The Love Potion (4 page)

But her advancing aunts were only a small part of the soap opera that was becoming her life.

Behind her aunts, Sylvie saw two late arrivals. Valcour LeDeux—an older, alcohol-dissipated, though still handsome, version of Luc in an expensive, tailor-made suit—strolled forward with a bourbon in one hand and his nymphet common-law wife in the other.

Luc’s body went completely tense the minute he noticed his father.

Rumor claimed that the man had physically abused his sons when they were children, and Sylvie could recall Luc with black eyes or a limp. At the time, she’d assumed he’d been brawling with boys his own age. Now she wondered. It would seem that Luc’s father had a lot to answer for.

Despite his unsavory reputation, Valcour LeDeux had money and power, thanks to his dumb-luck interest in Cypress Oil, and for that reason alone, he was her mother’s guest. Probably, he’d donated a pigload of cash to her last campaign.

She and Luc stared with horror at the two aunts…at the lech and the bimbo…then at each other. Without a word, Luc grabbed her hand, spun on his heel, and fled the scene, pushing her in front of him toward the old carriage house, which had been converted to a four-car garage, then beyond that to a massive magnolia arbor, which was fortunately empty.

Luc closed his eyes and breathed in and out, deeply, to settle his raging temper. The scent of magnolias was cloyingly sweet in the close confines of the bower.

How could he have taken the chance of speaking in a public setting about the lab tests? He should have known better. Secrecy was critical at this stage. He and Sylvie shouldn’t even be seen together. He’d never had trouble protecting his clients’ needs in the past. His only excuse was that
he seemed to be under the influence of some madness.

A love potion?

No, that’s impossible. Maybe the stress of hating my father for so many years, and finally having an opportunity to retaliate, has made me snap. Maybe I’ve been alone too long. Maybe Tante Lulu is right when she predicts a big thing is going to happen to me this year. I only hope the big thing isn’t jeopardized by misdirected lust. It’s burning out the circuits in my brain
.

When he opened his eyes, he saw that Sylvie had moved to the other side of the arbor, putting some distance between them. Smart woman!

Well, not so smart. Look at the mess she’s made with her stupid experiments. Look at the mess she’s made of me
.

Twilight came abruptly, as it always did in the bayou region, like a celestial light switch, hazing the already shady arbor. Against the backdrop of huge blossoms in vivid shades of coral and pearlescent white, Sylvie resembled a paper doll inserted in an impressionistic painting. Unreal and hauntingly beautiful.

Sylvie? Beautiful?
He really was going mad.

She wore a long gauzy dress of variegated shades of indigo blue—much like those in the fine fabrics Cajun women still hand-dyed and weaved. With its rounded neck that barely exposed her collarbone, its loose, waistless construction, and ankle-brushing length, it could have passed for an old-fashioned gown of another era, except that the back dipped low, low, low, exposing the delicious curve of her lower back.

He knew this because he’d followed her a short
time ago as they’d escaped the prying eyes and ears at the party. He knew because his heart had dropped about two feet when he got his first gander at all that creamy, made-to-be-caressed skin.

No doubt about it, Sylvie Fontaine was pretty. Not that he’d ever been attracted to her in that way. At least not before. Or not consciously. No, he preferred wild redheads. Or wild blondes. And taller. He liked a woman who would fit better against his six-foot frame. And he sure as hell didn’t favor her haughty, touch-me-not attitude.

He didn’t like her one bit. That was why his sudden obsession with her was so confusing and intolerable.

Sylvie had been a thorn in his side for years…a visible reminder of all his shortcomings. For that reason, he jabbed at her whenever they met. Oh, she’d pretended to be timid when they were younger, but she was Ice Breaux to the bone, even then.

“How come you never got married again, Sylv?” he surprised himself by asking. He surprised himself even more by closing the distance between them and leaning against a trellis post mere inches away from her.

Her eyes shot up. Wide blue eyes framed by thick, silky black lashes. It was probably just mascara. As Tante Lulu always said, “Put beauty on a stick and it look fine, but the stick, she is still a stick.” Usually, Tante Lulu was making that remark to his half-sister Charmaine, a former Miss Louisiana who owned a beauty spa over in Thibodaux. Charmaine claimed she could make any woman beautiful.

“Why?” Sylvie snapped, regaining her compo
sure and recalling him to his question about marriage. “How did you know I was married? It was fifteen years ago.”

“Everyone knew you were married,
chère
. Houma is a small town, after all.” And the speculation over why one of the Ice Breaux would marry a lowly street guitarist had provided meat for juicy gossip. He’d personally given her a mental salute at the time, but later learned that the marriage had lasted only six months. Mama Breaux-Fontaine had come riding to the rescue with a posse of lawyers. Actually, he hadn’t given her all that much thought back then. He’d been in a youth correctional home for a year, till his eighteenth birthday, and had just been offered an opportunity to turn his life around by attending LSU.

Sylvie’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment, but she lifted her chin.

“What’s the ex doing now? Is he a famous musician or something?”

She flashed him a sheepish grin. “He’s a stockbroker.”

He grinned back. Dangerous territory, that…sharing a grin with Sylvie Fontaine. Soon he’d be wanting to share other things. Hell, he already wanted
that
. “You didn’t answer my question. Why haven’t you married again?”

“Frankly, my personal life is none of your business.” At least she wasn’t exposing him to any more of her deadly grins.

“You made it my business, darlin’, when you gave me your potion.” He reached over and plucked a white blossom, tucking it behind one of her ears. The flower softened her features, giving her an almost wanton look.

At first, Sylvie was too stunned to react to his touching her. But not for long. “Don’t touch me,” she said, and put a good three feet between them.

“Why?” Lord, he’d forgotten how much fun it was to tease Sylvie. He never remembered having this urge to touch her, as he did now. No, it was more than an urge, it was a compulsion. He brazenly closed the distance between them.

“Why? Because I don’t like you,” she said.

“I don’t like you either. So?”

She put the back of one hand to her forehead, then sliced him a withering glare.

Except he wasn’t withering. Not anywhere.

“Go away, Luc.”

“Come with me.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Yeah. But no kidding, sugar, you should come with me down to the bayou.”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead with you down on the bayou, or anywhere else.”

He chuckled. “I meant that I want you to check out some of these contaminated streams, in person. What did you think I meant?” He batted his eyelashes at her with presumed innocence.

Her face grew redder at having misinterpreted his words. “I’m not getting anymore involved in your shenanigans than I already am. Matt Sommese is already sniffing around as it is.”

That threw a dash of cold water on his “shenanigans.” Raking the fingers of one hand through his hair, he exhaled with disgust. “Do you think he overheard anything I said? Dammit, I can’t even recall if I revealed anything important.”

She shook her head. “You really didn’t say much. No, I’m sure you didn’t give anything away
in that regard. I’m more worried that Matt might find out about my love potion. He
was
talking to Blanche, and she had had a little too much to drink.”

He grinned.

“Why do you continue to think this is a big joke?” she demanded.

“A love potion! I just can’t get over it. It’s so out of character for you. Now, if Blanche had done it, I would just shrug it off. But you? Unbelievable!”

“Whatever,” she said with a sniff of disdain. “The company is closed tomorrow. Come to my lab Monday afternoon, and I’ll give you the lab results. Then I’m done with you.”

Done with me? I don’t think so, babe
. “Okay. Let’s seal the bargain.”

She reached out a hand.

She thinks I mean a handshake. Hah!
“With a kiss.”
For now
.

Her eyes went wide with shock, and her mouth dropped open.

Open mouths were good. He moved in swiftly. Putting one hand on the nape of her neck and wrapping the other around her waist, he hauled her up on tiptoe, flush against his body.

She gasped.

He gasped.

His lips feathered over hers lightly, shaping, coaxing hers into pliancy.

“Salt,” he murmured against her open mouth. “And watermelon.”

“Margaritas,” she whispered back.

That brief movement of her lips against his was like the headiest aphrodisiac. Forget her love potion. Sylvie Fontaine’s lips were pure ambrosia.

Then he stopped thinking. With a hunger that had been building for the past twenty-four hours, Luc used his mouth and tongue and teeth to alternately punish her for the hell she was putting him through, and thank her for the hell she was putting him through. Who knew a kiss could be so powerful?

In the midst of the one unending kiss, Sylvie made little mewling sounds that caused him to press her lower body against his raging erection. Which then caused him to make little mewling sounds. He was about a hundred and ten on the arousal scale, with a hundred being blastoff.

“Sylvie,” he rasped out, breaking their kiss with a groan. He put his hands on her upper arms and set her away from him. “Sylvie, let’s go somewhere. To my place. Or yours.”

She blinked at him, as dazed as he was by the explosive chemistry that had ignited between them with just one kiss.

Chemistry?
That’s right. He’d forgotten. He was under the influence of a chemical concoction. But what was Sylvie’s excuse? Her glazed eyes and parted, kiss-swollen lips could only be attributed to…what? He had no chance to figure out the answer because Sylvie’s expression was morphing quickly from “Kiss me” to “Kiss off.”

“The only place you and I are going is our separate ways,” she stormed, grabbing for the magnolia in her hair and tossing it to the ground.

She was right. He had to get out of there…before he made a complete fool of himself. But he was pleased to have learned a few things about Sylvie Fontaine tonight. Like where the chinks were in her armor. No way did she have ice in her veins.

Not that he was planning to stick around for the deep thaw.

He wouldn’t mind a little ice sculpting, though.

“I’ll see you Monday afternoon, then,” he said, deciding to give her a break. He headed out of the arbor, and had just reached the end of the carriage house when he noticed that the band had changed its program to swing music, allowing the partygoers to dance up on the patio.

He turned back to Sylvie, whose shoulders were propped against the arbor like a rag doll. Yep, the heat was definitely on, and the ice was about to flow.

“You wanna dance,
chère?
”

“In your dreams!”

He winked at her. “Guar-an-teed!”

Sylvie had thought her life was hell. Little did she know there were degrees of hell, like Dante’s Inferno, and she’d only entered the first level.

When she awoke late the next morning—suffering from the aftereffects of the previous night’s numerous margaritas—Sylvie shuffled out to the front stoop of her town house in a Dilbert nightshirt and a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers. With an open-mouthed yawn, she reached down to pick up the Sunday edition of the
Times-Picayune
.

And went stiff as a show dog on point.

She wasn’t sure if it was the pouring rain that caught her attention or the strange flash of light. Peering upward from her bent-over position—luckily, her rear end was facing the open doorway and not the street—Sylvie saw a photographer raise his camera and then another brief flash of light. Then she noticed Matt Sommese, leaning against her car.

“Nice negligee, Sylvie. Victoria’s Not-So-Secret?” Matt inquired with a smirk. His photographer sidekick, who continued to click away, snickered in agreement. “Can I assume the love potion hasn’t kicked in yet?”

Swiftly, Sylvie spun on her heel and was back in her hall, closing the door, even as Matt called out, “Come on, Sylvie, gimme an interview. I just wanna know a little more about your…ha, ha, ha…love potion. And those lab tests. Is LeDeux in there with you? He hasn’t been answering his phone for the past eight hours.”

Oh, no! Blanche had confessed last night that she might have blabbed a little too much to the reporter, under the influence of those stupid watermelon margaritas. Sylvie had been hoping Blanche’s concerns were unwarranted. Now she knew better.

She opened her door a crack, with the chain attached. “No, Luc isn’t here. I can’t imagine what would make you think he would be. There is no love potion. It was just one of Blanche’s sick jokes. Now, go away. I wouldn’t give you an interview if you were Dan Rather.”

With that, she slammed the door.

An hour later, Dan Rather called.

Then Larry King, Sally Jessie Raphael, Sylvie’s mother, her aunts, a dozen newspaper and magazine reporters, Blanche, an enraged woman who claimed to be a voodoo priestess, a lawyer for Cypress Oil, even Valcour LeDeux, and most ominous of all, her boss, Charles Henderson.

Sylvie didn’t talk to any of these people. She just let them spout off into her muted answering machine while she chugged down cup after cup of
thick Creole coffee, and stared blankly at the frontpage articles in the
Times-Picayune
. Somehow, Matt had managed to piece together two stories based on what he’d pumped from Blanche at last night’s party; the rest he’d filled in with conjecture.

One article carried the headline “Is the Swamp Solicitor Fishin’ for Oil?” It was accompanied by a photo of Luc coming out of the Houma courthouse last year—following a triumphant win, she presumed from the wide grin on his handsome face. His hair was tousled, but he wore a suit with a loosened tie and opened top shirt button. Pure Cajun rogue lawyer.

The other article carried the headline “Chemist Discovers Love Potion; Terrebonne to Give Pfizer a Run for Its Money.” It was accompanied by Sylvie’s eleven-year-old college yearbook photo in which she resembled a dark-haired Martha Stewart…after swallowing a lemon. Pure Creole nerd wallflower.

Neither article was heavy on fact. Luc’s was mostly filled with rumors that had been floating around for months about Louisiana’s lower-triangle shrimp fishermen banding together to fight Cypress Oil. And there was lots of rehashing of Luc’s legendary bad-ass attitude; his maverick career, or non-career; teenage stints in reformatories; and his father’s rise to wealth from poor shrimp fisherman to major shareholder in Cypress Oil, thanks to the controversial sale of oil-rich lands that had been passed down in his family for generations. Tossed into the mix was a reminder of the problems affecting the entire bayou ecosystem.

Sylvie’s article was more brutal. Matt had man
aged to dredge up her education and work history, her failed marriage, her mother’s political record, her aunts’ business dealings, her cousin Valerie’s recent smash hit on Court TV, the unsavory appellation given to the women of her family, “Ice Breaux,” even the fact that Sylvie had been a client of a famous shyness therapist for years. The only news was that Sylvie had invented a love potion based on some chemical formula inserted into jelly beans and that it might have something to do with an old voodoo recipe passed down in her family. There was also some rehashing of the international hoopla when Viagra had first come on the market. Matt speculated—but luckily had no proof—that Lucien LeDeux, the bayou bad boy, had taken the love potion by mistake. That last
had
to have come from Blanche.

Unfortunately, it happened to be a slow news day.

Unfortunately, Matt’s love potion article was just quirky enough to be picked up by the wire services and the Internet, where it was catching the attention of the national media.

Unfortunately, Sylvie Fontaine was fast becoming the laughingstock of the world. The headlines said it all: “Love Potion Gone Awry.” “The Chemist and the Rogue.” “Forget Oysters, Try Jelly Beans.”

With a headache the size of Big Mamou, Sylvie finally picked up the phone and called Charles. He wasn’t at home, nor at the office. Just on a hunch, she tried her lab at Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals. He answered on the first ring.

“Where in God’s name have you been, Sylvie?”

“I overslept.”

“Overslept?” he sputtered. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

I’m beginning to get a clue
. “I never intended any of this to become public, Charles,” she started to say, but then realized there was a lot more that needed to be explained first. “Why don’t I come down there and fill you in on the whole picture?”

“No! There are some reporters outside.” He put his hand over the phone and spoke softly to someone else.

“Who’s there with you?” She didn’t like the idea of people being in her lab, possibly touching things that might upset her experiments.

“Frank Daley.”

She groaned.
The chairman of the board? Oh, Lord!

“On second thought, maybe you should come down, after all,” Charles said. “Slip in the back door. I’ll have a security guard let you in.”

Within a half hour, Sylvie entered her lab.

“What could you have been thinking, Sylvie?” Charles asked without preamble. He was alone and riffling through her files, which recorded the daily rat activities. The formula files were still in her briefcase in the trunk of her car, where she’d left it after work on Friday. “Timing is everything in a venture of this magnitude. You know better than anyone that the research is far from complete on JBX.”

Sylvie didn’t at all like the lecturing tone in Charles’s voice, but she bit back an angry retort and explained as briefly as possible what had happened.

Charles stood, drumming a pen on the desktop as he contemplated her words. Instead of his usual conservative business suit, he wore khaki slacks and a white oxford shirt. To her absolute amazement, she noticed a plastic pocket protector in the shirt pocket. She didn’t realize people actually used those things. Luc and Blanche would have had a good laugh over that nerdy accessory.

“It never occurred to me that you would have a loose tongue,” he added. “It never occurred to me that you’d do something to reflect badly on the company’s good reputation.”

“Now, wait a minute. It’s not my fault that snoopy reporter pieced together a story from eavesdropping and…whatever.”

“And you blew it over a man like Lucien LeDeux?” he sneered. “The Swamp Solicitor?”

Sylvie was really starting to dislike Charles’s attitude. “I am not involved
personally
with Lucien LeDeux, not that it’s any of your business.” She raised her chin haughtily.

“Oh, it’s my business, all right. We could be talking lawsuits here.”

Her face heated, but she held her ground. “No one but Luc ate the potion…no human, that is.” She motioned with her head toward the cages, where Samson and Delilah were indulging in their favorite pursuit, along with a half dozen of the other rodent couples.

“Can’t you stop them from doing that?” Charles inquired with a sniff of distaste.

“How would you suggest I do that?”

“Put them in separate cages.”

But that would be so cruel
. “I’ll take care of it.”
She walked over and opened the window blind, letting in a stream of sunlight. Now that the rain had let up, the sky was bright and cloud-free. “The rats will settle down now. They don’t like the light,” she explained.

Further, she decided to protect at least one of her pet couples—Samson and Delilah—from Charles’s or the company’s neglect or inadvertent abuse. She saw an empty Happy Meal carton that must have been left by a cleaning person. She poked several holes in it with a ballpoint pen, then gently placed the squealing lovers into their new nest of crumpled wax paper, which still smelled of cheeseburger. The two rats immediately latched onto a half-eaten french fry. Rat heaven.

“What…are…you…doing?” Charles demanded. Sylvie really, really disliked the underlying condescension in his voice.

“I’m taking Samson and Delilah home with me…for a few days.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to.”
Now that was a mature answer. Why didn’t I add a “nyah, nyah, nyah”? It must be my exposure to Luc that’s causing my personality to split
.

Charles snorted with disgust, then asked, “Speaking of lawsuits, did you use generic jelly beans, or the name-brand ones?”

“Huh?”

“Surely you see the possibilities of a lawsuit there, too,” he pointed out snidely.

“No, I didn’t use name-brand jelly beans.” She inhaled and exhaled deeply with exasperation. “Look, there’s no real harm done here. Tell the
reporters it was just a joke, that there is no love potion. I’m sure I can get Luc to go along with that.”
Well, reasonably sure
.

“It’s gone too far for that. Uh…actually…we…I mean, the board…are contemplating a rush trial on humans.”

“What? You made this decision without consulting me?” Sylvie was overwhelmed with fury. “And did you bump me from the trials, too? Are you by any chance taking over
my
project?”

Charles’s eyes looked everywhere but at her. Even more telling was his refusal to answer her questions. “In the meantime, we could schedule a press conference giving preliminary results on JBX,” he said. He shifted from foot to foot and rubbed a forefinger nervously over his upper lip.

The fine hairs stood out on her neck. “No! Absolutely not! I will not jeopardize the success of this venture because of a silly newspaper leak. Surely, we can do damage control.”

“Frank and I were talking about it, and of course we won’t know for sure till we examine your formula, but…”

“But?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Well, you see, the company earnings have been down this past quarter, and we were thinking that, if it really is a viable love potion, and it’s already been proven with lab rats, well, what’s the point of waiting till…” His words trailed off at her gasp of outrage, and his face flamed slowly into a beet-red color.

“The FDA would never give approval without human testing.”

“We could market it as an herb, rather than a drug, and bypass the FDA.”

“Here’s a flash, Charles. You are not turning this love potion into a commercial product,
until
it is proven safe and effective under at least six months to a year of human testing,” she asserted. “I may not be entirely certain of all my legal rights, but I do know I have the authority to stop
that
insanity.”

“It’s not up to you. Any work done on this property belongs to the company,” he asserted.

“Not if you don’t have the formula. Besides, you’re forgetting one not-so-minor point. I own an equal share in this formula.”

Charles’s face turned pale and greenish.

Thank God she’d had the foresight to seek legal advice last year when she’d first stumbled on this promising venture. She’d offered to resign from Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals and set up her own private lab. And she could have done it, too, thanks to a substantial trust fund left her by generations of independent Breaux women. But Charles had talked her into staying…the incentive being an equal interest in the project results.

“Now, Sylvie, don’t go off half-cocked. I’m sure we can straighten out the situation. We need a cooling-off period, though.”

She snorted her assessment of that wheedling suggestion, picked up the closed Happy Meal box by its cardboard handle, then slung her handbag over her shoulder, about to leave. “Remember, Charles, we have signed legal documents. But you’re right, we need each other.” She’d completed too much research on company property to veer off on her own now.

In a more placating tone, he said, “Go home and
think about it, Sylvie. Take a few days off till this settles down. The board is meeting tomorrow night. Why don’t we talk again on Wednesday? Maybe we can work something out that will be mutually beneficial.”

Mutually beneficial? He and this company didn’t care diddly how this news could ruin her personal life and professional career, so long as they could make a profit. She stared at him, really seeing him for the first time.
What a fool I’ve been!
“Do you mind if I ask a personal question, Charles?”

“No. Anything,” he offered magnanimously.

“Are you gay?”

She saw the surprise in his eyes, but only for a second. “Yes,” he said.

Yes? Just like that, he says yes
. Then something else occurred to her. “You’re gay, and you were going to participate in my experiment. Why? Did you have your own agenda in mind…like maybe proving that homosexuality isn’t genetic?”

“Hell, no,” he said, face flushed. “I intended to tell you before we began experimentation. You need to provide all types of statistical samples, Sylvie. In fact, I was going to suggest
all
kinds of additional combinations. Man-woman. Man-man. Woman-woman. Gays. Straights. Different ages. Maybe even different ethnic or race groups. Without all those, there would have been too many questions left unanswered. You were severely limiting the trials.”