Lucky’s Lady

CHAPTER 20

«SERENA? IS THAT YOU?» GIFFORD BELLOWED FROM the depths of his study.

Serena paused outside the open door, suitcases in hand. «Yes, Giff, it's me,» she called back wearily.

«Hey, Miz 'Rena,» Pepper called, grinning at her from his position in a leather wing chair. He lifted his coffee cup to her in salute. «Mighty good to have you back.»

«Thanks, Pepper.» She wished she could have said it felt good to be back, but all she felt at the moment was exhausted. She thought she could have just laid down on the old Oriental rug between the two blue tick hounds and slept for a week or three. The hounds looked up at her with woeful expressions. One mustered the ambition to woof softly, then fell over on his side, exhausted from his effort.

Gifford abandoned the blueprints on his desk and strode across the room toward her. He looked as vibrant and healthy and cantankerous as ever. There was a flush of color on his high cheekbones. His eyes gleamed with a fierce intelligence. His white hair was in a state of disarray that told of numerous finger combings.

«Where the hell have you been?» he demanded to know. «You were due back two hours ago. Odille waited supper as long as she could.»

«I'm sorry. My flight was delayed.»

«They don't have telephones up in Charleston?» Gifford said with characteristic sarcasm. He gave her an admonishing glare, took her suitcases away from her, and started down the hall with them.

Serena had all she could do to dredge up the energy to catch up with him. The man was nearly eighty and she thought he could probably work her right into the ground on his worst day. He was amazing.

He stopped at the door to her room and set her luggage down. «You had an old man worried he might have scared you off for good,» he said gruffly as he straightened and looked her in the eye. The glare had softened grudgingly with lights of love and unspoken apology.

«No,» Serena said with a weary smile. «You can't scare me, you old goat. I'm no coward.»

«Damn right you're not.» Gifford's shoulders straightened with pride. «You're a Sheridan, by God.»

He looked at her for a long moment then, and sighed, all the bluster going out of him. He raised his weathered old hands and cupped her shoulders gently. «I'm glad you're back, Serena. I know I pushed and bullied you into it, but you still could have said no in the end. I'm glad you didn't.»

Serena slid her arms around his lean, hard waist and hugged him. What had happened had their relationship and complicated it, but when all that was stripped away, the most important fact remained. «I love you,» she whispered, pulling back. Gifford reddened and looked at his feet, grumbling, uncomfortable with voicing such feelings to a person's face.

«You gonna go after that «big Cajun?» he asked suddenly.

The question took Serena by surprise, hitting her too suddenly for her to give a controlled response. She shook her head and looked at the floor, afraid of what her grandfather might pick up from her unguarded expression.

«What's the matter? He's not good enough for you 'cause he doesn't wear silk suits and read The Wall Street Journal?»

That brought Serena's chin back up. She glared at Gifford, realizing belatedly that he was once again playing her like a finely tuned fiddle. «That's not it and you know it,» she said evenly.

«He's had some rough times, but Lucky's a good man,» Gifford said gruffly.

«I know he is. Maybe someday he'll figure that out for himself. I can't push him into believing it.»

«Do you love him?»

«Yes.»

Gifford frowned, his bushy white brows pulling together in a V of disapproval above his dark eyes. «You want him, but you're not going after him?»

«We're talking about a relationship, not a big-game hunt,» Serena said dryly. «I can't go out in the swamp with a dart gun and bring him back to live in captivity. I can't drag him back here and force him to love me. Lucky has a lot of things from his past he needs to work out for himself. When he does-if he does-then maybe he'll see what we could have together.»

«Well, I hope so.» Gifford's frown softened, and he rubbed his chin. «I sure as hell don't want to think I dumped you on his doorstep just to get your heart broken. I was counting on getting some great-grandchildren out the deal.»

«Gifford!» Serena gasped, her cheeks blooming delicate pink.

The old man showed no signs of remorse. He didn't even have the grace to look guilty.

«You look as peaked and thin as a runt pup,» he complained, his gaze raking her head to toe. «I'll have Odille heat you a plate of food.»

Serena shook her head in amazement. «Don't bother her,» she said absently. «I ate on the plane.»

Gifford snorted his disapproval and moved off down the hall in the direction of the kitchen. «Wouldn't feed that trash to my hounds.»

Serena watched him go. One of the reasons she had decided to move back home was that she had figured Gifford would need her after everything that had happened. What a joke that was. It was quite clear he could take care of himself. She was going to have to stay on her toes just to keep up with him.

She dragged her suitcases into her bedroom, where she kicked off her shoes, stripped off her travel-wrinkled suit, slipped on her robe, and set about the business of unpacking before she collapsed under the weight of her fatigue.

She went about the task methodically, mechanically. It seemed most of her movements these days were mechanical. She was operating on automatic, taking care of day-to-day matters with an obvious lack of enthusiasm. In her logical, educated mind she knew this lethargy would pass eventually. In the meantime, she simply had to suffer through it, going through each day only to get to the next. It wasn't fun, but it was better than nothing. In her more philosophical moments she reflected it would give her added empathy for her patients in the future-as soon as she had some patients.

She had gone back to Charleston to tie up all the loose ends there, to resettle her patients with new therapists, to sell her condo and say good-bye to friends. All had been accomplished with minimal flap. Tomorrow she would drive up to Lafayette and start looking for office space. She should have been looking forward to the task, but she couldn't come up with any emotion to dent the numbness inside.

Too much had happened in too short a time. Her emotions had gone on overload and shorted out. It was a defense mechanism. It hurt to feel, therefore her mind had shut down the capacity to feel. The only time her emotions turned back on was late at night, when she was too tired and too lonely to keep them at bay. Then they rushed back in a high-voltage surge of pain that left her feeling even more drained and beaten.

A month had passed since the crisis at Chanson du Terre had come to a head. There would still be the trials to get through-Mason, Willis and Perret, Perry Davis, who had in fact been Mason's middleman in hiring the two thugs. Len Burke had gotten off scotfree. There had been no hard evidence connecting him to any crime other than greed. Shelby had already pleaded guilty to a minimal charge of conspiracy and been given a suspended sentence. She and her children had gone to stay with Masons parents in Lafayette. The Talbots had raised Mason's bail and were reportedly calling in long-due favors to get him the best defense attorneys money could buy. Rumors abounded about deals to avoid the scandal of a trial, but there had been no official word.

Serena found herself oddly incurious about it. She wasn't interested in punishment or restitution. The trust she had lost, the disillusionment she had suffered, couldn't be repaired or replaced. She wanted only to put it all behind her and get on with her life.

Gifford had reinstated himself in the house and was going on as if all that had happened was already little more than a dim memory. He was engrossed in planning the new machine shed as well as in ordinary plantation business. Pepper and James Arnaud had him thinking about crawfish as a new cash crop to rotate with the sugarcane.

As it always did, life gradually returned to normal, healing over the wound and leaving only hidden scars behind to remind those who had lived through the trouble.

Serena placed a final stack of lingerie in the dresser and closed the drawer. As she lifted her head her gaze caught on her reflection in the beveled mirror. It was amazing. She looked no different than she had before all this had begun. The cuts and scratches of her harrowing night in the swamp had long since healed, leaving her skin unmarred. It seemed as if there should have been some lasting sign of that whole momentous chapter in her life plain on her face for all the world to see, but the scars were on the inside, on her heart.

Lucky had gone away with the deputy that day and never returned. Serena had been angry, hurt, heartbroken. She had considered going out into the swamp to get him, but had decided against it in the end. It went against her grain to give up on him, but she knew she was right in not pushing him. It had to be Lucky's decision to come back to her. She couldn't force him to love her enough. She couldn't force him to want to have a future. He had to decide his life was empty without her. He had to see that hiding from the world wasn't the answer to his problems.

It had become painfully obvious he was not going to make those decisions.

Maybe she'd been wrong about him. Maybe he didn't love her after all. Maybe what they'd had together had been nothing more than desire magnified and intensified by the circumstances. Maybe she was the only one who had felt something that went beyond passion. Maybe she was the only one left feeling empty.

Even as she opened the dresser drawer and pulled out the faded blue workshirt, Serena chastised herself. This wasn't very healthy behavior. It was certainly no way to get over a broken heart. But her inner critic wasn't very stringent. Some deeper wisdom told her she needed time to heal. None of her practical therapy methods were going to change the fact that she still loved Lucky Doucet or that she missed him or that she hurt because of losing him. No amount of counseling could change the fact that she needed to feel close to him now at the end of a long day, when she was feeling tired and in need of a broad shoulder to lean on. So she didn't stop her hands from lifting the old blue work-shirt from the drawer, nor did she try to stop herself from bringing it up to brush the soft chambray against her cheek and breathe in the scent of it.

Hardly an hour went by that she didn't think of Lucky, wondering what he was doing, if he was all right, if he was still chasing poachers. She couldn't help thinking about him, picturing him standing at the back of his pirogue, poling silently through the swamp, or sitting in his studio staring moodily at a canvas. She couldn't help thinking about him, wondering what he was doing, if he ever missed her.

He had done what he thought was the right thing, the noble thing, in leaving her. Ironic, considering how determined he had been to convince her he was no good. Sometimes it made her angry when she thought of it-how high-handed he'd been in deciding what was best for her-and sometimes it made her ache with sadness that he'd seen himself as so unworthy of her love. Sometimes she told herself he might have known best and she should just give up on him and get on with her life. But she could never manage to tell herself that at night when she lay in her bed, staring into the darkness.

Hugging the shirt to her chest, she closed her eyes and sighed as the pain penetrated the protective wall she'd built around her heart. The scents and sounds of the summer night drifted in through the open French doors. And with them came the memory of the night she and Lucky had made love in this room.

No other man had ever made her feel the way Lucky did. No other man had ever gotten past her barrier of cool control and brought out the true woman in her. It didn't make sense. He was the last man she would have imagined falling in love with, dark, dangerous, rough-edged. And she would never have believed herself capable of falling so hard and so quickly. It defied logic. She could find no pat, analytical answer, but it was true nevertheless. No man had ever made her feel so alive, so filled with passion and yearning to be a part of another soul. She knew with a deep, sad certainty no man ever would.

All dressed up for me, sugar?

The words came to her like smoke, like mist on the bayou. Serena stared into the mirror and imagined she saw him standing behind her, his hot amber gaze roaming over her body, his artist s hands coming up to cup her shoulders and pull her back against him. She closed her eyes as she clutched the shirt to her chest and for just a second imagined his arms around her.

«Serena?»

Her heart jolted in her chest as she swung toward the door.

«Shelby.» She couldn't hide the surprise in her voice or any of the other feelings that sprang up at her sister's sudden appearance in the doorway. They had had no direct contact since that fateful day in Gifford s study. Serena hadn't been able to find it in her to be the one to take the initiative, and Shelby had shown no desire to do so either. Serena had wondered how long they would go on in limbo. It appeared her question was about to be answered.

«May I come in?» Shelby asked, sounding as formal as a stranger.

«Yes. Of course,» Serena said, folding her arms in front of her, Lucky s shirt caught between them.

«I came by to pick up the last of our things,» Shelby explained as she stepped in and closed the door behind her.

Serena made no argument, even though she knew all of Shelby's and Mason's things had long since been packed and sent to the Talbot home in Lafayette. Shelby had taken the crucial first step. What difference did it make if she had felt the need for an excuse?

Serena watched her sister as she moved slowly around the room, Shelby's normal energy level subdued as she straightened a doily here, a lampshade there. As always, she was impeccably dressed in a delicately printed sundress with a full skirt. Every honey-gold hair was in place, smoothed into a chignon at the back of her head. Noticeably absent from her ensemble was the expensive jewelry she so loved. The only ring she wore was her engagement diamond.

Serena watched her with a strangely detached curiosity. The initial rush of confusing emotions had subsided, leaving her feeling blank and empty again, vaguely wary of her sisters motives.

«I suppose you're still angry with me,» Shelby said. Her tone of voice was almost annoyed, as if she didn't believe Serena had a right to be angry, but her movements and quick sideways glances said she was nervous about what the answer to her statement would be.

«No,» Serena said, turning to watch her in the mirror.

Shelby looked up and frowned at her. «Serena the Good,» she said bitterly. «I should have expected as much. Forgive all those who sin against you.»

«I didn't say I'd forgiven you. I said I wasn't angry. Anger isn't what I feel when I think about you.»

«What do you feel?»

Serena was silent for a long moment as she contemplated her answer. «I don't know if it has a name. It's like grief, I guess, but different, worse in a way.»

Their eyes met in the mirror and Shelby suddenly looked genuinely sad.

«We were never very good at being sisters, were we?» she said softly.

Serena shook her head. «No. I'm afraid we never were.»

Shelby moved several steps closer, until they stood side by side, close but not touching, alike but not the same. Her gaze riveted on their images in the looking glass. «How can we look so much alike and be so different inside?» she whispered as if she were asking the question of herself.

Serena said nothing. There were no easy answers. As a psychologist, she could have cited any number of theories on the subject, but as a sister none of them meant anything. As a sister all she knew was that she and her twin were standing on opposite sides of a chasm that was too wide and deep to be bridged. There might have been a point in their past when they could have found some common ground and reached across, but that time was gone and they both knew it.

«I wish things hadn't gone so wrong,» Shelby said, her dark eyes filling.

That was as much of an apology as she was going to get, Serena thought sadly. There would be no remorse, no expression of regret for what had happened, for what could have happened. Shelby was incapable of taking blame. She was like a thief who was sorry the police had caught her red-handed, but not sorry she'd committed the crime. She was only sorry things had gone wrong.

«Me too,» Serena said softly, knowing they had blank slate of her emotions filled suddenly with a complex mix of feelings, like a tide rushing in, and, as she had said in answer to Shelby's earlier question, the strongest was something like grief. They may both have been physically alive, but whatever had been between them was dead and she wanted to mourn it like a lost soul.

«My word, Serena,» Shelby murmured, still staring at their reflections in the mirror, «you look all done in.»

«I'll be all right.»

«Yes, I'm sure you will be.»

«Will you?»

«We'll manage,» Shelby said, lifting her chin a defiant notch.

She moved back a step. The distance between them widened. Her reflection in the mirror grew smaller. When she reached the door and turned the knob, Serena found her voice.

«Shelby?» Their eyes met again in the glass. «Take care.»

A single tear rolled down her sister's cheek and a faint smile touched her mouth. «You too.»

Serena watched her go, feeling as if she were losing a part of herself she'd never really known. Then, bone-weary and heartsick, she crawled onto the bed, curled up with Lucky's shirt, and did the one thing she did really well these days-she cried herself to sleep.

Gifford slipped into the room quietly. He set the plate he was carrying on the dresser and walked around the end of the bed to look down at his sleeping granddaughter. The tears were still damp on her cheeks, her breathing still shaky. She held an old blue workshirt wadded up in her hands, reminding him of when she'd been no more than a toddler, dragging a ragged yellow security blanket around the house with her everywhere she went.

He remembered the day they'd put her mother in the ground, how he had slipped in that night to check on the girls because Robert had been too lost in his grief to think of it. He had found Serena asleep on top of the covers, still wearing the little black velvet dress and white tights she'd worn to the funeral, one patent leather shoe on and one off. The tears had still been damp on her cheeks, and she had clutched in her hand that ragged old blanket.

He remembered it like it was yesterday even though tonight he felt every one of the years that had passed since then. The love he'd known for Serena that night hadn't lessened a whit. It didn't matter that Serena had grown into a woman or that life had complicated things between them. He still experienced her pain more sharply than if it had been his own. His grief over what Shelby had done was magnified by the grief he knew Serena was feeling. Her pain over Lucky's defection was more than enough to break his own heart.

He knew he had pushed her over the years and bullied and manipulated her, but he hadn't done anything without loving her, and he just about couldn't bear to see her suffering. He couldn't change what had happened between them, and he couldn't mend the rift between her and Shelby, but he could do his best to knock some sense into that big Cajun rogue. In fact, it was the least he could do, all things considered.

Careful not to wake Serena, he leaned across the bed and pulled the coverlet back over her. He looked at her again, turned slowly, and shuffled out of the room, taking the dinner plate with him and shutting the light off on his way out.

Lucky checked the rope attached to the nose of the half-submerged rowboat one last time, then slogged out of the bayou and onto the bank. The day was hotter than summer in Hades. The sun beat down on the bare skin of his back through a haze of humidity, burning him an even darker shade of brown. Sweat rolled off him. He pulled on a pair of worn leather work gloves and took up the end of the rope he had looped around the trunk of an oak tree, paying no attention to his discomfort. He focused his mind on his job.

He'd been hauling junk up out of the bayou for weeks now, working literally from sunup to sundown, cleaning up dozens of sites careless people had chosen for disposing of such things as old refrigerators, iron bedsteads, stoves, mattresses, bicycles, and tires. It was a job that needed doing and one that he could devote himself to and exhaust himself with in the hopes of gaining a few hours of sleep at the end of the day.

When the job called for it, he used a gas-powered winch, but he fell back on it only after he'd spent a good long while trying to pull the object out by himself-no matter what it happened to be. The exertion cleared his mind and made certain the overriding pain he felt was in his muscles.

He took up the rope now and tightened the slack gradually until he was leaning back hard against it, straining to inch the boat up out of the water. He heaved, his every muscle standing out, physical pain blocking all thought from his mind. Beads of sweat slipped past the bandanna he wore around his forehead, stinging his eyes. He leaned back, pulling until his blood was roaring in his ears. He didn't even hear the outboard motor till the bass boat was nearly to the bank.

From the corner of his eye he saw Gifford and groaned inwardly. Why couldn't the world just leave him alone? He adjusted his grip on the rope and heaved backward again, doubling his concentration on his task, dragging the boat up another six inches toward the bank. The sound of the outboard ceased abruptly, but Lucky worked on as if he were completely oblivious of Gifford Sheridan's presence.

«I had me a mule once could pull like that,» the old man drawled. «He was a damn sight smarter than you, though, I reckon.»

Lucky sucked in a lungful of humid air, adjusted his grip, and hauled back on the rope again, the corded muscles in his neck and shoulders standing out as he pulled. The nose of the old rowboat lunged forward as the back end pulled free of the mud. Within a couple of minutes he had the dilapidated craft halfway ashore. He dropped the rope then and went to tip the water out of the boat. Gifford sat patiently watching him from under the brim of a battered old green John Deere cap.

«What are you doin' here?» Lucky growled, not looking up from his task. He pulled a small anchor from inside the boat and heaved it onto the bank. «I thought you got everything you wanted, old man.»

«What would it matter to you if I did or didn't? Everybody knows you don't give a damn about anyone but yourself.»

Lucky said nothing as he drained the boat. He didn't need this. His life was miserable enough without having this cantankerous old man chewing his tail. He'd done what he had to do. That was the end of it.

«You broke her heart,» Gifford said succinctly.

Lucky flinched inwardly, the words like a whip across tender flesh. He focused on the junk in the boat as he stood there waist-deep in the bayou. «I didn't ask her to fall in love with me.»

«No, but she did anyway, didn't she? God knows what she sees in you. I look at you now and all I see is a stubborn, selfish man too caught up in his penance to see he doesn't have anything left to pay for.» Gifford shrugged and sighed, his shrewd dark eyes on Lucky the whole time, never wavering. «Hell, I don't know, maybe you like pain. Maybe you like thinking you could have had a decent life with a wonderful woman, but you passed it all up to suffer. Catholics do like their martyrs.»

He didn't so much as bat an eye at the murderous glare Lucky sent him. The old man sat leaning forward with his forearms on his thighs and his big hands dangling down between his knees, as calm as if he were sitting over a fishing pole waiting for a bite. Lucky turned abruptly and waded ashore, dragging the old rowboat with him. When the boat lay on its side like the carcass of a whale, he turned back toward Gifford.

«I did what was best.»

Gifford snorted. «You did what was easiest.»

«The hell I did!» Lucky snapped, taking an aggressive step toward the bow of the bass boat. «You think I wanted to walk away from her? No. But what kind of life could I give her? What kind of husband would I be?»

«Not much of one until you get yourself straightened out. I don't see any sign of that happening any time soon,» Gifford said sarcastically. «I guess I can just go on home and tell Serena she's crying herself to sleep at night for no good reason.»

The blow was on target, even more so than Gifford could have hoped. Lucky had heard Serena's tears. He had found himself on the gallery of Chanson du Terre late one night, just to catch a glimpse of her, just to ease that one longing a little. He'd seen her curled up on her bed, crying into the shirt he'd left behind. He'd told himself then he'd done the right thing; he didn't deserve her tears. But the sound of them, the idea of them, had been enough to tear his heart in two.

«I can't give her what she needs,» he said, staring down at his boots.

«What do you think she needs, Lucky? Money? An executive husband? Serena can make her own money. If she wanted an executive, she could have had one long before now. All she needs is for you to love her. If you can't manage that, then, by God, you are one sorry soul indeed.»

«She knows I love her,» Lucky admitted grudgingly.

«Then come back.»

«I can't.»

Gifford swore, his patience wearing thin in big patches. «Goddammit, boy, why not?»

Lucky gave him a long, level look. The corner of his mouth curled up in a faint sardonic smile. «I got my reasons.»

The old man's jaw worked and his face flushed, but he held his temper in check. «Well, Lucky,» he said at last on a long sigh, «you have a nice life out here all by yourself.» He reached around for the starter rope, his fingers closing over the handle. «Don't worry about Serena. She'll buck up. She's a Sheridan.»

The engine sputtered, then roared to life, and Gifford calmly rode away, leaving Lucky feeling as unsettled as the bayou in the churning wake of the outboard motor.

The feeling still hadn't subsided by sundown when he abandoned his job for the day and made his way home. It hadn't lessened any by midnight when he sat on the floor of his studio drinking and staring morosely at his paintings in the moonlight. He had managed to keep the worst of his feelings at bay these past few weeks, denying them, dodging them, burying them, but now they rose to the surface like oil on the bayou. They clung to him, refusing to be ignored even as he tried to study the painting on the easel before him.

He hadn't painted in weeks. He had expected to find the same peace in it as he had after returning from Central America, but when he'd taken up the brush and applied it to the canvas he'd felt nothing to compare with the peace he had found so briefly in Serena's arms. That kind of peace he never expected to find again.

That had been an unwelcome revelation. The solace he had once found in this place was lost to him. He had retreated from the love Serena had offered him and found not peace, but misery in the form of a terrible wrenching loneliness that felt as if a vital part of him had been torn out and taken away.

He couldn't go out into the swamp without thinking about the way she had given him her trust there in the place she had been afraid of. His house was haunted by her memory. He hadn't slept a night in his bed because he couldn't lie there without remembering the feel of her body against his. Every time he turned he thought he caught the scent of her perfume in the air. He could feel her presence but he couldn't touch her, couldn't see her, couldn't take her in his arms and have her chase away the darkness in his soul.

«Damn you, Serena,» he muttered, pushing himself to his feet.

The emotions rose higher and hotter inside him, tormenting him. He paced back and forth before the easel with his head in his hands as he realized with a sense of panic there was no escape. He could work till he dropped and the feelings would still be there inside, waiting for a chance to torture him. He could drink himself unconscious and they would still come to him through the haze of oblivion.

Crying out in fury and frustration, he grabbed the unfinished painting from the easel and smashed the edge of it against the floor with all his strength, snapping the stretcher like a toothpick. He let the ruined mess drop from his hands and backed away from it blindly.

«Damn you, Serena!» he shouted to the heavens. He whirled toward his work table and swept an arm across it, knocking bottles and brushes to the floor. And he shouted in anguish above the crash, «Damn you! Damn you!»

He stumbled back across the room, reeling at the inner pain, exhausted from fighting his feelings. Slowly he sank back down to the floor, on his knees on the dropcloth where they had first made love, feeling as bleak and desolate inside as he had ever in his life. He tilted his head back, turning his face up toward the skylights and the cold white light of the moon. Tears trickled from the outer corners of his eyes, across his temples, into his hair.

He hadn't asked to fall in love. All he had wanted was to be left alone. Now he was so alone, he couldn't stand it.

This was hell on earth, and Gifford had the gall to accuse him of taking the easy way out.

Serena had called him a coward. She'd said he pitied himself, that he was afraid to give their love a chance to work.

Of course he was afraid. He had known they would only end up hurt in the end, and he'd had enough pain to last him a lifetime.

But Serena was hurting now, despite his noble sacrifice, and he'd never lived through this kind of agony. It was far worse than anything Ramos and his buddies had dished out because it was relentless and unreachable and nothing relieved it. He ached with missing Serena. He ached with the need to touch her. He ached with guilt and the knowledge that she was right.

He was a coward. He'd been afraid to feel again. He had been afraid to let Serena get close to him for fear of what she would see, but she had seen every part of him, every side of him-good and bad-and she'd still loved him.

What kind of fool was he to let a woman like that get away? What kind of fool was he to go on suffering like this?

A noble fool who had pushed away the woman he loved for her own good. A frightened fool who had been too wary of love. A fool who had nothing to offer her but himself because his life had been stripped down to mere existence.

Where did he go from here?

Lucky stared long and hard at the painting on the floor before him. It lay in a crumpled, twisted heap, ruined, worthless. He could throw it out or he could try to salvage it, restretch the canvas, start over on the painting.

A sense of calm settled inside him as the answers came to him.

If Serena deserved a better man than he was, then he would have to become a better man. If his life offered her nothing, then he would have to change it, because he didn't want to live without her. He didn't want to be a martyr to his past. It had taken so much from him already-his youth, his hope, his family-he couldn't let it take Serena too.

The time had come to leave it behind and try to take that first step forward. He had a long way to go before he would feel whole and healed, but he would never get there if he didn't take that first step, and his life wouldn't be worth living if he stayed where he was.

Slowly he reached for the ruined canvas and pushed himself to his feet.