Lucky’s Lady

CHAPTER 8

SERENA SAT IN THE PIROGUE, SHADING HER EYES from the fierce morning sun that had come up like a ball of fire to burn off the low-lying fog. It was not yet noon and already the heat was as oppressive as a fur coat in July. She had dressed in a sleeveless white cotton blouse and khaki walking shorts, but even these summerweight garments wilted and clung to her and made her think longingly of a swim suit and a quiet day at the beach.

Adding to her discomfort was the knowledge that Lucky was standing behind her. She could feel him glowering down at her, and she straightened her back to show she wouldn't be intimidated by his evil mood.

She had gone searching for him at seven-thirty, eager to get to Gifford's -partly because she didn't quite trust herself to be alone with him. She had slept all of two hours after they had parted company the night before. And those two hours had been full of erotic dreams starring Guess Who. Just the memory was enough to make her blush. She didn't want to begin to decipher its meaning.

Lucky Doucet was trouble; he was an outlaw. The fact that he had a body to rival Adonis's couldn't enter into the argument. She couldn't get involved with him. She kept repeating that to herself like a mantra, but every time she thought she had herself convinced, her mind would sneak in the memory of the way he had held her after she'd told him about getting lost in the swamp. For that moment he had been gentle and tender and compassionate……

He had been none of those things when she found him that morning. After searching the galleries back and front and finding only a trio of baby raccoons playing on the steps, she made her way up the exterior staircase to the attic.

Lucky stepped out and slammed the door shut behind him as she neared the landing, glaring at her with bleary, bloodshot eyes. His jaw was shadowed with morning beard. His hair was loose and disheveled, falling to his shoulders in unruly blue-black waves.

«What the hell are you doin' up here?» he demanded, his voice low and as rough as gravel. «I don' want you comin' up here. You got that?»

«Why?» Serena questioned, arching a brow. «Is this where you keep the bodies?»

«C'est pas de ton affaire,» he muttered. «Never you mind what I keep up here. It's nothin' for a pretty shrink to go sniffin' through. You're a helluva lot better off not knowing.»

The mere suggestion made Serena curious. What was he hiding? Stolen goods? Illegal liquor? Drugs? Guns? It could have been any of those things, all of them, or something even worse.

«I'm sure I don't care what you keep in there, Mr. Doucet,» she said with as much cool as she could muster. «I only came up here looking for you.»

He moved down to the step below hers, putting them nearly at eye level. Giving her a look that was at once calculatedly cruel and seductive, he lifted a hand to cup her cheek and brought his mouth down close to hers.

«Change your mind, sugar?»

«Certainly not.» Making a disgusted face and leaning back to escape his breath, she fanned the aroma away with her hand. «You've been drinking.»

«Heavily,» Lucky said, straightening away from her. «You oughta try it sometime. Loosen you up. From what I've seen, you could stand it.»

On that infuriating note, he turned and descended the stairs, his heavy boots barely making a sound on the wooden treads. Serena followed at a discreet distance, her mind wrestling with the conflicting facets of the man and with the conflicting emotions he aroused inside her. Her overriding thought was that the sooner she got to Gifford's, the sooner she would be free of Lucky Doucet and the strange spell he seemed to have cast over her.

While she sat at the table waiting impatiently, Lucky went through his morning ablutions without haste, shaving, showering, emerging from the bathroom barechested, wearing a pair of jeans that were nearly white with age. His wet hair was slicked back into its queue and bound with a length of leather boot lace. A scrap of red bandanna was tied around his right biceps, hiding the ugly wound he had acquired the night before.

Serena's gaze fastened on the makeshift bandage, and she felt something twist in her stomach. She told herself it was revulsion at the reminder of how this man made his living, but she knew that wasn't the whole truth. A part of that knot could be directly attributed to fear of what might have happened to him if the bullet had gone high and inside. He would have been dead and there would have been no chance left for anyone to reform him.

She shied away from the direction her thoughts were taking. That path was a dead end, a fast track to heartache.

«I suppose you'll tell me the other guy looks worse,» she said, still staring at the bandage and the massive arm it was bound to. Looking at it at least kept her eyes off his chest and the taut, hard muscles of his stomach.

Lucky looked down at the bandanna as if getting grazed with a bullet had slipped his mind. He flicked a speculative glance at Serena. «Mais yeah, but then, he was an ugly son of a bitch to start with.»

«Shouldn't you have a doctor look at that?»

«You're a doctor,» he said, his voice low and rough, his eyes capturing hers. He braced his hands on the arms of her chair and leaned down until his mouth hovered a breath away from hers. «You wanna look at it?»

«No,» Serena murmured, tensing against the waves of heat rippling through her. He was much too close. His body gave off an electrical charge that shorted out her common sense and stimulated the primitive instincts buried beneath her sophisticated facade. His clean male scent filled her nostrils, and she caught herself wondering what it would be like to kiss him when he tasted like toothpaste instead of tobacco.

«No?» he questioned softly, arching one black brow. «Is there some other part of me you'd care to examine, Dr. Sheridan?»

Her memory leapt at the opportunity to remind her of the way he had molded her hand to his erection. Serena bit back a curse, but she couldn't stop the heat from rising in her cheeks.

«Just say the word, sugar,» Lucky announced. «Your wish is my command.»

Serena broke away from the beam of his gaze and spoke through her teeth. «I wish you would stop wasting time on crude seduction routines and take me to Gifford's.»

He backed away from her, his expression cold and closed. «You'll get there.»

«When?»

«When I'm damn good and ready to take you.»

He proceeded out onto the back porch, where he set down a dish of dry cat food for the baby raccoons, shooting Serena a look that dared her to comment. She stood at the back door, watching quietly as the little bandits gamboled around his big feet, vying for his attention, playing with his shoelaces. Lucky grumbled at them in French, but made no move to lack them away. He looked annoyed and embarrassed and Serena felt a most disastrous weakening in the heart she was trying to steel against him.

«It's just easier to feed them than have them in my garbage all the time, that's all,» he said defensively. «It's not like they're pets.»

The words had barely left his mouth when one of the coons sat up on its hind legs and snickered at him, reaching up with its front paws to bat at his pant leg.

«Why not just shoot them?» Serena asked sweetly. «You could save up all their little hides and make yourself a shirt.»

Lucky narrowed his eyes and growled at her, but the effect was ruined when another raccoon reached from its perch on the gallery railing for the shiny button on Lucky s jeans. He arched away from it, scolding it in rapid French. The little coon sat back and whinnied at him, and he reached out grudgingly to scratch it behind one triangular ear.

Serena felt her heart give a traitorous thump. The big bad poacher had a soft spot for little animals. She reminded herself that even Hitler had had a pet, and she forced herself to go back to the table to wait.

Only after a breakfast of fried catfish and a bottle of beer did Lucky give any indication of being ready to take her to Gifford's.

«I've got better things to do than play chauffeur,» he grumbled as he poled the pirogue away from the shore.

Serena shot him a look over her shoulder. «You know, I'm sick of hearing you complain. If you didn't want to get involved in this, you could have left me at Gifford's yesterday. Why bring me here if you're too busy to take me back?»

He arched a brow above the rim of his mirrored sunglasses with insulting lasciviousness. «Do you really have to ask, sugar?»

She narrowed her eyes speculatively. «You know, I think you do that on purpose.»

«What?»

«Make obnoxious sexist remarks. I think you do it to make me angry, to throw me off the topic. Why is that, Lucky? Are you afraid to have a real conversation with a woman?»

«I'm not afraid of anything,» he said too vehemently, giving the push-pole a mighty shove. «I'm sure as hell not afraid of you.»

They traveled on in a silence that was as thick as the muggy air.

No shotgun blast greeted them this time as they rounded the bend to Gifford's cabin. Gifford sat on the steps tying fishing flies. Pepper Fontenot sat in a ratty old green and white lawn chair in the yard with a gutted outboard motor on a tarp at his feet. The clamorous sounds of a Cajun band blasted out of a portable radio on the gallery.

«Hey, Giff, what sa matter with you? You run outta shells or somethin'?» Lucky hollered as he piloted the boat alongside the rickety dock.

Gifford pushed himself to his feet and jammed his big hands at his waist. «Hell, I ain't wasting good buckshot on you, Doucet.»

«What about me?» Serena called. She waited for Lucky to pull the nose of the pirogue up on shore and exited from the bow, preferring to step on land rather than risk her neck on the rotted pier again.

Gifford gave her a long, hard stare as she came to stand at the foot of the steps. «I figured you'd be on your way back to Charleston by now.»

Serena swallowed down the hurt and met his gaze head-on. «I told you, I won't leave this swamp until you do. I want you to come back to Chanson du Terre with me.»

«And I told you, I'm not going. You're not bossing me around, little girl. I don't give a toot how many degrees you have. You can't hightail it out of Lou'siana first chance you get, then come on back and try to run things on the weekend.»

She didn't back down. Lucky watched her take it on the chin. He cursed Gifford for being so hard on her, then told himself he didn't care. He leaned a hip against the newel post and lit his fourth cigarette of the morning, sucking smoke down a throat that was already raw.

He felt like holy hell. Even in the best of circumstances he never slept more than a couple of hours at a stretch because of nightmares, but the previous night had been worse than usual. What little sleep he'd gotten had been plagued with memories of pain and betrayal. As if his conscious mind hadn't been doing the job well enough, his subconscious had seen fit to remind him that beautiful women were the cause of most of his problems. First Shelby, then Amalinda Roca, the lovely little viper whose duplicity had helped to land him in a Central American prison.

He had finally given up on the idea of sleep and had proceeded to attempt to drown his foul mood and sexual frustration with whiskey, succeeding only in giving himself a colossal hangover. Now his head banged in syncopated rhythm with the gash in his arm where Mean Gene Willis had managed to nick him.

«You look like hell,» Gifford said, his hard gaze still on Serena. His voice had lost some of its edge, betraying his true concern as he took in the dark crescents beneath her eyes. He glanced at Lucky to distract himself from his guilt. «You both look like hell.»

«Mebbe they both been raisin hell,» Pepper suggested, chuckling merrily at the dark looks his comment received from both Lucky and Serena. Gifford only raised a bushy white brow in speculation as he studied them.

Serena felt a blush rise to her cheeks at the memory of the near miss of the night before. There but for the grace of God and Smith amp; Wesson… If the sight of Lucky s gun hadn't brought her back to reality in a cold rush, she may well have had something to blush about now. Dropping her head, she made her way up the steps, past her grandfather and onto the gallery.

«I could use a cup of coffee. Pepper, do you still make it strong?»

«Black as dat bayou and strong 'nough to curl your purty blond hair, pichouette,» Pepper said, flashing his teeth.

«Sounds like heaven,» Serena mumbled, letting herself in the front door.

Gifford remained on the steps, staring down at Lucky. «What have you got to say for yourself? You been fooling 'round with my little girl?»

Lucky slid his sunglasses on top of his head and gave Gifford a belligerent look. «What would you care, old man? All you wanna do is give her the sharp side of your tongue. You're the one left her with no place to stay last night.»

«I got my reasons.»

«Like you got your reasons for holin' up out here?» Lucky shook his head and muttered an expletive. «Cut her some slack, Giff. She came, didn't she?»

«Yeah, she came, and she'll leave again too,» Gifford drawled, nodding. «First chance she gets. She don't give a damn about what happens here. The girl oughta have some respect for family, for tradition.»

Lucky snorted. «You got a funny way of teachin' respect. Dump her out in the swamp to spend the night. She'd probably cut your heart out if you had one.»

The idea that Gifford had known about Serena's fear and played on it infuriated Lucky. And the rise of his protective instincts made him even angrier. He swore again, tossed his cigarette butt to the dirt, and snuffed it out viciously with the toe of his boot. «I oughta just wash my hands of the lot of you. It's nothin' but trouble, this business.»

«Me, I hear you got 'nough trouble wit' dat Perret boy and dat big ugly son Willis,» Pepper said, rocking back on the hind legs of his lawn chair. His light eyes sparkled like aquamarines in his dark face.

Lucky scowled at him. «Where'd you hear that?»

«Me, I heard dat wit' my ears, I did.» The old man chuckled at his little joke, not heeding Lucky's ferocious glare in the least.

«Yeah, well, you keep your ears out of it or they might just get shot off.»

The end of his warning was punctuated by the sound of the screen door slapping shut, the soft «pop» sounding like a toy gun. Serena made her way across the small gallery, trying to concentrate on the steam rising from her coffee instead of the conversation she'd heard plainly through the screen while she'd been inside.

«Are you going to make this easier on all of us and explain to me what's going on, Gifford?» she said, lowering herself carefully to sit on the top step.

Gifford looked down at her and frowned. «Shouldn't have to be giving you an update like some kind of goddamned foreign correspondent.»

Serena sighed heavily, feeling too exhausted to even bring her cup to her lips so she could draw on the amazing elixir that was Pepper Fontenot's coffee. «Gifford, please. You've made your opinion of my life abundantly clear. Yes, I'm living miles away. People do that, you know. They grow up, they move on, they make their own lives.»

«You've got no sense of tradition.»

«I won't be a slave to it, if that's what you mean. I appreciate the history of Chanson du Terre, but I'm not going to become a planter to keep it going. Shelby is the one who always planned to carry on the tradition in one way or another. My career has taken me elsewhere. That doesn't mean I don't care about Chanson du Terre or you. I love you both,» she said, looking up at him with fierce earnestness in her wide dark eyes. «Is that the confession you were looking for? Are you happy now?»

«Hardly,» the old man grumbled. Still, he backed up a step and sat down beside her. «If you cared about the place, things would never have come to this.»

«And just what is 'this'? What's going on?»

He hesitated a long time, considering and discarding options. Serena didn't rush him, but sat patiently, sipping her coffee. Finally, he heaved a sigh and plowed a hand through his white hair, leaving short strands standing on end.

«Some hotshot political people have got it into their puddin' heads Mason Talbot is destined for political stardom. They want him to run for the legislature next year. He's just pretty enough and stupid enough to get elected too. He'll make a nice little puppet for the oil kingpins. His daddy may have lost his fortune in the bust, but he hasn't lost any of his connections. I'm sure old John Talbot would love to have a son in the governor's mansion one day.»

«Mason running for office,» Serena murmured, a troubled frown drawing her brows together. «I can't believe Shelby didn't mention it to me.»

«Seems to me there's quite a few things Shelby didn't mention to you, chere» Lucky commented darkly.

Serena shot him a look of annoyance and turned back to Gifford. «I don't see what this has to do with Chanson du Terre.»

«Think about it, Serena. Shelby has her heart set on Mason going to Baton Rouge. They won't need the plantation. The state the place is in right now, all it is is a liability. But if I were to sell it now and advance her her inheritance, that would give Mason enough money to buy his way into any office he wanted.

«Everybody knows it's advertising wins elections nowadays. Plaster Mason's pretty face on billboards, on television, on the sides of buses, nobody's gonna care that he's got cotton for brains.»

Serena felt compelled to stick up for her absent brother-in-law. She had always liked Mason. He was too laid-back for Gifford's taste and he might have been more fluff than substance, but he had a good heart. «Mason has got more than cotton for brains. He graduated from law school fifth in his class.»

Gifford gave a snort that eloquently spoke of his regard for lawyers in general. «Don't mean he's got a lick of sense. All it means to me is he has a nose for loopholes and technicalities. Hell, that hound over there can sniff out a coon fast as dammit, but that don't mean he's Einstein.»

It was pointless to argue with him, and they had gotten off the most important topic, so Serena steered them back with effort. «You said yesterday you'd mentioned something to Shelby about selling. Why would you do that if you don't want to sell?»

He scowled at his boots and looked uncomfortable. When he spoke, it was as grudgingly as a schoolboy owning up to sticking gum on his teachers chair. «Hell, I was just makin' noise. We've been having a rough spot here-cane smut last year, too much rain this spring, production costs are up, that damned gas tax gets us coming and going. I was just grumbling is all, trying to see if I might raise a little interest in Shelby for something besides redecorating the house while she's staying in it. So I say over dinner one night, 'By God, if all I'm gonna do is work myself to death on this place so some stranger can come in and take over, I might as well sell it and go to Tahiti.' Faster than I could spit and whistle, she had a Tristar rep nosing around the place.»

Serena frowned as she listened. It had seemed unlikely to her that Shelby would want to sell Chanson du Terre, if not because of a sense of tradition, because it had always represented status in the community-something Shelby prized almost above all else. But if she had set her sights on an even higher plateau and saw selling the place as a means of achieving that end, that was a different story. Shelby's talent for rationalization was unsurpassed in Serena's experience.

«Why Tristar Chemical?» she asked.

Gifford shrugged wearily. «I don't know. There's probably some connection through Mason's family. How else would she have found a buyer at all? Since the oil bust, the market down here is soft as butter. Shelby couldn't sell igloos to Eskimos to begin with. Mason only let her have that office space downtown to placate her. You know I love her, but she's a silly little thing and always has been. The only reason she went into real estate was so she could dress up, look important, and go to the chamber of commerce meetings.»

«So you don't want to sell the place,» Serena said, uncomfortable with the topic of her twin. «Tell the Tristar people no and be done with it.»

«They don't take no for an answer,» he grumbled. «That damned Burke is like a pit bull. I can't shake him for love or money.»

Serena fixed her grandfather with the stern look she'd learned from him. «Gifford Sheridan, in all my life I've never known you to back down from a fight.»

He frowned at her. His square chin came up a notch. «I'm not backing down from a fight.»

«Then what are you doing out here?» she asked, exasperated.

He raised his head another proud inch, looking as stubborn and immovable as the faces on Mount Rush-more. «I'm dealing with it my own way.»

They were back to square one. Serena squeezed her eyes shut for a second and concentrated on the needle of pain stabbing through her head. She took a sip of coffee, hoping in vain that the caffeine would bring her energy level up. Instead, it churned like acid in her stomach and made her feel even hotter and more uncomfortable than she had been to begin with.

Of course, Gifford's obstinance wasn't helping. Nor was having Lucky's steady gaze fastened on her. He stood at the foot of the steps, staring at her through the opaque lenses of his sunglasses, an unnerving experience in the best of circumstances. The only thing that might have made it worse was if he hadn't been wearing the glasses. She couldn't think of anything more disturbing than the heat and intensity of those amber eyes.

Pepper broke the tense silence, rising lazily from his chair. Without a word to anyone he ambled down to the edge of the bayou and stood for a moment, apparently admiring the view. When he turned to come back, he looked up at Giff and said, «Company comin'. Me, I hears dat ol' Johnson outboard wit' the bad valve.»

Gifford swore, pushing himself to his feet and turning for the cabin. He returned with his shotgun, the twelve-gauge cracked open so he could shove slugs into it as he pounded down the steps and across the yard.

«Gifford!» Serena set her coffee cup down and ran after him. «Gifford, for heaven's sake!»

He managed to get one shot off before she reached him. The buckshot hit the water, sending up a spray just off the port bow of the game warden s boat. Perry Davis s voice crackled at them over a bullhorn.

«Goddammit, Gifford, put the gun down!»

Gifford lowered the shotgun but wouldn't relinquish it to Serena when she tried to pull it away from him. She ground her teeth and counted to ten and tried to call on her years as a counselor to cool her temper. Nothing helped much. She was furious with Gifford and she knew she was simply too close to him to ever be completely rational and objective in dealing with him.

The engine of the game wardens boat cut and the hull bobbed on the dark water a few feet from shore. Perry Davis stood behind the wheel, looking outraged and officious, his baby face flushed. Beside him was a middle-aged man, big and raw-boned with a fleshy face and a head of slicked-back steel-gray hair. He wore navy slacks and a striped necktie that had been jerked loose and hung like a noose around the collar of his sweat-stained blue dress shirt.

«You keep shooting at people and I'm gonna have to arrest you, Gifford,» Davis threatened, switching off the bullhorn.

Lucky, who had come to stand on Serena's left, gave a derisive snort. «You don't arrest nobody else. Why start with him?»

The game warden worked his mouth into a knot of suppressed fury. «Maybe I'll start with you.»

Lucky pushed his sunglasses up his nose and gave Davis a long, level look, smiling ever so slightly. «Yeah? You and what army?»

«I'll get you, Doucet. I can promise you that,» Davis said, thrusting a warning finger in Lucky's direction. «Crazy bastard like you running around loose. Folks aren't gonna stand for that forever.»

Serena could feel the tension humming around Lucky like electrical waves. The muscles in his jaw worked. He never took his eyes off Perry Davis and he never said another word. Yet, even from a distance of several yards, Davis felt compelled to back away; he moved to the back of the boat on the excuse of looking at the motor, trying to appear as if he had casually dismissed Lucky and their conversation. Gifford took advantage of the silence.

«Burke, you turn yourself around and get out.»

The big Texan let a phony grin split his meaty features. «I can't do that, partner. We've got business to discuss.»

«I've got nothing to say to you that can be said in front of a lady,» Gifford retorted. «I'm not interested in your offer. Go on back to Texas before I shoot you full of holes.»

«Gifford,» Serena said, schooling herself to at least appear calm and under control. «Why don't you invite Mr. Burke in? I'm sure we can settle this business amicably with a little plain talk.»

Burke gave an exaggerated shrug. «The little lady has a head on her shoulders, Gifford. I've said that all along. Isn't it about time you listened to her?»

It occurred to Serena that the Tristar rep had mistaken her for Shelby, but she didn't have the chance to correct him.

«I don't have to listen to anybody!» Gifford shouted, color rising in his face from his neck up. «I'm not senile, by God. I can make up my own mind. And if there's gonna be any plain talk, it's gonna come from the business end of old Betsy here,» he said, raising the stock of the shotgun to his shoulder.

«Gifford!» Serena shouted, lunging toward him. He squeezed the trigger as she knocked him off balance. The shotgun bucked as another deafening explosion rent the air. Water sprayed up against the hull of the game warden's boat, dousing Burke and Davis with a rain of mud and shredded vegetation. The two men ducked, covering their heads with their arms, then came up swearing.

Burke pointed a warning finger at Gifford. «I've had it with you, Sheridan. You're a crazy old man. There's been plenty of witnesses to that. I can get the sheriff out here. You can't just go around shooting at people who want to do business with you.»

«Hell,» Gifford said, wading out into the water, his fierce gaze fixed on Burke. «I said a long time ago they ought to open season on Texans. This state wouldn't be in the mess it's in if we'd 'a kept you greedy sons of bitches on the other side of the border!»

Serena eyed the muddy water with distaste, a tremor of fear snaking down her spine. Then she looked at her grandfather's back as he advanced toward the game warden's boat and forced herself to take the first step in, her shoes sinking into the muddy bottom. She grabbed Gifford by a belt loop on his jeans and tried to pull him back toward shore.

Burke had turned hot pink; his eyes bugged out of his head as if someone had suddenly pulled his tie tight enough to cut off his wind. «Keep it up, Sheridan! Come on, say a few more lines like that one! They'll sound real good at your competency hearing!»

Gifford tried to launch himself toward the boat, but Lucky stepped in front of him and planted a hand on his chest.

«C'est assez. Go on up to the house, mon ami,» he said softly. «Go on.»

The old man stood for a moment, grinding his teeth, his weight on his forward foot, his big hands twisting on the shotgun. The only other sound was Beausoleil playing «J'ai Ete au Zydeco» on the portable radio with inappropriate joy.

«Gifford, please,» Serena whispered behind him, pressing her cheek to his broad back as her feet sank deeper into the goo.

«Come on, Giff,» Pepper said from the bank. «He ain't worth the trouble.»

Gifford snarled a curse, jerked around, and waded back to shore. With Pepper whispering and gesturing animatedly beside him, he headed for the cabin.

Lucky's gaze settled on Serena. She was up to her knees in the bayou. The color was draining from her face and her eyes looked huge as she stared at him.

«Foute ton quant d'ici,» he murmured. «Go on, chere, get away from here. I'll take care of this.»

She backed away slowly, grimacing as the mud sucked at her shoes.

Lucky turned and advanced on the boat, wading right up alongside it until he was waist-deep in the muddy water. «This is no way to do business, M'sieu Burke,» he said, his low, rough voice just above a whisper.

Burke leaned down, bracing his hands on the side of the boat, his gaze intent on Lucky s face. «You tell your friend to start cooperating, then, son,» the Texan said, also speaking softly, as if the weight of the subject required a tone of conspiracy. «My company has gone to a lot of trouble to choose that site, and they mean to have it.»

«Is that supposed to be a threat?»

«It's a fact, son.»

The words hit him wrong. Burke's tone, his voice, his accent, his air of command, all conspired against him in Lucky's mind. For a split second he was back in Central America taking orders from a big Texan who had sold him down the river, a lieutenant colonel who had been using his covert operations team to make himself a bundle. Lucky had uncovered the man for the traitor he was, but not before spending a year in hell. That all came back to him in a flash, and the reins of control slipped a little through his mental fingers.

«You know, there's a lotta things I'm not too sure of,» he said to Burke, a chilling smile curving his mouth. «But there's one thing I do know for certain.» In the blink of an eye the smile was gone. He grabbed the knot of Burke s tie and gave it a yank, pulling the man down toward him so they were nose to nose. «I'm not your son.»

The Tristar rep was over the side of the boat and diving headfirst into the bayou before he could register a protest. He landed in the water like a whale and came up spitting mud.

«You hadn't ought to lean over the side that way, mon ami,» Lucky said, wading casually toward the shore. «You might fall in. You fall in, there's no tellin' what might get you in this water.»

As if he had conjured it up by magic to illustrate his point, a water snake slid out of some reeds near the bank. Burke swore and scrambled to get back over the side of the boat. Davis helped him, grabbing him by the back of his pants and hauling him up, shouting at Lucky all the while.

«I mean it, Doucet! I've had it with you running roughshod! Your days out here are numbered.»

Lucky made a face and waved him off. Serena met him on the bank, glaring up at him. Color had come back into her cheeks, he noticed.

«Can't you show respect for anybody?» she asked sarcastically.

«Mais yeah,» he said flippantly. «My maman, my papa, the Pope. Len Burke ain't the Pope, sugar. I don't think he's even a good Catholic.» He gave her an infuriating indulgent look. Behind them the motor of the game warden's boat roared to life, then faded into the distance.

«That's it,» Serena declared, stopping in her tracks. She threw her hands up in a gesture of defeat. «I've had it. There's something about this place that drives people over the edge. I can't stand it. Gifford is going around shooting at people. You- You're-«She couldn't finish the sentence, she was so upset. She gave in to the urge to stamp her foot. It seemed she could control little or nothing out there-not the situation, not her fears or her passions or her temper, least of all her guide.

«This whole situation is just ridiculous,» she said, pacing a short stretch of bank, her arms crossed tightly against her. «Why didn't Shelby call me? Why didn't she just explain all this to me to begin with?»

«Gee,» Lucky said with mock innocence. «Could it be she didn't want you to know? Could it be she thought she might pull off the deal without having you know a thing about it until it was too late?»

Serena shot him a look from the corner of her eye. «Oh, for Pete's sake, you make it sound like a big conspiracy.»

«That's because it is a big conspiracy, sugar,» he said, leaning back against the trunk of a massive live oak. He shook a cigarette out of the pack from his shirt pocket and dangled it from his lip without lighting it.

«Don't be ridiculous,» Serena snapped. «You're trying to tell me Shelby is in league with the Tristar people to drive her own grandfather from his land?»

Lucky shrugged. «C'est bien. You got it in one. It's a sweet deal. She gets a nice fat commission on the sale and her inheritance besides. On top of that, she and the politically ambitious Mr. Talbot bring industry to a town with a depressed economy. There's nothing like a local hero in an election year, you know.»

Serena planted herself squarely in front of him, settling in for the argument. «You're way off base. In the first place, Mason doesn't have an ambitious bone in his body. If he were any more laid-back, someone would have him interred.»

«You heard your grandpapa, chere. The powers that be want Talbot in office. His daddy wants him in office. Shelby wants him in office. You think he's gonna tell all those people no? You think Shelby would let him?'

«You make my sister sound like Lady Macbeth. Shelby is hardly that calculating or devious.»

Lucky knew exactly how devious and calculating Shelby could be, but he didn't give voice to his own experiences. He used Serena's instead. «Isn't she? Are you forgetting what you told me last night? She left you out here alone. You could have been killed.»

«That was an accident, a joke that went wrong.»

«Was it?»

Serena dodged his steady gaze. He was dredging up old hurts inside her and they had no place here. Besides, no one had been more relieved than Shelby when Serena had been found after her ordeal. Her sister had wept at her hospital bedside and had begged her forgiveness… and she had thrown her fear of the swamp, the fear that had resulted from that incident, up in her face time and again since then.

Serena shrugged off the grain of doubt trying to insinuate itself into her mind. Her feelings toward her twin were complicated enough already; she didn't need Lucky s dark suspicions adding to the morass.

«Stop trying to turn me against my own sister,» she said irritably. «I'm sure you have every reason to be paranoid, considering the kind of life you lead, but I refuse to fall into that land of thinking.»

«You shrinks have a word for that too, don't you?» Lucky said, arching a brow. «Denial?»

«Talk about denial,» Serena grumbled, changing the subject as she resumed her pacing. She threw a fuming look up at the cabin. «I can't believe Gifford. He says he's dealing with this his way. He's not dealing with it at all. He's making me-«

She broke off as the realization hit her like a brick square in the forehead. Making her deal with it was his way of dealing with it. He wanted to force her into caring more about the plantation. He wanted her to take up the banner and fight for the cause, and in doing so revive her sense of tradition and duty. God, he had even lured her into the swamp, the place she had lived in fear of for fifteen years.

«That old fox,» she muttered, planting her hands on her hips. «That old son of a boot.»

He had manipulated her as neatly as a chess master, and now there was no honorable way out. She was involved and she would have to do her best to resolve the situation or lose face with Gifford again. She might have run the risk of incurring his wrath, but she couldn't bear the thought of facing his disappointment in her. He had bet on that and won, the old horse thief.

«Take me back,» she said suddenly, turning toward Lucky. «Take me back to Chanson du Terre. I have to talk with Shelby. I'll straighten this mess out as best as I can. But if Gifford thinks he can guilt me into staying here forever, he can just think again.»