Lucky’s Lady

CHAPTER 10

He'd had the dream a hundred times, he was crawling through a sewer tunnel under the private prison of self-styled general and drug kingpin Juan Rafael Ramos, the fumes choking him, the screams of prisoners in the interrogation rooms coming to him through the stone walls like the eerie cries of tortured souls from another dimension.

He had planned this escape since the day he had regained consciousness after his first «questioning» by Ramos's men. He had concentrated on the plan every time they tortured him, focusing his mind on freedom instead of the excruciating pain, had visualized it in his mind over and over through the endless hours in a dark, dank cell. Now the end of the tunnel was literally in sight. His fingers threaded through the rusted grate and pushed it out. On the other side, standing in a ball of bright light were Ramos, Amalinda Roca, and Lieutenant Colonel R. J. Lambert.

He lunged for Lambert first and killed him with a rough metal shank. Blood gushed from the body like water from a fire hydrant and pooled around him, thick and warm and shoulder-deep. He could hear a woman's laughter, and he turned toward it slowly, his movements hindered by the fluid rushing around him. Amalinda hovered above him, her long hair flowing around her like streamers in the wind.

The instant he recognized her her face contorted grotesquely into a monster's snarling countenance with fangs dripping venom. Her fingers transformed into snakes that wrapped around his throat and pulled his head under the swirling current of blood, drowning him. He could feel the pressure, the pain in his lungs, the panic rising in the back of his throat-

Lucky jerked awake, gasping for air and looking wildly for the source of the pressure on his chest. A woman lay with her cheek pressed over his heart, her hair spilling like a curtain of silvery silk over his dark skin. Shelby. No, no, he told himself, working to keep another rush of ugly memories at bay. Not Shelby. Serena.

It took him a long moment to sort reality from the nightmare, to realize who Serena was and where they were. Fragments of thought and emotions swirled like dust at the edges of his mind, and he painstakingly selected the appropriate pieces and frantically attempted to push the rest aside.

Serena. Safety. Home.

She lifted her head and blinked sleepily, looking up at him in silent question. Lucky said nothing. He eased out from under her and left the bed, padding naked to the front window.

A cold sweat filmed his skin. His hair was damp as he ran his fingers through it, slicking it back from his face. He was shaking-perhaps not visibly, but inside he was shaking violently and his heart beat like thunder. He braced his hands against the frame of the open window, trying to get a breath of fresh air, trying to hang on as fear tore at the edges of his sanity. It crawled up the back of his throat to choke him, and he coughed and gripped the window frame harder as he fought the sensation back down.

They were old companions, the nightmares and their aftermath, the shaking, the blinding fear that maybe this time he wouldn't be able to push the darkness back from the edges of his mind, the weariness, the regret. The thing he wanted most was to lie down and escape from it all with sleep, but he knew he wouldn't sleep again this night. The dreams were too terrible, too vivid, too seductive in their attempts to pull him over the edge.

He wouldn't sleep again this night because he was afraid, and because he was afraid he was ashamed. A stronger man could have slept. A better man wouldn't have been plagued by demons the like of these. Knowing Serena was there to witness it all made the shame a hundred times worse and he called on his deep reservoirs of anger and self-protection to deflect it.

Serena watched him from the bed. She couldn't see his face, but the pale moonlight spilling in through the window washed silver over his shoulders and back as he stood with his head lowered. Every muscle was tense, taut, perfectly delineated from its neighbor. His back rose and fell as he struggled for breath. She had no idea what kind of nightmare had driven him from sleep to this mental ledge he was clinging to now. All she knew was that she wanted to help. She wanted to reach out and offer him her strength as he had offered his the night before.

She found Lucky's T-shirt among the tangle of clothes on the floor beside the bed and pulled it on. It fell to the middle of her thighs as she slipped from the bed and went to him.

«What's wrong?» she asked quietly. For a long moment the only sounds that answered her came from outside-the chirrup of frogs and insects, the distant whinny of a raccoon.

«Rien,» he said at length, then shook his head impatiently as he realized he hadn't answered her in English. «Nothing.»

She reached out to lay a hand on his arm. «Lucky-«

«Nothing!» He roared, turning on her. It was a tactical error. Serena didn't back away. Instead, she looked up into his face and read it as plainly as a college professor might have read a grade-school primer. Lucky turned away to stare out the window again, schooling his voice to a calmer tone. «It s nothing to do with you. Just some leftover stuff from my stint in Central America.»

«What were you doing in Central America?»

A sardonic smile twisted his mouth. «Well, I wasn't down there with the Maryknoll Fathers, that's for sure.

«The army?»

«Yeah. Doin' a little job for Uncle Sam. It was nothing.»

«We don't get nightmares from nothing.»

«Pas de betises,» he muttered.

«If you want to talk about it, I might be able to help,» Serena said softly, her eyes warm with concern.

Lucky forced a laugh. «You can't even help yourself,» he said, almost wincing at the deliberate cruelty of his words.

Serena ignored his verbal strike. He was scared and hurting; lashing out was a natural response. «It's easier to solve other people's problems.»

«Yeah, well, forget it,» he growled.

She shrugged and crossed her arms in front of her. She looked all of nineteen standing there swallowed up in his T-shirt, her hair down, her skin smooth and flawless in the moonlight. Lucky felt a fresh stirring of desire and a dangerous tenderness. They added to the burden of all the other emotions he was shouldering at the moment, and he wondered if he would be able to shrug them off before he buckled beneath the load.

«All right,» Serena said, nodding. «I just thought-«

«What?» Lucky snapped. «You thought what? That just because I've spent half the night inside you that gives you the right to open up my head to see what kind of snakes are in it? Think again, angel.»

Serena wanted to argue with him. She wanted the right to ask him what haunted his dreams. She wanted to know everything about him. She wanted him to share that information with her willingly, but she knew he wouldn't any more than he would have shared his paintings with her. He would have been happier if she had gone on believing he was a criminal.

Maybe she would have been happier too. She would have stayed her distance from the man she had first believed him to be.

She turned and looked back at the bed they had shared the last few hours. Day had faded into night. Between bouts of lovemaking they had found their way down from the grenier, trading the hard floor of Lucky's studio for the comfort of an old-fashioned mattress stuffed with Spanish moss and fragrant dried flowers and herbs. Lucky had made love to her again slowly, tenderly, drawing out the anticipation and the climax, taking her to yet another height she had never before scaled. Her body was still alive with the sensations, her every nerve ending humming in awareness of the man standing beside her.

«Don't read anything into it,» he muttered, following her gaze. «It's just sex.»

Serena's mouth twisted in a wry, rueful smile. «Gee, thanks for making me feel like a cheap one-night stand.»

«It's nothing personal.»

«Oh. I see,» she said dryly. «I'm just one in a long line of cheap one-night stands. That makes me feel a lot better. You sure know how to flatter a girl, Lucky.»

«If you wanted pretty words, you came to the wrong man. There's nothing pretty inside me.»

Serena thought of the haunting beauty of his paintings but said nothing. He hadn't appreciated her seeing them, and he wouldn't appreciate her seeing anything else that was buried beneath his tarnished armor either.

«I'm just being honest with you, chere. Isn't that what you shrinks always want? Honesty? The straight line?»

Serena said nothing. The awful fact of the matter was that deep down she would rather have had him lie to her tonight. She felt so raw emotionally; so much had happened in the last two days, she would have been glad to have a man hold her and tell her she meant the world to him even if it wasn't true. But she would have been a fool to think this man would do it.

Lucky wouldn't let anyone that close to him, not even in a lie.

She walked away from him, moving gingerly. Unaccustomed to sex, her body ached in muscles she'd forgotten she had. She went to the screen door and looked out at the bayou. The fear that had assaulted her the night before was conspicuously absent tonight. Other things had taken precedence over it-thoughts of Gifford, Shelby, the very real and physical presence of Lucky. Lucky, her hero, her antihero, her lover.

She'd never taken a lover before. She'd never even known a man like Lucky before-hard, haunted, dark, and complex. It all seemed so unreal, being in this place with this man. She felt as if she didn't know herself anymore. She had a wild urge to look into a mirror to see if she even resembled the person she had been two days before.

«Are you all right?» Lucky asked.

He had moved to stand behind her. She could feel the heat of his body and didn't resist the urge to lean back into him. His arms folded around her automatically, offering comfort he would never voice.

Serena sniffed, a wry, weary smile tugging at one corner of her mouth. «Sure. I have my whole life turned upside down on a regular basis. Doesn't everyone?»

«You could leave. Go back to Charleston. Make Gifford deal with this on his own.»

«No. Unlike you, I am obligated to other people. I may live my life apart from them, but that doesn't mean I can just shut them out. I can't walk away from this until it's over.»

Lucky listened to the mix of resignation and conviction in her voice and wondered how he could have ever confused her with her sister. The only thing they had in common was a pretty shell. Serena's hid a core of integrity and a deep well of strength she was having to draw on again and again, thanks to Shelby and Gifford. She was at once tough and fragile, a combination that touched him in a way he didn't want to admit. And it hurt him to think she was going to lose what was left of her innocence before everything was done here-hurt him in a place he hadn't believed he could be touched.

Out of a strong sense of self-preservation he denied the feelings. What he felt for Serena was desire and nothing more, he told himself. A desire that seemed insatiable. It stirred in his gut again like the glowing coals of a fire that could be banked but not extinguished.

He bent his head and brushed his mouth against her cheek and her temple. «Can I have you until it's over?» he murmured, his hands moving restlessly upward, over her ribs and stomach to her breasts.

Serena shivered from the heat of his touch and the coldness of his words. No pretense of love or affection. Just the bald, blunt truth. She tried not to let it bruise her heart. Lucky was no man for a long-term commitment. If she wanted him at all, she would do well to take a page from his book and see it as an opportunity for great sex and nothing more. An adventure, an odyssey she could look back on later when she returned to Charleston and sanity, and marvel at the recklessness of it.

At any rate, she didn't think she had a choice. She wanted him whatever way she could get him. Her body was responding to his now as if they had been lovers for weeks instead of hours. Heat rose inside her, inflaming the tips of her breasts as his fingers rubbed them through the soft cotton of the T-shirt. It seared her core as she felt his erection press into her back and throb relentlessly in the tender flesh between her legs. He turned her in his arms, pulling the T-shirt up so she would fit against him skin to skin.

«I can't get enough of you, chere,» he whispered, tasting her lips with soft, ardent kisses. «I want you again.»

Serena ducked her head against his chest. «I don't think I can.»

Lucky hooked a finger under her chin and tipped her head back. What he saw in her face wasn't rejection but embarrassment, and he smiled softly in understanding.

«Me, I've got just the thing for that, sugar,» he said seductively, leaning down to nuzzle her cheek. «Come on back to bed and let ol' Lucky kiss it and make it better.»

They left for Chanson du Terre while the mist still hovered over the bayou like thin wisps of cotton batting, giving the swamp its most primitive air. It looked like the dawn of time, when the earth was still cooling beneath the waters. Dinosaurs would not have appeared out of place.

It was easy for Serena to imagine they had slipped through a hole in the fabric of time and had fallen into earth's prehistory, that she and Lucky were the only woman and man on earth. It was an uncharacteristically romantic notion, but she didn't try to chase it away.

She took in the scenery silently as Lucky poled the boat. She still wasn't comfortable with the swamp- she doubted she ever would be-but her perceptions had changed subtly after having seen Lucky's paintings of this place. She glimpsed it now a bit through his eyes, and she tried to understand both the swamp and the man better.

Both were filled with secrets. Both were cloaked with an air of mystery and shrouded in isolation and loneliness. It was no wonder Lucky had taken refuge here; the swamp understood him. Serena wondered if she would ever be able to comprehend him fully, if she would ever be able to unlock his secrets or if he would remain as much a puzzle to her as the swamp.

The yearning to know more about him yawned inside her like a sudden crack in her block of knowledge that needed filling with details. She wanted to know what he'd been like as a boy, why he'd left college, what incidents had sown the seeds of cynicism in him. The questions buzzed on the tip of her tongue, but Serena didn't give them voice. It was foolish to encourage the desire to deepen their relationship. Lucky had set the bounds very clearly and concisely: they could share each other's bodies for the duration of her stay, offer the rudiments of friendship on occasion, but nothing more.

«What are you thinking?'

Serena jerked her head up in surprise, looking at Lucky with what she supposed was an unfortunately guilty expression.

«Nothing,» she mumbled. She wasn't much of a liar. The word was probably emblazoned in red across her cheeks. Lucky frowned at her and she changed the subject before he could comment. «I'm not looking forward to dealing with this situation at Chanson du Terre. I don't feel it's my place to interfere.»

He planted the push-pole, and the pirogue slid forward. «You said yourself, you don't have a choice.»

«I know, but I don't have to like it or feel comfortable doing it. I feel like an outsider butting in. Shelby is going to resent it in a big way.»

«There are more important things at stake here than Miz Shelbys feelings,» Lucky said acridly.

Serena twisted around on the seat of the pirogue to get a better look at him. His jaw was set, his eyes trained on some point in the middle distance. His face gave nothing away.

«Is your family close?» she asked. Lucky flinched inwardly. Was his family close? Oh, yes, they were close, like the woven threads in homespun Cajun cloth… with one exception-him. He had kept his distance since returning, though he knew it puzzled them and hurt them. They were good people, his parents, his brothers and sisters, too good to risk tainting them with his experiences and his problems. He visited his parents dutifully if not often, and he saw the others from time to time, but he remained the loose thread in the fabric of the Doucet clan. The one that had come unraveled, he thought with bitter humor.

«Lucky?»

«Oui,» he said shortly. «They're close.»

«I've never been fortunate enough to say that about my sister and me. What's going to happen with the plantation isn't likely to help matters in that respect.»

«As I said, cherie, there are bigger things to consider.»

He steered the pirogue to the shore. Serena looked around them. They were in what seemed to be the heart of the swamp. There was no sign of civilization, certainly no sign of their destination. There was nothing much visible except black water and dense forest. She lifted a brow in silent question when Lucky glanced down at her.

«I need to show you something.»

He hopped out of the pirogue and pulled the nose ashore. Serena remained stubbornly in place as he offered her his hand.

«Where is this thing you need to show me?' she asked suspiciously.

«Down this path,» he said, motioning toward the woods.

Serena saw no evidence of Lucky's path. All she could focus on was the wild tangle of trees and underbrush and the knowledge of what might be under the underbrush. The old fear rose to the surface of her feelings like oil.

Lucky gently cupped her chin in his hand and turned her face up so she would look at him instead of the forest. «Don' be afraid of this place, chere,» he whispered. «You're with me. You're mine now. I won' let anything hurt you.»

Staring up into his hard face, Serena felt a strong elemental connection with him, a bond that had been forged without their knowledge or consent as they had come together in passion. She was his, Lucky Doucet's lady, bound to him in the most fundamental of ways. He would protect her as well as possess her, as males had protected their females for eons.

«You trust me, cherie?»

«Yes,» she answered. With my life if not my heart.

She trusted him. It would have been unthinkable just two days earlier. She would never have believed a man who seemed so unscrupulous, so untamed, a man who defied authority and solved his problems with violence would be trustworthy on any count, but she knew now that there was so much more to Lucky than what met the eye. He was like a diamond in the rough-hard and dark on the outside, a multitude of facets within.

She took his hand and allowed him to help her from the boat. As soon as her feet touched shore he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the place he wanted her to see. The path he followed was overgrown with ferns and thorny dewberry bushes and crowded on both sides by trees. The swamp was doing its best to eradicate the evidence of man's past intrusion. For the most part, Serena saw no trail at all, but Lucky walked on as steady and sure as if he'd been strolling down Main Street in town.

He took her to a small clearing at the edge of another stream. The clearing was framed with hackberry and magnolia trees, the magnolias scenting the air with the heavy perfume of their last few blossoms. The opposite bank of the stream was dotted with white-topped daisy fleabane and black-eyed susans. Silhouetted against the rising sun were a doe and twin fawns that had come to drink.

Lucky stood Serena down in front of him, keeping her within the shelter of his arms. He pointed to a raft of water hyacinth that stretched from bank to bank.

«That stuff can choke a bayou to death,» he said softly. «One plant can produce sixty-five thousand others in a single season. It blocks the light from getting to the plants beneath it and they die. The phytoplankton the fish feed on goes, and so go the fish. The pond weeds the ducks feed on die and the ducks leave. Man introduced that plant here by accident.»

He turned slightly and pointed to a stand of cattails along the far bank where the head of an animal that resembled a beaver was visible between the reeds. «There's a nut'ra. They were brought to Lou'siana in the thirties for breeding experiments. Some got away. Now there's so many down in the marshes, they're eatin' the place up. They chew the grass down to nothin' in places where the oil companies won't let trappers in. Without the grass roots to hold it together, the marsh soil breaks up and washes away, and saltwater leaches in from the Gulf and poisons everything. Man brought the nut'ra here.

«You look at this place and think it's a world away from anywhere,» he said. «But right here are two examples of man's intrusion. The swamp might seem an unforgiving, indestructable place, but it's a delicate place of checks and balances. Man could destroy it in the blink of an eye.»

«Why are you showing me this?' Serena asked, looking up at him over her shoulder.

«I just wanted you to understand before you go back to deal with Shelby and Talbot and Tristar. It's not just Chanson du Terre ridin' on this, angel, and it's not just your relationship with your sister or Gifford. It's a whole ecosystem,» he said, staring out at the wilderness as if he felt the need to memorize every aspect of it before it was too late. «This swamp is dying already a little bit at a time. Silting up from the big channels that were built to keep the Mississippi from flooding farm land that never should have been farm land to begin with. Tristar has plans to dig their own navigation channel. That'll bring in more silt, Le bon Dieu only knows what they'll dump out here where nobody can see. They have a rap sheet of environmental crimes as long as your arm.»

Serena listened carefully, taking in not only his words but the sentiment behind them. This wasn't Lucky the erstwhile poacher talking, it wasn't Lucky the tough guy. This was Etienne, the student of biology, the boy who had grown up on these bayous, learning their secrets. «You love this place, don't you?»

Lucky said nothing for a long moment. This swamp was his home, his salvation, the solitude that had helped him heal when he'd been clinging to the ragged edge of sanity. The silence grew heavy; weighed down with the importance of his answer.

«Oui» he said at last. «I know you hate it, but this place is my life.»

His admission touched Serena in the most tender corner of her heart, and she felt a dangerous rise of emotion pressing against the backs of her eyes. This was the first part of his inner self Lucky had shared with her willingly, candidly.

No matter how foolish her brain told her it was, her heart embraced this small piece of hope greedily. She turned in Lucky's arms and hugged him, wanting something she didn't dare name and feeling in that moment that she would do anything to save this place, no matter how much she feared it, just to be able to give something to Lucky that went deeper than desire.