The Love Potion

by Sandra Hill

  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 castrate 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 Fr
ench 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?”

  “Of course not, but…”

  “But?” he prodded.

  “But they had a love potion in them,” she divulged with a sigh of resignation. “Can you see now why you have to vomit?”

  “A love potion?” he hooted. “Oh, darlin’, if you wanted to get laid, why didn’t you say so?”

  She closed her eyes for several seconds, as if counting to ten. When she opened them, her blue eyes still glittered with anger, but her words came out calmly, as if he were a half-witted child. “Listen, and listen good, because I’m only going to explain it once. I have invented a real love potion. JBX—the Jelly Bean Fix—is a little side venture of mine and Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals. I’ve run experiments on my lab rats for over a year, and believe me, the potion works.”

  “A love potion? Ha, ha, ha. You been sniffin’ some voodoo-hoodoo incense or somethin’? I got news for you, honey. There ain’t no such thing as a love potion.”

  “How about Viagra? If someone had told you a few years ago that there was a little blue pill that could perform such…well, magic, you probably would have pooh-poohed that, too,” she said, lifting her chin with affront.

  “Pooh-pooh? What’s a pooh-pooh? I do not pooh-pooh.” Then he thought about her other words. “You’ve been giving your rats Viagra? Isn’t that kind of weird? And illegal? Maybe I should call the animal-rights people.”

  “No, I have not been…oh, this is an impossible conversation. Listen. You swallowed a love potion, you big baboon. Get that through your thick head. We have to do something about it, now!”

  He looked over to the cages where some of the rats were humping away, while others were nuzzling each other like little lovebirds…or love rats. Still others were nibbling on miniature versions of the jelly beans he’d just eaten.

  He didn’t believe for one minute that there was any such thing as a real love potion…no matter what she said about Viagra. But there wasn’t a chance in hell that he wasn’t going to pounce on this opportunity. “So, when do I go into lust mode? Will I be makin’ love to you on the floor, like those rats? And no one will be able to blame me ’cause I’ll be out of control from your potion, right? And you’ll lose all your inhibitions and jump my bones like a hobo on a hot dog, right?”

  “The potion isn’t about lust…well, not totally. It’s a love potion. Please, Luc, try to vomit, or go to the hospital and have your stomach pumped, if you won’t let me do it.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “If you only knew.” She sighed and rubbed the fingertips of one hand over her creased forehead.

  “I thought Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals made birth control and hormone replacement pills.”

  “They do. This is a…um, special experiment. But we haven’t started the human trials yet.”

  “Special? Human?” His head cocked in puzzlement as he watched her face redden again, and she avoided his eyes. “Aha! You’re going to be one of the experimentees, aren’t you? Whooee! Sylvie Fontaine taking a love potion! And, man, you wouldn’t want news of this to get out any too soon, right?” A rush of exhilaration ran through his veins, just like when he had a good hand in bourré and knew he was going to win the game. Sylvie Fontaine didn’t know it, but she was going to help him and the shrimp fishermen. Or else…

  The possibilities were endless…and surprisingly tantalizing.

  “Project heads often volunteer to be their own ‘guinea pigs.’ And it will be a long time before this product is ready for market. That’s the only reason Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals wouldn’t want a premature announcement of our tests.” Her eyelashes fluttered as she spoke.

  She was a rotten liar. He kind of liked that about her. “I don’t understand why you would be working on a love potion. And by the way, are you the only one I’m going to be lusting…oops, I mean loving? I’m not gonna be in rut for every woman I meet, am I? That could be really time-consuming, and I have a date with some crawfish down on the bayou.”

  Her shoulders slumped, and he almost regretted his vulgar taunting. Almost.

  “Luc, why do you talk to me like that? You’ve been doing it for years and years. What have I ever done to you?”

  “’Cause you’re so uppity-uppity, always looking down your nose at me.” And you react so quickly to the least little jab.

  “I am not. I do not.”

  “Mais oui, you do. Not that I care.”

  She raised her brows in disbelief. “In answer to your question, no, you won’t be attracted to just any woman. Only me.”

  “Well, isn’t that convenient?”

  “The jelly beans you ate had my enzymes in them.” She put up a halting hand when he was about to make another smart remark. “If I’d put your enzymes in a neutral set of specially prepared jelly beans and I ate them, then the process would be reversed.”

  “Enzymes?”

  She shrugged. “Enzymes can be obtained in lots of ways, or simply by taking a tiny drop of saliva.”

  “Yech! I ate your spit?”

  “Luc, that’s the least of your problems.”

  Her words were beginning to sink in, which raised more questions. He narrowed his eyes at her. “Who are the males who are gonna be sucking up love potions with you in this little human test run?”

  She jutted out her chin stubbornly.

  “I have a right to know, dontcha think?”

  She refused to budge.

  He tried to think. Houma and the bayou region were a vast network of gossip grapevines. A guy couldn’t piss in his own toilet without the entire parish counting the drops. Luc figured Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals wouldn’t be bringing in outsiders for this experiment. It would probably be men within the company, in order to preserve secrecy. And he didn’t care what Sylvie said, secrecy would be important. He couldn’t think of anyone…except…no, that was impossible. “Your boss,” he guessed.

  Sylvie’s cheeks immediately turned bright red.

  He clapped his knee with glee at the absurdity of the situation. “Don’t try to deny it, chère. I can see the truth on your face.”

  “Oh, all right. Charles Henderson will be one of the participants,” she confessed hesitantly. “But don’t you tell anyone.”

  Like anyone would believe me! Once he snapped his gaping mouth shut, he burst out laughing. He couldn’t help himself. “You’re giving a love potion to a gay man? Talk about!”

  “Gay? Gay?” she shrieked, and his ears started ringing again. “He’s not gay.”

  “Honey, Chuckie boy is one-hundred-percent lah-di-dah. I guar-an-tee.”

  “How do you know? Are you gay? Oh, this has got to be the worst thing you’ve ever said to me. The worst.”

  “I’m not gay,” he said with affront. “But I have gay clients.” Well, he’d had one gay client two years ago…a female impersonator at a gay nightclub in Lafayette, The Blue Lily.

  “It’s not true,” she whispered weakly.

  “It’s true, Sylv. It’s true.”

  Tears filled her eyes…eyes that were really rather pretty, a luminous shade of blue, like the sky seen through a bayou mist on a summer day. Whoa! He caught himself up short. It was one thing to be a sucker for a woman’s tears, but now he was beginning to notice nice things about Sylvie.

  Could her jelly bean potion really be working?

  Nah!

  He felt kind of low unloading such bad news on Sylvie, though. Was she in love or something with a gay man? “Does it matter so much, Sylvie?” he asked with as much sensitivity as
he could summon. He was still having trouble holding back a smile at the whole ludicrous situation.

  “Drop dead!” she said with a sniffle.

  So much for sensitivity. He walked over to the table and picked up his jar of water. “When can you do the tests? I need an answer ASAP.”

  “I’m not doing your tests.”

  “Oh, yes, you are, Sylv.” Setting the jar back down, he picked up the dish of remaining jelly beans, scooped them up, and stuffed them in his jeans pocket. Patting the bulge with satisfaction, he said, “Evidence.”

  “Don’t you mean blackmail?”

  “Whatever.”

  “I’ll do it on one condition. You have to go out of town for at least a week. You can’t be anywhere in my vicinity.”

  “A week?” he sputtered.

  “You did suck up a double dose of those jelly beans,” she said defensively. “So, yeah. At least one week. I’ll put off the human trial runs until your ingestion runs its course.”

  Ingestion? Now, it’s an ingestion? Hell! “Oh, all right.” He didn’t have any pressing cases on deck, and he was on vacation; he’d been planning a trip deep into the bayou. He wasn’t sure he wanted to stay away for even a week, though. Well, she didn’t need to know that. As a parting shot, he added, “I hope I don’t get hungry tonight…for jelly beans.” He patted his pocket again.

  “You wouldn’t!”

  Maybe he would, Luc decided. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t. But one thing was sure. If he was getting into the blackmail business, he wanted something more than a lab test for his efforts. And he knew just what it was gonna be.

  Slooow dancing.

  Chapter Three

  “I’ve never seen so many men with no behinds in all my life,” Sylvie observed the next evening.

  “You’ve got a point there,” Blanche agreed. “Most of them are politicians, and everyone knows they have unleavened buns. Comes from all that hot air, I think. Yep, their inner tubes are leaking.”

  Sylvie and Blanche were sitting on lounge chairs beside the pool behind the Breaux family plantation house. The estate was renowned for its spectacular garden of native and imported irises of a thousand different species, which were in full bloom now.