Could it possibly be?
Oh, God! Please, no
.
Even as Sylvie stopped the car and helped Tee-John remove the bike, even as she drove the car away, she couldn’t help wondering about one alarming suspicion.
Could Luc be Tee-John’s father?
Sylvie had been sitting in the waiting room of Luc’s law office for over an hour before he came strolling in, wearing a dark blue business suit, light blue dress shirt, and a Star-Spangled Banner flag tie in shades of red, white, and blue. This was a stranger to Sylvie…not the man she’d come to know and love.
But then, maybe she’d never really known him. And maybe the love had been an illusion, too.
His secretary had informed her that he had a civil case on the court docket for two
P.M.
and that he’d planned to go there right from lunch. It was now three o’clock.
“Sylv!” Luc said on noticing her. “I was going to call you later today.”
Hah! Likely story!
There was surprise and pleasure on his face, not the anger she’d seen the last time they’d met. Things must be going well with the oil-pollution case, or he would be upset over her making contact with him.
“Can we talk in private?” she asked, sidestepping his arms, which had been about to pull her into an embrace. The guy had no problem with public shows of affection in front of his staff, apparently. Was it just her, or every woman he treated thus?
In particular, how about Jolie Guillot?
His brows lifted in question at her avoidance of his touch, but he nodded. Tossing some court documents on his secretary’s desk with instructions on letters to be written, he then opened his private office door, motioning for her to enter in front of him.
Sylvie should have known better.
No sooner had the door shut behind them than Luc had her pinned to the wall and was kissing her ravenously. So much for the love potion wearing off!
At first, she succumbed to the delicious play of his lips on hers. It had been a week, and she had missed him tremendously, and he was such a good kisser. But she was here for a purpose, she reminded herself. A serious purpose.
Shoving against his chest, hard, Sylvie moved to the other side of the room, putting a desk between them. “I have something to ask you,” she said without preamble.
“Will it involve tape measures and body fluids?” He was grinning at her, even as he approached in a slow, predatory manner. Just as he feinted one way, then the other, trying to grab for her, she moved behind his desk. Luc continued to grin, obviously enjoying this stalking game.
Well, she wasn’t. And it was time to straighten out a few important matters.
“Is Tee-John your son?” she asked bluntly.
Luc stopped in his tracks, and the grin evaporated from his mouth. “What did you say?”
Sylvie sank down into the desk chair and put her face in her hand for a moment. Once she was calm, she repeated her question. “Is Tee-John your son?”
His silence was damning, and the bleak expression on his face was downright alarming. “I don’t know,” he admitted softly.
“You don’t know?” she practically shrieked. “How could you not know such a thing? Is it even possible?”
“Yes, dammit, it’s possible.”
Sylvie put both palms to her abdomen. She felt as if she’d been kicked in the gut.
“Eleven years ago, I came home from college during my senior year. I was drinking at a Christmas party, and she was there.” He lifted his palms in a weary fashion. “I just don’t know.”
“Did it ever occur to you to ask?”
“Of course I asked.”
“And?”
“Jolie laughed.”
“She laughed?” Sylvie repeated. “Couldn’t you have had DNA tests done?”
“Not without the mother’s permission, and Jolie prefers having my father’s purse strings than mine.”
“Well, I’d say it’s about time you found out for sure. Tee-John has overheard too many things. He’s suspicious.”
“Oh, God!” The look of horror on Luc’s face had to be genuine. “He thinks it’s me?”
“No, no, no! He just suspects that Valcour isn’t his father.”
Luc tilted his head and stared at her. “Then how did you make the connection?”
“Because he looks just like you. Because some of his mannerisms are identical to yours. Because, in retrospect, I realized how green you turned at times when I mentioned Valcour being his father.”
He nodded.
“I just don’t understand you, Luc. How could you have let that boy stay in the same house with Valcour LeDeux, knowing that he might be yours?”
Luc’s chin lifted in defiance. “You can’t think any less of me than I have for years. The ‘bad boy of the bayou’ appellation has been well-earned. Sleeping with my father’s common-law wife! Talk about trash! But I’ve looked out for Tee-John all my life. Don’t you insinuate otherwise.”
They both stared at each other then, each waiting for the other to say something more.
“I guess that’s it then,” Luc said, his shoulders dropping with resignation. “I told you over and over, Sylv, that you’re uptown and I’m…not.”
With a sigh, she gathered her purse and was about to leave. “We’ll talk about this later, Luc.”
“Yeah, right.” Luc spoke with his back to her as he stared out the window.
“I need time to think,” she said defensively.
“Call me when you have some answers, babe, because I sure as hell am fresh out.”
Sylvie closed the door behind her, and felt a door of much more importance closing between them, as well.
Luc was sitting at Swampy’s bar several days later when his two brothers sidled up to him, one on either side.
“Is it really as bad as all that?” asked René, whose band was taking a break from the second set.
“It’s worse,” Luc muttered into his beer. Actually, he’d been sipping at the same beer for so long, the bartender, Gator, was giving him a dirty look. Amazing how being on the binge wagon for so long turned serious drinking into such an unappealing experience. He must have grown up somewhere along the way in the past five or ten years without realizing it.
“I thought you’d be happy that the police arrested those two hoodlums who shot at you and Sylvie,” Remy remarked, taking a long drink from a frosty glass of draft.
“I am,” Luc said, pushing his beer aside, “but I still think Dad was involved somehow. He probably paid them well to say they were hired by some unknown person to scare us off.”
His two brothers nodded in agreement.
“I’m not buying their claim that they were from New York, either. Not with those thick Creole accents,” Luc went on. “But at least they’ll be doing a minimum of three to five in the state pen. And Claudia can call off her guards.”
“To tell the truth, I think Dad was scared shitless this time,” Remy added. “He’s pulled some shady deals in the past, but I don’t think he expected his hired guns to actually use…well, guns on one of his sons. Maybe he’s learned his lesson this time.”
They all nodded again.
“So, why the sad-sack face, bro?” René, asked, clapping a hand on Luc’s shoulder. “You should be happy that everything is falling into place.”
“Everything but Sylvie. Luc is in luuuuuv,” Remy pointed out in a teasing tone.
“Man, if that’s what love’s like, I hope I’m never afflicted,” Remy commented, motioning for Gator to set another draft in front of him and René, “Are you still under the influence of the love potion, do you think?”
“Damned if I know.” Luc took a sip of his tepid beer and grimaced. “All I know is I love her. I want her with a passion. All I can think about is Sylvie.”
“Sounds like a love potion to me,” was Remy’s opinion.
As if Remy knew how a love potion felt!
“Why don’t you just call her, Luc?” René, suggested. “Now that the negotiations with Cypress
Oil are almost finalized, she’s in no real danger. At least not from the oil folks. I can’t speak for the love-potion fanatics.”
“Yeah,” Remy agreed. “If she really loves you, nothing could be that bad.”
“She never actually said she loves me,” Luc admitted.
Remy waved a hand airily. “No biggie, bro. You should have seen the look on her face when she was defending you to Dad and to her mother.”
Luc felt his face brighten with hope that soon deflated. “That was before she learned…well, never mind.”
“Learned what?” both his brothers demanded.
“There are things about me even you guys don’t know.”
“What could be so damned bad?” Remy asked.
“Really, Luc, everyone has something he regrets,” René said. “I can’t imagine anything in your past that couldn’t be forgiven.”
“Oh, yeah! How about the fact that Tee-John might be my son?” Luc recoiled at the indiscretion of his loose tongue. For more than ten years, Luc had kept this suspicion to himself. Now, in one moment of insanity, he had blurted it all out. He was pathetic.
A deafening silence followed in which Luc felt like crawling into one of the filthy cracks in Swampy’s plank floors.
“Uh. Luc, I think you’d better explain.” Remy’s voice was oddly strangled.
“What can I say? I was a college senior, home on break, suffering from terminal horniness. There was a Christmas party…I’d been drinking…
and Jolie crawled into my bed. So, maybe…just maybe…Tee-John is mine.”
“And Sylvie found out?” Remy guessed.
“Yep. Just call me ‘the bad boy of the bayou,’ through and through.”
Remy inhaled deeply, then let out a whoosh of air. “Well, you’d better make that ‘the bad
boys
of the bayou.’ ’Cause I was eighteen at the time and living at home. Suffice it to say, I always wondered if Tee-John was
my
son. Like you, there was only one time with the round-heeled Jolie, but I guess that’s all it takes.”
“Remy!” Luc exclaimed. “Are you saying you’ve been as guilt-ridden as I’ve been all these years?”
“Absolutely. I guess it’s why we’ve both kept such a close eye on the kid. I would have moved to Alaska long ago to open my own small aircraft business, but I felt the need to stick close to Houma.”
Luc stared at his brother in astonishment. “What a helluva mess! I just can’t believe Jolie went after both of us.”
“Uh, actually…” René raised a hand sheepishly. “I was nineteen, and Jolie came to my shrimp boat one night. You can’t imagine how guilty I’ve been feeling all these years. And I’ve been keepin’ an eagle eye on Tee-John too.”
They all glanced at each other, stunned at the enormity of what they’d just discovered.
“What a sorry bunch of sonofabitches we are!” René concluded with a mirthless laugh.
“Man, that Jolie must have been laughin’ up her miniskirt all these years,” Luc commented. “Pulling all our strings, even Dad’s. I’m thinking she’s not as dumb as she acts.”
“You should tell Sylvie about this, Luc,” Remy suggested. “Betcha she’d understand.”
He shook his head. “No, don’t you see, it’s not the possible paternity that upset her. It’s that she believes my failure to take responsibility has put Tee-John in physical jeopardy. I’m A-l reckless scum in her book, guaranteed.”
His brothers nodded. Women had a different way of thinking than men, and they knew it.
“Well, one thing’s for damn sure. We’re going to find out one way or another who the proud papa is.
Now
,” Luc vowed, and everyone agreed.
The next day, DNA tests were performed in a hospital lab on Tee-John LeDeux and his three “brothers,” not to mention an enraged Valcour LeDeux.
The father was proven to be Valcour, much to Jolie’s delight. “Do y’all think I would’ve risked mah fortune gettin’ knocked up by you penniless schmucks?” Jolie remarked to them with a laugh.
“She has a point there,” Luc agreed.
“Yep, schmucks ’r us,” was Remy’s astute observation.
“Do they sell cigars to celebrate non-fatherhood?” René put in.
Valcour just glowered at them all.
Valcour and Jolie were married the following day in a civil ceremony…but only after Jolie signed a generous pre-nup, put together by The Swamp Solicitor, no less.
Although some of the burden of guilt was lifted from Luc’s, René’s, and Remy’s shoulders, they were sobered by the secret they’d harbored all these years and the repercussions that could occur when morality wavered. And they’d all confessed
to having worried that there was a bit of their father’s bad blood in them.
Luc was determined to explain all of this to Sylvie and hope she would understand, but thus far she’d avoided his calls. Not to worry. He had a plan that should redeem himself in her eyes. The world was going to know as well as he did just how great a chemist Sylvie was. She was sure to melt when he made his big announcement.
He hoped.
But just for good measure, Luc pulled out his St. Jude medal and said a little prayer. St. Jude wasn’t the patron saint of hopeless cases for nothing.
Sylvie had been meeting with Charles for more than an hour, trying to convince him to put a temporary halt on the JBX project.
“Charles, having been with Luc for several days while he was under the influence of the love potion has given me a new perspective on this project. I’m not saying we dump JBX. I’m just saying we need to step back and set some new parameters.”
Sylvie had come to some startling conclusions the past few days…days during which she’d refused to speak with Luc, days when all she’d done was think. The conclusion was clear: She did not like having a man fall in love with her prompted by a love potion. Whether the love carried over after the effects wore off was beside the point. Love was demeaned when it began because of a chemical formula.
Besides that, Delilah had taken a decided dislike to Samson, and Sylvie thought she understand why. The situation had become so bad that she’d
had to buy another critter cage to separate the bickering rats. Could the rat behavior be extrapolated to humans? Would Luc turn on her, the way Delilah had with her lover?
“We don’t have the luxury of time,” Charles contended. “The cat’s out of the bag, so to speak, and other companies will be copying us if we don’t act quickly.”
“How can they copy us if they don’t have our formula?”
“That’s another thing. You need to turn over the research data. I’ve tried…and our other chemists have tried…to break down those jelly beans you left behind with your enzymes in them, but there are some ingredients we just can’t identify.”
“I could have told you that,” she answered, not liking the fact that they were trying to “steal” her formula behind her back.
But then something Charles had said struck a chord with her.
“You didn’t have any jelly beans with my enzymes in them. Those were the ones that Luc took. The ones left sitting on the counter were the neutral set.”
“You’re wrong. The jelly beans left behind definitely had your enzymes in them.” To prove his contention, he motioned toward a microscope that was already set up with a slide on it holding a halved jelly bean.
She peered into the lens, and gasped. He was right.
She frowned with puzzlement. If the jelly beans left behind had her enzymes, then that meant that the jelly beans Luc had ingested…
“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. “That means that Luc never took the love potion after all. There must have been a mix-up in the petri dishes.”
“I thought you knew that all along.”
“Are you crazy? You thought I went off with Luc, pretending that he took the love potion? Why?”
Charles shrugged. “Good publicity.”
“You believed this was all a PR stunt on my part?”
He nodded.
“You are a world-class worm.”
There was no love potion
. Sylvie reeled as the implications of this news numbed her. If Luc hadn’t been under the influence of JBX, then that must mean that he’d been fooling her all along. Sylvie felt as if she’d been sucker-punched in the gut.
Tears burned her eyes while the ramifications kept occurring to her one by one, like dominoes falling in place. It had been a game to Luc all along. The teasing. The seduction. The profession of love. And the whole time, he’d probably been laughing at her.
Grabbing for her briefcase, Sylvie pointed a finger at Charles. “The JBX project halts right now. I’ll see you in court if necessary, but
we
are not proceeding till some new ground rules are set.”
Charles started to protest, then indicated with a motion of his hand that he acquiesced. “Let’s give it a week, then meet together with our lawyers.”
“In the meantime, you’ll do nothing.”
“I’ll do nothing,” he promised. “But JBX is too promising to discontinue. Agreed?”
She inclined her head in compliance.
Sylvie left the building and the parking lot as soon as she could, still unable to comprehend the full significance of this latest turn of events. She wasn’t sure what all the effects would be, but one thing was certain: She was devastated by Luc’s deception.
She’d thought the possibility of Luc’s fathering Tee-John was bad, but this was worse. The “bad boy of the bayou” had proven just how bad he could be.
She would never, ever forgive him.
That evening, Sylvie sat on the sofa with Blanche waiting for the local newscast to come on. Tante Lulu had called to alert her that there would be a special segment on the settlement between the Southern Louisiana shrimpers and Cypress Oil.
“Honey, you have to put this in perspective,” Blanche advised. They’d been discussing the situation between her and Luc. Her friend had already given her candid opinion of Sylvie’s red eyes and puffy nose.
“Perspective? The man is a tomcat who screws everything in sight, including his own stepmother, or almost-stepmother. And he lied through his teeth about being wildly attracted to me because of the love potion.”
“Okay, I’ll concede he deserves a few whaps in some strategic places, but, geez, Sylv, love doesn’t come along all that often.”
“But
he
doesn’t love me. Can’t you see? He was just pretending when he said that.”
“I was referring to
your
being in love. And don’t deny it, Sylv. You love Lucien LeDeux.”
Sylvie sighed, unable to repudiate that fact, much as she wished she could.
“Honey, don’t throw it away without giving him a chance to explain.”
“Explain? Oh, Blanche. What explanation can there possibly be for deliberately pulling the wool over my eyes? I knew I was out of my league with him from the start. I just didn’t realize how far.”
“And now we take you to the boardroom of Cypress Oil where a press conference is about to take place,” the announcer was saying.
She and Blanche sat up.
Seated at a long table in front of a bank of microphones was the president of Cypress Oil, Winston Oliver, who’d flown in from Los Angeles; Joe VanZandt, a Cypress Oil attorney; Deke Boudreaux, a Cypress flunky; several of the shrimp fishermen; and Luc, who looked absolutely gorgeous in a dark suit and white shirt with a floral tie. His hair had been recently trimmed.
“He got a haircut,” Sylvie murmured. For some reason, that brought tears welling in her eyes, even though she thought she’d been cried out today.
“You’re weeping over a haircut, Sylv? Why?” Blanche was staring at her with alarm.
“Because he’s already started to change, that’s why. To go on with his life.”
Blanche chuckled at her fancifulness.
Sylvie swiped at the tears and forced herself to focus on the TV screen.
VanZandt was giving the press an overview. Sylvie remembered him from grade school. He was an oily slimeball then, and still was. “It’s with profound pleasure that Cypress Oil and the Southern Louisiana Shrimpers Association announce a
mutually beneficial settlement. A short time ago, the shrimpers called to our attention a pollutant problem that we were unaware of. We were
shocked
to find that a
small amount
of pollutants had accidentally escaped.”