Page 5 of The Cajun Doctor

“SDU? Sounds like a sexual disease. But see, that’s the kind of remark that will get you in trouble.” Even as he chastised her, Luc had to smile. “All we need is time. Wish you had contacted me earlier, but not to worry. I’ve got investigators checking into his activities. We’re gonna nail his sorry ass to the wall, one way or the other.”

“I wish I’d hired you sooner, too. My old lawyer, Charles Broussard, was a lovely man . . . a friend of my grandfather . . . but not the sharpest knife in the drawer, not a barracuda like Daltry.”

“I eat big fish for breakfast,” Luc bragged.

He probably did. That, or fried gator kidneys if his crazy aunt had any say.

Samantha put one of her recently manicured fingernails to her mouth and began to gnaw nervously.

Luc slapped her hand away. “Enough of that! You have to walk in there as if you own the world. Fearless!”

“Pfff! How do I do that with a man who looks like some kind of Norse God in Armani? And a lawyer who sharpens his teeth on people like me?”

“No, no, no! Daltry is a shark, guar-an-teed, but, darlin’, you hired yourself an even badder shark. A Cajun shark. The best kind.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Here’s a clue on how not ta be intimidated. When I’m in court, if it’s a man tryin’ ta disconcert me, I just picture him naked, walkin’ down Bourbon Street with a string of Carnival beads looped around his . . . um, family jewels. If it’s a woman, I picture her, naked, too, but with a behind the size of a bayou barge, doin’ a Cajun shimmy snake dance. In both cases, people are laughin’ their asses off at them.”

Samantha’s jaw dropped open before she burst out with a giggle.

And that was how her ex-husband and his lawyer saw her as she and Luc entered the auxiliary courtroom. And, to her surprise, Nick was the one who looked disconcerted.

“Game on, Samantha?” Luc whispered in her ear.

“Game on,” she agreed, leaning in to his ear.

As Nick and his lawyer stood, Nick’s eyes widened with surprise at what must seem an intimate interplay between her and her lawyer. Luc might be fifty years old, give or take, and married with kids, but he was still handsome and successful, the type of man Nick had always intimated would never be interested in her.

The two lawyers exchanged cool greetings while Nick pulled his charm mask on and smiled at her. “Samantha, it’s good to see you again.”

Liar!

Giving her an insulting head-to-toe survey, he winked at her and drawled, “Lookin’ good, babe.”

Another lie. Among other things, Nick had more than once suggested she get breast implants. And skin bleaching to reduce the freckling. Like Dolly Parton and Michael Jackson, for heaven’s sake! The image still made her blood curdle.

Her upper lip curled with disgust at Nick’s continuing swarmy smile. Was there ever a time when she’d thought him attractive? Aliens must have invaded her brain.

“Oy-yay! Oy-yay! Judge Bernadette Pitre presiding in the case of Coltrane vs Starr,” the bailiff called out through an inner door which had just opened. The judge was followed by a court reporter with her portable steno machine.

“Oh, no! Another female judge!” Samantha complained to Luc.

Seemingly undismayed, he patted her arm and murmured something that sounded like, “Thank you, St. Jude.”

“Your honor, Jessie John Daltry representing Dr. Nicholas Coltrane.” The judge nodded at Daltry, but then frowned when Nick, in an impeccable gray suit with lavender shirt and purple striped tie, his blond hair perfectly groomed, and reeking of Bleu de Chanel, said with a teeth-showing, I-can-get-any-woman-I-want smile plastered on his sun-tanned face, “It is such a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Pitre. I have heard so much about you. Congratulations on your recent—”

“Are you tryin’ ta influence me, young man?” the judge asked with steel in her deep Creole voice. At forty-something she was not that much older than Nick’s thirty-four, but she was a big-boned, mocha-skinned Amazon of a woman who clearly handled her courtroom in a no-nonsense fashion. She looked a little bit like Queen Latifah in a judge’s gown.

Samantha had to grin at a female stonewalling Nick’s charm tactics.

Then the judge turned to her and Luc, and groaned aloud. Samantha could swear she said under her breath, “Oh, crap!”

Not a good sign.

“Lucien LeDeux! What’re you doin’ here, cher? Shouldn’t you be down the bayou chasin’ ambulances or somethin’?”

Instead of being insulted, Luc just grinned. “How’s yer Mama, Bernie?”

“Jist fine. And that old bird, Tante Lulu?”

“Still causin’ trouble. Thanks fer askin’.”