“Yes,” Serena murmured. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Canfield.”
“Don't mention it. I was merely performing my civic duty. If you need any further assistance, don't hesitate to call.” He rolled his eyes heavenward and heaved a dramatic sigh. “I may have every appearance of a dotty old codger, but I believe I still have a few tricks up my sleeve.”
Serena managed a pale smile as she watched the elderly lawyer stroll gracefully into the hall, Panama hat in hand. She listened as he exchanged a few lines of banter with Odille on his way out. Then the house fell into silence.
She could feel the power of Lucky's gaze on her as she went to the French doors. Trying to block the sound of departing squad cars from her mind, she looked through the panes of glass past the gallery, across the lawn. The bayou was a dark ribbon at the feet of the trees. The sky was a turbulent patchwork of rapidly changing cloud formations and patches of blue; it looked as unsettled as she felt.
She felt as if her life had been thrust into the winds of a hurricane. Everything had blown apart—her family, her image of herself, her sense of control over her own destiny—everything lay in fragments around her and she didn't know where to begin to pick up the pieces. She had come here for a few days of vacation. Instead, her life had been irreparably altered;
she
had been irreparably altered.
“What happens now?” Serena heard herself ask the question, but it felt as if it had come from someone else. She couldn't imagine why it would have come from her; she didn't think she really wanted to hear Lucky's answer.
“There'll be a hearing,” he said, deliberately choosing the mundane interpretation of the question. “They'll be charged. Bail will be set—for Burke and Shelby at least.”
Serena glanced back at Lucky. He was sitting back against the desk, turning a smooth glass paperweight over in his hands, his gaze steady on her.
“I never would have suspected Mason,” she murmured. “Never.”
“No one would have.” He put the paperweight down and came to stand behind her at the glass doors, his face grave. “No one can guess the kind of things pressure can drive a man to do,” he said softly. “I'm sorry about Shelby, Serena. I have my own grievance with her, but I know she's your sister and it must hurt.”
Tears stung Serena's eyes as she nodded. “I always wished we would have been as close as twins are supposed to be. We never were. Now we never will be. What's happened will always be between us.”
Lucky slid his arms around her and leaned down to kiss her cheek. “I told Hollings I'd take a deputy out to where we left Willis and Perret.”
Serena nodded, rubbing her hands over her upper arms as if to warm herself through the fabric of the soft faded chambray shirt she had borrowed from Lucky's wardrobe. It hung to her knees, and she had needed to fold the cuffs back five times to reveal her hands, but it had been a big improvement over her ruined silk blouse and the memories attached to it. She hadn't been able to look at that pile of clothing without shuddering. Lucky had taken the garments outside and burned them, then loaned her his shirt and a pair of old gray sweat pants.
“I suppose I should go and change,” she said. “You'll be wanting your shirt back.”
“Keep it.”
The words seemed innocuous enough, but Serena felt what was coming as surely as if he had just held up a red flag. This was it. This was going to be the moment Lucky chose to end it. He would say good-bye and ride off into the swamp without looking back, and she would be left with a broken heart and an old blue workshirt.
“A souvenir?” she asked dryly, looking up at him over her shoulder. “Something I can pack away in my hope chest and take out whenever I want to remember you fondly?”
Lucky stepped back, frowning. “Serena, don't.”
“Don't what?” She arched one golden brow. “Don't remember you fondly? Don't remember you at all? You want me to pretend I never fell in love with you? Is that what you're going to do, Lucky? Pretend you never told me you loved me?”
“I told you from the beginning what we could have.”
She held up both hands to ward off his words. Anger rushed into her head and pounded like mallets in her temples. “Don't you try to feed me that line again. I'm ready to gag on it! I don't care what boundaries we set. I don't care that it's been only a matter of days. What we have goes way beyond sex, and you know it.”
“I know it can't work,” he insisted, glaring at her.
She returned his hard gaze, matching his stubbornness ounce for ounce. “You won't let it work.”
Lucky spun away, his hands raised as if to strangle somebody as his temper surged. She was going to make this as difficult as possible for them both. She wouldn't just accept the facts and meekly walk away. No, no, she would tear them all apart and analyze them and try to find a cure.
“Dammit, Serena, you saw what happened out there last night,” he said tightly. He stared down at his boots because he was too ashamed to look her in the eye. “Is that the kind of man you want for a husband? Next time I might just slip off that edge.”
“I saw what happened,” Serena said softly, aching for him. “And I saw you get through it. You saved my life. And I watched you take care of me afterward, and I was there when you made love to me too. What happened with Willis doesn't make me love you less, Lucky. If anything, it makes me love you more.”
Lucky shook his head impatiently as he paced before her. “That's not love. That's pity. I know what you see when you look at me, Serena—some poor, crazy bastard who needs someone to take care of him.”
“Damn you, Lucky Doucet,” Serena snarled. She came around in front of him and grabbed the waistband of his jeans to keep him from walking away. She glared up at him, her face scratched and bruised, fury in her eyes. “I will thank you to stop interpreting my feelings for me. I don't pity you, you pity yourself. You're so damn proud and stubborn, you can't bear the idea that you're not perfect, that you have flaws and frailties like everyone else. You make me mad as hell, but I love you. You're strong and good and tender under all that macho bullshit. And you love me. Look me in the eye and tell me you don't.”
He knew he should have done it, but he couldn't. He couldn't look down into that beautiful battered face and tell her he didn't love her, when he loved her more than life. But he couldn't give her what she deserved either.
“I can't give you the kind of life you deserve.”
“I deserve to have the man I love.”
“I live in the swamp,” he said. “I can't tolerate people. I'm lucky if I get through a day without comin' half unglued. What kind of future can I give you? What do I have to offer you, Serena?”
Her answer was simple and devastating. “Your heart.”
Lucky closed his eyes like a man in pain.
“Don't try to tell me you don't have one. You're just afraid to give it,” Serena said, tears rising again to tighten her throat and sting the backs of her eyes. “I know what it is to be afraid, Lucky,” she whispered.
He shook his head, refusing to look at her, the muscles of his jaw working.
“Yes,” Serena insisted. She stared up at him earnestly, her heart in her eyes. “I know how it feels. I know what it's like to feel it take hold and let it control you. I also know I could help you conquer it—not because I'm a psychologist, but because I'm the woman who loves you.”
“I've got to go,” he muttered, looking away, his face a taut, unreadable mask.
Serena felt futility pull down on her like a weight. He wasn't going to give in. He was going to withdraw into himself and close the door on her as he had countless times in the past few days, and none of the tools of her trade would be able to pry it open. Her love was the only key she had, and Lucky was making it clear not even that would unlock the chains that bound him to his past.
“Hiding isn't the answer, Lucky,” she said sadly. “You're a good man, a strong man, a man with talents. You've got so much to offer if you'll only stop running from who you really are.”
“Let me go, Serena,” he said softly. “You'll be better off.”
She stepped back from him, lifting her chin defiantly as she tried to sniff back her tears. “You think you're doing this for me? Your nobility is sadly misplaced. I don't want it. I want a future with you. We could have so much more than you're willing to give us, Lucky. You let me know when you're ready to accept that. I'll be here waiting.”
Lucky's gaze sharpened on her. “You're not goin' back to Charleston?”
“No.” Serena hadn't been certain of an answer until that very second, but it came out strong and sure, the only decision she could have made. “I'll have to go back to settle my affairs, but that's all. Chanson du Terre is my home. I have responsibilities here, and roots. It's time I faced that and accepted myself for who I am inside instead of who I am in Charleston. I'm all through being a coward. You let me know when you are.”
She gave him one last long look, then started for the door.
A deputy stuck his head in the open doorway. “Hey, Lucky, the boat's here. You ready to go?”
Serena stopped and stood there, waiting to hear his answer as if it were the answer to the question in her heart. The silence dragged on.
“Yeah,” he said at last, his voice soft and heavy. “Let's get outta here.”
CHAPTER
20
“
SERENA? IS THAT YOU?
”
GIFFORD BELLOWED FROM
the depths of his study.
Serena paused outside the open door, suitcases in hand. “Yes, Giff, it's me,” she called back wearily.
“Hey, Miz 'Rena,” Pepper called, grinning at her from his position in a leather wing chair. He lifted his coffee cup to her in salute. “Mighty good to have you back.”
“Thanks, Pepper.” She wished she could have said it felt good to be back, but all she felt at the moment was exhausted. She thought she could have just laid down on the old Oriental rug between the two blue tick hounds and slept for a week or three. The hounds looked up at her with woeful expressions. One mustered the ambition to woof softly, then fell over on his side, exhausted from his effort.
Gifford abandoned the blueprints on his desk and strode across the room toward her. He looked as vibrant and healthy and cantankerous as ever. There was a flush of color on his high cheekbones. His eyes gleamed with a fierce intelligence. His white hair was in a state of disarray that told of numerous finger combings.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded to know. “You were due back two hours ago. Odille waited supper as long as she could.”
“I'm sorry. My flight was delayed.”
“They don't have telephones up in Charleston?” Gifford said with characteristic sarcasm. He gave her an admonishing glare, took her suitcases away from her, and started down the hall with them.
Serena had all she could do to dredge up the energy to catch up with him. The man was nearly eighty and she thought he could probably work her right into the ground on his worst day. He was amazing.
He stopped at the door to her room and set her luggage down. “You had an old man worried he might have scared you off for good,” he said gruffly as he straightened and looked her in the eye. The glare had softened grudgingly with lights of love and unspoken apology.
“No,” Serena said with a weary smile. “You can't scare me, you old goat. I'm no coward.”
“Damn right you're not.” Gifford's shoulders straightened with pride. “You're a Sheridan, by God.”
He looked at her for a long moment then, and sighed, all the bluster going out of him. He raised his weathered old hands and cupped her shoulders gently. “I'm glad you're back, Serena. I know I pushed and bullied you into it, but you still could have said no in the end. I'm glad you didn't.”
Serena slid her arms around his lean, hard waist and hugged him. What had happened had changed their relationship and complicated it, but when all that was stripped away, the most important fact remained.
“I love you,” she whispered, pulling back.
Gifford reddened and looked at his feet, grumbling, uncomfortable with voicing such feelings to a person's face.
“You gonna go after that big Cajun?” he asked suddenly.
The question took Serena by surprise, hitting her too suddenly for her to give a controlled response. She shook her head and looked at the floor, afraid of what her grandfather might pick up from her unguarded expression.
“What's the matter? He's not good enough for you 'cause he doesn't wear silk suits and read
The Wall Street Journal?
”
That brought Serena's chin back up. She glared at Gifford, realizing belatedly that he was once again playing her like a finely tuned fiddle. “That's not it and you know it,” she said evenly.
“He's had some rough times, but Lucky's a good man,” Gifford said gruffly.
“I know he is. Maybe someday he'll figure that out for himself. I can't push him into believing it.”
“Do you love him?”
“Yes.”
Gifford frowned, his bushy white brows pulling together in a V of disapproval above his dark eyes. “You want him, but you're not going after him?”
“We're talking about a relationship, not a big-game hunt,” Serena said dryly. “I can't go out in the swamp with a dart gun and bring him back to live in captivity. I can't drag him back here and force him to love me. Lucky has a lot of things from his past he needs to work out for himself. When he does—if he does—then maybe he'll see what we could have together.”
“Well, I hope so.” Gifford's frown softened, and he rubbed his chin. “I sure as hell don't want to think I dumped you on his doorstep just to get your heart broken. I was counting on getting some great-grandchildren out the deal.”
“Gifford!” Serena gasped, her cheeks blooming delicate pink.
The old man showed no signs of remorse. He didn't even have the grace to look guilty.
“You look as peaked and thin as a runt pup,” he complained, his gaze raking her head to toe. “I'll have Odille heat you a plate of food.”
Serena shook her head in amazement. “Don't bother her,” she said absently. “I ate on the plane.”
Gifford snorted his disapproval and moved off down the hall in the direction of the kitchen. “Wouldn't feed that trash to my hounds.”
Serena watched him go. One of the reasons she had decided to move back home was that she had figured Gifford would need her after everything that had happened. What a joke that was. It was quite clear he could take care of himself. She was going to have to stay on her toes just to keep up with him.
She dragged her suitcases into her bedroom, where she kicked off her shoes, stripped off her travel-wrinkled suit, slipped on her robe, and set about the business of unpacking before she collapsed under the weight of her fatigue.
She went about the task methodically, mechanically. It seemed most of her movements these days were mechanical. She was operating on automatic, taking care of day-to-day matters with an obvious lack of enthusiasm. In her logical, educated mind she knew this lethargy would pass eventually. In the meantime, she simply had to suffer through it, going through each day only to get to the next. It wasn't fun, but it was better than nothing. In her more philosophical moments she reflected it would give her added empathy for her patients in the future—as soon as she had some patients.
She had gone back to Charleston to tie up all the loose ends there, to resettle her patients with new therapists, to sell her condo and say good-bye to friends. All had been accomplished with minimal flap. Tomorrow she would drive up to Lafayette and start looking for office space. She should have been looking forward to the task, but she couldn't come up with any emotion to dent the numbness inside.
Too much had happened in too short a time. Her emotions had gone on overload and shorted out. It was a defense mechanism. It hurt to feel, therefore her mind had shut down the capacity to feel. The only time her emotions turned back on was late at night, when she was too tired and too lonely to keep them at bay. Then they rushed back in a high-voltage surge of pain that left her feeling even more drained and beaten.
A month had passed since the crisis at Chanson du Terre had come to a head. There would still be the trials to get through—Mason, Willis and Perret, Perry Davis, who had in fact been Mason's middleman in hiring the two thugs. Len Burke had gotten off scot-free. There had been no hard evidence connecting him to any crime other than greed. Shelby had already pleaded guilty to a minimal charge of conspiracy and been given a suspended sentence. She and her children had gone to stay with Mason's parents in Lafayette. The Talbots had raised Mason's bail and were reportedly calling in long-due favors to get him the best defense attorneys money could buy. Rumors abounded about deals to avoid the scandal of a trial, but there had been no official word.
Serena found herself oddly incurious about it. She wasn't interested in punishment or restitution. The trust she had lost, the disillusionment she had suffered, couldn't be repaired or replaced. She wanted only to put it all behind her and get on with her life.
Gifford had reinstated himself in the house and was going on as if all that had happened was already little more than a dim memory. He was engrossed in planning the new machine shed as well as in ordinary plantation business. Pepper and James Arnaud had him thinking about crawfish as a new cash crop to rotate with the sugarcane.
As it always did, life gradually returned to normal, healing over the wound and leaving only hidden scars behind to remind those who had lived through the trouble.
Serena placed a final stack of lingerie in the dresser and closed the drawer. As she lifted her head her gaze caught on her reflection in the beveled mirror. It was amazing. She looked no different than she had before all this had begun. The cuts and scratches of her harrowing night in the swamp had long since healed, leaving her skin unmarred. It seemed as if there should have been some lasting sign of that whole momentous chapter in her life plain on her face for all the world to see, but the scars were on the inside, on her heart.
Lucky had gone away with the deputy that day and never returned. Serena had been angry, hurt, heartbroken. She had considered going out into the swamp to get him, but had decided against it in the end. It went against her grain to give up on him, but she knew she was right in not pushing him. It had to be Lucky's decision to come back to her. She couldn't force him to love her enough. She couldn't force him to want to have a future. He had to decide his life was empty without her. He had to see that hiding from the world wasn't the answer to his problems.
It had become painfully obvious he was not going to make those decisions.
Maybe she'd been wrong about him. Maybe he didn't love her after all. Maybe what they'd had together had been nothing more than desire magnified and intensified by the circumstances. Maybe she was the only one who had felt something that went beyond passion. Maybe she was the only one left feeling empty.
Even as she opened the dresser drawer and pulled out the faded blue workshirt, Serena chastised herself. This wasn't very healthy behavior. It was certainly no way to get over a broken heart. But her inner critic wasn't very stringent. Some deeper wisdom told her she needed time to heal. None of her practical therapy methods were going to change the fact that she still loved Lucky Doucet or that she missed him or that she hurt because of losing him. No amount of counseling could change the fact that she needed to feel close to him now at the end of a long day, when she was feeling tired and in need of a broad shoulder to lean on. So she didn't stop her hands from lifting the old blue workshirt from the drawer, nor did she try to stop herself from bringing it up to brush the soft chambray against her cheek and breathe in the scent of it.
Hardly an hour went by that she didn't think of Lucky, wondering what he was doing, if he was all right, if he was still chasing poachers. She couldn't help thinking about him, picturing him standing at the back of his pirogue, poling silently through the swamp, or sitting in his studio staring moodily at a canvas. She couldn't help thinking about him, wondering what he was doing, if he ever missed her.
He had done what he thought was the right thing, the noble thing, in leaving her. Ironic, considering how determined he had been to convince her he was no good. Sometimes it made her angry when she thought of it—how high-handed he'd been in deciding what was best for her—and sometimes it made her ache with sadness that he'd seen himself as so unworthy of her love. Sometimes she told herself he might have known best and she should just give up on him and get on with her life. But she could never manage to tell herself that at night when she lay in her bed, staring into the darkness.
Hugging the shirt to her chest, she closed her eyes and sighed as the pain penetrated the protective wall she'd built around her heart. The scents and sounds of the summer night drifted in through the open French doors. And with them came the memory of the night she and Lucky had made love in this room.
No other man had ever made her feel the way Lucky did. No other man had ever gotten past her barrier of cool control and brought out the true woman in her. It didn't make sense. He was the last man she would have imagined falling in love with, dark, dangerous, rough-edged. And she would never have believed herself capable of falling so hard and so quickly. It defied logic. She could find no pat, analytical answer, but it was true nevertheless. No man had ever made her feel so alive, so filled with passion and yearning to be a part of another soul. She knew with a deep, sad certainty no man ever would.
All dressed up for me, sugar?
The words came to her like smoke, like mist on the bayou. Serena stared into the mirror and imagined she saw him standing behind her, his hot amber gaze roaming over her body, his artist's hands coming up to cup her shoulders and pull her back against him. She closed her eyes as she clutched the shirt to her chest and for just a second imagined his arms around her.
“Serena?”
Her heart jolted in her chest as she swung toward the door.
“Shelby.” She couldn't hide the surprise in her voice or any of the other feelings that sprang up at her sister's sudden appearance in the doorway. They had had no direct contact since that fateful day in Gifford's study. Serena hadn't been able to find it in her to be the one to take the initiative, and Shelby had shown no desire to do so either. Serena had wondered how long they would go on in limbo. It appeared her question was about to be answered.
“May I come in?” Shelby asked, sounding as formal as a stranger.
“Yes. Of course,” Serena said, folding her arms in front of her, Lucky's shirt caught between them.
“I came by to pick up the last of our things,” Shelby explained as she stepped in and closed the door behind her.
Serena made no argument, even though she knew all of Shelby's and Mason's things had long since been packed and sent to the Talbot home in Lafayette. Shelby had taken the crucial first step. What difference did it make if she had felt the need for an excuse?
Serena watched her sister as she moved slowly around the room, Shelby's normal energy level subdued as she straightened a doily here, a lampshade there. As always, she was impeccably dressed in a delicately printed sundress with a full skirt. Every honey-gold hair was in place, smoothed into a chignon at the back of her head. Noticeably absent from her ensemble was the expensive jewelry she so loved. The only ring she wore was her engagement diamond.