The Love Potion (2 page)

“Aberration about says it all,” Sylvie said with a sigh. In Sylvie’s matriarchal family, there were no men. Mostly, they just gave up and died under all that feminine domination. In her family, the women didn’t divorce their men; they buried them. The Breaux women were known throughout Louisiana as the Ice Breaux, in recognition of their cold ruthlessness in pursuing their goals. Her
mother, Inez Breaux-Fontaine, was a state legislator with aspirations of being elected to the U.S. Congress. Her grandmother, Dixie Breaux, was a hard-as-nails oil lobbyist. Her aunts, Margo and Madeline Breaux, had stopped at nothing in setting up their mail-order-tea dynasty. Valerie Breaux, daughter of her deceased Uncle Henri, made no apologies for her roughshod, fast-track career path from jury consultant to Court TV anchor.

The look of compassion in Blanche’s eyes said without words that she understood perfectly how many of Sylvie’s present actions were based, deep down, on lifelong insecurities stemming from her family. With a shrug of resignation, Blanche asked, “So, when are you going to do the deed?”

“Soon. Two weeks…a month, at most. We’re still synchronizing schedules for all the test candidates.” Sylvie pointed to a petri dish filled with dozens of jelly beans.

“Jelly beans?” Blanche raised an eyebrow in question.

“Yep. My lab rats like them, and…oh, I might as well tell you. Charles has a passion for jelly beans, too.”

Blanche snorted with disgust. “It’s about the only thing he’s ever demonstrated a passion for.”

Sylvie shot her a glance of condemnation for that snide remark, even though it was true that Charles hadn’t succumbed to any of the normal hints and downright obvious seduction techniques she’d tried the past year.

“Would they work for anyone?” Blanche picked up a handful and let them slip through her fingers.
“I mean, if I give them to some guy, would they work for me?”

“Not those. They contain my enzymes. In order for them to work for you, your enzymes…in fact, putting your simple saliva, or a drop of blood, even a hair, inside a neutral set of jelly beans, like those over there…would work for you. Along with my secret ingredients, of course.” She pointed to her briefcase, where a plastic ziplock bag held dozens of the multi-colored candies.

“Be careful, honey,” Blanche warned as she picked up her purse and prepared to leave. “Sometimes the worst thing that can happen in life is we get what we wish for.”

Sylvie refused to let Blanche’s admonition dampen her spirits. Nothing could ruin her good mood today.

Lucien LeDeux was in a lousy mood.

He was supposed to be on a two-week vacation. The crawfish were fat and sluggish this summer, and he’d much rather be down in the bayou checking his nets than cruising into the sweltering city at rush hour. But duty called in the form of entrapment…by his own conniving brother.

“You are in some kind of wild-ass-lousy mood,” his brother René griped from the passenger seat of the jeep where he was holding onto the crash bar with white knuckles. The right door had fallen off two months ago, and Luc hadn’t bothered to replace it. “I think it’s Sylvie Fontaine that has the steam risin’ from your ears.”

Sometimes René had a death wish.

“I think you’ve had the hots for her since we were kids,” René went on. “I think your testiness is
just a cover-up for deeper feelings. I think you’re afraid of—”

“I think you better shut up, René. I only do one good thing a year, and your tab is runnin’ out fast.”

“Cool your jets, man. I was just pointin’ out that you and Sylvie are—”

“Knock off the love-connection talk, René, or I’m outta here.”

“
Dieu
, if you don’t wanna help, I can get another lawyer.”

“I should be so lucky.”

“Maybe F. Lee Bailey is available. Or Roy Black. How about that guy with the fringed leather jacket…Jerry whatshisname?”

“Hah! You and I both know there isn’t another attorney who’d take on your case.”

“
Mais oui
, but then I am fortunate to get ‘The Swamp Solicitor.’” René smirked at him.

Luc gritted his teeth and refused to rise to that particular bait, but he took great delight in pressing his foot to the accelerator and speeding down the highway, hitting every pothole the parish road crew had missed in the past few years. He got grim satisfaction from the surreptitious sign of the cross René made on his chest.

“I shouldn’t have put you in this spot, Luc.”

René’s sudden contrition surprised Luc. “You had no choice,” he admitted. “
C’est ein affair à pus finir
.” It was a much-used Cajun saying, but particularly applicable in this case. “It’s a thing that has no end.”

René nodded. “Perhaps we can finally put an end to it.”

The hopeful note in his brother’s voice tore at Luc’s heart. It didn’t matter if it was a seven-year-
old René looking up to a ten-year-old Luc for answers, or a thirty-year-old René and a thirty-three-year-old Luc. Their father’s misdeeds were never-ending. The scars never got a chance to heal.

Luc’s stereo suddenly kicked on, and René’s static-y voice belted out:

Even René’s raucous demo tape couldn’t raise Luc’s spirits now. His brother was an excellent small-time commercial fisherman, a fair singer and accordionist on the side, and a horrible lyricist. But he fancied himself the next Garth Brooks of the Bayou with his combination of country, zydeco, and Cajun music, which he played on off nights going from one dive to another across Louisiana.

Swerving his jeep off the highway, Luc ignored the sounds of a half-dozen horns blasting behind him. His turn signal hadn’t been working for the past year.

He took a quick look at the crowded parking lot of Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals and muttered, “That figures!” Without hesitation, he pulled his jeep into the “No Parking” slot reserved for the company president. The car continued to rumble even after he turned off the ignition, finally com
ing to a halt with a loud belch from its rear end.

“Your car needs a tune-up,” René advised, unwisely.

“My life needs a tune-up.”

“Yep.”

Luc glanced over at his brother to see what that terse remark implied.

“You’re a pain in the ass. A royal
chew rouge
.” René was grinning at him.

“I know.” Luc couldn’t help grinning back.

“Let’s hope Sylvie Fontaine has a taste for pain-in-the-ass, over-the-hill Cajuns.”

“Oh, yeah! Ab-so-loot-ly!” Luc shook his head at the futility of this whole mission. “René, my agreeing to come here today isn’t about impressing Sylvie. As if I could!”

“It wouldn’t hurt you to try. You don’t have to nail her, or nothin’. Just be nice.”

Pour l’amour de Dieu! Where does René get these ideas?
“Nail her? Where did that brain-blip come from anyhow? Me and Bunsen Burner Barbie? Ha, ha, ha.” He shivered with exaggerated distaste.

Come to think of it, he always felt kind of shivery when he was around Sylvie…nauseous, actually. He couldn’t stand the woman. Never could. Without a word—just a toss of her aristocratic head—she always managed to reduce him to the small, ill-clothed, bad boy from the bayous, anxious for a favor from an uptown Creole girl. Not that he ever showed it. Instead, he played down to her expectations.

“I still can’t see why I have to be the one to approach her, René. You know her, too. I remember her greeting you at the Crawfish Festival last
summer. Seems to me she gave you a big hug of welcome. ‘Oooh, René, it was so sweet of your band to come play for us.’” The last he mimicked in a high falsetto voice. Then he added in a grumble, “All I got was her usual frown.”

René laughed. “Sylvie likes you, deep down.”

“It must be real deep.”

“Here,” René said, offering him the rearview mirror, which he picked up off the floor. “Your hair looks like a bayou hurricane just swept through.”

Luc raked his fingers through his windblown hair, then gave up. Was he seriously buying into René’s warped idea of impressing Sylvie?

“I still say you should have worn a suit.”

“A suit! What, you don’t like the way I’m dressed now?” He looked down at his jeans and the black T-shirt emblazoned with the logo “Proud to be a Coonass.” He lifted his chin defensively. “My clothes are clean.”

In truth, his clothes were always clean. Rumpled, yeah. But always,
always
clean. One time Sylvie had looked kinda funny at his muddy jeans and sniffed, as if he smelled. It didn’t matter that he was only eight years old at the time. His clothes were never dirty again, even when he’d had to wash them in cold bayou stream water in an enamel basin at night, along with those of his younger brothers Remy and René, and wear them damp to school in the morning. A slap or two from his father would be thrown in there somewhere. By mid-morning his head would often droop with exhaustion, and Sister Colette would rap him awake with a ruler to the head, deriding, “You bad boy, you! You’re never going to amount to any
thing but a
gougut…
a slovenly, stupid person.”

Lordy, he hadn’t thought of that in years. No wonder it rankled like hell that he had to go to Ms. Goody Two-Shoes for a favor today.

“Well, come on,” he urged as he climbed over the driver’s door, which was rusted shut. “Time to put our pirogue in the water and see if we float or sink.”

“Uh, me, I think I’ll stay here. Better you should dazzle Sylvie with your moves in private.”

Moves? What moves?
Watching his brother squirm uncomfortably in the seat, avoiding his eyes, Luc realized that he’d been set up good and proper. René had never intended to go in with him. Whatever. He might as well get it over with. Maybe he’d still get in an hour or two of fishing tonight.

“
Bonne chance
,” René called after him as he headed for the front entrance of the pharmaceutical research company, where workers were beginning to stream out, ending their workday.

Yep, it is a thing without end
, he decided.
Sa fini pas
. And it wasn’t his father he was thinking of now.

Samson and Delilah were at it again.

And that was truly amazing, Sylvie reminded herself, since the jelly beans Delilah had been indulging in the past week were placebos. It proved once again that the attraction continued even after the potion wore off, just as she’d told Blanche earlier this afternoon.

Sylvie hung her lab coat on a wall hook, then rolled down the sleeves of her long-sleeved shirt and buttoned them at the wrists. The lab technicians had already left for the day, and she had completed her own official duties an hour ago. She would close up soon, once she took a few more notes. She stooped forward, clipboard in hand, to observe more closely the activity in the glass cage.

“Hey,
chère
, you wanna dance?”

Lucien LeDeux
, Sylvie thought instantly. She’d recognize that voice anywhere…the plague of
her life…the man most likely to dampen her good mood.

“Slooow dancing?” he added as usual, chuckling.

The Cajun clod! Uh-oh! What if he’s looking at my lab rats? What if he suspects what I’m doing here? We can’t let news of this project become public yet. God, he’d like nothing better than to spread the word from one end of the bayou to the other, giving his own twisted spin to my project. He’d make me a laughingstock. Sylvie, the hard-up spinster with the horny hamsters, or some such nonsense
.

She peered back over her shoulder at the jerk, and could have died. His dark eyes weren’t planted on the animals after all. He was staring, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, at her behind, where the denim fabric stretched taut due to her bending.

She’d always adhered to that womanly adage, passed down through the ages: Never bend over in front of a man. Especially not one with the instincts of a bad-to-the-bone connoisseur of females like Lucien LeDeux.

“Man, oh, man! You have the sweetest heart-shaped ass this side of Opoulousa, darlin’,” he murmured begrudgingly. Then he shook his head, like a shaggy dog, seeming to realize belatedly that compliments, even crude ones, were not his usual M.O. when dealing with Sylvie.

Oooh, it’s just like the lech to say the opposite of what he thinks. Heart-shaped? As if!
Instantly, she straightened with affront, and banged her head on an open cage door in the second tier. “Damn!” she swore as her clipboard fell to the floor with a clatter and papers scattered everywhere.

Luc hunkered down at the same time she did to help her gather up the mess, and they knocked heads.

“Nice running into you,
jolie fille
,” he drawled.

The lazy grin that tugged at his full lips was the last straw. “Go away,” she said.

“Am I sensing a little hostility here?”

Sylvie gave him a hard shove in the chest.

Taken by surprise, he fell backwards. But, to her dismay, the idiot grabbed her by the upper arms and took her with him. She landed flat on top of the laughing lout.

In all the years she’d known Luc, he’d never once actually touched her. Odd that she would recall that now. That must be why she was so disconcerted by the light pressure of his fingertips on her arms, when he’d only been trying to break her fall.

She tried not to notice the silky texture of his unruly, overlong black hair…or the dancing amusement in his dark, dark, brown eyes…or his even, white teeth. Instead, she frowned at his well-worn, form-fitting jeans and at the logo on his T-shirt with its self-deprecating slur on his ethnic origins—Coonass. If she, or anyone else, ever referred to him as such, he’d probably fly into a rage.

Then, the worst thing of all happened. Luc stopped laughing as his attention was caught by the sawdust flying in one of the cages, where Samson and Delilah were still at it. She saw the instant he comprehended what she’d been observing on his arrival.

“Ah,
chère
, if I’d known you were into…perver
sions,” he teased, “I could have introduced you to this place on Bourbon Street. They have two-way mirrors and—”

Feeling her face heat, she tried to squirm away, but his arms were locked around her waist.

“A blush, Sylv?” he whispered huskily. “At your age, you can still blush? You give me faith, darlin’. You give me faith.”

“I’d like to give you something, you dumb dolt,” she snarled, and scrambled to her feet. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“I need a favor,
bébé
.” He had the good sense to duck his head sheepishly.

“A favor?” She started to snicker. “Me do a favor for you? What’s the occasion? All Pigs Day?”

Sylvie saw Luc’s jaw clench and the visible effort he made not to retort with his usual teasing insult. “Now, Sylvie, don’t be sayin’ no till you hear me out. I know I didn’t start out right, teasing you and all. Come,” he coaxed, pointing to two tall stools next to a long, stainless-steel table. “Come, sit your sweet self down over there, and let me explain it to you.”

Geez, his obnoxiousness is so bad it’s almost adorable. Adorable? Yikes! Watch yourself, Sylvie
. He’d done it again. Rattled her composure. Made her feel all flustery and insecure, like a twelve-year-old girl at her first school dance. Sylvie took a deep breath for patience. “Let’s cut to the chase, LeDeux. I was in a really good mood before you came on the scene. I’d like to end my day the same way.”

“Watching rats have sex gets you in a good mood?” he asked, blinking his deliciously dark lashes with seeming innocence.

I never realized how good-looking he was before. No wonder women fall like dominoes for him up and down the bayou
. “A zillion Louisiana bimbos must have gone down for the count with that sexy ploy,” she blurted out.

“What ploy?” He tilted his head, genuinely puzzled now.

She hesitated, then disclosed, “That come-hither, eyelash-batting trick.”

“Come-hither? Me?” He burst out laughing, and Sylvie had to admit he was pretty near irresistible when he threw his head back and laughed with unaffected abandon.

Finally, he wiped the tears of mirth from his eyes, and took her arm, leading her with gentle pressure to the table. “Truce, Sylvie. Okay?”

She refused to sit next to him on one of the high stools. Instead, she folded her arms over her chest and waited, tapping her foot impatiently.

He remained standing, too, though he chuckled at her silly act of defiance. Then he picked up a small Mason jar filled with a murky liquid that he must have laid on the table when he came in. Handing it to her, he said, “Will you test this for me?”

Now, that surprised her. He really had come here for some legitimate favor. Well,
maybe
legitimate. “What is it?”

“Water from Bayou Noir, near the old Farraday plantation.”

“Bayou Black?” Her forehead creased as she tried to picture that particular stretch. “Isn’t that where your family land used to be located? Isn’t that…why does the water look so cloudy? And what are those particles?”

His lips thinned, and his jaw jutted out angrily.

She opened the jar and sniffed deeply several times. “Oh, Good Lord, Luc…are you expecting to find petroleum wastes in this water?”

“Possibly.”

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “From Cypress Oil?”

The red stain creeping up his neck and filling his cheeks told all.

“Your father would be livid to know you’re going behind his back.”

“This has nothing to do with my father…at least, not directly,” he said. “I was contacted by a group of shrimp fishermen who’ve noticed dramatic changes in their catches the past few years.”

Dramatic changes in their catches
. That was an understatement. The past few years, various oil companies had been widening many of the bayous into navigation canals and dredging an interconnecting network of drilling and pipeline canals, often without regard for the ecosystem or the public water supplies. Despite the concern of environmentalists, a great number of Louisianans worked for and supported the oil industries’ offshore rigs; instead of supporting clean-water activists, these people displayed bumper stickers that read, “Oil Feeds My Family.” Their defense of their livelihood was understandable. But there
were
pockets of resistance throughout the state, especially in Terrebonne Parish. Luc was asking her to insert herself in the midst of this battle.

Still, she didn’t want to appear entirely unsympathetic. “I thought the DER had gotten serious about pollution control.”

He shrugged. “Money talks.”

“That’s a serious charge, Luc.”

“We’re talking serious money. Oh, I doubt that any high mucky-mucks are involved, but local water inspectors keep coming up with perfect reports on Cypress Oil. Bad business, that. It just isn’t believable.”

“And these fishermen came to you?” she inquired skeptically. “The Swamp Solicitor?” She saw him bristle at that appellation. Heck, she would have thought he relished the nickname. “Don’t get your nose out of joint. I apologize if I was offensive, but you must admit you’ve gone out of your way to earn a reputation for being a loose legal cannon on some occasions.”

“Some apology!” He was leaning against the wall, his long legs crossed at the ankles, gazing at her with amusement.

She exhaled with disgust. Talking with Luc LeDeux was like talking to flypaper—always had been; you never knew what was going to stick. “If a nutball, born-to-lose legal case comes up in Louisiana, you’re sure to be handling it…in your own slightly underhanded, not-quite-legal, not-quite-illegal manner.”

“Hey, why don’t you. say what you really think, Sylv?” His eyes continually swept Sylvie’s body as he talked.

“Why me?” she asked.

“I need someone totally disassociated from the oil companies or the government. Someone whose opinion can be trusted.”

“And you trust me?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “I think you’d cas
trate me with a spoon if I blew in your ear, but on a nonpersonal level, yeah, I suspect you’re honest to the bone.”

She refused to succumb to that faint praise, even though it did strike an unexpected spark of pleasure in her. “Bottom line, buster. You’re nuts if you think I’m going to get involved in a dispute with the government, Cypress Oil, a bunch of Cajun fishermen, and your”—she shuddered—“father.” She stooped down, her behind deliberately pointing in the opposite direction from Luc, and began to pick up her papers.

When she stood, he was still standing there. Obviously, the jerk couldn’t take a hint. She turned her back on him, and began to tuck the papers into folders inside her open briefcase.

“Hey, these are great,” Luc commented idly.

She decided to ignore him, even though he was probably observing her lab rats.
I refuse to let him ruin my wonderful day. I refuse to let him ruin my wonderful day. I refuse—

“Are they Jelly Bellies?”

—to let him ruin…What?…What did he say? Eek!
Chills erupted over Sylvie’s skin. “Wh-what?” she squeaked out, spinning on her heel.

Oh, my God!

Luc was tossing jelly beans up into the air, one at a time, like peanuts, and catching them in his mouth. She looked quickly at the petri dish at the other end of the table. It was only half full.

Oh, my God!

The bayou bad boy had just scarfed down a double dose of her love potion jelly beans.

“Sylv?” Luc asked with concern. “Your face is turning purple. You having a fit, or something?”

Her scream was probably heard all the way to Lake Pontchartrain.

Luc hit the side of his head with the heel of his hand—one, two, three times—to clear the ringing.

“You ate my jelly beans,” she said accusingly. “Without even asking.”

“Well, ex-cuuuuse my poor manners. I’m just a clumsy ol’ swamp rat. We don’t have no hoity-toity Emily Post down on the bayou to teach us low-down Cajuns proper etiquette.”

“You fool! You idiot! You crude, rude, stupid oaf!”

“Boy, talk about overreacting! It’s not as if I stole your car…or your virginity.”

“Aaarrgh!” She was yanking at her own hair.

Sylvie Fontaine always had been a high-strung holier-than-thou paragon, Luc knew, just like the other cold-blooded Ice Breaux broads in her family. Maybe all those years of suppressing emotions had caused her to snap. Weren’t there rumors that some of her ancestors had dabbled in voodoo? She sure was acting crazy. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, darlin’,” he said with as much compassion as he could muster. “I’ll pay you for the lousy candy…wh-what?”

Sylvie was approaching him with clawed hands.

He backed up slightly, hitting a utility sink. Hey, compassion only went so far. Sylvie was beginning to look like Bette Davis in
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Right down to the bulging eyeballs. Even her hair, which had been tucked into a neat, single braid down her back, was coming undone. With strength he never would have suspected she had, Sylvie shoved him around and forward so that he bent over the sink.

“Throw up,” she ordered.

“I beg your pardon?” He slanted her a sideways glance of incredulity. “They were only jelly beans, for chrissake.”

To his utter amazement, she tried to stick her fingers in his mouth. “Vomit, you jerk. Vomit.”

He would have laughed if he weren’t gagging. Her nimble fingers were practically tickling his tonsils. He bit down hard enough for her to pull out.

“Ouch!” she yelped. “Oh, God, you have to vomit.” Now she was slapping him on the back, hard.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her till she started to settle down. “Have you lost your freakin’ mind? Are you crazy?”

“I’m not crazy, but I will be if you don’t vomit.” She took several deep breaths. When she was no longer trembling, she eyed him speculatively. “I don’t suppose you’d let me ease a rubber tube down your throat and pump your stomach.”

“Only if you’re straddling my lap, naked as a French Quarter hooker, doin’ the hula. Even then, I’d have to think about it.”

“Oh, this is no time for your crude jokes. Get serious. You’ve been tormenting me for years, but you have no idea what you’ve done now.”

“Why don’t you tell me?” A sudden thought occurred to him. He seemed to remember seeing tiny jelly beans in some of the rat cages. Could they have arsenic, or something, in them? His stomach churned ominously. “Those jelly beans…they weren’t poisoned, were they?”