And when Gifford was gone and Shelby was off in Baton Rouge and Serena was back in Charleston… what then?

«Oh, no, you don't,» Serena muttered, pushing herself up from her place at the table. This was exactly what Gifford wanted-to rouse her sentimental streak.

Instead, she turned her mind to another puzzle- Lucky. She wandered the two rooms of his cottage, trying to discern as much as she could about him from the things she found. It was an exercise in perception and reasoning, she told herself, not simple curiosity about the man.

What she found in examining Lucky s lair was almost nothing. Utilitarian furnishings that happened to be antique. Nothing frivolous, nothing personal, nothing more revealing than a respect for his heritage and a need for order. He kept no books in sight, no magazines, no photographs, no art on the walls. But that in itself was a revelation. He was a man in hiding. His house was hidden. In his house, everything personal was hidden. He let nothing of his inner self show if he could help it at all.

Why was that? It didn't seem like a wholly natural reticence. It seemed more as if he had carefully constructed a maze of walls around himself for protection. What would a man like Lucky need protection from? He seemed so tough, so self-reliant. And yet there were the contradictions. He gave food to orphaned raccoons. He had defended her to Gifford. He had held her when she had felt miserable and afraid.

She opened the tall door of the armoire in the dining room. The shelves of the cupboard were stocked with only the kind of things one would expect to find in a dining room. Serena groaned a little in disappointment and hesitated a moment before crossing into the other room, which was, with the exception of the quality of the furnishings, barren as a monk's cell.

«Jackpot,» she whispered as she swung open the door of the large armoire that stood opposite the foot of the bed.

The closet had a column of cubbyholes along the left side, with an area for hanging clothes on the right. A set of three deep drawers created the base. She glanced over his wardrobe, which consisted of jeans, fatigue pants, T-shirts, and an army dress uniform with a chest full of decorations. The uniform interested her, but the smaller shelves on the left drew Serena's immediate attention.

They held framed photographs. The Doucet family captured at all different times of their lives. There was a sepiatoned wedding picture of his parents-a handsome, smiling couple gazing at each other with love. There was a battered black and white snapshot of his father standing with his hand on the shoulder of a gangly boy who was proudly displaying a trophy-size fish and a gap-toothed grin. Lucky, she assumed, looking much younger and lighter of heart. There were more recent photos of other members of the clan, unmistakable by their resemblance to one another, children of various ages, chubby babies in frilly baptism gowns, and grade-schoolers taking first communion in their Sunday best with their faces shining and their cowlicks slicked into submission.

Serena felt her heart melt a little as she looked at the photographs. Lucky had a family and he loved them. He wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of framing the pictures if he hadn't cared deeply. Why did he isolate himself from them? Shelby had said his parents were nice people, respectable people. Did Lucky feel unworthy of them because of the life he led? Or was there something else that made him feel separate?

She reached out to touch the photograph of Lucky and his father, brushing her fingertips over the smiling face of the boy he had been. What had happened to that boy to put shadows in his eyes? What events had turned him into the dangerous, brooding man he was today?

A yearning to know that was deeper than professional curiosity ached inside Serena. She wanted to know Lucky's secrets, wanted to reach past them to offer him something-solace, comfort. This longing wasn't wise, and it brought her no joy, but she didn't try to deny it. She just stood there, hurting for him, hurting for herself, wishing to God she had never left Charleston.

«Mom sent over a chocolate cake and some cookies and two loaves of French bread she baked today. I just set 'em on the counter.»

Serena shrieked and jumped back from the armoire as if it had suddenly come alive. She swung around with a hand over her heart to keep it from leaping out of her chest. Standing at the entrance to the room was a boy of about thirteen, beanpole-thin in jeans that were too short and a T-shirt that proclaimed Breaux Bridge to be the crawfish capital of the world. His eyes were dark and round with excitement.

«You ain't Lucky,» he blurted out. «But Lucky sure is.»

The instant the remark registered in his brain he flushed a shade of red that rivaled the color of the baseball cap he wore backward on his head.

Serena laughed, more out of relief than anything. «You startled me,» she said, pushing the door of the armoire closed. «Lucky's not here right now. He should be back in about half an hour. I'm Serena Sheridan.»

«Will Guidry.» He came forward hesitantly, started to offer her his hand but stopped midway to check it for dirt. Finding it relatively clean, he stuck it out in front of him again, looking as if he fully expected contact with her to give him a painful shock.

«It's nice to meet you, Will.» Serena gave his hand a firm shake and released it. «Would you care to wait for Lucky to come back?»

«Um-well-no-that's okay,» the youth stammered. He jammed his hands into his pants pockets and shuffled his oversize feet, staring down at them as if they were the most amazing sight he'd come across recently. «I was just leavin' off some stuff. Mom says she knows he won't take nothing-«He grimaced and corrected himself. «Won't take anything for runnin' them poachers off our crawfish nets, but she said the least she could do was bake him somethin' nice seein' as how he lives out here all alone-«He broke off and winced again, as if some unseen etiquette monitor was smacking him with a switch every time he goofed up. «I mean, he did live alone until you- But then, maybe you aren't-I mean, this could just be- Aw, hell-I mean, heck-«

Serena stared at him, everything inside her going still. «What did you say?» she asked softly, ignoring the boy's red-faced embarrassment. «Did you say 'running poachers off?»

Will shuffled his sneakers and shrugged, giving her a look that told her he suspected she might be a little odd. «Well, yeah. That's sorta what he does.»

«But I thought-«Serena cut herself off, snapping her mouth shut with an audible click.

She had thought what Lucky had wanted her to think. She had taken one look at him and assumed he was an outlaw, and he had let her believe it, had reinforced that image every chance he'd gotten. This was certainly her day to feel like a fool.

«We been havin' some trouble, you know,» Will said somberly, scratching his bony elbow. «My dad's gone down to the Gulf to look for work, so it's just Mom and us kids to home. Poachers figured our nets would be easy pickin'. Lucky showed 'em different.»

«Lucky,» Serena murmured. Big bad Lucky Doucet. Savior of orphaned animals. Defender of the defenseless. Not poaching, but chasing poachers away from the nets of women and children.

«He's some kind of man,» Will said happily. «But I guess you already know that.» His gaze dropped abruptly and he turned red again. He was at the age where nearly everything struck him as a sexual innuendo, and every social blunder seemed catastrophic. He looked at Serena with horror. «I didn't mean that you'd know. I meant, you know…»

«I know,» she said absently, still too stunned to take much pity on the poor kid.

If Lucky wasn't a poacher, then why had he let her believe he was? And why the antipathy between him and the game warden? Maybe they simply didn't like each other. Maybe Lucky didn't think Perry Davis was doing a good enough job. There could have been any number of reasons, not all of them good. Just because he wasn't a poacher didn't mean «he wasn't guilty of something. There was still the matter of the illegal liquor and the room upstairs he didn't want her to see.