Tall, dark, and Cajun

de Sandra Hill

Rachel Fortier, a thirty-something home design consultant, has had it with her fiance. It's bad enough that he gave her a Thighmaster for Valentine's Day and a Butt Buster for her birthday, and that their seven-year engagement has no end in sight. But she just learned that he's had a vasectomy! Rachel packs up and heads south to meet her great-aunt Gizelle for the first time and take a few days to regroup. She imagines a Grandma Walton living in a picturesque house surrounded by wondrous nature. What she finds is a cabin on stilts deep in the bayous, with alligators and snakes the size of telephone poles. As for Aunt Gizelle, she's a former taxidermist who can outcreep Hannibal Lechter any day of the week.And if that isn't enough to make a girl turn around and head right back to her ex, Gizelle is feuding with a Cajun bad boy -Remy LeDeux, a helicopter pilot and Air Force vet whose face is scarred from battle. Rene wants to buy a piece of property from Gizelle, but the feisty senior makes it clear she wants nothing to do with any LeDeux. But the moment Remy sees Rachel getting out of a red truck, it's love at first sight for the long-time bachelor, despite all the turmoil she brings into his life, with her ideas of Feng Shui-ing his houseboat and her ex chasing after her, not to mention her great-aunt threatening to shoot his heinie. But getting Rachel to say "I do" is worth it. After all, he's never met a woman before who looks at him like he's a Whitmans Sampler box and she's a chocoholic.