«Now you can stop your squirming before you capsize us and serve us up to the 'gators for dinner.»

Serena shuddered at the mention of alligators, but didn't look at the water for evidence of any. «Thank you for your concern,» she said dryly. «Why aren't the mosquitoes after you, enormous, half-naked target that you are.»

«They like your perfume. Very uptown tastes, these skeeters have. Mebbe you'd like to take some of them back to Charleston with you, oui?»

«Don't you start in on me,» she warned, her voice hoarse from the big knot of emotion lodged like a rock in her throat. «You don't know anything about it.»

«I know Giff needs you here,» he said, taking up his stance behind her once again. The pirogue slid forward. «That is, if you care anything about your heritage. Mebbe you don't. You say you hate this place. Mebbe you'd like to see it poisoned and ruined, yes?»

«Gifford would never allow such a thing to happen.»

«Gifford won't have any say in the matter if he doesn't take charge of the situation soon. He thinks it'll just go away if he stays out here and shoots at the Tristar rep every time he comes around.»

«You make it sound like he's running away from the problem. Gifford Sheridan never ran from a fight in his life.»

«Well, he's runnin' from this one.»

«It's ridiculous,» Serena insisted. «If he doesn't want to sell to Tristar, all he has to do is tell them no. I don't understand what the big problem is.»

«Me, I'd say there's a lotta things here you don' understand, sugar,» Lucky drawled.

Not the least of which was him, Serena thought, plucking at the edge of the mosquito netting. The man was a jumble of contradictions. Mean to her one minute and throwing mosquito netting over her the next; telling her in one breath he didn't involve himself in other people's affairs, then giving his commentary on the situation. She wouldn't have credited him with an abundance of compassion, but he was rescuing her from having to spend the night outside, and, barring nefarious reasons, compassion was the only motive she could see.

She wondered what kind of place he was taking her to. She didn't hold out much hope for luxurious accommodations. Her idea of a poacher s lair was just a notch above a cave with animal hides scattered over the floor. She pictured a tar-paper shack and a mud yard littered with dead electricity generators and discarded butane tanks. There would probably be a tumbledown shed full of poaching paraphernalia, racks of stolen pelts and buckets of rancid muskrat remains. Certainly it would be no better than Gifford's place. She couldn't imagine Lucky hanging curtains. He struck her as the sort of man who would pin up centerfolds from raunchy magazines on the walls and call it art.

They rounded a bend in the bayou, and a small, neat house came into view. It was set on a tiny hillock in an alcove that had been cleared of trees. Its weathered-cypress siding shimmered pale silver in the fading light. It was a house in the old Louisiana country style, an Acadian house built on masonry piers to keep it above the damp ground. Steps led onto a deep gallery that was punctuated by shuttered windows and a screen door. An exterior staircase led up from the gallery to the overhanging attic that formed the ceiling of the gallery-a classic characteristic of Cajun architecture. Slim wooden columns supporting the overhang gave the little house a gracious air.

Serena was delightfully surprised to see something so neat and civilized in the middle of such a wilderness, but nothing could have surprised her more than to hear Lucky tell her it was his.

He scowled at the look of utter shock she directed up at him through the mosquito netting. «Whatsa matter, chere? You were expecting some old white-trash shack with a yard full of pigs and chickens rootin' through the garbage?»

«Stop putting words in my mouth,» she grumbled, unwilling to admit her unflattering thoughts, no matter how obvious they might have been.

A corner of Lucky s mouth curled upward, and his heavy-lidded eyes focused on her lips with the intensity of lasers. «Is there something else you want me to put there?»

Serena s heart thudded traitorously at the involuntary images that flitted through her mind. It was all she could do to keep her gaze from straying to the part of his anatomy that was at her eye level.

«You've really cornered the market on arrogance, haven't you?» she said, as disgusted with herself as she was with him.

«Me?» he said innocently, tapping a fist to his chest. «Non. I just know what a woman really wants, that's all.»

«I'm sure you don't have the vaguest idea what a woman really wants,» Serena said as she untangled herself from the baire and tossed it aside. She offered Lucky her hand as if she were a queen, and allowed him to hand her up onto the dock, giving him a smug smile as her feet settled on the solid wood. «But if you want to go practice your theory on yourself, don't let me stop you.»

Lucky watched her walk away, perversely amused by her sass. She was limping slightly, but that didn't detract from the alluring sway of the backside that filled her snug white pants. He might not have known what Miss Sheridan really wanted, but he damn well knew what his body wanted.

It was going to be a long couple of days.

He pulled the pirogue up out of the water and left it with its cargo of suitcases and crawfish to join Serena on the gallery. He didn't like having her there. This place revealed things about him. Having her there allowed her to get too close when his defenses were demanding he keep her an emotional mile away. He might have wanted her physically, but that was as far as it went. He had learned the hard way not to let anyone inside the walls he had painstakingly built around himself. He would have been safer if she could have gone on believing he lived like an animal in some ancient rusted-out house trailer.

«It's very nice,» she said politely as he trudged up the steps onto the gallery.

«It's just a house,» he growled, jerking the screen door open. «Go in and sit down. I'm gonna take the sliver out of that foot of yours before gangrene sets in.»

Serena bared her teeth at him in a parody of a smile. «Such a gracious host,» she said, sauntering in ahead of him.

The interior of the house was as much of a surprise to her as the exterior had been. It consisted of two large rooms, both visible from the entrance-a kitchen and dining area, and a bedroom and living area. The place was immaculate. There was no pile of old hunting boots, no stacks of old porno magazines, no mountains of laundry, no litter of food-encrusted pots and pans. From what Serena could see on her initial reconnaissance, there wasn't as much as a dust bunny on the floor.

Lucky struck a match and lit a pair of kerosene lamps on the dining table, flooding the room with buttery-soft light, then left the room without a word. Serena pulled out a chair and sat down, still marveling. His decorating style was austere, as spare and plain as an Amish home, a style that made the house itself seem like a work of art. The walls had a wainscoting of varnished cypress paneling beneath soft white plaster. The furnishings appeared to be meticulously restored antiques-a wide-plank cypress dining table, a large French armoire that stood against the wall, oak and hickory chairs with rawhide seats. In the kitchen area mysterious bunches of plants had been hung by their stems from a wide beam to dry. Ropes of garlic and peppers adorned the window above the sink in lieu of a curtain.

Lucky appeared to approve of refrigeration and running water, but not electric lights. Another contradiction. It made Serena vaguely uncomfortable to think there was so much more to him than she had been prepared to believe. It would have been easy to dislike a man who lived in a hovel and poached for a living. This house and its contents put him in a whole other light-one he didn't particularly like to have her see him in, if the look on his face was any indication.