Bayou Heat

Book excerpt: As Hurricane Gladys bears down on Shadow Bayou, Fontaine Varney’s ex-husband, lusty porn star Travis Coltrane, is shot to death in a fishing boat near Maison Fontaine, the luxury hotel Fontaine owns. Coltrane’s reputation for chasing anything that catches his eye, male or female, makes him ripe for killing. The list of people with motives for murdering the bayou stud is as long as a gator’s tail. Among the list of suspects is Travis’s widow, Fontaine’s mother, who spitefully married Travis before the ink dried on the papers nullifying his marriage to her daughter. Football-hero-turned-private-eye, Ace Chapelle, is hired by Fontaine’s wealthy father to protect her. Ace is just too handsome, too cocky, and too blatantly sexy for Fontaine’s taste. Fontaine cannot ignore her attraction to the roguish jock, but instinct warns he is a dangerous man. Meanwhile, she is equally drawn to the bayou’s handsome and charming new doctor, Dan Birdsong, a far more fitting mate for a Creole princess; however, the young physician clearly has a past he wants left undisturbed. Sheriff Cheyne Delacroix’s investigation leads him from the bayou into the fleshpots of New Orleans, where, he finds a spicy gumbo of suspects, most of whom voice the opinion that Coltrane wasn’t worth killing...yet somebody violently murdered him. Suspicions of blackmail, rumors of illicit affairs, and stories of past killings simmer in the sultry heat of Shadow Bayou’s dark, murky waters, when, without warning, an attempt is made on Fontaine’s life. Tension and tempers rise, heightening the fears of the stranded inhabitants of Maison Fontaine, as the storm approaches and the identity of the killer remains unknown. At the peak of the storm’s fury, yet another murder is committed. A terrified Fontaine realizes most of the people surrounding her harbor secrets, secret lives, and hidden agendas.