Lucky's Lady (21 page)

Lucky swore under his breath, letting go of her and turning to pace the bedroom floor. He ran a trembling hand over his hair and rubbed the back of his neck as he struggled to school his breathing to normalcy. “I heard about the fire. Explosion. People being taken to the hospital.”

Serena bit back the flippant remark that sprang instantly to her tongue. She stood back and studied Lucky as he paced. He'd been afraid for her. It was clear in his eyes and the set of his mouth. It was clear in his struggle for control of his emotions. She made no comment but felt a flare of something like hope in her breast. The granite man who cared about no one had been frightened for her.

“I'm all right,” she said quietly. She let her knees give way and sank down on a little Victorian dressing stool, toeing off her ruined espadrilles and starting on the buttons of her blouse. She watched Lucky move back and forth along the bed, tension rolling off him like steam as he forcibly calmed himself. “Where were you?”

“I had business to take care of.”

“You certainly have strange working hours.”

“I have a strange life,” he admitted dryly. “You may have noticed.”

Serena arched a brow. “What? Everyone I know lives in a swamp and picks their teeth with a commando knife.”

She dismissed his dark look and started to shrug off her blouse, but stopped herself as she realized two things simultaneously—she wasn't wearing anything underneath it and Lucky's eyes had suddenly settled, hot and glowing, on her chest. It wasn't that she felt modest around him. But a wild sensation fluttered in her middle. A deep, primal fear combined with excitement that took no notice of her need for control. Nor did it seem to care that the path it wanted to drag her down led to heartache. She managed to head it off at the pass and pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the protests of her aching legs.

“I have to take a shower,” she said, her fingers clutching her blouse together between her breasts.

Lucky stared at her. All the anxiety he had felt channeled itself into the one emotion he could understand and deal with—lust. When he'd heard about the explosion he'd nearly gone wild with thoughts of Serena lying burned and twisted among the rubble. Now she stood before him, looking bedraggled and a little bit afraid, but alive. Her dark eyes were wide and soft as she stared up at him.

He closed the distance between them with two long strides. His fingers pulled the blouse from her hand and peeled the two halves back as he pulled her gently into his embrace. With reverent care he bent and pressed his lips to each scratch that marred her face.

“I have to take a shower,” she mumbled again, her breath catching as Lucky's mouth settled on the pulse spot in her throat. “I have to go to Gifford's.” She gasped and arched her back as his hand carefully claimed her breast, but tried valiantly to hold on to her train of thought. “Will you take me?”

Lucky raised his head, his smoldering gaze capturing hers, an unconsciously tender smile turning one corner of his sensuous mouth. “Oh, yeah,
chère
. I'll take you. Absolutely.”

CHAPTER
                        

14

“
ARSON!
”
GIFFORD EXPLODED, HIS WEATHERED FACE
turning an alarming shade of red. “By God, that tears it! That just tears it! I don't know what the hell this world is coming to. People got no respect for nothing anymore.”

He set aside the shotgun he'd been cleaning and rose from his lawn chair to pace in agitation. His hounds lay on the ground, one on either side of the chair, watching him move back and forth with their droopy eyes and somber expressions.

“That bastard Burke. I'll have his head on a pike before this is over. And that smarmy little Clifton York too,” he said, jabbing the air with a forefinger for emphasis. “The nerve of that little weasel, refusing to pay the claim.”

Serena thought of the apologetic insurance adjuster and felt a pang of sympathy. “Mr. York is only doing his job.”

“Practically accusing me of burning my own property,” Gifford ranted. “By God, I'd eat dirt before I'd stoop to something so low. No Sheridan ever behaved in such a reprehensible manner—not counting the ones that got kicked out of the family, of course.”

“Of course,” Serena confirmed dryly. She stood before him with her arms crossed over the front of her wilting pink cotton blouse and her knees locked to keep her legs from buckling beneath her. The early morning storm had turned the cabin's meager yard to a soft ooze that squished up around the sides of her calfskin loafers. This trip was taking a heavy toll on her footwear on top of everything else. If she stayed much longer, she was going to have to go around in bedroom slippers.

“There was a time in this country when a man's honor meant something,” Gifford announced, as upset with having his reputation impugned as he was with having someone burn his machine shed to the ground. He planted his feet, jammed his hands at the waist of his jeans, and glared down at Serena as if it were all her fault standards had fallen to such an appalling level.

“I'm sure it's nothing personal,” she said. “It's a clear-cut case of arson. Until they figure out who did it, the company can't pay.”

Gifford snorted. A shock of white hair tumbled across his forehead. His eyes were fierce. “Until they figure out who did it. A blind halfwit could figure out who did it. Burke is responsible. Goddamn Texan. This state ought to have border regulations.”

“Burke has an alibi,” Lucky said unexpectedly. “He was at Mouton's.”

Serena turned toward him, unable to hide her surprise. He was leaning indolently against the trunk of a big live oak, his eyes hooded and sleepy. He looked like a panther, all leashed strength and quiet intensity, waiting for some unsuspecting deer to wander past.

“How do you know that?”

He gave her a look that was flat and unreadable. His big shoulders rose and fell in a lazy shrug. “Because I was there too, sugar.”

He'd left her bed to go to Mosquito Mouton's. Serena did her best to stem the rush of hurt. She had no hold on him, she reminded herself. Regardless of what her heart wanted, Lucky had clearly defined their relationship as just sex. Having agreed to those terms, she had no right to be angry with him or feel hurt that he hadn't chosen to hold her all night.

Business, he'd said. She wondered what kind of business one conducted at Mouton's in the wee hours of the morning. She wondered if it was the same kind of business he had been conducting the last time he'd been there—starting brawls, threatening people with knives.

“Of course he has an alibi,” Gifford said with disgust. “A man like Burke does his own dirty work when he's coming up through the ranks, but he hires it out as soon as he can. It wouldn't be any mean feat to hire some local piece of trash to start a fire. People will do anything for a dollar these days.”

“Unfortunately, no one saw anything,” Serena said. “Whoever did it managed to get away either before the first explosion or during the confusion afterward. I know I never thought of looking for a car or for anyone running away from the scene.”

“Maybe they never left the scene,” Lucky said quietly.

Serena sighed, blowing her breath up into the sweat-damp tendrils of hair that stuck to her forehead. She could feel Lucky's eyes on her, but she didn't look at him. They had already had this argument on the way to Giff's. She didn't for a minute believe Shelby had started the fire. It was simply impossible for her to picture Shelby slinging gas cans around and rigging machinery to blow up. But there may well have been a hired man capable of being bought off—by Burke, Serena insisted. Or the perpetrator may have been an outsider compelled by God knew what, a man who had simply blended in with the rest of the men while they had struggled to save the building.

“Well, there's no use speculating,” she said at last. “The point is, this business is getting way out of hand. You have to come back home, Giff. I mean it this time.”

Gifford lifted one bushy white brow. “Why? So you can cut and run?”

Serena refused to flinch. She stood toe to toe with the old man and said calmly, “So you can face up to your responsibilities.”

“Why should I be any better at it than you are?” he asked sarcastically. “Hell, I took my lessons from you, little girl. I didn't want to deal with it, so I left.”

“Stop it,” Serena snapped. She could feel the reins of her temper sliding through her exhausted grasp. Even in the best circumstances she had trouble dealing with Gifford in a controlled and rational manner. He knew exactly which buttons to push and he pushed them with a kind of malicious glee that infuriated her even further. She looked up at him now and held her anger in check with sheer willpower. “You stop trying to lay all this guilt on me, Gifford. I've had it with your manipulation.”

“Oh? You
are
going back to Charleston, then?” he said with cutting mock-surprise. “Leave your old grandfather to deal with arsonists and strong-arm tactics and treason among his own ranks.”

Serena ground her teeth and spoke through them. “I'm not going anywhere.”

Gifford stared at her long and hard. “Neither am I.”

The pressure built between them for another few seconds as their gazes locked and warred. Then abruptly Serena's temper erupted like a volcano. She kicked the lawn chair and let fly a very unladylike curse that sent the coon hounds scurrying for safety under the cabin.

“Damn you, Gifford,” she shouted, her hands knotting into useless fists in front of her. “How can you be so stubborn!”

“It's a family trait.”

“Don't you dare be glib with me,” she warned, shaking a finger at him. “This is serious.”

“I know exactly how serious it is,” Gifford said softly, abandoning his theatrics for cold, hard sobriety. “I know exactly what's at stake here, Serena. I wonder if you do. You think I'm just being a contrary old fool. You think I'm enjoying all the havoc I'm wreaking on everyone's lives. I'm trying to save something that's been a part of this family for
two centuries
.”

“By sitting out here in the swamp?”

He shook his head, his impatience and weariness showing in his dark eyes and the set of his mouth. “You don't get it, do you? I swear, for someone so intelligent you can be as thick as a red Georgia brick. I'm not talking about saving Chanson du Terre for the moment. I'm talking about it living on after me.”

Serena took in his words and their meaning, tears of anger and hurt and frustration rising in her eyes. She knew exactly what he meant. “You can't make me want to come back here, Gifford. You can't force me to want to stay.”

“No,” he said softly. “But I can make you see what the consequences will be if you don't. I can put it all in your hands. You can have the power of Caesar—does it live or does it die? Do two hundred years of heritage go on or do they get ground to dust? It will all be up to you, Serena. Sell it or save it.”

There it was. The cards were on the table. No more games. No more silent manipulation. He was laying it all at her feet and the thing she wanted most to do was turn and run. Serena stared up at him through a wavy sheen of tears and hated him at that moment almost as much as she loved him. She couldn't turn away. He meant too much to her. She couldn't stand the idea of disappointing him, of having him look at her and see a failure and a coward.

As a psychologist she could pick each of those thoughts apart, dissect them and diagnose them, and recommend therapy. But as a granddaughter, as a woman, she could only stand there and experience it. She felt as helpless and impotent as a child. She couldn't step back from it to examine it with the cool, objective eye of a neutral third party. She couldn't simply watch the storm from a safe distance. She was in the middle of it and there was no honorable way out.

“You think about that for a minute,” Gifford said, his face as stern and set as if it had been carved from granite. “Then you come on inside the cabin. There's something that needs to be taken care of before you go back.”

He walked away, calling softly to his hounds. Serena stood facing the bayou, fighting the tears, trying to concentrate on the sound of footsteps and dog toenails on the worn boards of the gallery, the slam of the screen door, the sound of Marc Savoy singing on the radio, the call of an indigo bunting somewhere in the tree-tops nearby. Arms bound tight across her middle, she stared out at the muddy water and the profusion of spider lilies that grew along the opposite bank, and forced herself to hang on to the very last scrap of her pride and control.

Lucky watched her, everything inside him aching for her. Every feeling he had thought dead had been resurrected in the past few days and they ached and throbbed now, hypersensitive in their rebirth. He didn't welcome their return. It was easier, safer, not to feel at all. He resented their intrusion on his emotional isolation. He resented Serena for arousing them so effortlessly. But he couldn't look at her now and feel anger. Nor could he turn away. He couldn't look at her now and see how the calm, controlled woman from Charleston had been broken apart in a matter of days and not feel something—sympathy, empathy, compassion. . . .

He pushed himself away from the tree and went to stand behind her. He wrapped his arms around her, silently offering his strength, rocking her gently in time with the Cajun waltz that floated out through the cabin's screens.

Serena turned her face to his shoulder and squeezed her eyes shut against the tears, forcing two past her lashes to roll down her cheek and soak into Lucky's black T-shirt. The temptation was strong to just let go, to cry, to put the burden on his broad shoulders and ask him to take care of her problems the way he had taken care of Mrs. Guidry's poachers, the way he took care of the orphaned raccoons. But she didn't. Couldn't. He didn't want her problems. He had problems of his own. He didn't want involvement and he didn't want love. That knowledge made it all the more bittersweet to have his arms around her now, when she needed so badly to have someone to lean on.

Maybe he would change. Maybe he felt more for her than he wanted to admit. Maybe, when this business with Chanson du Terre was over, he would let her near enough to help him with the demons that haunted him.

And maybe pigs would fly.

She wasn't doing herself any favors falling into the trap of “there but for the love of a good woman” thinking. She and Lucky had been thrown together by circumstances, had given in to physical needs, and when it was over they would go their separate ways—he into his swamp and she . . .

“I guess I'd better go in and see what new treat Gifford has in store for me,” she said, sniffing back the tears she wouldn't let fall. She turned in Lucky's arms and looked up at him, knowing with a terrible crystal-clear clarity that she had somehow, somewhere fallen in love with him. The thought hit her with a violent jolt every time it came. This big, brooding warrior with his panther's eyes and hooker's mouth, with his dark soul and heart of gold, had captured a part of her no other man ever had. Too bad he didn't want it.

They were greeted at the door of the cabin by the smell of warm beignets and strong coffee. While the battle of the Sheridans had been raging in the yard, apparently Pepper had been inside slaving over a hot stove. The old black man greeted Serena with a sad smile and a pat on the shoulder.

“You come on over here, Miz 'Rena. You looks like you could use some my coffee.”

Serena tried to smile. “Could I have you inject it directly into my bloodstream, Pepper? I feel like I haven't slept in a month.”

“Po' Miz 'Rena,” Pepper muttered, shooting a damning glare at Gifford, who sat at the battered red Formica-topped table with a long envelope in front of him.

Serena pulled out a chrome-legged chair and sank down on a green vinyl seat that had cracked and torn and been repaired with duct tape. Gifford had taken the seat by the window that looked directly out onto the yard, and she wondered if he had seen Lucky holding her, but she dismissed the thought. Despite the way Gifford made her feel, she was no longer sixteen years old and under his guardianship. If she chose to have an affair with a man who looked and acted like a pirate, that was her own business.

She glanced around the cabin as Lucky took a seat and fished a cigarette out of his shirt pocket. Pepper kept up a running monologue in the background, drawling on pleasantly about the crawfish catch as he gathered up mismatched mugs and a big white enamel coffeepot. The coon hounds lay sprawled on the floor like rugs, looking up at Serena with mournful eyes. The furniture seemed haphazardly arranged around their gangly forms, worn and tattered armchairs with stuffing poking through in spots. The walls were unadorned except for mounted antlers and a gun rack grotesquely fashioned from a pair of deer forelegs.

Serena had always thought the cabin looked like her idea of a prison camp barracks with its tarpaper walls, pitted linoleum floor, and absence of niceties. It hadn't changed a lick in twenty-five years. It was the same floor, the same furniture, the same outdated appliances, the same arrangement of foodstuffs on the single shelf above the single cupboard, the same old round-edged black radio playing Cajun music and herbicide ads. Even the condiments on the table looked the same.