“That’s not what your eyes are tellin’ me, chere catin.”

Serena dragged in a ragged breath and held it, feeling as if she were going to explode from sheer fury. She slapped his hand away and took a step back from him. “I didn’t come here to be insulted or manhandled. I came here to hire a guide, Mister-“

“Doucet,” he supplied. “Etienne Doucet. Folks call me Lucky.”

Serena vaguely remembered a Lucky Doucet from high school. He’d been several classes ahead of her, an athlete, a loner with a reputation as a bad boy. The girls whose main interest in school had been guys had swooned at the mere mention of his name. Serena’s interests had lain elsewhere.

She looked at him now and thought whatever reputation he had sown back then he had certainly cultivated since. He looked like the incarnation of the word trouble. She had to be half mad to even consider hiring him. But then she thought of Gifford. She had to see him, had to do what she could to find out what had made him leave Chanson du Terre, had to do her best to try to convince him to come home. As tough as Gifford Sheridan liked to pretend he was, he was still a seventy-eight-year-old man with a heart condition.

“I’m Serena Sheridan,” she said in her most businesslike tone.

Lucky Doucet blinked at her. A muscle tensed, then loosened in his jaw. “I know who you are,” he said, an oddly defensive note in his voice. Serena dismissed it as unimportant.

“I came here to hire a guide, Mr. Doucet. Gifford Sheridan is my grandfather. I need someone to take me out to his cabin. Mr. Gauthier has informed me that all the more reputable guides are booked up for the weekend, which apparently leaves you. Are you interested in the job or not?”

Lucky moved back to lean negligently against the counter again. Behind him, Lawrence had switched off his wrestling program in favor of live entertainment. In the background Iry Lejeune sang “La Jolie Blonde” in crackling French over the radio. The pretty blonde. How apropos. He took a deep pull on his cigarette, sucking the smoke into the very corners of his lungs, as if it might purge the feelings shaking loose and stirring inside him.

When he had stepped from the back room and seen her he had felt as if he’d taken a vicious blow to the solar plexus. Shelby. The shock had dredged up memories and emotions like mud and dead vines churning up from the bayou in the wake of an outboard motor-pain, hate, fear all swirling furiously inside him. The pain and hate were old companions. The fear was for the control he felt slipping, sliding through his grasp like a wet rope. The feelings assaulted him still, even though he told himself this wasn’t the woman from his past, but her sister, someone he had never had any contact with. Nor did he want to. They were twins, after all, maybe not perfectly identical, but cut from the same cloth.

He stared at the woman before him, trying to set all personal feelings aside to concentrate on only the physical aspects of her. It shouldn’t have been difficult to do; she was beautiful. From the immaculate state of her honey-colored hair in its smooth French twist to the tips of her beige pumps, she radiated class.

He swore, throwing his cigarette to the battered wood floor and grinding it out with the toe of his boot. Without looking, he reached behind the counter and pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, helping himself to a generous swig. Lawrence said nothing, but frowned and glanced away, tilting his head in silent reproof. Resenting the twinge of guilt pinching him somewhere in the vicinity of where his conscience had once resided, Lucky put the bottle back.

Damn. He damned Gifford Sheridan for having granddaughters that looked like heaven on earth. He damned women in general and himself in particular. If he had a lick of sense he would send Miss Serena packing. He would go about his own business and let the Sheridans do what they would.

That was the kind of life he had chosen to live, solitary, and yet other lives kept drifting into his. He didn’t want to be touched. He didn’t need the trouble he knew was brewing on the Sheridan plantation, Chanson du Terre, didn’t need the reminder of past pain. But Giff had dragged him into it to a certain extent already and there was too much riding on the situation for him to decline playing so slight a role in the drama.

He cursed himself for caring. He had thought himself beyond it, thought the capacity to care had been burned out of him by the acidic quality of his experiences. But it was still there, which meant he had to find the strength to deal with it. God help him.

Serena gave him one last scathing glare and turned on her slim, expensive heel, heading for the street entrance of the store. Lucky swore under his breath and went after her, catching her by the arm.

“Where you goin’, sugar? I never said I wouldn’t take you.”

She looked pointedly at the big dirty hand circling her upper arm, then turned that defiant gaze up to his face. “Maybe I won’t take you, Mr. Doucet.”

“The way I see it, you don’t have much of a choice. Ain’t nobody else gonna take you out to Giffs.” He laughed without humor. “Ain’t nobody else crazy enough.”

“But you are?”

He smiled like a crocodile and leaned down toward her until his mouth hovered only a few inches above her lips. “That’s right,” he whispered. “I’m over the edge. I might do anything. Ask anyone ‘round this town here. They’ll all tell you the same thing-Il n’a pas rien il va pas faire. There’s nothing he won’t do. That Lucky Doucet, he’s one bad crazy son, him.”

“Well, I’m a psychologist,” she said with a saccharine-sweet smile. “So we ought to get along just peachy, shouldn’t we?”

He let go of her arm as if she had just told him she had leprosy. The expression of smug male arrogance abruptly disappeared, and his face became blank and unreadable. He turned and strode for a side door that stood open and led directly onto a dock.

Serena stood a moment, trying to gather some strength, her gaze on Lucky Doucet’s broad bare back as he walked away. She could feel old Lawrence staring at her, but she didn’t move. She’d never had such a… primal reaction to a man. She was a sophisticated, educated woman, a woman who prided herself on her ability to maintain control in every situation. But that foundation of control was trembling in the wake of Lucky Doucet, and she didn’t like it. He was rude and arrogant and… The other words that came to mind were far too flattering. What difference did it make what he looked like? He was a Neanderthal.

He was also her only hope of reaching Giff. And she had to reach him. Someone had to find out what was going on. Shelby claimed she hadn’t a clue as to why Gifford had suddenly deserted the plantation in favor of living out in the swamp. It might have been nothing more than a matter of Giff getting fed up with having Shelby and her family underfoot while their new house was under construction, but it might have been something more. It wasn’t like him to leave during a busy time of year, simply turning the reins of the sugarcane plantation over to his manager.

Shelby had peevishly suggested Gifford was getting senile. Serena couldn’t imagine her grandfather as anything other than sharp as a tack, but then, she hadn’t actually seen him in a while. Her practice in Charleston kept her too busy for many visits home. She had been looking forward to this one, looking forward to simply enjoying her ancestral home in all its springtime glory. Then Shelby had greeted her at the door with news of Gifford’s defection to the swamp.

He’d been out there two weeks. Two weeks with no word, and Shelby had done nothing about it except complain.

“What did you expect me to do?” she had asked. “Go out there after him? I have two children to raise and a real estate business to manage and a husband, and I’m the chairperson of the Junior League drive for canned goods for the starving peasants of Guatemala. I have responsibilities, Serena! I can’t just jump in a boat and go out there! Not that he would ever listen to a word I have to say anyway. And you can’t expect Mason to go out there. You know how beastly Gifford is to him. I’m just at my wit’s end trying to deal with him. You’re the psychologist. You go out there and talk some sense into that hard head of his.”