«Just say the word, sugar,» Lucky announced. «Your wish is my command.»

Serena broke away from the beam of his gaze and spoke through her teeth. «I wish you would stop wasting time on crude seduction routines and take me to Gifford's.»

He backed away from her, his expression cold and closed. «You'll get there.»

«When?»

«When I'm damn good and ready to take you.»

He proceeded out onto the back porch, where he set down a dish of dry cat food for the baby raccoons, shooting Serena a look that dared her to comment. She stood at the back door, watching quietly as the little bandits gamboled around his big feet, vying for his attention, playing with his shoelaces. Lucky grumbled at them in French, but made no move to lack them away. He looked annoyed and embarrassed and Serena felt a most disastrous weakening in the heart she was trying to steel against him.

«It's just easier to feed them than have them in my garbage all the time, that's all,» he said defensively. «It's not like they're pets.»

The words had barely left his mouth when one of the coons sat up on its hind legs and snickered at him, reaching up with its front paws to bat at his pant leg.

«Why not just shoot them?» Serena asked sweetly. «You could save up all their little hides and make yourself a shirt.»

Lucky narrowed his eyes and growled at her, but the effect was ruined when another raccoon reached from its perch on the gallery railing for the shiny button on Lucky s jeans. He arched away from it, scolding it in rapid French. The little coon sat back and whinnied at him, and he reached out grudgingly to scratch it behind one triangular ear.

Serena felt her heart give a traitorous thump. The big bad poacher had a soft spot for little animals. She reminded herself that even Hitler had had a pet, and she forced herself to go back to the table to wait.

Only after a breakfast of fried catfish and a bottle of beer did Lucky give any indication of being ready to take her to Gifford's.

«I've got better things to do than play chauffeur,» he grumbled as he poled the pirogue away from the shore.

Serena shot him a look over her shoulder. «You know, I'm sick of hearing you complain. If you didn't want to get involved in this, you could have left me at Gifford's yesterday. Why bring me here if you're too busy to take me back?»

He arched a brow above the rim of his mirrored sunglasses with insulting lasciviousness. «Do you really have to ask, sugar?»

She narrowed her eyes speculatively. «You know, I think you do that on purpose.»

«What?»

«Make obnoxious sexist remarks. I think you do it to make me angry, to throw me off the topic. Why is that, Lucky? Are you afraid to have a real conversation with a woman?»

«I'm not afraid of anything,» he said too vehemently, giving the push-pole a mighty shove. «I'm sure as hell not afraid of you.»

They traveled on in a silence that was as thick as the muggy air.

No shotgun blast greeted them this time as they rounded the bend to Gifford's cabin. Gifford sat on the steps tying fishing flies. Pepper Fontenot sat in a ratty old green and white lawn chair in the yard with a gutted outboard motor on a tarp at his feet. The clamorous sounds of a Cajun band blasted out of a portable radio on the gallery.

«Hey, Giff, what sa matter with you? You run outta shells or somethin'?» Lucky hollered as he piloted the boat alongside the rickety dock.

Gifford pushed himself to his feet and jammed his big hands at his waist. «Hell, I ain't wasting good buckshot on you, Doucet.»

«What about me?» Serena called. She waited for Lucky to pull the nose of the pirogue up on shore and exited from the bow, preferring to step on land rather than risk her neck on the rotted pier again.

Gifford gave her a long, hard stare as she came to stand at the foot of the steps. «I figured you'd be on your way back to Charleston by now.»

Serena swallowed down the hurt and met his gaze head-on. «I told you, I won't leave this swamp until you do. I want you to come back to Chanson du Terre with me.»

«And I told you, I'm not going. You're not bossing me around, little girl. I don't give a toot how many degrees you have. You can't hightail it out of Lou'siana first chance you get, then come on back and try to run things on the weekend.»

She didn't back down. Lucky watched her take it on the chin. He cursed Gifford for being so hard on her, then told himself he didn't care. He leaned a hip against the newel post and lit his fourth cigarette of the morning, sucking smoke down a throat that was already raw.

He felt like holy hell. Even in the best of circumstances he never slept more than a couple of hours at a stretch because of nightmares, but the previous night had been worse than usual. What little sleep he'd gotten had been plagued with memories of pain and betrayal. As if his conscious mind hadn't been doing the job well enough, his subconscious had seen fit to remind him that beautiful women were the cause of most of his problems. First Shelby, then Amalinda Roca, the lovely little viper whose duplicity had helped to land him in a Central American prison.

He had finally given up on the idea of sleep and had proceeded to attempt to drown his foul mood and sexual frustration with whiskey, succeeding only in giving himself a colossal hangover. Now his head banged in syncopated rhythm with the gash in his arm where Mean Gene Willis had managed to nick him.

«You look like hell,» Gifford said, his hard gaze still on Serena. His voice had lost some of its edge, betraying his true concern as he took in the dark crescents beneath her eyes. He glanced at Lucky to distract himself from his guilt. «You both look like hell.»

«Mebbe they both been raisin hell,» Pepper suggested, chuckling merrily at the dark looks his comment received from both Lucky and Serena. Gifford only raised a bushy white brow in speculation as he studied them.

Serena felt a blush rise to her cheeks at the memory of the near miss of the night before. There but for the grace of God and Smith amp; Wesson… If the sight of Lucky s gun hadn't brought her back to reality in a cold rush, she may well have had something to blush about now. Dropping her head, she made her way up the steps, past her grandfather and onto the gallery.

«I could use a cup of coffee. Pepper, do you still make it strong?»

«Black as dat bayou and strong 'nough to curl your purty blond hair, pichouette,» Pepper said, flashing his teeth.

«Sounds like heaven,» Serena mumbled, letting herself in the front door.

Gifford remained on the steps, staring down at Lucky. «What have you got to say for yourself? You been fooling 'round with my little girl?»

Lucky slid his sunglasses on top of his head and gave Gifford a belligerent look. «What would you care, old man? All you wanna do is give her the sharp side of your tongue. You're the one left her with no place to stay last night.»

«I got my reasons.»

«Like you got your reasons for holin' up out here?» Lucky shook his head and muttered an expletive. «Cut her some slack, Giff. She came, didn't she?»

«Yeah, she came, and she'll leave again too,» Gifford drawled, nodding. «First chance she gets. She don't give a damn about what happens here. The girl oughta have some respect for family, for tradition.»

Lucky snorted. «You got a funny way of teachin' respect. Dump her out in the swamp to spend the night. She'd probably cut your heart out if you had one.»

The idea that Gifford had known about Serena's fear and played on it infuriated Lucky. And the rise of his protective instincts made him even angrier. He swore again, tossed his cigarette butt to the dirt, and snuffed it out viciously with the toe of his boot. «I oughta just wash my hands of the lot of you. It's nothin' but trouble, this business.»