Go out there. Into the swamp. Serena’s blood had run cold at the suggestion. It ran cold now at the thought. But she was just angry enough and stubborn enough to get past her fear for the moment. She had stormed from the house to go in search of a guide without even bothering to change her clothes. She wouldn’t allow herself to dwell on her fear. She had to see her grandfather and there was only one way to do that. She had to go out into the one place she thought of as hell on earth, and the only man available to take her had just walked away.

Serena rushed after Lucky Doucet, struggling to hurry in her narrow skirt and shoes that had not been intended for walking on rough planking. The midday sun was blinding as she stepped out onto the dock. The stench of dirty water and gasoline hung in the thick, still air. Lucky stood at the open door to the workshop.

“We haven’t discussed your fee,” Serena said, ignoring the possibility that he had changed his mind about taking her. She struggled for an even breath as she faced his chest.

He looked down his nose at her with an expression that suggested she had just insulted his mother. “I have no need of your money,” he said contemptuously.

Serena rolled her eyes and lifted her hands in a gesture of exasperated surrender. “Pardon me for thinking you might like an honest wage for an honest job. How bourgeois of me.”

He ignored her, bending to pick up a heavy cardboard box full of oily black motor parts. He lifted it as though it weighed no more than a kitten and set it on a workbench to sort through it. His attitude was one of dismissal and irritating in the extreme.

“Why are you making this so difficult?” Serena asked.

He turned his head and gave her a nasty, sardonic smile. “Because I’m a difficult kind of guy. I thought you might have figured that out by now. You’re an intelligent woman.”

“Frankly, I’m amazed you would credit a woman with having a brain. You strike me as the sort of man who sees women as being useful for only one purpose.”

“I said you were intelligent, not useful. I won’t know how useful you are until I have you naked beneath me.”

Heat flared through Serena like a flash fire. She attributed it to anger. Certainly it had nothing to do with the sudden image of lying tangled in the sheets with this barbarian. She crossed her arms in front of her defensively and made a show of looking all around them before returning her belligerent gaze to Lucky. “Pardon me, I was just checking to see if I had somehow been transported back into the Stone Age. Are you proposing to hit me over the head with a dinosaur bone and drag me back to your cave, Conan?”

He raised a warning finger, his brows drawing together ominously over glittering eyes. “You got a mouth on you, chere.”

He shuffled toward her, backing her up against the door frame. He braced his forearms on the wood above her head and leaned down close. His breath was warm against her cheek and scented with the smoky taint of tobacco and whiskey.

“I have never forced a woman,” Lucky said, his voice low and soft, the molten gold of his eyes burning into Serena’s. “I never have to.”

She was a spoiled society bitch and he wanted nothing to do with her. He’d been burned badly enough to know better. Dieu, he’d learned his first lesson at the hands of her twin! To get that close again was to give in entirely to the demons of insanity.

Still, desire ribboned through him. The subtle, expensive scent of her perfume lured him closer. He dropped his head down near the curve of her shoulder and battled the urge to nuzzle the tender spot just below her ear and above the prim stand-up collar of her dark pink blouse.

“I’m hiring you as a guide,” she said through her teeth, her voice trembling with rage or desire or both. “Not for stud service.”

Lucky mentally thanked her for breaking the spell. He stepped back, cocking one hip and hooking a thumb in the waistband of his pants. He gave her a devilish grin. “Why not, angel? I’d give you the ride of your life.”

She glared at him in utter disgust and walked away to stand at the edge of the dock, her slender back rigid. He had no doubt irreparably offended her ladylike sensibilities, he thought. Fine. That was exactly what he wanted. The more emotional distance he put between himself and a woman like Serena Sheridan, the better. His mother would have peeled the hide off him for talking that way to a woman, but this was more than just a matter of manners, it was a matter of survival.

He scooped up the box of motor parts and started down the pier with it, calling over his shoulder as he went. “So, you comin’, chere, or what? I don’t have all day.”

Serena turned and stared in disbelief as he headed down the worn dock. She noticed for the first time that his hair was nearly as long as hers, tied in a short queue at the back of his thick neck with a length of leather boot lace. A pirate. That was what he reminded her of-in looks and attitude.

“You’re leaving now?” she said, once again rushing to catch up with him.

He didn’t answer her. It was perfectly obvious he meant to leave. Serena cursed Lucky Doucet and spike heels in the same breath as she picked up her pace. Talk about your grade-A bastards, this guy took the prize. And she wanted to be the one to personally pin the medal on him. If they were in Charleston, never in a million years would she have put up with being treated the way he was treating her. She had too much sense and self-respect to fall for that tame-the-rogue-male syndrome. But they weren’t in Charleston. They were in South Louisiana, at the edge of the Atchafalaya Swamp, some of the wildest, most remote swampland in the United States. And Lucky Doucet wasn’t some button-down executive or construction worker she could bring to heel with a cool look. He was a breed unto himself and only marginally more civilized than the bayou country around them.

Abruptly, the heel of one of her pumps caught between planks in the dock and gave way, nearly pitching Serena headfirst off the pier and into the oily water. She swore aloud as she stumbled awkwardly, hampered by the narrow skirt around her knees, just managing to catch her balance before it was too late.

Lucky stopped and turned toward her with a look of mock affront. “Why, Miz Serena, such language! What will the ladies at the Junior League think?”

She narrowed her eyes and snarled at him as she hopped on her ruined shoe and pulled the other one off. The instant she put her foot down, she ran a sliver into it, but she refused to cry out or even acknowledge the pain. She limped up to Lucky, struggling to maintain some semblance of dignity.

“I’m not prepared to leave just now, Mr. Doucet,” she said primly. “I was thinking more along the lines of tomorrow morning.”

He shrugged without the least show of concern. A brilliant white grin split his features. “Well, that’s too bad, sugar, ‘cause if you’re leavin’ with me, you’re leavin’ now.”