«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.»