They were old companions, the nightmares and their aftermath, the shaking, the blinding fear that maybe this time he wouldn't be able to push the darkness back from the edges of his mind, the weariness, the regret. The thing he wanted most was to lie down and escape from it all with sleep, but he knew he wouldn't sleep again this night. The dreams were too terrible, too vivid, too seductive in their attempts to pull him over the edge.
He wouldn't sleep again this night because he was afraid, and because he was afraid he was ashamed. A stronger man could have slept. A better man wouldn't have been plagued by demons the like of these. Knowing Serena was there to witness it all made the shame a hundred times worse and he called on his deep reservoirs of anger and self-protection to deflect it.
Serena watched him from the bed. She couldn't see his face, but the pale moonlight spilling in through the window washed silver over his shoulders and back as he stood with his head lowered. Every muscle was tense, taut, perfectly delineated from its neighbor. His back rose and fell as he struggled for breath. She had no idea what kind of nightmare had driven him from sleep to this mental ledge he was clinging to now. All she knew was that she wanted to help. She wanted to reach out and offer him her strength as he had offered his the night before.
She found Lucky's T-shirt among the tangle of clothes on the floor beside the bed and pulled it on. It fell to the middle of her thighs as she slipped from the bed and went to him.
«What's wrong?» she asked quietly. For a long moment the only sounds that answered her came from outside-the chirrup of frogs and insects, the distant whinny of a raccoon.
«Rien,» he said at length, then shook his head impatiently as he realized he hadn't answered her in English. «Nothing.»
She reached out to lay a hand on his arm. «Lucky-«
«Nothing!» He roared, turning on her. It was a tactical error. Serena didn't back away. Instead, she looked up into his face and read it as plainly as a college professor might have read a grade-school primer. Lucky turned away to stare out the window again, schooling his voice to a calmer tone. «It s nothing to do with you. Just some leftover stuff from my stint in Central America.»
«What were you doing in Central America?»
A sardonic smile twisted his mouth. «Well, I wasn't down there with the Maryknoll Fathers, that's for sure.
«The army?»
«Yeah. Doin' a little job for Uncle Sam. It was nothing.»
«We don't get nightmares from nothing.»
«Pas de betises,» he muttered.
«If you want to talk about it, I might be able to help,» Serena said softly, her eyes warm with concern.
Lucky forced a laugh. «You can't even help yourself,» he said, almost wincing at the deliberate cruelty of his words.
Serena ignored his verbal strike. He was scared and hurting; lashing out was a natural response. «It's easier to solve other people's problems.»
«Yeah, well, forget it,» he growled.
She shrugged and crossed her arms in front of her. She looked all of nineteen standing there swallowed up in his T-shirt, her hair down, her skin smooth and flawless in the moonlight. Lucky felt a fresh stirring of desire and a dangerous tenderness. They added to the burden of all the other emotions he was shouldering at the moment, and he wondered if he would be able to shrug them off before he buckled beneath the load.
«All right,» Serena said, nodding. «I just thought-«
«What?» Lucky snapped. «You thought what? That just because I've spent half the night inside you that gives you the right to open up my head to see what kind of snakes are in it? Think again, angel.»
Serena wanted to argue with him. She wanted the right to ask him what haunted his dreams. She wanted to know everything about him. She wanted him to share that information with her willingly, but she knew he wouldn't any more than he would have shared his paintings with her. He would have been happier if she had gone on believing he was a criminal.
Maybe she would have been happier too. She would have stayed her distance from the man she had first believed him to be.
She turned and looked back at the bed they had shared the last few hours. Day had faded into night. Between bouts of lovemaking they had found their way down from the grenier, trading the hard floor of Lucky's studio for the comfort of an old-fashioned mattress stuffed with Spanish moss and fragrant dried flowers and herbs. Lucky had made love to her again slowly, tenderly, drawing out the anticipation and the climax, taking her to yet another height she had never before scaled. Her body was still alive with the sensations, her every nerve ending humming in awareness of the man standing beside her.
«Don't read anything into it,» he muttered, following her gaze. «It's just sex.»
Serena's mouth twisted in a wry, rueful smile. «Gee, thanks for making me feel like a cheap one-night stand.»
«It's nothing personal.»
«Oh. I see,» she said dryly. «I'm just one in a long line of cheap one-night stands. That makes me feel a lot better. You sure know how to flatter a girl, Lucky.»
«If you wanted pretty words, you came to the wrong man. There's nothing pretty inside me.»
Serena thought of the haunting beauty of his paintings but said nothing. He hadn't appreciated her seeing them, and he wouldn't appreciate her seeing anything else that was buried beneath his tarnished armor either.
«I'm just being honest with you, chere. Isn't that what you shrinks always want? Honesty? The straight line?»
Serena said nothing. The awful fact of the matter was that deep down she would rather have had him lie to her tonight. She felt so raw emotionally; so much had happened in the last two days, she would have been glad to have a man hold her and tell her she meant the world to him even if it wasn't true. But she would have been a fool to think this man would do it.
Lucky wouldn't let anyone that close to him, not even in a lie.
She walked away from him, moving gingerly. Unaccustomed to sex, her body ached in muscles she'd forgotten she had. She went to the screen door and looked out at the bayou. The fear that had assaulted her the night before was conspicuously absent tonight. Other things had taken precedence over it-thoughts of Gifford, Shelby, the very real and physical presence of Lucky. Lucky, her hero, her antihero, her lover.
She'd never taken a lover before. She'd never even known a man like Lucky before-hard, haunted, dark, and complex. It all seemed so unreal, being in this place with this man. She felt as if she didn't know herself anymore. She had a wild urge to look into a mirror to see if she even resembled the person she had been two days before.
«Are you all right?» Lucky asked.
He had moved to stand behind her. She could feel the heat of his body and didn't resist the urge to lean back into him. His arms folded around her automatically, offering comfort he would never voice.
Serena sniffed, a wry, weary smile tugging at one corner of her mouth. «Sure. I have my whole life turned upside down on a regular basis. Doesn't everyone?»
«You could leave. Go back to Charleston. Make Gifford deal with this on his own.»
«No. Unlike you, I am obligated to other people. I may live my life apart from them, but that doesn't mean I can just shut them out. I can't walk away from this until it's over.»
Lucky listened to the mix of resignation and conviction in her voice and wondered how he could have ever confused her with her sister. The only thing they had in common was a pretty shell. Serena's hid a core of integrity and a deep well of strength she was having to draw on again and again, thanks to Shelby and Gifford. She was at once tough and fragile, a combination that touched him in a way he didn't want to admit. And it hurt him to think she was going to lose what was left of her innocence before everything was done here-hurt him in a place he hadn't believed he could be touched.