Serena rolled her eyes. «A very charitable attitude.»
«Practical. Practical,» Shelby reiterated with a decisive nod. She calmed visibly as she put on her businesslike persona again, folding her hands primly in front of her. «It's the practical thing, Serena. And if you have no interest in staying here anyway, I don't see why you don't just side with us and get it over with. It's best for everyone. It's best for Gifford, if you come right down to it.
«He's seventy-eight years old and he's got a heart condition, for heaven's sake,» she said, warming to this new angle of showing concern for someone else. «He shouldn't be out in the cane fields. He shouldn't have to worry himself sick over the weather and the insects and the price of diesel fuel and whether or not that old John Deere is going to make it another season. He should be taking it easy. He shouldn't have to think about anything but going fishing with Pepper and swapping stories with the men down at Gauthier's.
«He almost went bankrupt last year, you know,» she added, looking genuinely saddened. «Many more things go wrong this year and he will. What good will all his stubborn pride do him then? It would kill him to go under. He can avoid it now, go out with dignity.»
Serena said nothing. Her sisters arguments were valid. They made perfect sense. They were neat and tidy and left no loose ends-except Gifford's hearts desire and the fate of Lucky's swamp. And how did one compare those things to the fate of a town? Was two hundred years of heritage more important than two hundred fifty jobs? Were a few jobs worth ruining a delicate wilderness that could never be replaced?
«I don't know,» she murmured half to herself.
She sat down on the foot of the bed and leaned against a slender post, twining her arm around it like a vine. She stared at her reflection in the mirror above the dresser, looking for answers that weren't forthcoming. She felt as if she had the weight of the world on her shoulders, and all she wanted to do was shrug it off and walk away, but she couldn't. She couldn't walk away from Chanson du Terre or her need to please Gifford or her complicated relationship with her sister.
«I don't know what to do,» she whispered, a feeling of bleak desolation yawning inside her like a cavern.
The image in the mirror was duplicated as Shelby sat down beside her. They looked less like twins now, Serena thought, because she herself looked like hell. There were dark crescents beneath her eyes and she was pale and drawn. The emotional war was taking a toll on her. Shelby was bearing up better under the strain with the aid of a full complement of expensive cosmetics. She looked less troubled by the burden of it all, perhaps because she shouldered none of the load. Shelby had always possessed the convenient ability to shift blame elsewhere, so while she may have been frustrated with the current situation, she felt it was all someone else's fault. Serena had no doubt her sister slept like a baby. For all her talk of accepting responsibility, responsibility rolled off Shelby like water off a duck's back.
«My, you look all done in,» Shelby said softly, and her brows knitted in one of her rare shows of genuine concern.
She didn't look directly at Serena but assessed her appearance via the mirror, as if she were obsessed with their likenesses. It was a disturbing thing, and Serena forced herself to stand up and move to avoid it. She went to the French doors again and stood with her back against the frame.
«You didn't tell me you knew Lucky Doucet,» she said mildly, watching out the corner of her eye for a reaction.
Shelby jerked around in surprise, a multitude of emotions sweeping over her face like clouds scudding across the night sky. «What did he tell you?» she asked guardedly.
«Nothing much,» Serena conceded.
Apparently feeling safe, Shelby rose to her feet and moved in a leisurely manner, smoothing the bedspread, straightening the skirt of her dress. «I went out with him a few times back when I was dating Mason to make Mason jealous,» she admitted without remorse. «It was a long time ago. I never think about it. I mean, for heaven's sake, look at what became of him. I'm embarrassed to admit I ever knew him. Why did you want to know?»
«No reason.»
«Good Lord, Serena,» she said with genuine alarm. «You're not involved with him, are you? He's dangerous. Why, you can't imagine the things people say about him!»
Serena expected she could imagine quite vividly what the average person would have to say about Lucky. They would look at him and see exactly what he wanted them to see, and «dangerous» would only just begin to cover it. She had wondered if he had let Shelby see some other side of him. Obviously he hadn't.
It frightened her to think how happy that made her. This was dangerous territory-thinking she might be the one woman to reach beyond his barriers and touch his heart, taking joy in the knowledge that her sister had not been there before her. It was foolish. She had enough trouble without trying to take on a project like the reformation of Lucky Doucet. All he wanted from her was sex.
«He mentioned that he knew you,» she said. «I was just curious, that's all.»
«Oh.» Shelby shrugged and headed for the door. «Well, it was nothing,» she said, reducing the affair down to the level of importance it held for her. Lucky Doucet had served his purpose. She had gotten what she wanted. Nothing else mattered. «Good night.»
«Good night.»
Serena watched her sister go. Nothing had been resolved. They had gone another circuit on the merry-go-round of their relationship once more, suffering through emotional ups and downs only to return to the place they had started.
She sighed as the door clicked shut and gasped in the next breath as someone grabbed her from behind. One brawny arm went around her waist and hauled her back into what seemed like a rock wall, and a hand clamped over her mouth, effectively snuffing out the scream that tore its way up the back of her throat.
«All dressed up for me, sugar?» Lucky said, his lips brushing her ear, his left hand moving restlessly over the silk that covered her belly. «You shouldn't have.»
«Damn you,» Serena told him as he pulled his hand away from her mouth. She tried to twist around in his arms so she could hit him, but he held her in place with ridiculous ease. «You scared the hell out of me.»
«Yeah, you oughta be scared of me,» he muttered, nuzzling the side of her throat.
He made that land of comment again and again to convince her of the blackness of his character, but Serena was no longer willing to buy it. Now that she had caught glimpses of the real man, she was no longer willing to believe the myth. Her heart had, with a will of its own, set itself on that man beneath the dangerous facade. However futile it might have seemed, she wanted to latch on to the goodness she knew was inside him and draw it out.
That he still wanted to keep her away from who he really was made her angry-angry with him and angry with herself. Of all the men in the world, why did this one have to be the one to capture her heart? Two days earlier she hadn't even liked him. She wasn't sure she liked him now, but she couldn't escape the fact that she had fallen in love with him. It seemed impossible and foolishly romantic and very unlike the Serena Sheridan who lived a sane and orderly life in Charleston. But they weren't in Charleston and she wasn't the same person who had left there, she reminded herself with weary resignation.
«Stop it,» she said, her exhaustion with the whole situation showing in her voice.
«Stop what? This?» He rubbed his beard-roughened cheek against her skin again, breathing in the scent of her. «Or this?» he asked, sliding his dark hand down over her belly to the juncture of her thighs where he stroked her boldly through her clothes.
Serena moaned at the sensations that burst and flowed inside her like floodwaters from a dam. In the span of one night Lucky had conditioned her body to respond to his without reserve. She wanted him instantly, wanted nothing more than to lie down and welcome him into her, to love him with every part of herself. But she forced herself to pull away from him, fighting to retain some small scrap of control, some tiny piece of sanity.