Lucky’s Lady

CHAPTER 5

SERENA HAD NO TROUBLE MANAGING A SCREAM THIS time. She shrieked, dropping to her knees on the floor of the pirogue and covering her head with her arms as buckshot hit the bayou in front of them, spewing muddy water and bits of shredded lily pad everywhere.

Her first thought was that they were being set upon by one of the honest men Lucky had been poaching from. Perhaps even the rightful owner of the crawfish squirming in the onion sacks two feet from her nose. She expected to hear another volley of shots and wondered if Lucky had a gun tucked away someplace to defend them with. But the initial boom faded away. In the ensuing silence, she lifted her head a few inches and peeked out between her fingers.

Gifford stood on the bank, legs spread, the smoking gun cradled loosely in his big hands. He was a tall, well-built man who didn't look anywhere near his age except for his thick head of snow-white hair, one lock of which insisted on tumbling rakishly across his broad forehead. With his square shoulders and trim waist, he still looked fit enough to wrestle a bear and win. His bold features were set in a characteristically fierce expression-bushy white brows lowered, square chin jutting forward aggressively. His nose was large and permanently red from years spent in the fields under the relentless southern sun.

«Goddammit, Lucky!» he bellowed, his voice a booming baritone that rivaled the shotgun for volume. «I thought you were that bastard Burke!»

«Naw,» Lucky called back calmly, poling the boat forward as if getting shot at didn't affect him in the least. «You might wanna shoot me anyway, though, when you see what I brought you.»

Serena rose up on her knees, snapping her head around to give him the evil eye before turning back toward her grandfather. She pushed her hair out of her eyes with one hand, hanging on to the side of the pirogue with the other to steady herself. Conflicting emotions shoved together in her chest like a logjam as she looked at the man who had essentially raised her. With adrenaline still pumping through her veins and the sound of the shotgun blast still ringing in her ears, anger took precedence for the moment.

The pirogue slid in beside a weathered dock with gnarled pilings and pitted planks. Serena didn't even wait for the boat to settle. She clambered out of it, awkward in her haste as she pulled herself up onto the rickety wharf. The pirogue scooted away as she pushed off from it and she slipped and hit her shin but managed to keep from falling back into the muddy shallows. Dirty, disheveled, with blood seeping into the previously immaculate white cotton of her pant leg and her hair tumbling in disarray around her shoulders, she stormed for shore, limping.

«Dammit, Gifford, what the hell do you think you're doing? Shooting at people! My God!»

Gifford scowled at her. «Jesus Christ. What the hell kind of language is that for a lady to use?»

«The kind I learned from you!» Serena shot back. She planted herself in front of him, her hands on her hips, staring up at him with as much defiance as she could muster.

«Well, hell,» Gifford muttered. There wasn't any way around that one. He cracked the shotgun open and extracted a shell, which he slipped into the breast pocket of his faded chambray workshirt. «I'll bet you don't use that kind of language up in Charleston.»

«I'm not up in Charleston.»

«For once,» he said with a snort. «What are you doing out here?» he asked, frowning down at Serena again. «I sure as hell never expected to see you riding around the swamp in a pirogue.»

«Believe me, it's not my idea of fun,» Serena said, shooting a glare Lucky's way. «I can think of a lot better things to do with my free time and much more pleasant company to do them with.»

«She takes exception to my temperament,» Lucky said with a sardonic smile as he approached, an onion bag of crawfish swinging from his fist.

«Among other things,» Serena muttered.

Lucky stopped beside her, dropped the bag at his feet, and lit the cigarette dangling from his lip, his eyes on Serena the whole time.

He tilted his head back and blew a thin stream of smoke into the air. «Guess I'm gonna have to go back to charm school for a refresher course,» he drawled laconically.

«Don't you believe him, Miz 'Rena,» Pepper Fontenot said with a gravelly chuckle as he ambled toward them from his lawn chair. Pepper was a thin, wiry man with the same pitch-dark skin and light eyes as his sister, the formidable Odille. He had somehow managed to sustain a very merry personality despite having lived with Odille his entire life, and wore his wide smile as comfortably as he wore his faded old coveralls. He slapped Lucky on the shoulder. «He charm the hide off a gator, dis one, if he be of a mind to.»

Serena arched a brow at Lucky. «He must not have been of a mind, then.»

«Mebbe it was the company,» Lucky said through his teeth.

Quelling the juvenile urge to stick her tongue out at him, Serena turned back toward her grandfather. «You might tell me you're glad to see me,» she said, not quite able to hide her hurt at his cool reception.

«I might say it once I find out what you're doing here.»

«What I'm doing here!» she exclaimed, splaying a hand across her chest. «I'm here because you took off without a word of explanation to anybody. I come down for a visit and the first thing I'm told is that you moved yourself out here two weeks ago and haven't been heard from since. What was I supposed to do? Say, 'Oh, gee, too bad I missed him' and just go on with my vacation? My God, Gifford, you could have been dead for all we knew!»

«Well, I'm not,» he snapped. «If that's all you came to find out, you can go on home now. You aren't going to inherit for a while yet if I can help it.»

«What kind of a rotten thing is that to say?»

«It's the kind of thing a man starts saying when he's nigh onto eighty with a bum ticker and a couple of ungrateful granddaughters.»

He snapped the shotgun closed with a decisive click, turned, and walked away.

Serena stood there, dumbfounded, watching him walk up the slight incline toward the cabin. Every time she saw Gifford in the flesh she was stunned by how badly she wanted his love and approval and how badly it hurt when he didn't offer them freely. It was as if the instant she encountered him, the child in her revived itself.

She was tired and frustrated, hungry and dirty. All she wanted to do was snuggle into her grandfather's embrace and let go of the determination that had gotten her this far. She wanted to be able to tremble and have Giff soothe her fears away as he had when she'd been a little girl, but that wasn't an option. She wasn't a child anymore, and Gifford hadn't been sympathetic to her fear of the swamp for a long, long time.

When she hadn't gotten over it after what he thought was a reasonable amount of time, his understanding had metamorphosed into a subtle disapproval and disappointment that had colored their relationship ever since. He thought she was a coward. Watching him walk away, she wished he could have realized how much courage it had taken her to get this far.

«Yeah, there's just nothin' quite so heartwarmin' as a family reunion,» Lucky muttered, his eyes also on Gifford's back as the old man walked away.

Serena glared at him. «Butt out, Doucet.» She stomped after her grandfather, her espadrilles squishing in the damp, spongy dirt that constituted the front yard.

The cabin was a simple rectangular structure covered with tan asphalt shingles. It was set up a few feet off the ground on sturdy cypress stilts to save it from the inevitable spring flooding. The roof was made of corrugated tin striped with rust. A stovepipe stuck up through it at a jaunty angle. The front door was painted a shade of aqua that hurt the eyes. There were no curtains at the two small front windows.

The cabin had never contained any amenities, certainly nothing that could have been considered «decorating» unless one included mounted racks of antlers. Serena doubted that had changed since the last time she'd been out here. The hunting lodge was one of those male bastions where anything aesthetically pleasing was frowned on as unmanly. Gifford undoubtedly still used the same old tacky, tattered furniture that hadn't been good enough for the Salvation Army store twenty years earlier. The floor of the two-room structure was probably still covered with the same hideous gray linoleum, the kind of indestructable stuff that promises to last forever and unfortunately does.

Serena wasn't going to find out immediately. Gifford didn't go to the door of the cabin. He climbed partway up the stairs, then turned around and plunked himself down with his gun across his lap as if he meant to block the way. Serena's step faltered just long enough so that the two old blue tick hounds that had jogged out from behind the woodshed could jump up on her and add their paw prints to the front of her shirt. She groaned and shooed them away, scolding them.

«You used to love them dogs,» Gifford grumbled, scowling at her disapprovingly. «I suppose they don't allow hounds like that up in Charleston.»

Serena shook a finger at him as she came to stand at the foot of the steps. «Don't you start that with me, Gifford. Don't you start in on how Charleston has changed me.»

«Well, it has, goddammit.»

«That's not what I came out here to discuss with you.»

Gifford swore long and colorfully. «A man can't get a scrap of peace these days,» he said, addressing the world at large. «I came out here to get away from people, not to form some pansy-ass discussion group.»

Serena ignored his protest and pressed on. «It's not like you to just take off, especially this time of year. There's too much work to be done around the plantation.»

He rolled his big shoulders and looked down at his feet. «That's what I've got Arnaud for. He's the manager, hell, let him manage. Tired old men like me are supposed to take off and go fishing.»

«When you knew I was coming to visit?» Serena pushed the hurt away with an effort and gave an unladylike snort. «Since when are you a tired old man?»

«Since I figured out I don't have an heir who gives a rat's ass about everything I've broke my back for.»

«Oh, for heaven's sake, Gifford!» she snapped. «What are you talking about?»

«I'm talking about you living eight hundred miles away and your sister ready to sell the old place at the drop of a hat. That's what I'm talking about.»

«What is this nonsense about Shelby wanting to sell Chanson du Terre?» she demanded irritably. «I've never heard anything more ludicrous in my life. Ever since we were little girls she's talked about growing up and getting married and living on the plantation. She wouldn't dream of selling it!»

«Well, that just shows how out of touch you are with your own family, young lady,» Gifford announced piously.

«Oh, for the love of Mike!» Serena cut herself off abruptly, not trusting herself to say anything more until she reined her temper in a notch. She clamped her mouth shut and paced back and forth along the base of the stairs, her arms banded tightly across her as if to keep herself from exploding.

«Honestly, I don't know what to think,» she muttered more to herself than to Gifford. «People telling me Shelby's lost her senses and wants to sell Chanson du Terre. Shelby tells me she thinks you've gone senile-«

«Senile!» Gifford launched himself off his step like a rocket, shooting up to his full height. His craggy face turned an unhealthy shade of maroon. «By God, that tears it! Is that what you've come out here for, Serena? Is this a professional visit? You out here to see if the old mans lost his marbles? Then y'all can get that candy-ass lawyer husband of Shelby's to have me declared incompetent, sell the old place, and live off the sweat of my carcass- By damn- By God-I won't have it!»

He clutched the railing with one hand and the shotgun with the other and hissed a breath in through his teeth, struggling suddenly for air.

Serena rushed up the steps, her own heart thundering in alarm. «For God's sake. Gifford. sit down!»

He complied without argument, his knees buckling, backside hitting the old step with a thump. The tension went out of his muscles. His wide shoulders sagged and he drew in a ragged deep breath. He fished around in his shirt pocket for a pill, pulling out the shotgun slug and tossing it carelessly aside.

Serena kneeled at his feet, shaking all over. She pressed her hands against her lips and struggled not to cry, realizing for the very first time just how old he was, just how mortal. She watched him stick a little pill under his tongue and held her breath as his color faded slowly from red to pale gray. He seemed to age twenty years before her eyes, his incredible inner fire dimming like a flame that had been abruptly turned down.

«You all right, Giff?» Lucky said, his dark voice shot through with tension. Serena realized with a start he was on the step right behind her. He leaned down to get a look at Gifford's face, laying a hand on her shoulder in a manner that might have been intended as comforting.

Gifford muttered one of his more virulent oaths.

Pepper stuck his head in under the stair railing and flashed a smile of relief. «He kin cuss like dat, he all right. He stops cussin', him, den you ax him if he be dead.»

«Smartass,» Gifford growled.

Pepper gave a hoarse laugh and withdrew to snatch the squirming bag of crawfish away from the inquisitive coon hounds that were sniffing and pawing at it.

Serena felt herself sag with relief. She couldn't stop herself from reaching a hand up to touch her grandfather's knee, just to reassure herself. «You ought to go in and lie down, Giff. We can talk later.»

«I don't need to lie down,» the old man snapped. «Just a little dizzy spell, that's all. Christ, I don't know who wouldn't be dizzy with all this going on around them. It makes me so damn mad, I can't see straight half the time. I make one remark about selling, and your sister, who couldn't sell ice water in hell, runs right out and finds a buyer. Judas H. Priest. And where are you? Off shrinking heads in Carolina, as if there aren't enough lunatics in Lou'siana to go around.»

«We can talk about it when we get home,» Serena said softly.

There were a hundred questions to be asked. Why hadn't Shelby called her when Gifford had left? Why had she denied knowing the reason Gifford had left? Why would Gifford ever have mentioned selling the plantation and why would Shelby agree to it, much less find a buyer?

Feeling a little like Alice waking up in Wonderland, Serena pushed herself to her feet and wiped the remaining tears from her eyes. The questions would have to wait. She wouldn't quiz Gifford now and run the risk of giving him another attack. It could all be sorted out once they were back home. And the sooner the better.

She turned around to look back at the dock. Gifford's bass boat was tied up on the side opposite Lucky's pirogue. «Pepper, would you please get the boat ready?'

Pepper shook his head, smiling at her much the way Lawrence Gauthier had earlier. «Oh, no, chere. Me, I kinda like bein' alive. You ax Giff 'bout it, he don' wanna go nowhere.»

Serena turned back to her grandfather. He refused to look at her. «Gifford, please. You can't stay out here.»

«I sure as hell can.»

She turned to Lucky.

He shrugged and physically backed away from the conversation. «It's a free country.»

«I don't believe this,» Serena said angrily, raking her hair back from her face with trembling hands. «Dammit, Gifford, you nearly had a heart attack right before my eyes. You can't stay out here!»

«I can do whatever I damn well please, young lady,» he said, forcing himself to his feet. He swayed a bit, but gripped the rail with a white-knuckled fist and locked his knees. «I won't have you or your sister or anybody else trying to run my life.»

Serena cast one last glance at Pepper and Lucky, looking for help but finding none. Pepper shuffled his feet and dodged her gaze, staring down at the bag of crawfish. Lucky merely stared back at her, saying nothing, offering nothing. She shook her head. «I think you've all gone mad.»

«Well then, why don't you just go on back to Charleston, where you won't have to worry about all your crazy relatives,» Gifford said coldly. «Outta sight, outta mind. You don't care what all goes on down here.»

Serena held up a hand to cut him off, pressing her lips together and blinking hard to ward off more tears of frustration. «I won't discuss this with you now, Gifford. I won't.»

«Fine. Then go on and get out of here. Leave me in peace.»

«I'm not going anywhere,» she announced. «I'm staying right here until I convince you to come home.»

«The hell you are. I won't have you,» Gifford barked. «Lucky, you take her on back to Chanson du Terre.»

Lucky backed away another step, brows drawing together ominously low over his eyes. «Forget it. I ain't running no goddamn ferry service. I'm not takin' her all the way back to Chanson du Terre. It's gettin' dark. I've got things to do.»

«Then she can stay with you at your place, 'cause she sure as hell ain't staying here,» Gifford declared. «I came out here to get away from ungrateful women.»

«Stay with him!» Serena said with horror.

«Stay with me!» The idea nearly made Lucky choke.

They regarded each other with a land of terror that didn't go unnoticed by Gifford. The old man raised an eyebrow.

«She's not stayin' with me,» Lucky said emphatically. «It's out of the question. Absolutely out of the question.»

His house was his sanctuary. It was the space he had created for himself to heal in, to have some measure of peace. It was his private refuge, the last stronghold of his sanity. The last person he wanted breaching those walls was this woman, a woman he wanted beyond all reason, a woman whose face haunted his mind with memories of the pain and betrayal of another.

«Non. Non,» he muttered, shaking his head. «Sa c'est de la couyonade.»

Gifford snorted. «So you think I'm foolish too? By God, the two of you deserve each other. You can sit around over coffee tonight and compare notes on ways to avoid your responsibilities.»

Lucky wheeled around, stomping up three steps to thrust a warning finger in Gifford's face. «You're skatin' on thin ice, old man,» he said through his teeth. «I don' owe you. I don' owe Chanson du Terre.»

«Oh, that's right,» Gifford drawled sarcastically. Lucky s ferocious look didn't impress him; he was too old to be frightened by the idea of his own mortality. «You don't owe anybody anything. You're your own man. Good for you, Lucky. You can pat yourself on the back after the swamp silts up and everything dies.»

«Don' you talk to me about responsibilities, Gifford,» Lucky snapped. «You've got your own. And where are you? Out here fishin' and takin' potshots at Tristar reps. How the hell is that gonna solve anything?»

«I've got my own way of dealing with the situation.»

«Mais, yeah» Lucky said with a harsh laugh. «By not dealing with it.»

Serena stepped between them. «Excuse me. Do I get a say in this matter?»

Both men scowled at her simultaneously and answered in thunderous unison. «No!»

She fell back a step in utter disbelief.

Lucky jumped off the stairs and started pacing again. He knew Gifford-mules had nothing on him when it came to stubbornness. If he said he wasn't letting Serena stay with him, he meant it. He'd leave her on the doorstep all night if it came to that. The idea went against Lucky's grain on a fundamental level where he'd long ago thought he'd given up all feeling.

He glanced at Serena out of the corner of his eye and mentally swore a blue streak. She was just as proud and stubborn as her grandfather. She'd stood toe to toe with the old man. She'd been on the brink of tears with worry over him. She obviously loved him.

And old Giff had given her an emotional buffeting for her trouble. She looked like a hothouse flower that had been thrust outdoors during a thunderstorm- bedraggled, dirty, exhausted.

And Gifford was bent on turning her away.

Damn.

It wasn't that he cared about her, Lucky assured himself. It wasn't that he wanted to get involved. It was none of his business how Gifford treated his granddaughter. For all he knew, she deserved to be left out on the porch all night. The extenuating circumstances were what concerned him-another example of the way other people s affairs kept drifting into the path of his life. This swamp was his world. He couldn't bear the idea of seeing it destroyed.

He heaved a sigh and raked his hands through his hair. What were his options? He wanted Gifford to deal with the Tristar problem before something catastrophic happened, like Gifford shooting Len Burke or Shelby succeeding in selling the place to a company with a record as environmental rapists. That meant getting Gifford to go back to face the situation. Serena had resolved to get him to return, and heaven knew she had the determination to convince him, given enough opportunity. That meant keeping her near the old man and away from her sister's poisonous influence. And that meant…

Hell and damnation.

He examined the dilemma from another angle. How long could it take Serena to talk Gifford into going home? A day or two. Three at the outside. How much harping could a man take, after all? Lucky decided he wouldn't actually have to stay with her if she was in his house. He could easily spend that much time out in the swamp. He had plenty of other things to keep him occupied. Still, he didn't like the idea of being cornered into doing something.

He stopped his pacing, turning his head to glare up at Gifford. «All right,» he said, his voice low. «I'll keep her.»

Gifford successfully fought off a smile.

Serena's jaw dropped.

For a long second no one said anything. The tension building in the air was enough to make the coon hounds whine and trot away in search of a safe haven.

«Keep me?» Serena questioned softly, glaring at Lucky. «Keep me!» Her voice rose several decibels. She planted her hands on her hips and leaned over him, enjoying the height advantage for once. «You most certainly will not keep me!» She whirled toward Gifford, her face livid. «I will not stay with this man! I hardly know him and what I do know about him is hardly flattering. For heaven's sake, Gifford, you can't really expect me to stay with him!»

«Who knows what I might expect,» Gifford said, putting on a wounded air. «I'm just a crazy old man waiting to die.»

«Stop it!» Serena spat out. She stared up at him in the fading afternoon light and felt a big ball of fear swell up in her chest like a balloon. He had that same look he'd had on his face when she'd been seventeen and the sheriff had brought her home after catching her and two other honor students splitting a jug of cheap wine under the bleachers at the football stadium.

Her voice softened to a whisper. «Gifford?»

He shook his head. «Don't you even ask me, Serena. I'm so mad right now I could spit brass tacks. You think you can just come breezing in here and fix everything up with a sentence or two because you've got a sheepskin from Duke and a fancy practice up in Charleston. You don't know what's going on here and you don't care. You just want to put all the parts back in their places and get on with your vacation.» He shook his head once more and blew out a breath. His color was heightening again, a flush creeping up from his throat into his face like mercury rising in a thermometer. «Go on, get out of here. You'll be all right with Lucky.»

He turned and trudged up the rest of the steps, letting himself into the cabin without looking back. Serena felt stunned, as if someone had hit her between the eyes with a rock. Well, she'd gotten what she deserved, hadn't she? In his usual no-nonsense style Gifford had cut through to the heart of the matter. She had thought she'd come out here and simply set things straight, put her world back on track, rearrange things to her satisfaction. She had inherited that take-charge manner from Gifford. She used it to great success in her everyday life back in Charleston. But they weren't in Charleston.

Damn this place. She closed her eyes and rubbed her hands over her face, erasing what was left of her makeup.

«I'm sorry, Miz «Rena,» Pepper said, climbing the stairs to stand beside her, his wriggling, clicking crawfish sack hanging down from his fists. «You know old Giff. He gets in a temper, him, there's no tellin' what he say. He don' mean half.»

Serena tried without much luck to muster a smile. «Does that mean you'll run me home after all?»

He frowned, something that looked completely foreign to his face, as if his mouth didn't quite know how to turn that way. «Can't. Dat old boat, she's not runnin'. Lucky, he bring the part, but dat don' make her run. Take me a coupl'a days to fix.»

Serena hadn't thought it possible for her spirits to sink any lower. She'd been wrong. They seemed to fall now from their last toehold into a bottomless black pit. It must have been a painful thing to watch, because Pepper made another attempt to frown. He shuffled his feet on the worn tread of the step, working up to making a run for it.

Why, oh, why had she let her temper goad her into coming out here without thinking it through, without first finding out exactly what was going on? Now she was stuck in this god-awful place. Turned out by her own grandfather. Turned over to the care of a man who wouldn't know a scruple if it bit his handsome butt.

She turned her bleak gaze to Lucky. He stood absently scratching the head of one of the coon hounds as he watched her, his expression inscrutable. In the long, sinister shadows seeping across the ground as the sun slid away, he looked more dangerous than ever.

«Get in the boat, chere,» he said softly. «Looks like we're stuck with each other for a little while longer.»