She could not get close to this man. She could not lower her defenses. One one-night stand was enough. And she, for sure, could not tell him he had a son. When her grandfather had emptied his meager bank account so that she could finish college—she’d been a junior and John a recent graduate by then—she’d made a promise to him that she would keep the paternity secret. She’d lost her scholarship because she had to drop out for a semester after the birth. And now that she’d moved back to Houma, her grandfather was Etienne’s primary caregiver while she worked erratic hours. Even before that, her grandfather had been her rock, especially after her father’s suicide, when it had been brought home dramatically to a fifteen-year-old girl that her father chose death over a life with just her.
Yep, she owed her grandfather so much! Gramps had a long-running feud with Valcour LeDeux, John’s notorious alcoholic father, and if he chose to pretend that Etienne had no LeDeux blood, well, so had she.
And, frankly, she didn’t feel guilty over her secret, or not very much. John had a reputation from his early teens of being wild, moving from woman to woman. That’s not what she wanted as a father for Etienne. She doubted he’d have any interest in having a son, anyway. It would interfere with his lifestyle.
But what about Etienne? her conscience sometimes nagged at her. Doesn’t he have a right to a father?
“Earth to Celine. You ask me a question, and then tune me out.”
“Oh. What did you say?”
“I said that, as a result of your article, I’ve been given a leave of absence.”
“A suspension?”
“More like a request to request.”
“Why? You didn’t do anything wrong. Did you?”
He shook his head. “Police do not want publicity, especially undercover detectives, even when their identities aren’t specifically spelled out.”
She flushed. She had wanted to embarrass John, in a private way, not make him lose his job. “What will you do?”
He shrugged. “Out of sight, out of mind.”
“Paid?”
“Yes, but I’ve got to disappear for a while. Until after the trial. I have an idea for some work I can do in the short term. After that . . . ” He shrugged. “I’m not sure I can go back to the force in Fontaine.
They’d probably assign me to office work.”
“I’m sorry, John. I never intended for this kind of thing to happen.” She put her hand on his forearm without thinking.
He stared down at her hand, then glanced up at her face.
She removed her hand, which sort of tingled. No, no, no! No tingling. Last time I tingled around this bundle of sexual magnetism I ended up pregnant.
“Actually, my suspension is due to some other things, too,” he admitted.
She smacked him on the arm. “You rat! You deliberately tried to make me feel bad.”
“Just deserts, baby.” He smiled at her.
Damn, she hated it when he smiled at her.
“Congressman Martinez is threatening to cut state funding to our police department for embarrassing his wife. Ted Warner is running editorials non-stop on his TV stations about police brutality. And that bogus evangelist did a public confession in which he managed to make law enforcement Satan’s disciples and him the repentant sinner.”
“Well, I’m not surprised. As you can imagine, they’ve been lobbing volleys at the newspaper, too.”
“My biggest beef, though, is what you did to me. I’m this close . . . ” He held a thumb and forefinger about two inches apart. “ . . . to gettin’ calls from Cosmo magazine, Entertainment Tonight, Matt Laurer, Star Magazine, and every other media outlet in the world, wanting an interview with the general theme bein’ ‘The Very Virile Cop.’”
She couldn’t help but giggle.
“You think that’s funny, do you? There’s even a dingbat who wants to set up a fan club Web site for the anonymous hot cop.”
“So, what does this have to do with me? That horse is already out of the barn, no putting it back now.”
He nodded. “You’re gonna pay, that’s what I’ve decided.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How?”
“What have you got to offer?”
“For you? Nothing.”
“Tsk-tsk-tsk! So much hostility. One can only wonder how you would put that hostility to work for you in certain situations.”
She could feel herself blush, which was probably what he intended. “What do you want for the pictures?”
“Hmmm.” He leaned back on his barstool and surveyed her slowly from head to foot. “I’m thinkin’
I’d like a weekend of hot screaming can’t-get-enough sex at a place of my choice.”
Oh. My. God! “You can’t possibly mean that.”
“I was just wonderin’, chère, are you a faker or a quaker?”
“Huh?”
“In the sack.”
“How immature!” she said, when she finally understood, even knowing he was just needling her.
Then, “Look at me. I am the farthest thing from your usual sex toy.”
“My reputation is vastly inflated, sweetheart. And if you’re implying that I don’t find you attractive, you’re so far off base it’s laughable.”
“I don’t even like you.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think of me.” He pulled another photo from an inside pocket of his jacket. “Oops, it looks like there’s a photo I forgot to show you. You can thank Tank for these.”
She took it from him, then wished she hadn’t. It was the kiss between her and John at the Playpen.
While one of his hands held her nape, the other was inside the front of her dress. It must have been when he filched her mike from inside her bra and unclipped the brooch. They both had their eyes closed. The kiss was open-mouthed. The worst thing was, she didn’t appear to be struggling.
This is bad. Really bad. “This is blackmail.”
“And your point is?” Slapping some bills on the bar, he stood and took the photo out of her hands, tucking it back in his pocket. Before he left, he said, ominously, “I’ll be in touch. Be ready.”
I hear spirits . . . or something . . .
You ought to be ashamed of yourself, John told himself when he was back at his Baton Rouge apartment, packing. He often heard voices in his head, which he identified as his conscience, but Tante Lulu would probably attribute to St. Jude.
Hah! Did you see the look on her face when I mentioned wild sex? said his darker side, his non-conscience. Her idea of wild sex is probably a vibrator and a George Clooney movie.
He zipped up a duffel bag and continued to fill a small, wheeled overnighter. No way was he going to sit around this small efficiency twiddling his thumbs while the department decided what to do with him. He was off to Bayou Black, where he could think more clearly . . . make some decisions.
Meanwhile, the voices in his head were waging a bloody battle.
Yeah, but the blackmail . . . the sexual barter. You didn’t really mean that.
Didn’t I?
She’s a good girl.
One, she’s a woman, not a girl. Two, she wasn’t all that good when she hit the sack with me six years ago. Three, Celine in that hooker dress and bed-mussed hair did not spell “good girl.”
You’re a pig.
So I’ve been told, but kiss me hard enough and I stop squealing.
Very funny. She has a secret.
Huh? That thought caught him up short. Where did that come from? What did it mean?
He frowned. He did sense something that Celine was withholding. But a secret? He didn’t know about that.
You’ll see.
Her secrets have nothing to do with me.
There was laughter in his head now.
He was going to have a talk with Tante Lulu about this mind message crap she was planting in his head.
The laughter continued.
He inherited the mischief gene . . .
John LeDeux was th
e father of her five-year-old son Etienne.
But he didn’t know it.
He never would.
Her grandfather was waiting for her when she got to their Houma home later that day, a glass of iced lemonade sitting on the kitchen counter in welcome.
She took a long drink, then asked, “Where’s Etienne?”
“The rascal, he is in his room havin’ quiet time.”
She arched her eyebrows.
“He painted Mrs. Thibodeaux’s cat. Purple.”
She put a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. Mrs. T’s cat Wiener was the ugliest creature, with mottled white fur and pinkish-gray eyes that tended to cross.
“Gramps, I was thinking today . . . maybe I should tell John LeDeux about his son. Now, now, don’t go getting excited. Hear me out.”
Her grandfather’s face was florid with outrage.
“Not for John’s benefit,” she went on quickly, “but doesn’t Etienne have a right to a father? And, really, John isn’t that bad. I had lunch with him today, and—”
Her grandfather stood and literally growled. “Not so bad? He’s a LeDeux, ain’t he? Girl, ya cain’t be thinkin’ straight. That boy has a reputation as wild as a peach orchard hog.”
“He’s not a boy anymore, Gramps,” she told him. “He’s twenty-eight years old.”
“That doan make no difference. He’s a wild man, too. Besides, have ya thought on what you’d do if he wanted to take Etienne away from you? That whiz-bang lawyer brother of his would be on ya like white on rice.”
That was a concern . . . a remote one, but a concern nonetheless. She relented then, recognizing the worry in his eyes, and patted him on the arm. “It was just a thought.”
He appeared mollified, but still grumbled. “I doan like ya breakin’ bread with no LeDeux.”
“More like bread pudding,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’ll talk to you when I come down.” She was already heading toward the stairs, but she turned around and backtracked to give her grandfather a quick hug, whispering in his ear. “Don’t be worrying about the LeDeuxs.”
“But John LeDeux . . . you were with him.”
“I am not involved with John LeDeux, and I never will be. Okay?” In the back of her mind was John’s ominous threat about the kiss photograph and a wild weekend of sex. He can’t possibly be serious. I can’t stand to be around him for five minutes, let alone forty-eight hours.
Her grandfather nodded at her reassurance.
“Let me go talk with our little Van Gogh,” she said with a smile, heading for the stairs again.
“What’s for dinner?”
“Crab soup.”
“Yum! It’ll go great with the fresh bread I bought down at the French Quarter Market today.”
She entered Etienne’s pint-sized bedroom with its alligator wallpaper, goldfish aquarium, plastic baseball bat, kiddie-sized fishing rod, and Hot Wheels and pirate collections. Not to mention that jar of worms which Gramps had failed to throw out when Etienne took his nap this afternoon. They probably stank by now.
He launched himself at her so his arms were wrapped around her neck and his skinny legs straddling her waist. She practically fell backward, but then sank down on the bed with him in her lap.
All in one breath, he told her, “I dint hurt Wiener. I jist put some purple dots on him with my paint markers, and he liked ’em. He really did. He licked my face. And then Grampa said I did a nasty and made me go ta my room. And it’s so boooring. I wouldn’t hafta play with Wiener if I had a dog. A big dog.” Etienne had a playmate, Pete Doucet, who had a German Shepherd. Ever since Etienne had seen it, a puppy had been his constant request.
“Listen, honey, you mustn’t do anything to anyone else’s property. Not their animals. Not their houses. Not their toys. Anything. It’s not right. Do you understand?”
He nodded. “I want a dog.”
So much for remorse. “I know you do, sweetie, but not yet. Gramps doesn’t get around as good as he used to. Let’s wait ’til you’re old enough to care for a dog yourself.”
“I’m old enough now.”
“Not quite.” She lay down on his bed and motioned for him to lie beside her, his face pressed against her chest. She kissed the top of his head and murmured, “Tell me about your day, honey.”
“You and Me time” was a tradition with them. Even when she was working two jobs and attending classes, the first thing she did when she got home was lie down with her baby and chat about little nothings. On more than one occasion, she’d fallen asleep along with her baby. “It’s just you and me, kiddo,” she’d repeated often, especially when the loneliness became almost overwhelming.
Now, her “baby” blathered on about worms and butterflies and dogs and swing sets and birthday parties. She told him about the bread pudding she’d had for lunch, though no mention of his father, and the peacock feathers she’d seen in a French Quarter shop, and how they needed to go to the mall soon to buy him some new athletic shoes, and, yes, he could get the light-up ones.
Giving him one final hug, she said, “Now take off those dirty clothes so we can go downstairs and eat dinner. I bought some praline ice cream for dessert.”
He brightened at a combination of his punishment being over and his favorite ice cream. While he changed his clothes, chattering the whole time, she watched him closely. Something became apparent .
. . something she had tried her best to avoid seeing in the past but being so close to John today made it impossible to ignore.
Except for his pale blue eyes, he looked just like John. Even worse, she suspected he’d inherited his father’s rascal gene.
He was the target . . . of teasing . . .
John was sitting on Tante Lulu’s back porch with his three half-brothers waiting for the first meeting of the Pirate Project team to start. The out-of-town folks were down at the banks of Bayou Black admiring Useless, René’s pet alligator.
For all of them, the bayou was a touchstone. They could leave for short periods, but the swamp mud in their blood drew them back every time.
Tante Lulu’s cottage was built in the old Cajun style . . . an exterior of bousillage, or fuzzy mud mixed with Spanish moss and crushed clam shells . . . but in this case, the stucco had been covered with half-logs and white chinking. There was a stretch of lawn that led down to the water’s edge, centered by a spreading fig tree heavy with fruit. Rock-edged flower beds surrounded the house, and a wire-mesh fence enclosed neat rows of her vegetable garden. John and his brothers took turns helping to keep the place in shape, a real pain in the ass since everything grew at warp speed in the bayou, but this place had been a refuge to each of them at one time or another from their father’s alcoholic binges.
Besides, how could anyone say no to Tante Lulu?
Since he was on “suspension,” John had decided to join the Jinx team once again, but he had to do it surreptitiously, especially since the witness list had been given to the defense this morning. Once the project started, he would stay at René’s remote cabin. Luckily, the project site was located at a spot not too far from his brother’s property. In the meantime, he wore disguises whenever he was out in public and drove his sister-in-law’s puke green VW bug, a comedown from his red Impala convertible, that was for sure. He hadn’t been specifically identified in the article, and Tante Lulu was only a silent partner; so, he should be safe here. Still, he was taking no chances.
“You look ridiculous,” remarked René from where he was sitting on a rocker next to his. René, who used to be an environmental lobbyist, ought to know; some of his tree hugger friends were the most ridiculous-looking in the world. In fact, they ate so much twigs and bark, aka granola, that John once told René that they looked like bushes themselves. Not René, of course; he had to be a good-looking dude to get a babe like Trial TV lawyer Valerie Breaux for his bride. René was going to act as part-time consultant on the job. Nothing visible. Ever since Hurricane Katrina, fol
ks in Louisiana were more concerned about protecting the coastal wetlands and the bayous which fed into the Gulf of Mexico. René would make sure the Jinx team toed the environmental line.
“What? You doan lak me in blond hair, cher?” He touched the blond wig he was wearing under a baseball cap—borrowed from Tante Lulu—and removed the black frame glasses.
“You look like a dork. And you talk like a dork when you use that fake Cajun drawl.”
“That’s the point.”
“Bet it cramps your style with women.”
“What women?”
René’s left eyebrow rose just a fraction, a trick he’d never learned himself. “Not getting any action lately, bro? Tsk, tsk, tsk. You need some advice?”
“Not from you.”
Remy and Luc, sitting on the remaining rockers, laughed at the verbal sparring. They were going to help but not actively participate in the Pirate Project. Remy would be taking lots of equipment along with the project members out to the remote site in his hydroplane, in several different trips.
His brothers were here today for no reason other than to be pains in his ass, enjoying his most recent notoriety. All of them were draining cold Dixie longnecks, the best thing on a warm Louisiana day.
Luc pulled out the newspaper again, pointing to the infamous article. They’d been razzing him about it for the past hour. “Me, I’m just a dumb ol’ Cajun, but is this article really sayin’ you’re a cop whose job it was to have sex for money?”
“My name wasn’t in that article. How do you know it referred to me?”
“Puh-leeze! Man, you’ve been in some scrapes before, but this one beats them all. Talk about!”