Cajun Persuasion

by Sandra Hill

  Reader Letter

  Dear Readers,

  Did you like Aaron’s story in Cajun Persuasion? I must admit this was a hard one to write.

  Rule of thumb for writers: Never make a secondary character compelling if you don’t plan to give him a separate story. And, boy, did Aaron turn out compelling in The Cajun Doctor! Who wouldn’t love a hot pilot with a wicked sense of humor! Especially one who had such a poignant love for his twin brother and his new, extended bayou family. Why else would he have bought a rundown plantation?

  Second rule of thumb for writers: Never write a character into a corner, unless you have an escape plan. Previously, I described Aaron as mysteriously disappearing every night and no one knew where he went. Here’s a bit of gossip. I didn’t know either.

  Most of all, you have to admit that Tante Lulu was in her usual outrageous form. She had a great pal with Aunt Mel.

  Hard to believe that Cajun Persuasion marks the twelfth book in my Cajun series. It all started with The Love Potion (Luc’s story) and has come all the way to the most recent The Cajun Doctor and Cajun Crazy. What a colorful life the old lady has lived! What else could she possibly have in mind?

  And, by the way, did you notice recent news stories about the Cajun Navy? You all know how much I love Cajuns, but now I like them even more. Google them. You might be surprised.

  On a more serious note . . . although I placed this story of sexual exploitation as a back story to this novel, it is a horrendously real fact of life, even in the United States. Currently, there are more than 20 million victims of human trafficking worldwide, more than 4 million of those for sexual purposes. In the United States alone, there are 1.5 million victims, and 300,000 more added each year. The average age of the victims is 11–14 years old, and their life spans are seven years, once they are taken into the sex trade. Shocking, right?

  I love to hear from readers and can be reached at shill733@aol.com or my website at www.sandrahill.net or on Facebook at Sandra Hill Author. As always, I wish you smiles in your reading.

  Sandra Hill

  Aunt Mel’s Alaskan Fried Green Tomatoes

  Fried Tomato Ingredients

  2–3 green tomatoes

  1/2 cup (or more) heavy cream

  1 egg (beaten and mixed with a tsp of water)

  1/2 cup (or more) flour

  1/2 cup (or more) panko

  1/2 cup (or more) cornmeal

  Salt

  Pepper

  Sugar

  Cayenne pepper (optional)

  Oil (canola, preferably, but bacon fat works, too, if you have it)

  Directions:

  Slice and salt the tomatoes, then set them aside.

  Mix the panko and cornmeal together in equal parts. Set up four bowls containing, in this order, the heavy cream, flour, beaten eggs, and panko/cornmeal mixture. Note that directions call for one half cup to start. This is to accommodate however many tomatoes you choose. More can always be added.

  Get the oil in a frying pan to sizzling, but not so hot that it would burn the breading on the tomatoes.

  Drain any excess water off the tomato slices and now sprinkle lightly with sugar to cut the tartness.

  Now carefully dredge each slice, both sides, in the cream, flour, egg, then panko/cornmeal mix. Fry on one side to a golden brown, turn, fry on other side. Try not to turn more than once to preserve the breading. Salt and pepper to taste. If you like spicy, you can also sprinkle with cayenne, or add a dash to the flour or panko/cornmeal mix.

  Serve hot or cold with dipping sauce.

  Dipping Sauce

  1/2 cup mayonnaise

  3 tbsp catsup

  2 tbsp (more or less to taste) horseradish

  1 tsp paprika

  Tabasco (a dash if you like extra spicy)

  Directions:

  Mix thoroughly and refrigerate. If you have extra, it works great with fish or onion rings, too.

  An Excerpt from The Love Potion

  Continue reading for an excerpt from the book that started it all—the first book in Sandra Hill’s sizzling Cajuns series,

  THE LOVE POTION!

  And don’t miss the first book in Sandra Hill’s new Bell Sound Series,

  THE FOREVER CHRISTMAS TREE,

  On-sale October 2018.

  Chapter One

  Houma, Louisiana, 1999

  Forceful seducation, for sure . . .

  Samson was a stud, no doubt about it.

  With his usual raw animal magnetism, he stepped through the low doorway, then reared up, bracing a shoulder against the glass wall. Nostrils flaring and body quivering with tension, he surveyed the far corner where his “harem” huddled together in fear.

  Or was it anticipation?

  Immediately, his beady eyes honed in on one female . . . Delilah. She was nibbling on a tiny red jelly bean. It mattered not that her mousy brown hair stood up in spikes, unlike the renowned beauty of her namesake. Or that she darted her head this way and that, seeking escape . . . a clear contradiction to the famed Biblical siren who supposedly craved sexual attention. At the same time, her timid glance kept returning to Samson. Clearly, she was attracted, despite herself.

  Samson was not so shy. His widespread stance and outthrust pelvis sent a message as old as time. I am male. I am aroused. And I want you. There would be no escape for Delilah. Not from this glass-walled prison. Not from the scurvy rat who would have his way with her.

  But Samson was a cool dude. He didn’t force his attentions on any female. He didn’t have to. Snagging her gaze, Samson held his prey transfixed . . . the first step in eroding her defenses. Then he waited.

  Delilah made a little squealing sound of protest, but couldn’t seem to break the eye contact. It was as if she were under some spell. Nervously, she gulped down her jelly bean, followed by two more, a yellow and a green. Gradually her body relaxed, and her eyes dilated with some strong emotion. The only thing missing from her surrender was the white flag.

  Samson moved forward slowly, cutting Delilah from the pack. Every movement he made, from narrowed eyes to self-assured body movements, bespoke a fever pitch of sexual arousal. Delilah was becoming equally affected, a shivering mass of excitement, the closer he got.

  Acting swiftly, Samson pounced on Delilah, giving her no chance for second thoughts. Without foreplay, he mounted her and was soon thrusting frantically, as if he had not done this a hundred times before. As if they would get no other chance to repeat the ecstasy.

  Then, when they were both exhausted with sexual satiety and the door to Delilah’s “prison” swung open providing a means of escape, Delilah did the strangest thing. Instead of darting for freedom, she cuddled next to Samson and nuzzled his neck. The victim was staying with her seducer, by choice, even after the fever had passed. It was almost as if Delilah loved Samson. Amazing!

  Amazing . . . because Samson really was a rat.

  Success is sweet . . .

  “I did it! I did it!” Dr. Sylvie Fontaine shrieked with exhilaration. “Move over, Viagra. Here comes JBX . . .‘The Jelly Bean Fix.’ ”

  Her best friend, Blanche Broussard, stood with her arms crossed over her chest, shaking her head at what she must consider an overexuberant reaction on Sylvie’s part to a mere scientific experiment. Mere? There was nothing mere about this. It was so much more . . . the breakthrough of the century!

  Sylvie had just run the hundredth trial run on her JBX project . . . the hundredth successful trial run. Despite her methodical, time-consuming analyses, she was still stunned at the fact staring her in the face . . . through two sets of beady, sex-glazed eyes.

  “I have invented an honest-to-God, legitimate love potion,” she said in an awe-filled whisper. “In two weeks the human experiments will begin, but there’s no doubt as to the outcome.”

  Unable to contain her elation, Sylvie boogied a little victory dance around her research lab, witnessed only by a bunch of unimpressed rats and the equally unimpressed Blanche.


  “Yech!” Blanche had a profound dislike for rodents of any type, even the cute, miniature variety of rats that Sylvie used, which were more like large mice, and she stood tentatively on the far side of the room, away from the animal cages. She brushed a hand with perfectly manicured lavender nails over the front of her long, gauzy dress, as if she might be contaminated, even from that distance.

  In her white lab coat, plain linen shirt, and jeans, Sylvie felt frumpy and staid next to Blanche, but after more than thirty years of friendship—thirty-three, if you counted the time they’d spent lying next to each other in high-wheeled, designer carriages while their nannies strolled them to Magnolia Park as babies— she’d long ago given up on competing with Blanche’s beauty or flair for style.

  “Really, Sylv, you’ve gotta get a personal life. Watching rats have sex is not . . . well, normal.”

  “Is that a professional opinion? From ‘The Love Astrologer’?” Sylvie asked with a grin. Blanche was a self- trained astrologer, a local radio celebrity whose “love horoscopes” were must-listening every morning across Louisiana—a combination star chart analysis and philosophy for daily living.

  “I develop horoscopes for all aspects of life, not just love charts,” Blanche corrected her with a little harrumphing sound of consternation. “But you’re changing the subject, Sylv.” She let out a whoosh of exasperation. “You’ve been cooped up in this dreary place for too long, hon.”

  “Do you think this is dreary?” Sylvie was so used to the dim light lab rats preferred that she no longer noticed. “You just don’t get it, Blanche. I have invented a love potion . . . a love potion!”

  “Well, big whoop! A potion to reduce thighs . . . now that I could get excited about.”

  “As if you have to worry about your thighs!” Sylvie made several more notes on her clipboard before casting a sidelong glance of disgust at Blanche’s perfect figure. At five-foot-ten, Blanche didn’t carry an ounce of excess fat. Sylvie, a good four inches shorter, didn’t either, but she had to work at it every single day. Darn it!

  “Every woman in the world has to worry about her thighs, honey. Especially after she passes the big Three- Oh. Forget cellulite. Everything starts to swell up or slip down then.”

  “That’s precisely why my discovery is so important. It moves the emphasis away from physical appearance.”

  “With rat aphrodisiacs? Disgusting!”

  Blanche just didn’t understand.

  In this spare room, off the main laboratories of Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a company that dealt almost exclusively with birth control and hormone replacement products, Sylvie had been conducting her experiments for the past year on dozens of rodent couples in their glass-walled cages. It hadn’t started out that way. She’d been immersed in her regular work involving progesterone when she noticed an elevation in pheromone levels as different ingredients were manipulated. Out of that had grown her JBX Project, which would be of special interest to any for-profit company, especially after the way Pfizer stock had almost doubled in price following the announcement in mid-’98 of its little blue pill.

  Of course, there was a world of difference between Viagra and JBX, but they were both drugs that could enhance a person’s love life. The public would love it . . . there was no doubt about that fact in Sylvie’s mind.

  She’d given her chemical formula to just the male rat, the male and female, just the female, two males, two females, every combination possible. She’d adjusted the proportions, measured heart rates and blood pressure, tested blood samples, studied changes in physical characteristics. Samson and Delilah were the standard against which all the other “guinea pigs” were studied, and they’d proven in more than a hundred encounters that physical and emotional attraction could be directed on a short-term basis.

  Oh, the idea of inciting or heightening lust had been around since the beginning of time. Everything from amulets to oysters. And, of course, Viagra. But being able to orchestrate the emotions, perhaps even love itself, through chemistry, now that was a big-time breakthrough.

  “Isn’t this illegal or something, hon? Drugging someone without their permission?”

  “Well, in the wrong hands it could be problematic, but that will never happen . . . well, any more than Viagra, or any other substance, is misused. Besides, it will be at least a year before we’re ready to go public with this . . . lots of time to iron out those little wrinkles.”

  “But it sounds sort of like that date rape drug, GHB . . . you know, the one they call ‘Easy Lay.’ ”

  “Absolutely not! Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid knocks a person out; my love potion turns them on . . . emotionally. Well, physically, too, but the most important part is that the receiving party is attracted temporarily, on an emotional level, lasting anywhere from a few days to several weeks.”

  “I just don’t know, Sylvie.”

  “Think about it, Blanche . . . How many times have you and I said that the mating game is based too much on youth and physical appearance . . . that men and women often overlook the perfect partner? This potion gives that perfect person an opportunity to be with the mate they want, to have that person get to know the real individual. Hopefully, when the potion wears off, the lovin’ feelings will remain.”

  “But the ethics of it all! The manipulation!”

  “Hah! How is this any more unethical than following the advice of that popular book The Rules? Or wearing a push-up bra? Or seductive perfume? Health food stores are loaded with bottled love aids. Heck, women have been manipulating men, and vice versa, for centuries, ever since Eve gave Adam the apple.”

  “I know you’ve worked hard to conquer your shyness, Sylvie, but I still can’t visualize you setting yourself up for the publicity this would engender. You would be the spokesperson for this potion when it hits the market, right?”

  “No! Never!” She shivered with distaste at the notion of making a spectacle of herself, not having come that far in her shyness therapy. But she did want credit for her work. She came from a family of overachievers, and it was her turn to get some much-overdue credit. Fame and fortune, without being the deer in the headlights, that was what she wanted.

  “Your company might feel differently.”

  She shook her head. “I may be working in Terrebonne facilities, but this is my project. All the project data is stored in my safety-deposit box, and the essentials of my everyday work are kept in that locked briefcase,” she said, pointing to the desk, “which I carry home with me every day. I have no interest in being personally associated with this product in the public eye, but I do expect recognition behind the scenes and in the professional scientific community.”

  “This is all about your boss, isn’t it, Sylv?” Blanche walked over to the coffeemaker in the corner, the multi-colored bands of purple in her skirt shimmering in the thin stream of sunlight coming through the single window.

  “Partly,” Sylvie admitted, taking one of the cups her friend handed to her. Before she continued, she took a sip, savoring as always the pungent scent of the thick, black Creole coffee, with enough caffeine to revive a corpse. In fact, it was one of the secret ingredients in her love potion formula—an idea she’d gotten from the voodoo ritual handbook that had once belonged to her great-grandmother many times removed, Marie Baptiste, the demented antebellum mistress of a sugar plantation out on Bayou Noir. “I mean, I didn’t start this experiment with Charles in mind, but once I saw the implications, I knew that I would volunteer to be one of the dozen female guinea pigs when the human experiments began, and Charles would be one of the dozen male targets. It took a little convincing, but eventually he agreed . . . for the sake of the company. We’re starting in two weeks.”

  “Charles Henderson is a middle-aged dweeb . . . an executive stick-in-the-mud. Bo-o-o-ring, with a capital B,” Blanche asserted. “You can do ten times better than him. Besides, you’re approaching this whole seduction business wrong. You zap a man with a love potion and it takes all the mystery out of r
omance. What’s wrong with the old-fashioned way of falling in love?”

  “Ah, but that’s why I’ve been thinking that I would be better off with a man like Charles.”

  “Honey, you’ve been dating the wrong men if you think that. I wonder if you realize what you’re doing here.”

  “I know exactly what I’m doing. No more handsome men with overinflated egos. No more BMW-driving, bottled-water-drinking, exercise-addicted, vitamin-conscious, suntanned hunks of testosterone in Gucci loafers. No more boring nights of deep discussions on the lofty subjects of golf handicaps or 401K portfolios or mega-amp woofers. It’s time for a 180-degree turn in my life. All I want now is a quiet, scholarly type, like Charles . . . or a reasonable facsimile. A companion. A husband. A man to make a home with me and give me children. Lots of them.” She sighed with frustration, knowing she was failing miserably in explaining her motives, especially since tears of concern were welling in Blanche’s eyes.

  “Where’s the sizzle in that picture, my friend?” Blanche asked.

  “I don’t need sizzle.” Sylvie raised her chin defensively.

  “Sylvie Marie Fontaine!” Blanche declared, setting down her coffee and planting her hands on her hips. “Everyone needs sizzle. Are you sure there’s Creole blood flowing through your veins? Every Creole woman has passion in her soul.”

  Oh, there was Creole blood in her veins, all right. Some families prided themselves on having ancestors who’d come over on the Mayflower. Sylvie’s family took great pride in being one of the original white Creole families of French or Spanish descent who settled in the Louisiana colony centuries ago.