It was the hangout of poachers and men whose backgrounds were filled with more shadows than the swamp. And even among them, Lucky Doucet stood out as a remarkably dangerous sort of man. The men sized him up warily, the women covetously, but no one approached him.
The bartender, a portly man with a dense, close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard, groaned and rolled his eyes like a man in pain. He brought up the rag he was wiping the bar with and patted it against his double chins like an old matron trying to ward off a fainting spell.
“Jesus, Lucky, I don' want no trouble in here,” he wailed, waddling toward Lucky's end of the bar. His little sausage fingers knotted together around the towel in a gesture of supplication. “I just barely got the place patched up from the las' time.”
Lucky shrugged expansively, blinking innocence. “Trouble? Me cause you trouble, Skeeter? Hell, I just came in for a drink. Give me a shot and a Jax long-neck.”
Muttering prayers, Skeeter moved to do his bidding, sweat beading on his bald spot like water on a bowling ball.
Lucky's gaze homed in on Pou Perret, a little muskrat with a pockmarked face and a thin, droopy mustache. He was sitting at the far end of the bar, deep in conversation with a local cockfight referee. Picking up his beer bottle by the neck, Lucky sauntered down to the end of the bar and tapped the referee on the shoulder. “Hey, pal, I think I hear your mother callin'.”
The man took one look at Lucky and vacated his seat, shooting Perret a nervous glance as he moved away into the smokier regions of the bar. Sipping his beer, Lucky eased himself onto the stool and hooked the heels of his boots over the chrome rung.
“How's tricks, Pou? Where's Willis? In the back cheatin' at
bourré?
You out here keepin' watch or somethin', little weasel?”
Perret scowled at him and shrunk away to the far side of his stool like a dog afraid of getting kicked. He muttered an obscene suggestion half under his breath.
“That's anatomically impossible,
mon ami
,” Lucky said, taking another sip of his beer. “See the things you might have learned if you'd stayed in school past the sixth grade? All this time you've probably been wearin' yourself out trying to do that very thing you suggested to me.” He chuckled at Perret's comically offended expression as he helped himself to a pack of cigarettes lying on the bar. He lit one up and took a leisurely drag. Exhaling a stream of smoke, he shrugged and grinned shrewdly. “'Course, mebbe Willis, he helps you out with that, eh?”
Perret narrowed his droopy eyes to slits. “You bastard.”
Lucky's expression went dangerously still. His smile didn't waver, but it took on a quality that would have made even fools reconsider the wisdom of getting this close to him. “You say that in front of my
maman
, I'll cut your tongue out,
cher
,” he said in a silky voice. “My folks are respectable people, you know.”
“Yeah,” Perret admitted grudgingly, bobbing his head down between his bony shoulders like a vulture. He scratched his chest through his dirty black T-shirt, sniffed, and took another stab at belligerence. “How'd they ever end up with the like of you?”
Lucky's eyes gleamed in the dim light as he looked straight into Perret's ferret face. “I'm a changeling, don'tcha know. Straight up from hell.”
Perret shifted uneasily on his seat, superstition shining in his dark eyes like a fever. He lifted a hand to the dime he wore on a string around his neck. He snatched his cigarettes out of Lucky's reach and shook one out for himself, sliding a glance at Lucky out the corner of his eye. “What you want, Doucet?”
Lucky took his time answering. He stood and shoved the barstool out of his way so he could lean lazily against the bar. He set his cigarette in an ashtray and took another long swallow of his beer before turning to look at Perret again.
“You been sniffin' 'round the wrong part of the swamp this last couple of weeks, louse,” he said quietly. “Me, I think it might be better for your health if you go raidin' elsewhere.”
Perret made a face and shrugged off the warning. “It's a free country. You don' own the swamp, Doucet.”
Lucky arched a brow. “No? Well, I own this knife, don't I?” he said, sliding the hunting knife from its sheath. He grabbed a fistful of Perret's T-shirt and leaned over until Perret nearly fell off his stool. The wide blade gleamed just inches from the man's nose. “And I can cut you up into 'gator bait with it, can't I?”
Conversations around them died abruptly. On the other side of the bar, Skeeter Mouton whimpered and crossed himself, sending up a prayer for the survival of his establishment. Clifton Chenier's accordion sang out from the speakers of the jukebox, sounding as raucous and out of place as a reggae band in church.
“Come on, Lucky, don' go cuttin' him up in here,” Skeeter pleaded. “I won' never get all the blood out the floor!”
Perret turned gray and swallowed as if he were choking on a rock, his dark eyes darting from Lucky's face to the knife and back.
There was a commotion at the back of the room as a door burst open and a group of men emerged, their expressions ranging from avid interest to livid anger. At the front of the pack was Mean Gene Willis. Willis had been a roughneck down in the Gulf and a convict in the Angola penitentiary. He was a good-sized man with fists as big as country hams and a face like a side of beef. He made a beeline for Lucky with murder in his eyes.
Lucky let go of Perret, snatched up his untouched whiskey, and flung it into Willis's face. The big man howled and lunged blindly for Lucky, who met his advance with a boot to Willis's beer gut. Perret took advantage of the distraction to grab Lucky's beer bottle and break it on the edge of the bar. As he swung it in an arch for Lucky's head, a gun went off. Women screamed. Someone kicked out the plug on the jukebox. There was an instant of deafening silence, then a man's voice rang out.
“That's enough! Y'all stop it or I swear I'll shoot somebody and call it in the line of duty.”
Perret dropped his broken bottle and slinked away like the rat he was. Willis lay groaning on the floor, holding his stomach.
Lucky stepped back casually and sheathed his knife, his gaze drifting over the uniformed agent who had hurried out of the back-room card game with Willis. He had gone to school with Perry Davis and had disliked him since kindergarten. Davis was a man of fair, baby-faced looks and an annoying air of self-importance that was only more grating in adulthood, considering the fact that he was lousy at his job.
Lucky picked up his cigarette from the ashtray on the bar and took a slow pull on it. “Is this the kind of thing they were referring to when they named it the Department of
Wildlife
and Fisheries, Agent Davis? You playing
bourré
in a roadhouse?”
Davis gave him a cold look. “What I'm doing here is none of your business, Doucet.”
“No? A respectable employee of the government gamblin' on taxpayer's time? That's none of my business?”
“What do you care? I doubt you pay taxes and you sure as hell aren't respectable.”
Lucky chuckled. “That's right,
cher
, I'm not. You'd do well to remember that.”
“Are you threatening me, Doucet?”
“Who, me? I don't make threats.” His gaze took on the cold, hard look of polished brass, and his voice dropped a notch. “I don't have to.”
A muscle worked nervously in Davis's jaw. “I'm not afraid of you, Lucky.”
Lucky smiled. “Well then, I guess it's not true what folks say about you, is it? You're every bit as dumb as you look.”
Davis's pale complexion turned blotchy red, but he said nothing. He holstered his gun and turned away to shoo the bar's patrons back to whatever they had been doing before the ruckus.
Willis struggled to his feet. Doubled over with an arm across his belly, he glared at Lucky. “I'll get you, you coonass son of a bitch. You wait 'n' see.”
Lucky dropped his cigarette and ground it out on the floor with his boot. “Yeah, I'll be losin' sleep over that, I will,” he drawled sardonically. “Stay out of my swamp, Willis.”
He turned toward the door to make his exit and his heart jolted hard in his chest. Serena Sheridan was standing right in front of him with her little calfskin purse clutched to her chest, her eyes wide and her pretty mouth hanging open in shock. In her prim suit and slicked-back hairdo, she looked like a schoolmarm who'd just gotten her first eyeful of a naked man.
Lucky swore under his breath. He didn't need any of this. He would have been just as happy never to have to tangle with the likes of Gene Willis and Pou Perret. He sure as hell had never asked to baby-sit Serena Sheridan. This all came back to the other lives that kept insisting on crossing paths with his, and it was damned annoying.
He took Serena by the arm and ushered her toward the door. “You've got a real knack for showing up in places you hadn't oughta be, don't you?”
Serena looked up at him but said nothing. She suddenly felt way out of her depth. Anyone with half a brain would have spotted Lucky Doucet for a tough customer, but she hadn't quite realized just how tough, just how dangerous he might be. Somehow, the fact that he knew her grandfather had diluted that sense of danger, but what she'd just witnessed had brought it all into sharp focus.
He was a poacher, a thief. He was a man who threatened people with knives and thumbed his nose at authority. He had practically laughed in the face of the game warden. God only knew what other laws he might break without compunction.
“Serena? Serena Sheridan?” Perry Davis stepped in front of them with a questioning look that clearly said he couldn't have been more surprised to see her there on the arm of a gargoyle. “Is this man bothering you?”
Serena's gaze darted from him to Lucky. This was her chance. This was the part in the movie where everyone yelled at the screen for the heroine to cut and run. But she couldn't seem to find her voice, and then the opportunity was lost.
“Take off, Davis,” Lucky said on a growl. “The lady is with me.”
Davis looked anything but convinced, but when Serena made no move to object, he shrugged and turned away.
“You know that guy?” Lucky asked, steering her toward the door again.
“He's a friend of the family.”
Lucky sniffed. “You gotta choose a better class of friends, sugar.”
Serena almost burst out laughing. She shook her head and marveled at the whole scene. What the hell was she doing here? Why wasn't she taking the opportunity to get away from him?
“I thought I told you to wait in the boat,” he grumbled irritably, dodging her gaze.
“I
was
waiting in the boat until a truckload of roughnecks pulled up. Then it became a matter of the lesser of two evils. I decided the riffraff in here was probably safer than the riffraff out there.”
“And now you're not so sure?”
He opened the door for her and she stepped out onto the gallery to a chorus of wolf whistles and crude come-on lines. Closing her eyes, she sighed a long-suffering sigh and rubbed her temples. This just wasn't her day.
The screen door banged behind her and the harassment ceased abruptly as Lucky walked up beside her and put an arm around her waist. It was a possessive gesture, a protective one, not anything sexually threatening. In fact, it was almost comforting. Serena looked up at him, surprised. He was scowling at the oil-rig workers assembled on the wide porch.
“Don' they teach you respect for ladies where you boys come from?” he asked in that silky-soft tone that raised the hair on the back of Serena's neck.
No one said anything. The men who worked the oil rigs were a rough breed. They wouldn't back down from a fight, but they didn't appear ready to pick one either. They were probably exhibiting better judgment than she was, Serena thought. Perhaps they had met Lucky and his friend Mr. Knife before. They were probably all sitting there wondering what she was doing with the most dangerous man in South Louisiana.
She lifted her chin a notch and drew together the tattered remains of her composure as Lucky guided her down the steps and across the parking lot.
“I'd like to go home now, if you don't mind,” she said. “I can see you're a busy man, Mr. Doucet. I can make other arrangements to get to Gifford's tomorrow.”
Lucky stopped and jammed his hands at the waistband of his pants. He looked out at the bayou, squinting into the afternoon sun, and exhaled a long breath through his teeth.
This was stupid. He wanted to be rid of her, didn't he? He wanted her to think the worst of him, didn't he? He should have been happy that she was ready to give up, but he wasn't.
Dieu
, what a masochist he was! Why should he care that a woman like Serena Sheridan looked at him with wary contempt? The feeling was reciprocated a hundred and ten percent. He couldn't look at her without feeling . . .
What?
Hot. But that was just an instinctive response. Of course he wanted her. Any man with feeling below the waist would want her. She was beautiful in the cool, ethereal way of a goddess. Of course it drove him wild. Of course he wanted to bury himself between those long, sleek legs. Of course he wanted to stroke and kiss those high, proud breasts. But he knew too well that what lay under those pretty breasts of hers could be pure evil.
Anger. That was what he really felt, he told himself. Anger. Resentment. She was her sister's twin. She was Shelby with a doctorate in psychology—
Dieu
, what a nightmare!
She was also Giff Sheridan's granddaughter. And he had made Giff a promise. The reminder made him sigh again and mutter an oath in French.
“Look,” he said quietly. “I don' know what all you saw or heard in there, but it's got nothin' to do with takin' you out to Giff's. I promise you'll get there in one piece. I'm not gonna feed you to the 'gators or sell you to white slavers or anything like that. Giff's a friend of mine.”
Serena watched him closely, amazed. There was a flush on his high, hard cheekbones. He shuffled his boots on the crushed shell of the parking lot and refused to look at her. He actually looked contrite and embarrassed and . . . well, cute.