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  QUEEN FOR A NIGHT

  To reign as queen of the annual Mardi Gras ball was a childish fancy; Caroline Saucier never expected the chance to come her way. Then her uncle who would have been king had a heart attack.

  His choice as substitute is wealthy and reclusive shipping executive Ross McDougall.

  If Caroline can persuade Ross to accept the king’s crown, she may become his queen. But Ross, with fearless pirate’s blood in his veins, is about to take his yacht out into the teeth of a gulf storm.

  She can go with him or kiss the queen’s crown goodbye…

  Selected Praise for the Author

  “Jennifer Blake … a master story teller.”

  ~Long and Short of It Reviews

  “Jennifer Blake is a veteran of the romance novel industry, and it shows. She definitely knows how to write a … romance!”

  ~Reader to Reader.com

  “Ms. Blake’s storytelling brush paints a picture for the mind’s eye that is both strikingly clear and true to life … truly a Master of her craft.”

  ~ A Romance Review

  “I look forward, as always, to further creations by this wonderful author.”

  ~Genre Go Round Reviews

  “She builds a strong background, creates three-dimensional characters and weaves sexual tension into a lively love story.”

  ~RT Book Reviews Magazine

  “The prose is like butter, and it is very hard to stop reading! I loved the descriptions and the skill Blake has to bring her reader.”

  ~Heather Hiestand

  “Blake … has rightly earned the admiration and respect of her readers. They know there is a world of enjoyment waiting within the pages of her books.”

  ~A Romance Review

  “Jennifer Blake is a beloved writer of romance—the pride and care she takes in her creations shines through.”

  ~Romance Reviews Today

  Copyright © 2014 Patricia Maxwell

  aka Jennifer Blake

  Published in 2014 by Steel Magnolia Press, LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For more information, address:

  Steel Magnolia Press, LLC, 165 Maxwell Lane, Chatham, LA 71226

  [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design by LFD Designs For Authors.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The things women were willing to do for the chance to be a Mardi Gras queen, Caroline Saucier thought with a bemused shake of her head. She had sworn never to be pulled into that particular obsession. She hadn’t, either, in spite of childish dreams and play-acting. She’d become more serious, more practical as she grew up. Times had changed, too, so the idea seemed frivolous.

  She’d also known her prospects were slim given her dad never had time for Mardi Gras hoopla and carnival krewe membership. He might have married a Mardi Gras queen, but he’d been too busy making a living to care about such things.

  Never say never, her French-Creole grandmother always told her. Wise woman.

  A light wind off the bayou sent a strand of her dark blonde hair drifting across her face. She snagged it and tucked it behind her ear before shading her eyes with her hand against the setting sun’s glare. There he was, Ross McDougall, outlined in fiery light as he knelt on the deck of his white yacht. The man she had come to see, the one who might offer her a chance to be queen to his king.

  Doubt and reluctance churned in her stomach as she watched him secure a large piece of crated machinery to the boat’s deck, fastening it with swift, competent movements. He hadn't noticed her there on the path behind his house. If she turned and ran right now, he might never know she’d been there.

  Impossible.

  His housekeeper had let her in when she arrived, and pointed out the dock that jutted into the bayou; she was sure to mention someone had been looking for him. More than that, Uncle Tony and her cousin Murielle were counting on her.

  There was also a crown at stake. Not only had her mother been a queen, but her grandmother and great-grandmother before her. They might have been chosen by a krewe far removed from the granddaddy of all celebrations in New Orleans, but it made no difference; Mardi Gras was Mardi Gras in Louisiana, and tradition was tradition. To follow in the family footsteps, now that the opportunity loomed, was a sacred obligation.

  “You going to stand there all evening, or are you coming aboard?”

  The deep voice rang over the water, echoing back from the swamp cypress, palmetto and sawgrass on the bayou’s far bank. The man on the boat had seen her, after all. Good thing she hadn’t cut and run, Caroline thought with a grimace. Being caught at that would have been more embarrassing than what lay ahead of her.

  She jerked into movement along the path, descending shallow steps that led down to the dock. Her footsteps took on a hollow sound as she reached its wooden catwalk. “I was told you were getting ready to take your boat out,” she called. “I wasn’t sure you had time to talk.”

  Ross McDougall glanced up, snaring her with his gaze. Stringently assessing, it was as blue as the gulf that lay beyond the alluvial muddiness of Louisiana’s coastal waters. Caroline felt her pulse leap in her veins. Her task suddenly became more daunting as she realized how Lord-give-me-strength gorgeous the man in front of her was on close inspection.

  His face was a perfect arrangement of strong planes, high cheekbones, firm chin and firmer mouth. In spite of his eye color and Scots surname inherited from his father, his hair grew in the dark, sculpted waves of his French and Spanish forebears, an indication of the generations his mother’s family had lived in the area. There was also something particularly French in his unhurried appraisal.

  “You have thirty seconds, give or take.” He returned his attention to the rope he was coiling in a fast and secure sailor’s knot.

  “I'm Caroline Sau—”

  “I know who you are.”

  She blinked a little at that. Bacardville, the coastal community where Ross lived and worked was a miniscule dot on the map. Because of that and its relative isolation, everybody knew everybody else, true enough. But Caroline and her mother had left, moving to Lake Charles where her mother’s people lived, after her dad died the year she turned fifteen. So far as she knew, she and the man on the yacht had not set eyes on each other since she was a freshman in high school and he a lordly senior.

  That didn’t mean she hadn’t heard about him. Her mother kept up with her old network of friends and her husband’s relatives, so always knew what was going on in the area. So she’d listened, what of it? She’d missed Bacardville, always thought she might return one day. More than that, Ross McDougall had been the best-looking guy in town back in high school when she’d had a mad crush on him; it was natural to wonder about him now and then. Yet no one had mentioned he’d grown even better.

  “It’s Uncle Tony I need to talk to you about.” She studied the sun-bronzed face of the man kneeling on the boat deck for his reaction. And if her mind wandered to just how much of him had been burned deep brown by the gulf sun that was her secret.

  “Yeah?”

  “He—started having chest pains last night. They discovered blocked arteries in his heart. By-pass surgery is scheduled for in the morning.” Coming out with it like that might be abrupt, but was the best she could do at the moment.

  Ross McDougall looked up in narrow-eyed consideration. “I’m sorry to hear that
.”

  “The final rehearsal for the krewe’s Mardi Gras presentation is tomorrow night, with the ball the night after. Uncle Tony was supposed to be king this year.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Yes, well, I know I shouldn’t be telling you, but his heart problem changes things.” Warm color rose in her face and she looked away for an instant. The identity of the king chosen by the Krewe de Plaisir Toujours was supposed to be revealed only during the Mardi Gras ball.

  “Changes what, exactly?”

  A man of few words, Ross McDougall. “Obviously, Uncle Tony won’t be able to take his place as king. Someone else will have to do the honors.”

  “Not my problem.”

  “No, but the krewe—”

  “I belong to Plaisir Toujours because my dad and granddad belonged, and for no other reason. I avoid meetings and I don’t vote.”

  “So Uncle Tony told me, still—”

  “Yeah?” Ross rose to his full height with the effortless flexing of lean muscles. Pulling a shop cloth from the back pocket of his faded jeans, he began to wipe grease from his hands with grim efficiency.

  Caroline’s mouth went a little dry as she focused on the width of his shoulders, the long lengths of his legs and strength of his fingers. She collected her thoughts with an effort. “He—he suggested you might take his place as king.”

  “The devil you say.”

  She frowned as she met his hard gaze. “He’s your godfather, after all.”

  “Which means he knows being king is the last thing I’d ever care about doing.”

  “You might at least think about it before you say no.” Rising indignation colored her voice, and she put a hand on one hip.

  “Why didn't he call me himself?”

  “He's in the hospital, for heaven's sake!”

  “If he’s awake enough to worry about who might be king, he can pick up a phone.”

  “Look,” Caroline began in stringent tones, but then stopped as she saw Ross's face tighten. She drew a calming breath, trying for reason in place of irritation. “So you haven’t been active in the krewe, fine. It must mean something to you since you've kept up your family’s charter membership. You've donated supplies and sent people on your payroll to help with the parade and ball. With that background of service, the board members won’t say no if Murielle suggests you as a stand-in for Uncle Tony.”

  “Murielle.” He gestured toward Caroline with the cloth in his hand. “She sent you.”

  His voice was layered with suspicion, Caroline thought. “She asked me to come, yes. But somebody had to take charge in the middle of this crisis.”

  “She’s supposed to be queen, I’m guessing, since Tony was king.”

  “She is. Or rather, she was.” That was an easy deduction. The king usually selected an unmarried female relative as his consort, traditionally a daughter though it could also be a niece or younger sister. Wives sometimes served, but that was usually a last resort.

  He held her gaze for long, considering moments before giving a short laugh. “I see. You're the substitute queen if it turns out Murielle is tied up with her dad.”

  “Only if you agree,” Caroline said while heat rose in her face. “That’s if I can talk you into being king, of course.”

  “And if you can’t?”

  “The krewe vice president and his daughter are next in line. But the family owns a seafood restaurant, you know, and enjoy it a bit too much. The special costumes made for Uncle Tony and Murielle won’t begin to fit, and there’s no time to have new ones made. They would have to make do with rented outfits.”

  “Oh, now we can’t have that.” The comment was desert-dry.

  “It’s never happened before.” The beauty and pageantry of the costumes were a highlight of the ball. Anything less than magnificent would be a huge letdown for the krewe and its guests.

  “You and I are close enough in size to fit these get-ups, I suppose?”

  She measured him with a quick look before tipping her head. “So it seems, with a little alteration for height in your case. Murielle says so, anyway. “

  Swift thought moved behind Ross McDougall’s piercing blue gaze. Then he stepped to the stainless steel chain looped between railing posts at the entrance to the boat. Unfastening it, he held out is hand. “You had better come with me.”

  His manner was so compelling, and Caroline’s thoughts so absorbed by convincing him to act as king, that she put her hand in his warm grasp without thinking. As she stepped aboard the gently bobbing yacht, he released her then moved past back out onto the dock.

  Caroline turned to track his purpose while massaging the tingling sensation that remained in her hand and arm. As he whipped the yacht's thick bow line from around the dock stanchion, uneasiness stirred inside her.

  “Wait a minute. You—you don’t mean go out into the gulf with you?”

  He gave her a quick glance as he strode toward the stern. “I have to run a part down to one of the oil rigs. We'll be back before midnight.”

  Ross McDougall, she knew, owned a fleet of crew boats operating between the ports and offshore oil platforms from Morgan City, Louisiana to Matamoros, Mexico. The craft they were on was his private yacht, however, a fifty-foot beauty built for speed and ease of handling by one qualified man. It was not a working boat.

  “I thought you had men hired for things like that.”

  “Sometimes I prefer to do it myself, especially when it's a night run. Is it a problem?”

  A night run, just like that. Good grief. “It’s not exactly what I had in mind.”

  Returning from the rear of the vessel, he leaped back on board and stopped to look down at her, his gaze bright with irony and an odd heat only half-screened by his lashes. “What did you have in mind, exactly?”

  “Nothing! I mean—only to talk for a minute or two.”

  “You think I might take you out in the middle of nowhere and dump you overboard? Or something less sinister and more personal?”

  “The thought never crossed my mind.” Her mouth went a little dry as it certainly crossed it now.

  “Too bad.” A smile curled a corner of his well-defined mouth. “But you’d better decide whether you're going or staying.”

  He had cast off the stern line. They were drifting now, the distance between dock and boat widening by the second. The space was already broad enough to make jumping back onto the wooden catwalk undignified, if not downright dangerous.

  “You could nose back in after you start the engine,” she suggested.

  “Maybe. Is that what you want?”

  “Couldn't you wait just a few minutes?”

  The negative shake of his head was firm. “A storm is whipping up out in the gulf. They need this part out on the rig before it hits.”

  If she refused to go with him, there would be no opportunity to plead her case. Time was growing short; the Mardi Gras ball was only 48 hours away. It wouldn't be fair to wait too long before letting the substitute king and queen know they must step in.

  “A situation that will be remedied by the time we make our way down the bayou to open water.”

  “If anybody sees us heading out so close to dark, they’ll wonder what's going on.”

  “Does it matter?” He had moved to the open doorway into the boat's cabin, but stood with one hand propped on the frame as if he had all the time in the world. The yacht was gliding slowly backward toward an overhang of willows on the bayou's curving bank opposite the house. They would be plowing into them in about a minute.

  It was a boat ride; that was all. No need to make a big deal out of it.

  Anyway, Ross McDougall was right; it didn’t really matter. She was a grown woman, married, divorced and closing in on thirty, not some green girl with no idea how to handle being alone with a man. What people said had nothing to do with her, especially if nothing happened. And in spite of Ross’s suggestive comment, it was highly unlikely anything would.

  “So what's the d
ecision?”

  She met his eyes, searching their rich blue depths, their certainty and the strength of purpose behind them. There was nothing there to make her refuse.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Right,” he drawled. “Fasten the gangway chain there behind you?”

  As he ducked inside the cabin, Caroline hesitated a moment longer, but then moved to do as he asked. Her decision had been made. There was no turning back.

  The instant the chain was secure, the boat's big Chrysler inboard engines roared into life. The craft swung in a side-slipping curve, barely brushing the bank of willows before it heeled in a surge of power and headed toward the gulf.

  Subtropical February warmth was in the evening breeze that swept into Caroline's face. The smell of the bayou stirred up by the propellers was rich and fishy. She took a deep breath, welcoming the familiar scent and humidity-laden balminess. The smooth rumbling of the engines, the vibration and shifting movement of the deck under her feet sent intense pleasure bubbling up inside her. She closed her eyes to savor the sensation while a smile curved her mouth.

  She loved boats, loved being on the water. It had been a long time, too long, since she been out into the gulf. She was seized with a sudden need to see it again. She didn't know why she had objected to this trip, except that Ross McDougall had taken her by surprise with his virtual kidnapping.

  Kidnapping. How melodramatic, as if she was some virginal maiden and he a pirate king. Things like that didn't happen anymore, not in this day and age.

  Worst luck.

  Whoa, where had that come from? She wasn’t a giddy teenager with more imagination than sense. No, she wasn’t, even if pirates and Ross had once figured large in her fantasies, a natural result of old tales that an ancestor of his had sailed with the infamous Jean Lafitte. The last thing she needed was to cope with an amorous male in close quarters and no place to go if she needed to fight him off.

  There would be none of that. They were going for a run out into the gulf; that was all.

  Yes, they were heading out. Out into the wide, wind-blown, sea-blue gulf where the waves rolled landward in eternal journeys from faraway places. Out there where the air smelled and tasted of salt and was sticky on the skin. Maybe there would be a moon after a while, one that would lay a bright, heaving road for them to travel. She couldn't wait to see.