«Maybe they never left the scene,» Lucky said quietly.
Serena sighed, blowing her breath up into the sweat-damp tendrils of hair that stuck to her forehead. She could feel Lucky's eyes on her, but she didn't look at him. They had already had this argument on the way to Giff's. She didn't for a minute believe Shelby had started the fire. It was simply impossible for her to picture Shelby slinging gas cans around and rigging machinery to blow up. But there may well have been a hired man capable of being bought off-by Burke, Serena insisted. Or the perpetrator may have been an outsider compelled by God knew what, a man who had simply blended in with the rest of the men while they had struggled to save the building.
«Well, there's no use speculating,» she said at last. «The point is, this business is getting way out of hand. You have to come back home, Giff. I mean it this time.»
Gifford lifted one bushy white brow. «Why? So you can cut and run?»
Serena refused to flinch. She stood toe to toe with the old man and said calmly, «So you can face up to your responsibilities.»
«Why should I be any better at it than you are?» he asked sarcastically. «Hell, I took my lessons from you, little girl. I didn't want to deal with it, so I left.»
«Stop it,» Serena snapped. She could feel the reins of her temper sliding through her exhausted grasp. Even in the best circumstances she had trouble dealing with Gifford in a controlled and rational manner. He knew exactly which buttons to push and he pushed them with a land of malicious glee that infuriated her even further. She looked up at him now and held her anger in check with sheer willpower. «You stop trying to lay all this guilt on me, Gifford. I've had it with your manipulation.»
«Oh? You are going back to Charleston, then?» he said with cutting mock-surprise. «Leave your old grandfather to deal with arsonists and strong-arm tactics and treason among his own ranks.»
Serena ground her teeth and spoke through them. «I'm not going anywhere.»
Gifford stared at her long and hard. «Neither am I.»
The pressure built between them for another few seconds as their gazes locked and warred. Then abruptly Serena's temper erupted like a volcano. She kicked the lawn chair and let fly a very unladylike curse that sent the coon hounds scurrying for safety under the cabin.
«Damn you, Gifford,» she shouted, her hands knotting into useless fists in front of her. «How can you be so stubborn!»
«It's a family trait.»
«Don't you dare be glib with me,» she warned, shaking a finger at him. «This is serious.»
«I know exactly how serious it is,» Gifford said softly, abandoning his theatrics for cold, hard sobriety. «I know exactly what's at stake here, Serena. I wonder if you do. You think I'm just being a contrary old fool. You think I'm enjoying all the havoc I'm wreaking on everyone's lives. I'm trying to save something that's been a part of this family for two centuries.»
«By sitting out here in the swamp?»
He shook his head, his impatience and weariness showing in his dark eyes and the set of his mouth. «You don't get it, do you? I swear, for someone so intelligent you can be as thick as a red Georgia brick. I'm not talking about saving Chanson du Terre for the moment. I'm talking about it living on after me.»
Serena took in his words and their meaning, tears of anger and hurt and frustration rising in her eyes. She knew exactly what he meant. «You can't make me want to come back here, Gifford. You can't force me to want to stay.»
«No,» he said softly. «But I can make you see what the consequences will be if you don't. I can put it all in your hands. You can have the power of Caesar-does it live or does it die? Do two hundred years of heritage go on or do they get ground to dust? It will all be up to you, Serena. Sell it or save it.»
There it was. The cards were on the table. No more games. No more silent manipulation. He was laying it all at her feet and the thing she wanted most to do was turn and run. Serena stared up at him through a wavy sheen of tears and hated him at that moment almost as much as she loved him. She couldn't turn away. He meant too much to her. She couldn't stand the idea of disappointing him, of having him look at her and see a failure and a coward.
As a psychologist she could pick each of those thoughts apart, dissect them and diagnose them, and recommend therapy. But as a granddaughter, as a woman, she could only stand there and experience it. She felt as helpless and impotent as a child. She couldn't step back from it to examine it with the cool, objective eye of a neutral third party. She couldn't simply watch the storm from a safe distance. She was in the middle of it and there was no honorable way out.
«You think about that for a minute,» Gifford said, his face as stern and set as if it had been carved from granite. «Then you come on inside the cabin. There's something that needs to be taken care of before you go back.»
He walked away, calling softly to his hounds. Serena stood facing the bayou, fighting the tears, trying to concentrate on the sound of footsteps and dog toenails on the worn boards of the gallery, the slam of the screen door, the sound of Marc Savoy singing on the radio, the call of an indigo bunting somewhere in the tree-tops nearby. Arms bound tight across her middle, she stared out at the muddy water and the profusion of spider lilies that grew along the opposite bank, and forced herself to hang on to the very last scrap of her pride and control.
Lucky watched her, everything inside him aching for her. Every feeling he had thought dead had been resurrected in the past few days and they ached and throbbed now, hypersensitive in their rebirth. He didn't welcome their return. It was easier, safer, not to feel at all. He resented their intrusion on his emotional isolation. He resented Serena for arousing them so effortlessly. But he couldn't look at her now and feel anger. Nor could he turn away. He couldn't look at her now and see how the calm, controlled woman from Charleston had been broken apart in a matter of days and not feel something-sympathy, empathy, compassion..
He pushed himself away from the tree and went to stand behind her. He wrapped his arms around her, silently offering his strength, rocking her gently in time with the Cajun waltz that floated out through the cabins screens.
Serena turned her face to his shoulder and squeezed her eyes shut against the tears, forcing two past her lashes to roll down her cheek and soak into Lucky's black T-shirt. The temptation was strong to just let go, to cry, to put the burden on his broad shoulders and ask him to take care of her problems the way he had taken care of Mrs. Guidry's poachers, the way he took care of the orphaned raccoons. But she didn't. Couldn't. He didn't want her problems. He had problems of his own. He didn't want involvement and he didn't want love. That knowledge made it all the more bittersweet to have his arms around her now, when she needed so badly to have someone to lean on.
Maybe he would change. Maybe he felt more for her than he wanted to admit. Maybe, when this business with Chanson du Terre was over, he would let her near enough to help him with the demons that haunted him.
And maybe pigs would fly.
She wasn't doing herself any favors falling into the trap of «there but for the love of a good woman» thinking. She and Lucky had been thrown together by circumstances, had given in to physical needs, and when it was over they would go their separate ways-he into his swamp and she…
«I guess I'd better go in and see what new treat Gifford has in store for me,» she said, sniffing back the tears she wouldn't let fall. She turned in Lucky's arms and looked up at him, knowing with a terrible crystal-clear clarity that she had somehow, somewhere fallen in love with him. The thought hit her with a violent jolt every time it came. This big, brooding warrior with his panther's eyes and hooker's mouth, with his dark soul and heart of gold, had captured a part of her no other man ever had. Too bad he didn't want it.