The Love Potion

  She seemed to remember that the bayou cottage where he and his brothers had lived as young boys had been notoriously filthy…rusted cars, hot-water heater, and bathtub in the front yard…that kind of thing. Was there something about his deprived childhood that had generated this personality trait? As she recalled, his father hadn’t sold his land to the oil companies till Luc was about fourteen. Before that, there was lots of speculation on how Valcour LeDeux, a known alcoholic and brutal father, supported his family…or rather, did not support his family.

  There were so many things she was learning about Luc that made her wonder who he really was. Like an uncompleted puzzle, the whole picture was not yet clear, but it was slowly taking shape.

  Just before she prepared to go outside, Sylvie noticed a sealed cellophane package on a side table. She smiled when she saw what it was: three pairs of white boxer shorts imprinted with glow-in-the-dark red hearts. They had to be a “gift” from his aunt…or a prod, more likely.

  But Sylvie wasn’t smiling when she saw what lay under the boxers. It was a flame-red nightgown that dipped low, low, low in front; its hem would hardly reach the thighs. And it even had a name: “The Naughty Nightie.” Gawd!

  Merciful heavens! What could Tante Lulu be thinking?

  She was afraid she knew.

  After gathering together her notebook and pen, she found Luc down by the stream, calf-deep in the water, working a net to catch some crawfish. He wore a pair of cutoff jeans, and that was all. Lordy, Lordy, looking as he did, the man could catch a whole lot more than a netful of mudbugs.

  Lucien LeDeux was a well-built man. His arms and shoulders and chest, even his legs, showed well-developed muscle definition…not the pumped-up muscles of an exercise fanatic, but the healthy muscle tone of an active man. His black hair was a little long on the neck, and Sylvie remembered from the night before how silky it had felt against her hands. His fingers were long and deft and way too interesting as he maneuvered the net.

  He was not yet aware of her scrutiny; so, Sylvie watched as he performed his tasks…lifting the net; tossing crawfish of a suitable size into a bucket on the bank and the babies back into the stream; rebaiting the traps with what she recognized as cow lips—a favorite Louisiana bait for crawfish—which must have been sent with the supplies; and unfurling the net over the stream once again.

  He bit his bottom lip in concentration as he worked…clearly a labor of love. Truly, Luc was a man with bayou mud in his veins…a Cajun at heart. It was said that you could take the Cajun out of the bayou, but you couldn’t take the bayou out of the Cajun. It was certainly true of Luc…a man in his element here in the primitive swamplands. How hard it must be for him to switch personas when he had to enter sophisticated courtrooms for his regular work!

  Luc raised his face to the hot sun and stretched with lazy pleasure. Only then did he notice Sylvie watching him.

  “Did you have a good sleep?” There was a twinkle in his eye as he asked the question. The man got way too many twinkles in his eye, even for the most innocuous reasons.

  She nodded. Faced with the full splendor of his bare chest, she was suddenly at a loss for words.

  “Eat?” he asked.

  She nodded again. Mercy, the man was a dangerous six-foot bundle of male testosterone.

  Splashing noisily through the shallow stream, he walked up to her on the bank. His eyes roved over her, from her bare feet, the toes of which were wriggling in the streamside mud, up her legs, over his shorts and T-shirt, which were too big for her but suddenly felt revealing, to her rumpled hair, resting finally on her lips. Then he smiled…with an odd, knowing look on his face.

  “What?” she asked.

  He lifted an eyebrow in question.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “You were dreaming about me.”

  “Wh-what?” The nerve of him!

  “You were making sexy sounds and movements while you slept, and then you said my name.”

  “You’re making that up.” She refused to ask what sounds and what movements for fear of what he might reveal. But she’d really like to know how long he’d been watching her as she slept, and why.

  “No, I’m not.” His eyes were smoldering with some heated emotion, and more than a little promise. Of what, she dared not ask.

  Her face heated with embarrassment. Oh, this was too much. First, she had to live with the way she’d behaved in Luc’s arms the night before. Now, she had to live down what she’d allegedly done in her sleep.

  “I love your shyness, Sylv.” Luc was bending over the five-gallon bucket, checking on his crawfish, as he spoke in a voice gravelly with appreciation.

  “Where did that ridiculous statement come from?” she demanded. Really, the man had a way of disconcerting her. She’d come out here all prepared to tell him how things were going to be between them from now on, and he’d thrown her off guard by mentioning her dreams—which were coming back to her with graphic detail—and her shyness, which he knew had to be a sore spot with her.

  “You were blushing so sweetly, like you always do,” he explained, standing upright and arching his shoulders back to work out the kinks. “And I realized how much I like that shy side of your personallity.”

  “As if I care what—” She started to say something about how she couldn’t care less what he thought of her shyness, but he put up a halting hand so he could continue.

  “I understand…at least, I’ve been told…that you hate your shyness…that you’ve even had therapy to deal with it. But I’ve gotta say, babe, that there’s something really appealing about a woman who can be hot in bed and shy over breakfast.”

  “You…you…you…” she sputtered.

  “See?” he said, patting her on the behind as he walked by on his way back to the crab net in the water. “Your face is turning red again. You have the prettiest blush, chère.”

  Outraged, she tossed her notebook and pen to the ground and stomped after him, right into the water. “Number one, my shyness is none of your business. Number two, I am not hot in bed.”

  “Too bad,” he said drolly. “I know you’re a hot kisser; so, I just assumed—”

  “Assumption is the mother of all screwups.” She inhaled deeply to calm herself, and continued. “Number three, my face is red…not because I’m blushing, but because I’m furious. You…you…you…”

  He just grinned at her…which was the last straw. She shoved him in the chest, causing him to lose his footing and fall backwards into the murky water. But in the process, the brute grabbed ahold of her leg, pulling her down with him.

  When he came shooting up from the water, he flicked his hair back off his face and laughed. When she came up from the water, there was duckweed in her hair and brackish water in her mouth and she was choking, not laughing. He was still laughing joyously, splashing water at her in a teasing fashion like a little boy.

  But Sylvie had gone stone still as she combed her fingers through her hair. She’d just noticed that the top button of Luc’s cutoffs had come undone and the denim pants were riding low on his hips, exposing his navel and part of his flat stomach.

  Luc’s laughter stopped abruptly, and she thought she’d been caught in the act of ogling him. But no, he was staring at her, lips parted, eyes glazed. She looked down and could have died. She might as well have been naked for all the coverage the wet fabric provided.

  With as much dignity as Sylvie could muster, she walked stiffly out of the water, up the bank, and pointedly picked up her notebook and pen. “You and I have to talk,” she told Luc then.

  He looked at her face, then at the notebook, then back to her face again. “If you pull out a measuring tape, Sylv, I swear I’m gonna wrap it around your neck.”

  A short time later, Luc was lolling in the hammock, one arm propped behind his head, the other dangling a long-necked beer over the side from loose fingers, while Sylvie acted the dedicated scientist. He was about to fulfill an agreement he and Sylvie had
just negotiated. The gist of it was that she was going to “interview” him about his sexuality. Be still, my heart, and other body parts. He didn’t know about Sylvie, but personally, he was planning on having a great time with this interview.

  Sylvie sat on a wide tree stump several feet away. Her long legs were extended forward and crossed at the ankles while she took notes with so much seriousness you’d think the future of mankind was at stake…instead of the libidos of mankind. If she knew how good her bare legs and feet…even her cute toes…looked to him, she would run for the hills.

  I wonder how she’d look with pink toenails. Better yet, I wonder how she’d react if I suggested painting her toenails for her. Not that I’ve ever painted anyone’s toenails before, but I remember someone doing that to Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham. Was it Kevin Costner? Or that whiz-kid pitcher? Whoever! It sure as hell worked for me. Maybe I could…yikes, maybe I’d better focus on the subject at hand.

  “Tell me again about our contract,” he encouraged her, wanting to get his mind off her toes. Who would have guessed his erotic fantasies ran to feet?

  “Well, it’s not exactly a contract.”

  Uh-oh. “Hey, I’m a lawyer, remember? An oral agreement is most definitely a contract.”

  “Oh, all right, a contract, then,” she said with exasperation.

  He’d been needling her with questions about their agreement for the past fifteen minutes while his brain tried to register the fact that Ms. Cool-as-a-Cucumber Sylvie Fontaine wanted to ask him questions about sex. Sex, for God’s sake!

  He couldn’t recall any woman asking him such questions in the past unless she was drunk, or unless he was buried ten inches inside of her…well, okay, maybe not quite ten inches. How about nine? Yep, if he was going to fantasize, nine was a perfectly good number.

  He grinned to himself, especially as the word “delusional” came to mind, and Sylvie glared at him, not understanding why he was grinning.

  Should I tell her?

  Nah.

  “Stop looking at me like that,” she said.

  “Like what?” He batted his eyelashes innocently. “Oh, you mean like with pleasure…’cause you were dreaming about me?”

  “I…was…not…dreaming…about…you,” she informed him through gritted teeth.

  “Uh-hum,” he conceded with a wink.

  “Back to our ‘contract.’ I’ll help you with your water pollution tests, even to the extent of appearing in court, if necessary. And in return, you’ll cooperate with the JBX experiment.”

  “I’m not taking any more jelly beans.” Another dose of that love potion and he might just reach that magic number nine. Either that, or explode.

  “I know that. I meant cooperate, as in answering questions and giving me data related to the effects of the formula you’ve already taken.”

  “And you’re going to take the pirogue with me tomorrow down to Bayou Noir, where we’ll spend the day gathering new samples.”

  “I already said I would…though I don’t see why we can’t wait till we get back to Houma. Everything doesn’t have to be so clandestine.”

  He frowned at her.

  “I gave you my word, Luc. Do you want it in writing?”

  “Weeelll…” He drew the word out, making sure she knew he didn’t trust her totally…any more than she trusted him totally.

  “Why is the shrimpers’ plight so important to you, Luc? Is it just because your brother is involved?”

  He shook his head, suddenly serious. “Water pollution should be important to everyone, not just the shrimpers. The threat of sickness, even cancer, is real. But as to my involvement”—he shrugged—“fishing defines the Gulf, Sylv, you know that, especially shrimp fishing. More than that, it’s a Cajun way of life. Take that away, and you take away our heritage.”

  She stared at him steadily, and he could imagine that her brain was working overtime. Lucien LeDeux. The Swamp Solicitor. Takes on every unwinnable case in creation. “You sound as if shrimp fishing is being dealt a death blow,” she said.

  “It is. Maybe not today, but the death blow is sure as hell on the horizon if something isn’t done soon. I wouldn’t be surprised if the shrimp of the future come strictly from shrimp farms.”

  “And that would be so horrible?”

  “That would be more than horrible.” He hated even talking about what was happening to the fishing industry in Louisiana…in fact, to the whole bayou ecosystem. “The shrimpers are already beset with hundreds of government regulations, wetland erosion, foreign competition, fights with the sport fishermen, overdemand, population growth and residential development, farm runoff…and God only knows what the effects of global warming will be. The contaminants being released into the shrimp breeding grounds by the oil companies are the last straw.”

  “But there are so many problems,” she argued. “I just don’t see how your…our…efforts can make a difference. It’s like dog paddling against a tidal wave.”

  “Don’t discount the duck theory, Sylv.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Nibbling away like ducks,” he explained with a smile. “I know we can’t correct all the problems. There are dozens of environmental and other special-interest groups out there trying to correct some of them. If we attack the oil companies one at a time on their pollution policies, and others hit them on dredging offenses, or political corruption, or whatever, eventually…well, eventually we’ll have nibbled them away, like ducks.”

  “Or at least given them a few duck bites,” she said with a smile.

  “Bingo,” he agreed, smiling back at her. And it wasn’t just her duck-bite comment that he was smiling about. He couldn’t get over the fact that Sylvie had been dreaming about him. And she had been, no matter what she said.

  “So, you and I and René and the shrimpers involved in this fight are ducks, right?”

  “Quack-quack.” He hesitated a moment before adding, “There is something else we want from you.”

  She sat up, alert with suspicion.

  “Sometimes we Cajuns are a bit aggressive in fighting the oil companies…hell, even our Cajun brothers and sisters aren’t all supporting us. Many of them work on the oil rigs, for chrissake. So, I figure we should try a different tactic from the usual cancer scare when we go public with whatever damning information we gather.”

  “I’m listening,” she said warily when he paused to decide just the right way to broach the subject.

  “Well, we’ve discovered some scientific data that shows that petroleum by-products can affect the sperm counts in fish. If it can affect fish virility, maybe it does the same thing with male humans. What better way to get the public behind us than to threaten a man’s sexual prowess?”

  Sylvie thought a moment. “I’m beginning to see the light. You figured since I’m a scientist who works with testosterone and hormones, I would be the perfect person to help you out.”

  He felt his ears heat up, but he held his chin high.

  “You rat! You told me that you wanted me to work with you because I was the only one you could trust.”

  “There is that, too, Sylv. Honest.”

  “I don’t know what to believe.”

  “I’ve told you why the shrimpers’ case is important to me, Sylv. Now you tell me why JBX is so important to you.”

  She hesitated, at first…unwilling to share her secrets. “I know you consider the love-potion experiment a huge joke, and I admit there are some aspects that lend themselves to humor. But this is very serious business to me. If I told you I was working on a new birth-control pill, or a new estrogen-replacement program, you’d be clapping me on the back in encouragement. It really isn’t such a far stretch to manipulating testosterone and hormone levels for aphrodisiacal purposes.”

  He put up one hand in surrender, the other one still held the beer.

  “And, okay, I might as well admit it, there’s a little bit of vanity involved, too,” she added.

  His only respon
se was a lift of one eyebrow, and another sip of beer.

  “I come from a family of high achievers. Everyone knows my mother, the politician; my aunts, the herbal-tea queens; my cousin Valerie, the Court TV sensation. All the Breaux women are huge successes. By comparison, I’m just a mousy little scientist doing hackwork who will never rise to any great level of success. Maybe my family will lay off me if I can provide just one super-achievement.”

  “Sylvie! Don’t you dare fall into that trap of allowing other people to define you. If you enjoy what you do, and you do the best job you can, then that is success. And dammit, it doesn’t matter if that job is laying a roof or climbing Mt. Everest…or…or playing with a Bunsen burner.”

  She smiled at his vehemence. “Is that why you take on such outrageous cases, and deliberately give the appearance of being a lazy shyster lawyer?”

  “Who says I’m lazy?” he asked with mock affront. “But Sylv, I still can’t reconcile your alleged shyness with the publicity this love-potion business is going to generate. Are you prepared to run the gamut of TV talk shows? Are you prepared for the jealousy of your peers? Are you prepared for the potshots Jay Leno and David Letterman are going to take at you? Are you prepared to open your private life to public scrutiny?”

  She looked at him with horror. “Of course not! I do want recognition for my work, but I will never allow myself to be the spokesperson for the project. Never!”

  “You might not be able to prevent it, Sylv. Be prepared.”

  “And one more thing, buddy, I’m tired of your innuendoes about my shyness being a scam or nonexistent. Believe me, my shyness was a terrible problem at one time…a handicap, really. And it took a long, long time to get this far, overcoming its sometimes debilitating effects; so, lay off the shyness remarks.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, saluting her with the long-neck.

  “I suspect your constant teasing is a cover-up for something, Luc. I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.”