Their gazes locked and warred-hers cool, his burning with intensity. She congratulated herself on defusing a potentially disastrous sexual situation. He congratulated himself on goading her temper. Both went on staring. The air around them thickened with electricity.

On the eastern bank of the bayou an alligator roused itself from a nap, plowed through a lush tangle of ferns and coffee-weed stems, and slid down into the» water.

Serena jumped, jerking around to stare wide-eyed at the creature. The alligator was lying in the shallows among a stand of cattails, just a few feet away from the pirogue, its long, corrugated head breaking the surface of the murky water as it stared back at her.

Lucky gave a bark of laughter. «Mais non, mon ange, that 'gator's not gonna get you. Unless I throw you overboard, which I have half a mind to do.»

«I don't doubt it-that you have half a mind, that is,» Serena grumbled, snatching the canteen away from him to take another swig of false courage.

And just how much of a mind do you have, Serena, antagonizing this man? Good Lord, he was a poacher and a bootlegger and who knew what else. He gave her a nasty smile, reminding her enough of the nearby alligator to give her chills.

«No wonder Gifford's holed up out here,» he said, taking up the push-pole again and sending them forward with the strong flexing of his biceps. «I don't see how a man could stand to be stuck in a house with two just like you.»

Serena kept one eye on the alligator and both hands firmly clamped to the edge of the seat. «For your information, my sister and I are nothing alike.» «I know what your sister is like.» The cold dislike in his statement made her glance over her shoulder at him. «How? I can't imagine the two of you run in the same social circles.»

Lucky said nothing. That mental door slammed closed again. Serena thought she could almost hear it bang shut. He looked past her, as if she had ceased to exist, his face a stony mask. His silence left her free to draw her own conclusions.

Perhaps Shelby had made some kind of public statement against poachers or places like Mosquito Mouton's. It would be like Shelby to get on a soapbox and publicly antagonize people she thought of as unsavory. Her views would be met with widespread approval among the upstanding members of the community, something that would appeal enormously to her ego.

Shelby had always required a great deal of attention and praise, and had been willing to go to whatever length she needed to get those things. It wouldn't have been beyond her to pick on a man as dangerous as Lucky Doucet. She would have considered the potential for self-aggrandizement long before giving a thought to the potential for trouble.

Serena wondered if her sister had any idea she'd made an enemy of a man who carried a hunting knife the size of a scimitar.

They moved on up the bayou, the silence of the swamp as heavy and oppressive as the heat. The denser the vegetation became, the more overwhelming the stillness. It played on Serena's nerves, tightening them so that something as innocent as the «quock» of heron set them humming.

The deeper they penetrated into the wilderness, the less it looked like man had ever intruded upon it. The most conspicuous sign of human habitation Serena saw was the occasional slip of colored plastic ribbon tied to a branch to mark the location of a crawfish trap.

Lucky pulled up beside one of these-a red ribbon tied to the branch of a willow sapling-and set about emptying the dip net set in the shallow water beneath it. The thin mesh was brimming with red crawfish. He raided four nets along the same bank, emptying their contents into the onion sacks he had stored in the bow of the pirogue, going about his task as if Serena were nothing more than an annoying piece of cargo he had to step around. She watched him with interest, not daring to ask if the traps he was harvesting were his.

«Are we nearly there?» she asked as Lucky once again began to pole the pirogue north, then east.

«Nearly. You'll know when we're just about onto Gifford's.»

«I doubt it. It's been years since I've been out here.»

«You'll know,» he said assuredly.

«How?»

«By the gunshots.»

Serena made a face. «That's ridiculous. Old Lawrence said something about people getting shot at too. I know my grandfather can be cantankerous, but shooting at people? That's absurd. Why would he shoot at people?»

«To scare them off.»

«And why would he want to scare people off?»

«So they'll leave him alone.»

Serena shook her head impatiently. «I don't understand any of this. In the first place, it's not like Giff to desert the plantation for so long a time, not even during crawfish season.»

«He's got his reasons,» Lucky said enigmatically.

Serena gave him a long, searching look. She didn't like the idea of this man knowing more about her family's concerns than she did. It made her feel like the outsider. It also threw a glaring spotlight on her deficiencies as a granddaughter. She didn't come home often enough, didn't keep up with the local news, didn't call as often as she should. The list of venial sins went on, adding to her feelings of guilt. Still, she couldn't keep herself from asking the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.

«And just what do you think those reasons are, Mr. Doucet?» she queried, looking up at him.

His face remained impassive. «Ask Gifford, if you want to know. I don't get involved in other people's lives.»

«How convenient for you. You have no one to worry about, no one to answer to except yourself.»

«That's right, sugar.»

«Then what are you doing bringing me out here when you would clearly rather have come alone?»

Lucky scowled at her, his black brows pulling together like twin thunderheads above his eyes. When he spoke his voice was soft and silky with warning. «Don' you go tryin' to get inside my head, Dr. Sheridan.»

Serena rolled her eyes. «God forbid. I'm sure I'd rather fall into a snake pit.»

One and the same thing, cherie, Lucky said to himself, but he refrained from speaking that thought, knowing it was the kind of statement a psychologist would pounce on. He was managing just fine. If everyone would just butt the hell out of his life, he would be great.

«How come you don' know Gifford's reasons for comin' out here?» he asked, going on the offensive. «Don' you ever talk to your grandpapa on the telephone? Mebbe you don' care what goes on down here. Mebbe you don' care about this place or Chanson du Terre, eh?»

«What kind of question is that?» Serena bristled, rising to the bait like a bass to a fly. «Of course I care about Chanson du Terre. It's my family home.»

Lucky shrugged. «I don't see you livin' there, sugar.»

«Where I live is none of your concern.»

«That's right. Just like it's none of my concern if someone wants to come in and flatten the place with bulldozers. It's not my family what's lived and worked on that land two-hundred-some years.»

Serena stared up at him, feeling as if she'd been hit in the chest with a hammer. «What do you mean, flatten the place? What are you talking about?»

«Chanson du Terre, angel. Your sister wants to sell it to Tristar Chemicals.»

«That's absurd!» she exclaimed, laughing at the sheer lunacy of the statement. «Shelby wouldn't want to sell Chanson du Terre any more than Scarlett O'Hara would put Tara on the market! You obviously don't know my sister. It would never happen. Never.»

She went on chuckling at the idea, shaking her head, trying to ignore the terrible certainty in Lucky s eyes as he stared down at her. The look was meant to assure her of the fact that he knew many things she didn't have a clue about. A part of her rejected the notion outright, but another part of her churned with a sudden strange apprehension.