«Non. Non,» he muttered, shaking his head. «Sa c'est de la couyonade.»
Gifford snorted. «So you think I'm foolish too? By God, the two of you deserve each other. You can sit around over coffee tonight and compare notes on ways to avoid your responsibilities.»
Lucky wheeled around, stomping up three steps to thrust a warning finger in Gifford's face. «You're skatin' on thin ice, old man,» he said through his teeth. «I don' owe you. I don' owe Chanson du Terre.»
«Oh, that's right,» Gifford drawled sarcastically. Lucky s ferocious look didn't impress him; he was too old to be frightened by the idea of his own mortality. «You don't owe anybody anything. You're your own man. Good for you, Lucky. You can pat yourself on the back after the swamp silts up and everything dies.»
«Don' you talk to me about responsibilities, Gifford,» Lucky snapped. «You've got your own. And where are you? Out here fishin' and takin' potshots at Tristar reps. How the hell is that gonna solve anything?»
«I've got my own way of dealing with the situation.»
«Mais, yeah» Lucky said with a harsh laugh. «By not dealing with it.»
Serena stepped between them. «Excuse me. Do I get a say in this matter?»
Both men scowled at her simultaneously and answered in thunderous unison. «No!»
She fell back a step in utter disbelief.
Lucky jumped off the stairs and started pacing again. He knew Gifford-mules had nothing on him when it came to stubbornness. If he said he wasn't letting Serena stay with him, he meant it. He'd leave her on the doorstep all night if it came to that. The idea went against Lucky's grain on a fundamental level where he'd long ago thought he'd given up all feeling.
He glanced at Serena out of the corner of his eye and mentally swore a blue streak. She was just as proud and stubborn as her grandfather. She'd stood toe to toe with the old man. She'd been on the brink of tears with worry over him. She obviously loved him.
And old Giff had given her an emotional buffeting for her trouble. She looked like a hothouse flower that had been thrust outdoors during a thunderstorm- bedraggled, dirty, exhausted.
And Gifford was bent on turning her away.
Damn.
It wasn't that he cared about her, Lucky assured himself. It wasn't that he wanted to get involved. It was none of his business how Gifford treated his granddaughter. For all he knew, she deserved to be left out on the porch all night. The extenuating circumstances were what concerned him-another example of the way other people s affairs kept drifting into the path of his life. This swamp was his world. He couldn't bear the idea of seeing it destroyed.
He heaved a sigh and raked his hands through his hair. What were his options? He wanted Gifford to deal with the Tristar problem before something catastrophic happened, like Gifford shooting Len Burke or Shelby succeeding in selling the place to a company with a record as environmental rapists. That meant getting Gifford to go back to face the situation. Serena had resolved to get him to return, and heaven knew she had the determination to convince him, given enough opportunity. That meant keeping her near the old man and away from her sister's poisonous influence. And that meant…
Hell and damnation.
He examined the dilemma from another angle. How long could it take Serena to talk Gifford into going home? A day or two. Three at the outside. How much harping could a man take, after all? Lucky decided he wouldn't actually have to stay with her if she was in his house. He could easily spend that much time out in the swamp. He had plenty of other things to keep him occupied. Still, he didn't like the idea of being cornered into doing something.
He stopped his pacing, turning his head to glare up at Gifford. «All right,» he said, his voice low. «I'll keep her.»
Gifford successfully fought off a smile.
Serena's jaw dropped.
For a long second no one said anything. The tension building in the air was enough to make the coon hounds whine and trot away in search of a safe haven.
«Keep me?» Serena questioned softly, glaring at Lucky. «Keep me!» Her voice rose several decibels. She planted her hands on her hips and leaned over him, enjoying the height advantage for once. «You most certainly will not keep me!» She whirled toward Gifford, her face livid. «I will not stay with this man! I hardly know him and what I do know about him is hardly flattering. For heaven's sake, Gifford, you can't really expect me to stay with him!»
«Who knows what I might expect,» Gifford said, putting on a wounded air. «I'm just a crazy old man waiting to die.»
«Stop it!» Serena spat out. She stared up at him in the fading afternoon light and felt a big ball of fear swell up in her chest like a balloon. He had that same look he'd had on his face when she'd been seventeen and the sheriff had brought her home after catching her and two other honor students splitting a jug of cheap wine under the bleachers at the football stadium.
Her voice softened to a whisper. «Gifford?»
He shook his head. «Don't you even ask me, Serena. I'm so mad right now I could spit brass tacks. You think you can just come breezing in here and fix everything up with a sentence or two because you've got a sheepskin from Duke and a fancy practice up in Charleston. You don't know what's going on here and you don't care. You just want to put all the parts back in their places and get on with your vacation.» He shook his head once more and blew out a breath. His color was heightening again, a flush creeping up from his throat into his face like mercury rising in a thermometer. «Go on, get out of here. You'll be all right with Lucky.»
He turned and trudged up the rest of the steps, letting himself into the cabin without looking back. Serena felt stunned, as if someone had hit her between the eyes with a rock. Well, she'd gotten what she deserved, hadn't she? In his usual no-nonsense style Gifford had cut through to the heart of the matter. She had thought she'd come out here and simply set things straight, put her world back on track, rearrange things to her satisfaction. She had inherited that take-charge manner from Gifford. She used it to great success in her everyday life back in Charleston. But they weren't in Charleston.
Damn this place. She closed her eyes and rubbed her hands over her face, erasing what was left of her makeup.
«I'm sorry, Miz «Rena,» Pepper said, climbing the stairs to stand beside her, his wriggling, clicking crawfish sack hanging down from his fists. «You know old Giff. He gets in a temper, him, there's no tellin' what he say. He don' mean half.»
Serena tried without much luck to muster a smile. «Does that mean you'll run me home after all?»
He frowned, something that looked completely foreign to his face, as if his mouth didn't quite know how to turn that way. «Can't. Dat old boat, she's not runnin'. Lucky, he bring the part, but dat don' make her run. Take me a coupl'a days to fix.»
Serena hadn't thought it possible for her spirits to sink any lower. She'd been wrong. They seemed to fall now from their last toehold into a bottomless black pit. It must have been a painful thing to watch, because Pepper made another attempt to frown. He shuffled his feet on the worn tread of the step, working up to making a run for it.
Why, oh, why had she let her temper goad her into coming out here without thinking it through, without first finding out exactly what was going on? Now she was stuck in this god-awful place. Turned out by her own grandfather. Turned over to the care of a man who wouldn't know a scruple if it bit his handsome butt.
She turned her bleak gaze to Lucky. He stood absently scratching the head of one of the coon hounds as he watched her, his expression inscrutable. In the long, sinister shadows seeping across the ground as the sun slid away, he looked more dangerous than ever.
«Get in the boat, chere,» he said softly. «Looks like we're stuck with each other for a little while longer.»