He laughed and brought the coffee to his lips. The dark roast was rich and heady, sweetened with something that reminded him of pumpkin pie. Damn, she even made good coffee. Was there anything she couldn’t do?

“No worries,” he said. “I’d never slack off at the helm.”

She lowered herself onto to the rickety chair and studied him for a moment. “I know you wouldn’t. The Belle is your whole world.” There wasn’t an ounce of resentment in her words. When Marc turned to regard her lovely face, he saw a glimmer of respect shining there.

“She is,” he agreed. “That doesn’t bother you?” Over the years, most women he’d tangled with had complained that he’d spent too much time on the Belle and not enough in their beds. He wondered why Allie felt differently.

She shook her head. “Not at all.”

“Why?”

A slow smile lifted her cheeks and her eyes softened as if she wanted to give him a hug. It looked a lot like empathy, which caught him off guard. “Because I know the real reason you’ve invested your heart and soul and all your money in this boat.”

He lifted a questioning brow.

“It’s about family,” she said simply. “As long as the Belle stays in business, everyone you love is here—Alex and Nicky, little Worm, Ella-Claire, and your pawpaw. Even Beau.”

While he processed that, she went on.

“Plus, you had an . . .” She trailed off, searching for the right word. “ . . . An unusual childhood. You didn’t grow up in the same house with your brothers—some of you didn’t even go to the same school—so your only chance to be together was on the Belle. She’s the single thread that ties together the most important people in your life.”

Marc stared out the front window and considered Allie’s words. He’d never thought about it that way, but he supposed she had a point. If it weren’t for summers slaving aboard this boat, he’d never have seen his brothers. The one time they’d tried to organize a family barbecue, Worm’s mama had “accidentally” stabbed their daddy in the thigh with a wooden kabob skewer. After that, they gave up on yearly reunions.

He might consider his brothers idiots, but they were his idiots, and he liked having them around—even Beau, despite the fact that he busted Marc’s chops on a daily basis. The only Dumont missing on board was their daddy, and until now, Marc hadn’t realized how quiet the boat seemed without the man barking orders at them. Almost too quiet.

“So,” Allie continued, “by making the boat your priority, you’re putting your family first. How could anyone fault you for that?”

“Believe me,” Marc grumbled, “plenty of women have tried.”

“Then they didn’t know you at all.”

He grabbed a cookie and threw her a teasing glance. “And you do?”

With a shrug, she crossed her long legs at the ankles and folded both arms behind her head. “Better than you think.”

Marc laughed and dug into his cookie, but deep down he figured she was right. Her observations about the Belle had proved Allie understood him better than he understood himself.

Truth be told, that scared him a little.

He didn’t want her to get under his skin or inside his head and take up residence there. Allie was more than a red-hot lover. She was quickly becoming a friend too, and if he allowed their connection to grow stronger, it would sting all the more when everything fell apart. Which it would. People weren’t meant to mate for life—the divorce rate clinched it.

Logically, Marc knew he should pull back, but that’s not what he did. Allie enchanted him with her infectious cheer and her kind words, and he couldn’t ask her to leave.

They spent the next hour talking about her bakery, the Sweet Spot, and how she’d ended up there. Turned out she’d spent several years as an office manager for a New Orleans dermatologist until her parents had died and left her a small inheritance.

“That’s when I realized how short our lives are,” she said, peering into the darkness. “Way too short to spend my waking hours getting paid minimum wage to run someone else’s business.”

“But why a bakery?” Marc asked. “Why not a voodoo shop or a haunted graveyard tour? With the last name Mauvais, you’d have an edge over the competition.”

Allie frowned. “Because I’m more than my last name. All my life, people have seen me as Juliette Mauvais’s great-great-granddaughter. I want my own identity, separate from hers.”

Marc understood. The Dumont name had its own muddy reputation, which had never really bothered him until recently. But he was captain now, and he wanted folks to take him seriously, not see him as another liar or player or cheat. Once you’d been branded, a reputation was hard to shake. He and Allie had that in common.

“And I love to bake,” she went on. “My mama was big on comfort food. Anytime I had a bad day, she’d make her special bread pudding with an extra dash of lemon juice, just for me.” She smiled to herself. “It always made me feel better. There was a lot of love in her kitchen, and I like to think I’m keeping her memory alive through her recipes. It feels good to know I can lift someone’s mood with something as simple as a cruller.”

“Brave move,” Marc said, knowing full well the challenges of managing a small business. “Especially doing it on your own.”

“I’m not alone—not really. At first I was going to open the shop in Cedar Bayou, because it was all I could afford. But Devyn knew I’d do better in the city, so she insisted on chipping in her half of the inheritance for the camelback store.”

That surprised Marc. “She’s part owner, then?”

“Mmm-hmm. A silent partner, and you’d never know it. She hasn’t asked to see a single income statement.” She pursed her lips for a moment. “Not that there’s much income to speak of, but still.”

As talented as Allie was in the galley, she should be in the black by now. Maybe Marc could help. “Let’s add your contact information to the Belle’s Web site,” he suggested. “We’ll mention you in the newsletter, too. I’ve heard the guests raving about your desserts. Let’s give them a reminder—maybe a recipe. A way to relive part of their vacation when they get home.”

Smiling, she drew her knees to her chest and wrapped both arms around her legs. “I like it. With any luck, soon my real customers will outnumber the fake ones.”

“Fake ones?”

“You know, the folks who only come around for love charms.” With a wistful sigh, she rested her chin on one knee. “They think I’m the reincarnation of Memère because we look alike. But I’m not. I have her eyes, not her so-called power.”

She seemed so defeated that Marc handed her a cookie. “Then why don’t you quit making gris-gris?” That would put an end to the steady flow of traffic from the old wives and starry-eyed teenagers. “Just cut them off. Eventually word will get around, and they’ll leave you be.”

“I don’t know,” she said around a bite of chocolate chip cookie. “Sometimes it’s annoying, but the people who come to me are lost, and I get to steer them in the right direction.” She reached for his coffee and took a sip, then handed it back. “That makes me feel useful.”

Marc scoffed. “Honey, you’re plenty useful without all that mumbo jumbo.”

Allie grinned with a far-off look in her eyes as if replaying a memory. “You don’t get it.”

“Then enlighten me.”

So she told him the story of opening day at the Sweet Spot, when a college coed had come looking for a love charm to win back her cheating boyfriend. “She was insecure and terrified of being alone,” Allie said. “I could see the desperation in her eyes, and I knew she’d never listen to reason. So I lied. I pretended to read the bones, and I told her the spirits of her ancestors demanded she stay away from the boy because she was destined for someone better. I said they were angry that she was willing to accept so little from a man.”

“Did it work?”

Allie nodded, her whole face lighting up in a smile. “I passed her on the street a few years later. I don’t know if she ever met anyone, but she strutted down that sidewalk like she owned it. She’s not that same scared little girl anymore.” She pointed her cookie at him. “Tell me that wouldn’t make your day.”

Marc had to admit she was right.

From there, the conversation returned to him, specifically what he’d been up to since they’d graduated high school and lost touch. Talking with Allie was easy, and before long, he found himself confiding his mama’s bout with cancer—how he and Ella-Claire had taken turns living at home to help out after each round of chemo.

“She’s been in remission five years,” he said. “Healthier than ever.”

Allie stared at him with a grin tilting her lips.

“What?” he asked.

“You can tell a lot about a man by the way he treats his mama.”

“Whatever.” Marc waved her off. She was making a big deal out of nothing. Any decent human being would have done the same. “My daddy really put her through it. Someone had to look out for her.”

Tossing her half-eaten cookie onto his napkin, Allie stood from her chair and settled behind him. She wrapped both arms around his waist, and after giving him a tight squeeze, she stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear, “I like you, Marc Dumont.”

The tickle of warm breath in his ear made Marc shiver. Before he could return the sentiment, Allie abruptly released him, then let herself out the pilothouse door.

Marc listened to her retreating footsteps, missing her already. He liked her, too—perhaps more than he should.

Chapter 12