“Did you check your ingredients?” Marc asked.

“What kind of fucking moron do you take me for?”

Marc elected not to answer that question, but he assumed Chef meant yes. “Then I don’t know what to tell you. Sauté ’em in butter. You can’t screw that up.”

“Screw it up?” Chef drew back as if Marc had slapped him. “Are you implying this is my fault?”

Marc’s patience snapped. “Who else’s fault would it be?”

“I think we both know.” Regale closed in on Marc until they were toe to toe. “One of us just doesn’t want to admit it.”

“One of us,” Marc uttered, refusing to back down, “has no friggin’ idea what you’re talking about.”

Regale’s upper lip curled in loathing. “I’m talking about the back-swamp voodoo whore you keep around to polish your knob.”

Marc heard a pop inside his brain like a blown fuse. Without thinking, he fisted Regale’s shirt and slammed him into the stainless steel refrigerator. “You’d better shut the hole in your face before I shut it for you.”

But he forgot Regale was built like a bull.

The man used one powerful arm to shove Marc away and the other to coldcock him in the eye. Marc’s head snapped back as sparks of pain exploded behind his lid. He recovered quickly and delivered a left hook to Chef’s kidney and a right jab to the gut.

It barely fazed Regale.

He growled and charged Marc, leaning down like an offensive lineman about to flatten him. Marc braced for impact, but just as their bodies connected, Regale lost his footing in a puddle of his own bourbon sauce and went down hard, knocking his forehead on the floor.

He lay there, out cold.

Good. Now the bastard couldn’t run his dirty mouth.

Marc took a deep breath and glanced around the room at Chef’s wide-eyed staffers. Since there was no chance of maintaining his professionalism after that display, he issued a command.

“Fry up some shrimp and serve it with something—anything—bottled cocktail sauce if you have to. I want dinner out there in fifteen minutes flat.”

While the staff jumped into action, Marc dragged Chef’s unconscious body out of the way and made a call to the pilothouse.

“Hey,” Marc said when his man picked up. “Where’s the nearest port?”

“Just passed one about a mile back,” came the response. “Why’d you ask?”

“Turn the Belle around,” Marc ordered. “We’re dropping a passenger.”

* * *

Marc tipped back a can of Coke, wishing it were a shot of Crown Royal, and pressed a bag of frozen peas to his eye. He winced when the contents shifted against his swollen flesh. He’d have one hell of a shiner in the morning, but it would be worth it. Already, he felt twenty pounds lighter with Regale off the boat. The chef had taken all his toxicity with him when the paramedics had wheeled him down the ramp and into the darkness.

Now there was the incidental matter of who would cook their meals.

“Gimme some of that, boy.” Nodding at the bottle of Crown Royal, Pawpaw slid his tumbler across the table, and Marc used his free hand to pour two fingers of whiskey before sliding it back.

The executive bar had been deserted anyway, so he’d closed it down for an emergency family meeting. Nicky and Alex sat at opposite ends of the table, wearing the same worried expression, no beer bottles in hand.

Bad sign.

“Grab a Sam Adams and let’s figure this out,” Marc said to his twin brothers. When neither of them made a move for the cooler, he tipped his frozen peas in that direction. “That’s an order from your captain.”

Alex threw him a sour look and reached into the cooler for two beers, then handed one to Nick, who unscrewed the top and took a deep pull. He toasted Marc with his bottle. “You run a tight ship, Cap’n.”

Marc knew it was a sarcastic jab, but he let it go. “Damn straight. I didn’t take shit from Regale and I won’t take it from you, so don’t start.” Okay, maybe he didn’t let it go. But his blood was still boiling from the fight, and now wasn’t the time to needle him.

“I still can’t believe you cleaned his clock,” Nick said. “That man was our bread and butter.”

“That man was an unreliable dictator.” Marc sucked in a mouthful of cola, and it slid down the wrong pipe. He coughed and swiped a hand over his mouth. “The guests won’t be sorry to hear he’s gone. Not after he held them hostage for an hour with no supper.”

“You know who else should be gone?” Pawpaw said, pointing his tumbler toward the casino.

“Don’t start.” Marc wasn’t in the mood to hear it. God help him once word spread among the crew that he and Regale had come to blows over Allie. Pawpaw would go apeshit. “She’s got nothing to do with this.”

It wasn’t the truth, but he didn’t much care.

“I second that,” Nick said. “If anything, she’s good luck. You should’ve seen her today. Every time she blew on someone’s dice, they rolled a seven. The guys are nuts about her.”

Marc’s brows lowered. Just how many pairs of dice had there been? “Now that Regale’s gone, I want her back in the galley doing what I hired her to do,” he grumbled. “First thing.” Alex snickered and Marc kicked him under the table. “I mean it.”

“Aye-aye, Cap.” Alex took a swig of beer, but he still had a smug smile on his lips.

Ella-Claire joined them and dragged over a chair to sit beside Alex. “Sorry I’m late.” She grabbed Alex’s beer, took a leisurely sip, and handed it back as if it were the most natural thing in the world to share a drink with him.

What was up with that?

He knew the two were buddies, but Marc didn’t want Ella’s mouth touching Alex’s—not even by way of a beer bottle. Marc got up from the table and grabbed a Sam Adams from the cooler, then handed it to his sister. “Here, hon,” he said, untwisting the top for her. “You don’t want to go drinking after any of my brothers.”

Alex scowled, first at Marc, then at the lip of his beer bottle. “You sayin’ I have cooties?”

“Of course you do,” Ella said with a friendly shoulder bump. “But they’re sweet cooties.” Just as Marc resolved to keep an eye on those two, Ella said something that shut down his mind to cohesive thought. “By the way, I took the liberty of calling Beau.”

The men at the table drew a collective breath, and all eyes shifted to Marc. It took him a minute to find his voice. When it resurfaced, he sounded eerily calm despite the rush of anger in his veins. “Why would you do that?”

Ella rolled her eyes as if the answer should be obvious. “Because he practically cut his teeth in that galley. Didn’t you tell me he started working in the kitchen before he could say his ABC’s?”

Marc couldn’t deny it. His big brother had always been a clever bastard and that, combined with his gargantuan size, meant any problem he couldn’t solve with his brain had been solved with his fists. As kids, Beau had lorded it over him until Marc grew big enough to push back. They’d been at each other’s throats ever since.

“No,” Marc said. “He won’t take orders. He’s worse than Regale.”

“He’s family,” Ella pressed. “And he’s changed.”

Marc cocked his head to one side and gave her a skeptical look.

“Really,” she swore, holding up a hand in oath. “I don’t know where he’s been for the last couple of years, but he sounds like a new man.” She sipped her beer, then lifted it toward Marc. “You know what he said when I told him you’re captain now?”

Marc laughed without humor. “He probably asked if our liability insurance is paid up.”

“He said It’s about flippin’ time.”

“Flippin’?” Marc asked in disbelief.

“Okay, that’s not the actual word he used, but still,” Ella said. “He’s happy for you.”

Marc doubted that. “Doesn’t matter. He’s not a gourmet.”

“His food is just as good . . .” Alex pointed out.

Nick added, “He works at half the salary.”

“And he can meet us in Naaaatch-ez,” Ella sang, flashing an encouraging smile.

Marc tossed his frozen peas onto the table and wondered if it was too late to rehire Regale. Kicking a man’s ass tended to burn bridges, but in this case it might be worth trying to get him back.

“Hire the boy,” Pawpaw hollered, “and be done with it!” Then he muttered under his breath, “You’ll bring a Mauvais on board, but not your own kin. It ain’t right.”

“Jesus, fine. Just do it.” Marc reached for the bottle of whiskey but changed his mind. Liquor wouldn’t cure what ailed him. Nothing would.

This trip was a bona fide disaster.

* * *

Allie shook her hips to the beat of “I Feel Lucky,” singing along with Mary Chapin Carpenter from the iPod docking station in the galley. Regale had never allowed music in his kitchen, but this wasn’t his kitchen anymore.

“I feel luckyyyyyyyyy, yeah!”

She whistled the rest of the song as she drizzled cream cheese icing over a batch of newly cooled breakfast Danish. Nobody else sang with her, but the galley staff had a collective spring in their step, a lightness that came from a total liberation from tyranny. Maybe Allie should play “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead.” They’d probably dance a jig to that.

But it wasn’t only Chef’s absence that had Allie smiling. The Belle had finally docked in Natchez, and the passengers would soon disembark for a day of historic plantation tours and shopping—which meant the kitchen could operate on half staff.

Luxurious as the Belle was, Allie’s feet itched for the firmness of solid ground. A flowery sundress and a pair of strappy sandals beckoned from her suite upstairs, and she couldn’t wait to get out of this uniform and into something pretty.