It all caught up with her then. The fear, the memories, the episode with Gifford, her exhaustion, the futility of trying to hurt Lucky all rushed up on her and hit with the strength and finesse of a freight train. She stopped struggling against him. His grip relaxed and she jerked her arms back, pulling free. She turned toward the door and pressed her hands over her face as the last brick in her wall of resolve crumbled.

She didn't want to be there. She didn't want to be frightened. She didn't want to have to deal with any family problems. She didn't want to have to deal with a man like Lucky.

Tears came very much against her will, but she didn't have the strength to stop them. They rolled like pearls down her cheeks.

Lucky watched with something akin to horror. The sound of a woman crying flipped a panic switch inside him. He could deal with her smart mouth and her cool reserve and the temper she had just unleashed on him, but tears… Dieu! And these were the real thing, not some phony whimpering designed to win her something. These were real tears, and it was plain she didn't like having him see them. She kept her back to him, her shoulders rigid as she tried in vain to fight them off. He stood there helpless, his hands jammed at his waist. The image of her standing on the pier at Gauthier s came back to him-the way the color had suddenly washed from her face as she'd looked down at his pirogue, the impression he'd had of inner fragility. It was there again, that sense that something inside her had cracked.

He couldn't help but feel empathy. He knew what it was to feel strength give way inside, to feel darkness creeping in like cold black ink. It didn't matter how many times he told himself he wouldn't get involved with her beyond the physical sense. It didn't matter how detached he told himself he was. He couldn't ignore this kind of pain.

«Hey,» he said, coming to stand directly behind her. He rested a hand on her shoulder and held on, gentle but firm, as she tried to shrug him off. «What'sa matter, chere? Did I scare you that bad? I didn't mean to. I don' like comin' in the front door. It's an old habit that's saved my miserable hide more than once. Saved me from gettin' a goose egg this time,» he said, pushing at the candlestick with the toe of his boot.

«It's not that,» Serena whispered miserably. She shook her head and tried to sniff back the tears, but they still squeezed out to dribble down her face. She felt too defeated to cling to her pride. It served no purpose anyway. Why not tell him and get it over with? He probably thought the worst of her as it was, and what did it matter if he did? She didn't have to answer to him.

«It's this place. The swamp,» she said. She brushed her hair back from her face and stared out the door at the shades of darkness beyond. «It terrifies me.»

«Is that why you never went out to get your bags?»

Serena nodded. «I'm sure it seems completely stupid to you, but going out there in the dark is one of my worst nightmares.»

«Why is that?» Lucky asked, backing a step away from her and letting his hand drop from her shoulder.

«Why do you hate this place so? Is it too dirty for you? Too primal? It offends your sophisticated sensibilities that much?»

The bitterness in his voice touched Serena's raw nerves like acid. She jerked around to face him, glaring up at him through her tears. «Stop it. I'm sick of your reverse snobbery. Stop putting me down because I prefer to live in a city and hold a regular job and wear a complete set of clothes. You don't know anything about me. You don't have any idea why I hate this place.»

«Then tell me.» He spoke it like a challenge, told himself he didn't care what the answer was, and waited to hear it just the same.

Serena blew a long sigh of resignation between her lips. Wrapping her arms around herself, she turned once again to face the door. «When I was seventeen I got lost out here,» she began, relating the tale in a voice carefully devoid of emotion. «My sister and I and some friends came out for the day in Giff's bass boat. We were just fooling around, having fun. We had packed a picnic lunch and we stopped off at a little clearing to eat. I wasn't sure where we were, but the boy driving the boat said he was, so I didn't worry about it.

«Shelby and I started getting on each other about something. I don't even remember what it was. We were always like that-bickering over little things, always taking opposite sides of an issue no matter how trivial. Anyway, when we got ready to leave, I realized I had forgotten my jacket in the clearing and went back alone to get it. Shelby talked the boy who was driving the boat into leaving me there.»

«She left you there. Alone.» Anger simmered in Lucky's gut, hot and furious. Shelby. «The bitch.»

Serena made a dismissive gesture with one hand, then tucked it back against her. «It was just a spiteful joke. She didn't mean for anything bad to happen.»

«Didn't she?» Lucky said flatly.

«No. Of course not. She was just mad at me and wanted to give me a scare. They went off in the boat, intending to come back and get me in an hour or so, but a storm blew up.

«It was one of those days. The sky was blue one minute and black the next.» She could still see it clearly in her mind's eye-the clouds rolling in across the swamp, gray and black with a strange yellow tinge, like noxious smoke boiling up out of a hundred factory chimneys. She could still taste the air, could still feel the weight of it pressing on her the moment before the storm broke. She could still hear the deafening thunder, the vicious cracks of the lightning as it ripped across the sky.

«It rained so hard it looked like ice coming down in sheets. It stormed for hours, and when the thunder and lightning finally quit, it just kept on pouring. I got scared. I knew no one would be able to come and get me with a boat the way it was raining. I thought if I got pointed in the right direction, I might be able to find my way back. I was wrong.»

She stopped there, unable to talk about what it had been like to walk on and on, following swelling streams that ran one direction and then another, turning so many times she'd had no idea whether she had been going toward home or hell. She couldn't talk about the terror of spending the night with no shelter, no supplies, no food. She couldn't put into words what it had felt like to crouch on a tree stump as that dark water swirled up toward her, driving a trio of cotton-mouths up to share her perch.

The pressure building inside her as she relived the memories forced the false sense of calm from her voice. «I don't remember a lot of what happened,» she said in a tremulous whisper. «I blocked a lot of it out. I remember being cold and wet… and so afraid, I thought I'd choke on it… shaking so hard with fear that I almost couldn't walk. I remember the look on Gifford's face when they found me.»

«How long did it take?»

«Two days.»

Lucky swore under his breath. He had grown up on the bayous, fishing and hunting with his father and brothers, exploring just for the sheer joy of it. It was nothing for him to spend days in this wilderness. He knew every plant, every animal, every insect, every inch of mud and water. But he could imagine the kind of girl Serena had been-a soft, pretty debutante, member of the country club and cheerleading squad-and he could imagine her terror. The swamp was an unforgiving place, a place of natural beauty and natural violence. It didn't suffer fools gladly. Serena had been thrown into it completely unprepared. Considering the circumstances, that she had survived was a miracle.

And it had all been Shelby's fault.

It was Shelby's fault Serena was standing before him now, her fierce pride in tatters, trembling as if she were being given jolts of electricity at regular intervals. She had had this fear inflicted on her by her own sister, her twin. That was unthinkable to Lucky. Whatever else he might have done in his life, he had never intentionally hurt one of his own family members. But Shelby had. Shelby, who didn't care whom she hurt as long as she got what she wanted.