flickered and wind came out of nowhere. Allie kind of blanked out and she started chanting a spell or—”
“Wait,” Marc interrupted, his stomach dropping an inch. “What kind of spell?”
Ella bit her lip and admitted, “Well, I don’t know. She wasn’t speaking English.”
Marc released the breath he’d been holding. Allie could have been reciting her grocery list for all they knew. He’d had his doubts before, but lately he’d glimpsed a brand-new side of Allie—compassionate and kind. He refused to believe she’d cause anyone harm. Even to Chef, who clearly deserved it.
“Look, I never believed in all that,” Ella argued, “and I know Allie wouldn’t hurt a soul, but the whole thing gave me chills.” Ella lifted her forearm, where a dusting of translucent hairs stood on end. “I’m getting chills now just thinking about it.”
Alex glanced up from his paperwork. “Allie made Chef choke on a nut yesterday.” At Marc’s dubious glare, Alex clarified, “She used the Heimlich on him, but still. He almost died.”
“Let’s see if I’ve got this right,” Marc began. “You dragged me away from the pilothouse so I could track down our pastry chef and make sure she hasn’t cursed the boat?” Marc expected this kind of idiocy from Pawpaw—maybe even from himself at one time—but not from his sister. Perhaps the
Dumont crazy had started rubbing off on her.
“Oh, I don’t think she cursed the boat,” Ella said with a flap of her hand. “Just Phil.”
“And we need him,” Alex added. “So see if you can get her to undo it.”
“Uh-huh.” Undo it. Lord, it was too early for this mess. Marc heaved a sigh. “Fine. I’ll go check on her.”
“Nicky saw her take the stairs,” Alex said. “So she’s probably in her suite.”
All alone with Allie Mauvais in her suite . . .
The idea should have scared Marc, but it put a small bounce in his heels as he crossed the lobby to the main staircase. He was still springing when he knocked on her door, but the instant she answered, that buoyancy deflated faster than a leaky tire.
She looked like a drowned rat.
Her soaking-wet curls hung low and heavy, the locks dripping onto the lapels of her fluffy white guest robe. The oversized garment covered her from fingertips to ankles, dwarfing her body beneath yards of terry cloth. Mascara ran down her face in muddy streams as if she hadn’t bothered to wipe away her tears.
Oddly enough, the effect was freaking adorable, but he still felt terrible for her.
“Aw, sugar,” Marc said with a sympathetic tilt of his head. “That bad?”
“Don’t!” She held up an index finger. “Don’t do that! I’m a professional, not some hot piece of ass from th-th-th-th”—she gulped a hitched breath—“the swamp!”
Marc wanted to tell her the two weren’t mutually exclusive, but it seemed like the wrong thing to say. “Of course you’re a professional.” He nudged his way inside and shut the door behind him, then kicked aside a pile of dirty clothes. “Honey, I tasted your coffee cake. It was so good, I had to take a cold shower when I was done.”
That earned a weak smile. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and led her to the foot of the bed. She plopped down, and when he lowered himself beside her, she leaned her soggy head on his shoulder. Marc didn’t mind. He wanted to make her feel better, and besides, she smelled like warm vanilla sugar.
“Who told you?” Allie asked.
“Ella-Claire. She’s worried you hexed the chef.”
She sat up and faced him, her red-rimmed eyes softening in hurt. “Really?”
The look on her face sent an unexpected shock of pain through Marc, especially when he realized he’d contributed to the problem. Until now, he’d never put himself in Allie’s shoes, never imagined how she might feel each time he crossed to the other side of the street when she walked by. He’d been an idiot to assume Allie was some unshakable force of nature. She bled like everyone else. How had he never seen it before?
“I’m sorry, hon,” he said, pulling her close again. “Ella didn’t mean anything by it.”
Allie got quiet for a while, punctuating the silence with an occasional sniffle. When she finally spoke again, her voice sounded so small it tugged a knot in Marc’s chest. “Do you believe that?” she asked. “That I curse people?”
“No, not really,” he said. “But I’m not going to lie. I used to.”
“Is that why you dumped me after junior prom?”
Junior prom. The memory brought an instant smile to Marc’s lips, mostly out of embarrassment for his seventeen-year-old self. Talk about a blow to his ego.
He’d been so nervous that night he’d sweated through two dress shirts before he left to pick up Allie for the dance. Pawpaw had him half believing the devil would spring from the punch bowl and drag Marc straight to hell. His hands had trembled so hard Allie’d had to pin on her own corsage; his knees had knocked together so violently he could barely dance with her. It was a miracle he’d worked up the nerve to kiss her at the end of the night. Not his best performance, either—barely more than a shaky peck. She probably thought he was a lousy kisser, which he wasn’t, thank you very much.
“Yes and no,” he said with a chuckle.
She slid him a glare. “It’s not funny.” But one corner of her pink lips twitched in a grin. “I skipped a trip to the beach with my sister that weekend so I could stay home and wait by the phone.”
Marc sucked a breath through his teeth. “And I never called.”
“No, you didn’t,” she said, then added, “ever again.”
“I’m sorry, hon.” He dropped a quick kiss atop her head. “It wasn’t anything you did. I was telling the truth that night when I said I wanted to take you out again.”
“So what changed?”
He’d changed. More specifically, the skin all over his happy place. “The next day something happened that made me think the curse was real. I woke up with, uh . . .” Was there a delicate way to say blisters all over my johnson? “Well, an outbreak.”
She glanced up at him with a question in her eyes.
“On my manhood,” he clarified.
Allie gasped and gave him a playful shove. “And you thought that was my fault?”
Marc shrugged. “Daddy and Pawpaw kept telling me sex with a Mauvais woman would make my junk fall off, so . . .” He trailed off because the rest seemed obvious to him.
“But a rash could mean a dozen different things,” Allie said, ticking items off on her fingers. “A reaction to your laundry detergent, a new soap, a food allergy, or—if that rumor about you and the cheer squad is true—a social disease.”
“No way.” Marc held up one hand in oath. “I’ve never gone bareback in my life, and I get tested on the regular. I’m cleaner than a priest on Sunday.” He didn’t mention that the old rumor was true. He had worked his way through the varsity squad—but always protected by a barrier of nice, safe latex.
“Still, I can’t believe you blamed that on me.”
“Not you,” Marc said. He’d never believed Allie meant him harm. “The curse.”
“Same difference.”
“Not really.” It was Allie’s great-great-grandma who’d cursed the Dumonts, not her. “One is beyond your control and the other isn’t.”
“The other?” she asked.
“You know. Hexing people on purpose.” At her piercing glare, Marc added, “Just speaking hypothetically. I don’t pay a lick of credence to that stuff.”
“Uh-huh,” Allie said, clearly not buying it. “So you don’t even believe the curse is real anymore?”
“Nope.”
“Care to test it?” Her eyes—one the color of fine whiskey, the other grayer than a summer storm—twinkled with mischief and put a skip in Marc’s pulse. “Because I know a way to find out for sure.”
“What’s that?”
“Easy,” she said, raising one brow in a challenge. “Kiss me again.”
Of its own volition, Marc’s gaze flew to her mouth, full and soft and still wet from the shower. He froze, unable to form a response to her proposal. He’d often fantasized about taking that pouty lower lip between his teeth and tasting Allie Mauvais—kissing her and doing it right this time.
So what was stopping him?
“What’s the matter, baby?” she teased. “You scared?”
Maybe a little, but he’d never own up to it.
“Of kissing a pretty woman? Never.” Marc accepted her dare, pushing up her robe sleeve and taking her hand in both of his. “But I think we should start small. You know, make sure lightning doesn’t strike us dead.”
“Mmm,” she agreed with a mock solemn nod. “Baby steps.”
“Yeah, exactly.” He trailed an index finger along her wrist, all the way up to the inside bend of her elbow and back down again, then peered at her and asked, “Feel anything?”
The thumping vein beneath Marc’s fingers told him Allie felt a whole lot, but she shook her head. “Nope.”
“That’s a good sign.” Holding her gaze, he lifted her palm to his mouth and placed a slow, lingering kiss there, hiding a smile when she shivered and bit her lip. “How about
now?”
Allie swallowed hard enough to shift her throat. “Nothing.”
“Mmm, you don’t say.” It was time to dial it up a notch. Scooting nearer until their thighs touched, he swept back her dripping locks, then bent down and brushed his lips back and forth over her ear. He flicked his tongue along the rim before gently biting her lobe and whispering, “Now?”
A whimper was her only reply.
He was sure starting to feel something. Right behind his fly.
He worked his way down the side of her neck. When he found a weak spot at the top of her shoulder, he teased it—licking and sucking and nibbling until Allie’s low moans vibrated the skin beneath his lips.
He’d always wondered what she tasted like, and now he knew. Clean and savory, like honeydew. Marc couldn’t hide the lust in his voice when he tore his mouth away from her and asked, “Feel anything now?”
Allie’s breath came in shallow gasps. She tilted her head for more of his touch and murmured, “Not a thing.”
So he made love to her throat until she writhed in pleasure and leaned back onto the bed, sinking her fingertips into his shoulders to pull him atop her. A distant voice warned Marc he was going too far, but the blood drained from his brain and rushed between his legs, smothering his conscience with lethal force.
Distractions eliminated, he covered Allie’s body with his own and pressed her soft curves into the mattress, then nibbled a path from her shoulder to her jaw. He reached the corner of her mouth and pulled back to look at her—sodden curls fanning out around her flushed face, eyelids heavy, lips parted in need. Lord have mercy, she was so gorgeous, he ached deep inside where nobody had stirred him before.
“If you still don’t feel anything,” he whispered, “we can probably try that kiss now.”
“No lightning here.” Allie reached up and unfastened his hair, sending it spilling down like a curtain. “How about you, baby?” she asked with a seductive grin. “Anything scary happening in your pants?”