“A favor?” She started to snicker. “Me do a favor for you? What’s the occasion? All Pigs Day?”
Sylvie saw Luc’s jaw clench and the visible effort he made not to retort with his usual teasing insult. “Now, Sylvie, don’t be sayin’ no till you hear me out. I know I didn’t start out right, teasing you and all. Come,” he coaxed, pointing to two tall stools next to a long, stainless-steel table. “Come, sit your sweet self down over there, and let me explain it to you.”
Geez, his obnoxiousness is so bad it’s almost adorable. Adorable? Yikes! Watch yourself, Sylvie. He’d done it again. Rattled her composure. Made her feel all flustery and insecure, like a twelve-year-old girl at her first school dance. Sylvie took a deep breath for patience. “Let’s cut to the chase, LeDeux. I was in a really good mood before you came on the scene. I’d like to end my day the same way.”
“Watching rats have sex gets you in a good mood?” he asked, blinking his deliciously dark lashes with seeming innocence.
I never realized how good-looking he was before. No wonder women fall like dominoes for him up and down the bayou. “A zillion Louisiana bimbos must have gone down for the count with that sexy ploy,” she blurted out.
“What ploy?” He tilted his head, genuinely puzzled now.
She hesitated, then disclosed, “That come-hither, eyelash-batting trick.”
“Come-hither? Me?” He burst out laughing, and Sylvie had to admit he was pretty near irresistible when he threw his head back and laughed with unaffected abandon.
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.”