ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS A MERMAID
💛 Second Chance Romance
💛 Caught In The Rain
💛 Dark Past
💛 Fish Out Of Water
💛 The One That Got Away
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Lainey Jane – but please, call her LJ – needs out: out of her dead-end job, her soul-sucking family, and the Louisiana bayous in general. So when a chance comes up to join a cruise-ship liner as a permanent staff member playing a mermaid for excited children, LJ jumps at it. The fact that it comes with a move to Sydney, Australia? Absolute bonus.
But when her bunkmate bestie books her for a mermaid job on land, the life she thought she left behind shows up to haunt her, first in the form of wickedly hot and very off-limits Marcus “Mako” Dupre – and then other, more sinister forms. LJ thought the mermaid-on-land job was just a favor for a friend that came with a good paycheck. It turns out, favors have strings attached, and these ones might be strong enough to tangle LJ back in a past she’d do anything to forget, and whose resurrection could land her in prison… If only someone was around to help.
Perfect for anyone who wants a book full of the wit, humor and determination to overcome the odds!
***
“Lainey Jane!” Jenni’s smoke-stained voice rang out from the gloom of her office. “Get these tables cleared out! There’s a wreck an’ all the traffic’s coming our way!”
“On it!” I hollered back over the strained music coming from aging speakers.
“Wish you was on me,” one of the regulars said, laughing as he sloshed swamp hooch in a cup that probably hadn’t been truly clean in over a decade.
I was already turning to give him the dismissal he so desperately wanted when a large hand pulled me back against a warm wall.
“You lookin’ for a fight, Willard?” a deliciously deep voice that was pure Cajun asked as the scent of dark chocolate and cold mornings on the river wrapped around me. “Miss Lainey Jane is mine.”
For a moment time seemed to freeze and I could picture myself turning, smiling, feeling warm and loved and wanted in a way I’d never been. Wanted for myself and not for the work I could do for someone else. Wanted because the man standing behind me actually meant what he said.
The vision snapped with Willard’s snicker.
“Miss Lainey Jane is her own damn woman,” I said, pushing the hand away and turned to glare at Marcus Dupre.
My glare bounced off an unsinkable Cajun man. Six four in bare feet, shoulders like a linebacker, muscles cut like he was posing for a magazine in the morning, chocolate brown eyes with flecks of ocean blue, sun-tanned skin, and rich brown hair every girl in the parish wanted to touch, Marcus “Mako” Dupre was one of the sprawling clan of Dupres who were spread up and down the rivers like they owned them. His grandma was called Queen and she lived up to it. The whole passel of them were nothing but trouble.
This one though, I thought we’d seen the back of him years ago but, like another round of bad news, he kept showing up. He wasn’t cruel, not like my father or brothers, but he was a Dupre. That meant he could go from flashing a killer smile to simply killing someone with the blink of an eye. The whole family was that way, you were either on their side, or you were an enemy.
I’d never known what he saw me as, so I stayed safe and kept my distance. Even now, when the chill of the winter air wafting through the front door made me want to curl up in his warm arms. Perfect proof that I’d been working too long and had lost my ever-lovin’ mind.
His smile was as slow and seductive as a swaying snake. “You wound me, cher. You could be mine.”
“Yours?” I pushed away from him, quietly looking for the nearest steak knife. A Dupre usually needed to be losing a lot of blood before they remembered to listen. “I’m surprised you even remember my name. Must be why you forgot I don’t like the idea of being owned. Or was it because the last time you saw me was seven years ago?”
The last time I’d talked to him was the year we graduated, right before Marcus vanished in a wave of rumors. Maybe he went to college, more likely he went to prison. Wherever it’d been, he was back.
Charming as he was, my future plans did not include getting entangled with another powerful, capricious family. The Mako could hunt all he wanted, I’d be the ornery octopus slapping him if he got to close.
“Last time I saw you was in my bed last night.” Stormy, ocean-flecked brown eyes looked me up and down, taking in the tiny cutoff denim shorts and too-small black t-shirt that were the Jenni’s official uniform for the ladies.
“In your dreams maybe.”
“And what good dreams dey were. You were singing me a siren song…”