Page 81 of The Cajun Doctor

She pretended not to notice.

Aaron looked from her to Daniel and back again, then did a fist bump in the air.

Was her attraction to Daniel so apparent? Or his to her? She . . . they would have to be more careful. She could only imagine what their expressions would reveal if they’d actually done anything.

Luc and John LeDeux joined them then, having parked out front and walked around the house to the kitchen entrance. Apparently, they’d rung the doorbell and got no response except, according to John, “some dude inside saying ‘Holy shit!’ over and over.”

Luc wore a gray business suit that brought out the threads of gray in his dark hair and black-and-gray striped tie that he explained was needed for his appearance in court that morning. He was representing a restaurant being sued for serving gator meat out of season. John, who was known in Cajun land as Tee-John, or little John, from a young age, though he was now over six feet tall, was in jeans, pale blue dress shirt, unbuttoned at the neck with no tie, and a navy blazer, suitable for his job as a police detective in Lafayette. Luc was close to fifty, and John somewhere in his thirties, but they were both good-looking men. All the LeDeuxs were, men and women alike.

As they walked inside, they were complaining to each other about two of their children, John’s thirteen-year-old son Etienne, and Luc’s youngest, Jeanette, who was a high school senior.

“That boy, he gonna put me in the crazy house, guar-an-teed,” John declared in a slow Southern accent that probably had women swooning, despite his marriage and children. “How ya punish a boy who buys a shirt in the French Quarter that says, ‘I Shaved My Balls For This?’ and wore it ta Sunday mass at Our Lady of the Bayou Church?”

“Tante Lulu would say ya reap what ya sow,” Luc commented with a laugh.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s only fittin’ that the baddest boy in the bayou should get a boy with his own bad habits.”

“I wasn’t the baddest,” John protested with a grin.

Clearly, he had been. Even Samantha had heard about some of Tee-John LeDeux’s antics, all the way to New Orleans. Of course, that was before he’d married Celine, a newspaper reporter who trimmed his tail feathers.

“Anyways, wait ’til he get older. The problems, they get bigger. Jeanette wants a fluorescent tattoo on her butt that says ‘No . . . No’ on each buttock but in the dark, her ass says, ‘Yes . . . Yes.’ Can you imagine?”

John’s mouth dropped open, and he actually appeared to be interested. “Wish they had those when I was her age.”

“You would!” Luc said.

The two of them realized that all those in the kitchen were listening intently to their conversation.

“Sorry for airin’ our private shit,” John said.

“So, you called,” Luc said to Samantha. “What’s the problem?”

Instead of going outside where the heat was becoming brutal, they decided to talk around the table in the kitchen, where there was at least a ceiling fan. Aaron went upstairs to shower and change before his work assignment. Samantha and Daniel cleared the table while Angus told the story of his gambling debts and the mob loan, and of his and Lily Beth’s involvement with Dr. Nicholas Coltrane. Lily Beth inserted a comment here and there, but mostly she remained silent, yawning occasionally. She probably needed to lie down and take a nap.

Samantha and Daniel sat down then. Daniel told about the visit last night from the two Dixie Mob dimwits, and Samantha related her threatening phone calls from Nick, including two more voice mails this morning, which she hadn’t told Daniel about yet. He gave her a questioning look, and she just shrugged. Too much had been happening.

Daniel wasn’t putting the moves on her in front of Luc and John, but sitting next to her, thigh to thigh on a bench, felt intimate . . . and promising.

“Mon Dieu! Y’all are in a mess of trouble,” John concluded.

“No shit!” Angus muttered.

“This is way beyond the scope of local police, although ya do need ta contact them,” John went on. “I’ll put ya in touch with the police chief in Houma. Beyond that, I suspect the feds’ll have ta be involved, both for the mob and the baby sellin’ crimes. Not just ’cause of the RICO Act, but crossin’ state lines, and all that. The chief kin handle the details.”

“That’s pretty much what we’ve already told them,” Samantha said, “but they’re afraid to get the law involved. Not just for their own legal liabilities, but if the mob or Nick hear that they’ve contacted the police, they’ll surely come after them.”

“That’s where I come in,” Luc interjected. “As your lawyer, I’ll try to get you a deal where you both avoid prosecution in return for testifying against them.”

Lily Beth groaned and clutched her stomach protectively.

“Is she all right?” Luc asked Daniel. Samantha had informed Luc earlier about Daniel’s plans to examine the pregnant girl.

Daniel nodded. “The stress can’t be good, though.”

“Darlin’, yer job is ta take care of yerself and yer baby. Ya need ta trust us ta take care of all this other crap,” John said.