Cajun Magic 01 - Voodoo on the Bayou Read Online Free Page A

the landlord of the house she’d be living in during her stay. She hoped the house was in better shape.
    She pulled at the rusty handle on the screen door, hoping the inside of the bait shop didn’t smell as bad as the outside. When the door swung wide, she stepped into the dark interior and inhaled deeply. Again, she choked. A combination of earthy, fishy, musty odors assailed her nostrils.
    Her eyes adjusted to the darkness left by the waning light of the setting sun. Soft thumping noises emanated from the far end of the store, but she couldn’t see well enough in the dim interior to make out a person. Why hadn’t anyone turned on the lights?
    “Excuse me,” she called softly.
    More thumping and scuffling ensued. Elaine thought she heard a faint moan, but nobody appeared. Good lord. What had she interrupted?
    She cleared her throat and tried again. “Excuse me?” Her voice echoed off the walls, and she cringed.
    Still no response.
    What was wrong with these people? She knew she’d spoken loud enough this time to wake half the town. Perhaps the person behind the counter wasn’t a person. Maybe it was a dog or cat.
    Whatever it was might be trapped or hurt and need her help. Her heart rate increasing, she strode across the room and had almost reached the other end of the building when a man rose from behind the counter, his back to her.
    She stopped so fast she almost tipped over and her mouth dropped open.
    Wow.
    She’d never seen such a beautiful human male specimen in all her twenty-six years. His broad, bare shoulders were solid and tanned, each muscle neatly defined and precisely curved. His back tapered down to a trim waistline, disappearing below the top of the counter to what promised to be magnificent buttocks of firm proportions.
    With his back still to her, he cleared his throat. “Am I…?” He held his hands up to the meager light from the windows and flexed his fingers. Then, holding his arms in front of him, he plucked a hair. “Ouch!” He laughed out loud and shouted, “Thank God.”
    Elaine stood in a silent stupor as the muscles in his shoulders flexed and extended with each movement. Her mouth went dry and not a single coherent thought surfaced.
    He turned and treated her to the full force of his ice-blue gaze. Ebony hair hung long around his ears and curled down the nape of his neck in dark waves. A single lock fell across his forehead and he pushed it back into place with a broad hand.
    Her fingers itched to pull the curl back down on his forehead. Her stomach did flip-flops at the expanse of hard-muscled chest only a few feet away.
    Startled by her reaction to the half-naked man standing in front of her, she felt her eyes widen and she licked her lips. At least she thought he was half-naked. Was that a bare leg she could see through the glass case standing between them? Her ever-curious gaze slid downward.
    The man glanced down, a faint red staining his cheeks. He folded his arms across his chest and quickly leaned forward against the counter. “Can I help you?”
    It took her several seconds to locate her tongue before she could reply. “I need you,” she stammered.
    The man smiled and a wicked eyebrow rose up under the stray lock of hair that had fallen back over his forehead. He didn’t comment, nor did he move, staying firmly in place, the counter covering him from the waist down. “You need me?”
    Heat crept up her neck and into her face when she realized what she’d said, and what she’d tried to see. “I mean, I’m here about the bed.”
    His smile broadened.
    She pressed her hands to her cheeks, her mortification complete. Where had her intellectual vocabulary and scientific mind gone? She felt like a giddy, hormonal teenager instead of a respected scientist with numerous research articles and a book under her belt. “Oh, good grief, let me start over.”
    “Perhaps you should.” His words seeped into every pore of her skin like butter on a hot potato. He could have