Lucky’s Lady

CHAPTER 2

IT WAS A NO-WIN SITUATION. IF SHE STOOD HER ground, she lost her ride. If she gave in, it was another blow to her pride and another peg up for Mr. Macho’s overinflated ego. Serena took a slow, deep breath of air that was as dense as steam and tasted metallic and bitter. Maintaining as much of her dignity as she could, she lifted her slim nose and gave Lucky a long, cool look.

One corner of his lush mouth curled like the end of a cat’s tail. “What’sa matter, chere? You’d rather give orders than take them? Well, I’m not your hired boy. You want a ride, then you climb in the boat. You wanna boss somebody around, you can take a hike.”

Serena was certain she could actually feel her temper start to boil the blood in her veins. She clenched her jaw and fought a valiant battle to keep the lid on when all she wanted to do was tell Lucky Doucet to take a long walk off a short pier. Despite her name, her apparent serenity was little more than a shield, a defense mechanism, protective camouflage.

All her life she’d had to struggle with strong doses of Sheridan temper and stubbornness. Now she wrestled one into submission with the other. The man was doing his best to make her angry, so she stubbornly refused to lose her temper.

“You are a remarkably obnoxious man, Mr. Doucet,” she observed in the calmest of voices, as if she were commenting on nothing more interesting than the weather.

“I always try to excel.”

“How admirable.”

“So are you comin’?” He set his box down on the dock and sat beside it, dangling his long legs off the pier.

“I’ll need to stop by Chanson du Terre for a few things. You wouldn’t have any objection to that, would you?”

He gave her a flat look.

Serena motioned impatiently to the suit she was wearing. “You don’t really expect me to travel out into the swamp dressed this way, do you?”

He scowled and grumbled as he lowered himself into his boat. “Non. Come on, then. I been here too long already. Just look at the trouble I got myself into, havin’ to haul you around.”

Serena moved to the edge of the dock and looked down. It was then that the full folly of what she was about to do hit her. Lucky’s boat was no more than twelve feet in length, slender as a pea pod, and it looked about as stable as a floating leaf. Sitting in it would put her no more than an arm’s length from the black water of the bayou.

Fear rose up in her throat and wedged there like a tennis ball. What was the matter with her? Had she completely lost her mind? She was about to put her life in the hands of a man she wouldn’t sit next to on a bus and trust him to take her into the deep swamp in a boat that looked about as seaworthy as her broken shoe.

The swamp. Where anything could happen. Where people could get lost and never be found.

A chill raced over her flesh, settling into her arms and legs in trembling pools. She clenched her jaw and held her breath, forgetting every relaxation technique she taught her own patients. It had been too long since she’d been assaulted by this fear. The strength of it took her by surprise. It swelled and shook her, crowding at the back of her throat like a scream demanding release.

Lucky stood in the pirogue, watching her, annoyed by her dawdling. Then the color drained out off her face and his annoyance was replaced by something he refused to name. Serena Sheridan had come across as a lady who could handle herself in most situations. She had stood up to him better than most men did. Now she looked like a piece of porcelain about to crack from some fierce internal pressure. Something deep inside him responded to that, commiserated with it.

He ground his teeth, resenting the feeling and giving in to it at the same time. As hardened as he liked to think he was, he couldn’t just stand there and watch her fall apart. He told himself it was because he didn’t want to have to deal with a woman in hysterics. Besides, he had already decided the safest thing for him was to keep her half mad at him all the time. A man stayed wary of a snake poised to strike; it was the ones that appeared to be docile and dozing in the sun that were dangerous.

“You don’ like my boat, chere?” he drawled, an unmistakable note of challenge in his voice.

“A-um-“ Serena pulled herself out of her trance with difficulty, trying to focus not on her memory but on the boat and the man standing in it leaning indolently against a long push-pole. “It’s not exactly what I had in mind. Don’t you have something a little… bigger?”

“Like a yacht?” he asked sarcastically. “This ain’t Saks Fifth Avenue, sugar. I don’t have a selection for you to try on for size. Now, are you gonna get on down here or do I get to spend the rest of the day lookin’ up your skirt?”

A welcome surge of reckless anger warmed the chill that had shaken Serena from within. She narrowed her eyes as she pressed her knees together demurely and pulled her slim skirt tightly around them. Clutching her purse and shoe in one hand, she lowered herself awkwardly to the rough planks of the dock, dropping her legs over the edge and grimacing as she felt her pantyhose run all the way down the back of one leg.

She looked down at the pirogue bobbing gently on the oily water and a second wave of apprehension rose up to her tonsils. She hadn’t gone out on the bayou in a boat of any kind in fifteen years. She doubted she would have felt safe on the Queen Elizabeth II, let alone this simple shell of cypress planking. Still, why couldn’t he at least have had a nice big bass boat with a motor on it? Nobody used pirogues anymore… except Lucky Doucet.

“My pirogue is all the boat I need,” Lucky said as he reached up for her. “What’d you think-that I’d go around in a cabin cruiser on the off chance I might have to give some belle a ride somewhere she hadn’t oughta be going in the first place?”

Serena flashed him a glare. “No. I was just hoping against hope that you weren’t as uncivilized as you appear to be.”

He laughed as his big hands closed around her slender waist. She gave a little squeal of protest as he lifted her down into the boat. The pirogue rocked beneath his spread feet and she sacrificed pride for panic, dropping her shoe and purse and grabbing on to Lucky’s biceps for support.

For an instant she clung to him as if he were the only thing keeping her from falling into the gaping jaws of hell. Her breasts pressed against his upper rib cage, her belly arched into his groin as his big hands splayed across the small of her back, holding her close. His thighs were as solid as oak trees against hers. A shiver of primitive awareness shimmied down her back as she looked up at him.

He flashed her a smile that would have given the devil goose bumps. “Oh, I’m every bit as uncivilized as I look.” His voice dropped to that throaty purr that set all her nerve endings humming like tuning forks. “You gonna try to do somethin’ ‘bout that, chere? You gonna try to domesticate me?”

The suggestion elicited an involuntary trill of excitement inside her. It was like a starburst of sensation deep in her belly, and Serena cursed it for the foolish- j ness she knew it was. Any woman who took on the task of domesticating Lucky Doucet was just asking for trouble. Still, she couldn’t seem to quell the feeling as she looked up at him, at his hard, beard-shadowed jaw and that decadent mouth. She steeled herself against it, pushing herself back from him. He let her put an inch of space between them, but only after letting her know he could have held her there all day if he’d been of a mind to.

“Domesticate you?” Serena said derisively, arching a delicate brow. “Couldn’t I just have you neutered?”

“No need.” He gave her a little push that landed her on the plank seat of the pirogue with an unceremonious thump, and turned to get his box of motor parts. “I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole, lady.”

“That’s the first good news I’ve had today,” Serena grumbled, ignoring the twinge of disappointment that nipped her feminine ego. Ignoring, too, the obvious comparison to be made between Lucky Doucet and a ten-foot pole.

She fanned herself with her hand, feeling suddenly flushed and watched as Lucky lifted his box off the dock, back muscles bunching and sliding beneath his taut, dark skin. He settled the box in the bow of the boat, then moved gracefully toward the stern, stepping over the jig and over the seat, carelessly rocking the tippy pirogue.

Serena’s fingers wrapped around the edge of the seat like C clamps, and her gaze drifted longingly down the pier to a shiny aluminum boat. It seemed huge and luxurious compared to the homemade pirogue. A fat man wearing a black New Orleans Saints cap and a plaid shirt with the sleeves cut off sat at the back of it, jerking the rope on the outboard motor.

“You might think about joining the twentieth century sometime soon,” Serena said, shooting Lucky a sweet smile. “People use motors nowadays.”

Lucky stared at the gas and oil bleeding into the water from the outboard as the fat man yanked on the rope. He frowned, brows pulling low over his eyes as he took up his push-pole. “Not me.”

He poled the pirogue away from the dock and let the nose turn south.

Serena jerked around, looking up at him over her shoulder with alarm. “This isn’t the way to Chanson du Terre or Gifford’s fish camp. Just where do you think you’re taking me, Mr. Doucet?”

Lucky scowled at her. “I got other things to do besides haul your pretty face up and down the bayou.”

It was apparently all the answer he was going to give her. He had set his face in an expression that declared the subject closed, and Serena decided not to push her luck. After all, he wasn’t running a taxi service. She had no claim on his time. Considering his attitude, it was a wonder he had agreed to take her at all.

She faced forward and tried to concentrate on the scenery instead of the sinuous feel of the boat sliding through the dark water. They were at the south edge of town, and the only buildings along the banks of the bayou were the occasional bait shop and a couple of dilapidated tar-paper shacks on stilts with boathouses made of rusting corrugated metal.

A spindly legged blue heron stood among the cattails near the bank, watching them pass. Serena focused on it as if it were the subject of a painting, its graceful form set against a backdrop of orange-blossomed trumpet creeper and clusters of dark green ferns. Rising in the background, hackberry trees reached their arms up to a china-blue sky and live oak dripped their tattered banners of dusty gray Spanish moss.

Their destination eventually became clear as Lucky poled toward the bank and a wharf hung with barnacle-encrusted tires to buffer its edge. The structure that rose up on stilts some distance behind it was as big as a bam, an unremarkable clapboard building with peeling white paint and a sign hanging above the gallery that spelled out mosquito mouton’s in two-foot-high red letters. Rusted tin signs advertising various brands of beer were nailed all along the side of the building above a long row of screened windows. Even though it was only the middle of the day, cars were parked on the crushed-shell lot and Zydeco music drifted out through the double screen doors in swells of sound accented by occasional shouts and laughter.

“A bar?” Serena questioned imperiously. She looked up at Lucky, incredulous, as he brought the boat alongside the dock. “This is where you had stop to delay us? A bar?”

“I’ve got some business here,” he said. “It won’t take long. You wait in the boat.”

“Wait in the-?” She broke off, watching in disbelief as he hauled himself onto the dock and headed for the bar without looking back. “Swell.”

God only knew what his business was or how long it would take. In the meantime she could sit and rot in his stupid boat. The sun beat down on her, its heat magnified by the humidity. She could feel her linen suit wilting over her frame like an abused orchid. Not that it was going to be salvageable after today anyway, she thought, grimacing at the greasy handprint on the sleeve of her jacket.

She cursed her temper for getting her into this. If she hadn’t let Shelby goad her into rushing right out to find a guide… If she hadn’t let old feelings of inadequacy push her… If she had taken the time to think the situation through in a calm and rational manner, as she would have back in Charleston…

This was what coming home could do to a person. She had an established persona back in Charleston, an image she had fashioned for herself among acquaintances she had chosen. But this was home, and the minute she came back here, she became Gifford Sheridan’s granddaughter, Shelby Sheridan’s twin, the former captain of the high school debate team; old feelings and old patterns of behavior resurrected themselves like ghosts, peeling away the veneer of adulthood like a pecan husk.

It was part of the reason she stayed away. She liked who she was in Charleston -a professional woman in control of her life. Here she never felt in control. The very atmosphere wrested control away from her and left her feeling unsettled and uncertain. This place, Mosquito Mouton’s, was a perfect example. It was the most notorious place in the parish. She had been raised to believe it was frequented by hooligans and white trash, and no decent girl would come within shouting distance of it. Sitting in Lucky Doucet’s pirogue, she had to quell the urge to look around for anyone who might recognize her. She felt as if she were a teenager cutting class for the first time. Crossing her arms in front of her, she heaved a sigh, closed her eyes, and thought of her cool, pretty apartment back in Charleston. It was done in soft colors and feminine patterns and had a view of the water. There was a garden in the courtyard, and it was a long, long way from the swamp and Lucky Doucet.

The instant the screen door banged shut behind him, heads turned in Lucky’s direction.

The place was about half full and would be bursting at the seams by sundown. Mouton’s was the hub of trouble. There was gambling in the back and girls who might do anything for a few bucks or just for the hell of it. From here a man could find his way to a dogfight or a fistfight or a whorehouse or any number of dens of iniquity that were no longer supposed to exist in the civilized South.

It was the hangout of poachers and men whose backgrounds were filled with more shadows than the swamp. And even among them, Lucky Doucet stood out as a remarkably dangerous sort of man. The men sized him up warily, the women covetously, but no one approached him.

The bartender, a portly man with a dense, close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard, groaned and rolled his eyes like a man in pain. He brought up the rag he was wiping the bar with and patted it against his double chins like an old matron trying to ward off a fainting spell.

“Jesus, Lucky, I don’ want no trouble in here,” he wailed, waddling toward Lucky’s end of the bar. His little sausage fingers knotted together around the towel in a gesture of supplication. “I just barely got the place patched up from the las’ time.”

Lucky shrugged expansively, blinking innocence. “Trouble? Me cause you trouble, Skeeter? Hell, I just came in for a drink. Give me a shot and a Jax long-neck.”

Muttering prayers, Skeeter moved to do his bidding, sweat beading on his bald spot like water on a bowline ball.

Lucky’s gaze homed in on Pou Perret, a little muskrat with a pockmarked face and a thin, droopy mustache. He was sitting at the far end of the bar, deep in conversation with a local cockfight referee. Picking up his beer bottle by the neck, Lucky sauntered down to the end of the bar and tapped the referee on the shoulder. “Hey, pal, I think I hear your mother callin’.”

The man took one look at Lucky and vacated his seat, shooting Perret a nervous glance as he moved away into the smokier regions of the bar. Sipping his beer, Lucky eased himself onto the stool and hooked the heels of his boots over the chrome rung.

“Hows tricks, Pou? Where’s Willis? In the back cheatin’ at bourre? You out here keepin’ watch or somethin’, little weasel?”

Perret scowled at him and shrunk away to the far side of his stool like a dog afraid of getting kicked. He muttered an obscene suggestion half under his breath.

“That’s anatomically impossible, mon ami,” Lucky said, taking another sip of his beer. “See the things you might have learned if you’d stayed in school past the sixth grade? All this time you’ve probably been wearin’ yourself out trying to do that very thing you suggested to me.” He chuckled at Perret s comically offended expression as he helped himself to a pack of cigarettes lying on the bar. He lit one up and took a leisurely drag. Exhaling a stream of smoke, he shrugged and grinned shrewdly. “ ‘Course, mebbe Willis, he helps you out with that, eh?’

Perret narrowed his droopy eyes to slits. “You bastard.”

Luckys expression went dangerously still. His smile didn’t waver, but it took on a quality that would have made even fools reconsider the wisdom of getting this close to him. “You say that in front of my ma-man, I’ll cut your tongue out, cher,” he said in a silky voice. “My folks are respectable people, you know.”

“Yeah,” Perret admitted grudgingly, bobbing his head down between his bony shoulders like a vulture. He scratched his chest through his dirty black T-shirt, sniffed, and took another stab at belligerence. “How’d they ever end up with the like of you?”

Luckys eyes gleamed in the dim light as he looked straight into Perrets ferret face. “I’m a changeling, don’tcha know. Straight up from hell.”

Perret shifted uneasily on his seat, superstition shining in his dark eyes like a fever. He lifted a hand to the dime he wore on a string around his neck. He snatched his cigarettes out of Luckys reach and shook one out for himself, sliding a glance at Lucky out the corner of his eye. «What you want, Doucet?»

Lucky took his time answering. He stood and shoved the barstool out of his way so he could lean lazily against the bar. He set his cigarette in an ashtray and took another long swallow of his beer before turning to look at Perret again.

«You been sniffin' 'round the wrong part of the swamp this last couple of weeks, louse,» he said quietly. «Me, I think it might be better for your health if you go raidin' elsewhere.»

Perret made a face and shrugged off the warning. «It's a free country. You don' own the swamp, Doucet.»

Lucky arched a brow. «No? Well, I own this knife, don't I?» he said, sliding the hunting knife from its sheath. He grabbed a fistful of Perrets T-shirt and leaned over until Perret nearly fell off his stool. The wide blade gleamed just inches from the man's nose. «And I can cut you up into 'gator bait with it, can't I?»

Conversations around them died abruptly. On the other side of the bar, Skeeter Mouton whimpered and crossed himself, sending up a prayer for the survival of his establishment. Clifton Cneniers accordion sang out from the speakers of the jukebox, sounding as raucous and out of place as a reggae band in church.

«Come on, Lucky, don' go cuttin' him up in here,» Skeeter pleaded. «I won' never get all the blood out the floor!»

Perret turned gray and swallowed as if he were choking on a rock, his dark eyes darting from Lucky's face to the knife and back.

There was a commotion at the back of the room as a door burst open and a group of men emerged, their expressions ranging from avid interest to livid anger. At the front of the pack was Mean Gene Willis. Willis had been a roughneck down in the Gulf and a convict in the Angola penitentiary. He was a good-sized man with fists as big as country hams and a face like a side of beef. He made a beeline for Lucky with murder in his eyes.

Lucky let go of Perret, snatched up his untouched whiskey, and flung it into Willis's face. The big man howled and lunged blindly for Lucky, who met his advance with a boot to Willis's beer gut. Perret took advantage of the distraction to grab Lucky's beer bottle and break it on the edge of the bar. As he swung it in an arch for Lucky's head, a gun went off. Women screamed. Someone kicked out the plug on the jukebox. There was an instant of deafening silence, then a man's voice rang out.

«That's enough! Y'all stop it or I swear I'll shoot somebody and call it in the line of duty.»

Perret dropped his broken bottle and slinked away like the rat he was. Willis lay groaning on the floor, holding his stomach.

Lucky stepped back casually and sheathed his knife, his gaze drifting over the uniformed agent who had hurried out of die back-room card game with Willis. He had gone to school with Perry Davis and had disliked him since kindergarten. Davis was a man of fair, baby-faced looks and an annoying air of self-importance that was only more grating in adulthood, considering the fact that he was lousy at his job.

Lucky picked up his cigarette from the ashtray on the bar and took a slow pull on it. «Is this the kind of thing they were referring to when they named it the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Agent Davis? You playing bourre in a roadhouse?»

Davis gave him a cold look. «What I'm doing here is none of your business, Doucet.»

«No? A respectable employee of the government gamblin' on taxpayers time? That's none of my business?»

«What do you care? I doubt you pay taxes and you sure as hell aren't respectable.»

Lucky chuckled. «That's right, cher, I'm not. You'd do well to remember that.»

«Are you threatening me, Doucet?»

«Who, me? I don't make threats.» His gaze took on the cold, hard look of polished brass, and his voice dropped a notch. «I don't have to.»

A muscle worked nervously in Davis 's jaw. «I'm not afraid of you, Lucky.»

Lucky smiled. «Well then, I guess it's not true what folks say about you, is it? You're every bit as dumb as you look.»

Davis 's pale complexion turned blotchy red, but he said nothing. He holstered his gun and turned away to shoo the bar's patrons back to whatever they had been doing before the ruckus.

Willis struggled to his feet. Doubled over with an arm across his belly, he glared at Lucky. «I'll get you, you coonass son of a bitch. You wait 'n' see.»

Lucky dropped his cigarette and ground it out on the floor with his boot. «Yeah, I'll be losin' sleep over that, I will,» he drawled sardonically. «Stay out of my swamp, Willis.»

He turned toward the door to make his exit and his heart jolted hard in his chest. Serena Sheridan was standing right in front of him with her little calfskin purse clutched to her chest, her eyes wide and her pretty mouth hanging open in shock. In her prim suit and slicked-back hairdo, she looked like a schoolmarm who'd just gotten her first eyeful of a naked man.

Lucky swore under his breath. He didn't need any of this. He would have been just as happy never to have to tangle with the likes of Gene Willis and Pou Perret. He sure as hell had never asked to baby-sit Serena Sheridan. This all came back to the other lives that kept insisting on crossing paths with his, and it was damned annoying.

He took Serena by the arm and ushered her toward the door. «You've got a real knack for showing up in places you hadn't oughta be, don't you?»

Serena looked up at him but said nothing. She suddenly felt way out of her depth. Anyone with half a brain would have spotted Lucky Doucet for a tough customer, but she hadn't quite realized just how tough, just how dangerous he might be. Somehow, the fact that he knew her grandfather had diluted that sense of danger, but what she'd just witnessed had brought it all into sharp focus.

He was a poacher, a thief. He was a man who threatened people with knives and thumbed his nose at authority. He had practically laughed in the face of the game warden. God only knew what other laws he might break without compunction.

«Serena? Serena Sheridan?» Perry Davis stepped in front of them with a questioning look that clearly said he couldn't have been more surprised to see her there on the arm of a gargoyle. «Is this man bothering you?»

Serena's gaze darted from him to Lucky. This was her chance. This was the part in the movie where everyone yelled at the screen for the heroine to cut and run. But she couldn't seem to find her voice, and then the opportunity was lost.

«Take off, Davis,» Lucky said on a growl. «The lady is with me.»

Davis looked anything but convinced, but when Serena made no move to object, he shrugged and turned away.

«You know that guy?» Lucky asked, steering her toward the door again.

«He's a friend of the family.»

Lucky sniffed. «You gotta choose a better class of friends, sugar.»

Serena almost burst out laughing. She shook her head and marveled at the whole scene. What the hell was she doing here? Why wasn't she taking the opportunity to get away from him?

«I thought I told you to wait in the boat,» he grumbled irritably, dodging her gaze.

«I was waiting in the boat until a truckload of roughnecks pulled up. Then it became a matter of the lesser of two evils. I decided the riffraff in here was probably safer than the riffraff out there.»

«And now you're not so sure?»

He opened the door for her and she stepped out onto the gallery to a chorus of wolf whistles and crude come-on lines. Closing her eyes, she sighed a long-suffering sigh and rubbed her temples. This just wasn't her day.

The screen door banged behind her and the harassment ceased abruptly as Lucky walked up beside her and put an arm around her waist. It was a possessive gesture, a protective one, not anything sexually threatening. In fact, it was almost comforting. Serena looked up at him, surprised. He was scowling at the oil-rig workers assembled on the wide porch.

«Don' they teach you respect for ladies where you boys come from?» he asked in that silky-soft tone that raised the hair on the back of Serena's neck.

No one said anything. The men who worked the oil rigs were a rough breed. They wouldn't back down from a fight, but they didn't appear ready to pick one either. They were probably exhibiting better judgment than she was, Serena thought. Perhaps they had met Lucky and his friend Mr. Knife before. They were probably all sitting there wondering what she was doing with the most dangerous man in South Louisiana.

She lifted her chin a notch and drew together the tattered remains of her composure as Lucky guided her down the steps and across the parking lot.

«I'd like to go home now, if you don't mind,» she said. «I can see you're a busy man, Mr. Doucet. I can make other arrangements to get to Gifford's tomorrow.»

Lucky stopped and jammed his hands at the waistband of his pants. He looked out at the bayou, squinting into the afternoon sun, and exhaled a long breath through his teeth.

This was stupid. He wanted to be rid of her, didn't he? He wanted her to think the worst of him, didn't he? He should have been happy that she was ready to give up, but he wasn't. Dieu, what a masochist he was! Why should he care that a woman like Serena Sheridan looked at him with wary contempt? The feeling was reciprocated a hundred and ten percent. He couldn't look at her without feeling…

What?

Hot. But that was just an instinctive response. Of course he wanted her. Any man with feeling below the waist would want her. She was beautiful in the cool, ethereal way of a goddess. Of course it drove him wild. Of course he wanted to bury himself between those long, sleek legs. Of course he wanted to stroke and kiss those high, proud breasts. But he knew too well that what lay under those pretty breasts of hers could be pure evil.

Anger. That was what he really felt, he told himself. Anger. Resentment. She was her sister's twin. She was Shelby with a doctorate in psychology-Dieu, what a nightmare!

She was also Giff Sheridan's granddaughter. And he had made Giff a promise. The reminder made him sigh again and mutter an oath in French.

«Look,» he said quietly. «I don' know what all you saw or heard in there, but it's got nothin' to do with takin' you out to Giffs. I promise you'll get there in one piece. I'm not gonna feed you to the 'gators or sell you to white slavers or anything like that. Giffs a friend of mine.»

Serena watched him closely, amazed. There was a flush on his high, hard cheekbones. He shuffled his boots on the crushed shell of the parking lot and refused to look at her. He actually looked contrite and embarrassed and… well, cute.

Lord, what was the matter with her, thinking he was cute? Puppies were cute. Boy scouts were cute. Lucky Doucet was a grown tiger. He probably had boy scouts for lunch and ate puppies for dessert and picked his teeth with prim blond psychologists who saw redeeming qualities where there were none. She shouldn't be thinking any kind thoughts about him. She should be afraid of him… but she wasn't.

She was obviously losing her grip on sanity. It was this place, this wild, primal place. The air was ripe with scents that invaded the brain. What common sense she had left told her not to trust this man any farther than she could throw a horse, but she couldn't bring herself to walk away from him.

«I'm amazed,» she said at last.

«What?» He gave her a narrow look. «That I wouldn't sell you to white slavers?»

A corner of her mouth lifted in a wry smile as she started toward the dock. «That you have a friend.»