“That’s the first good news I’ve had today,” Serena grumbled, ignoring the twinge of disappointment that nipped her feminine ego. Ignoring, too, the obvious comparison to be made between Lucky Doucet and a ten-foot pole.
She fanned herself with her hand, feeling suddenly flushed and watched as Lucky lifted his box off the dock, back muscles bunching and sliding beneath his taut, dark skin. He settled the box in the bow of the boat, then moved gracefully toward the stern, stepping over the jig and over the seat, carelessly rocking the tippy pirogue.
Serena’s fingers wrapped around the edge of the seat like C clamps, and her gaze drifted longingly down the pier to a shiny aluminum boat. It seemed huge and luxurious compared to the homemade pirogue. A fat man wearing a black New Orleans Saints cap and a plaid shirt with the sleeves cut off sat at the back of it, jerking the rope on the outboard motor.
“You might think about joining the twentieth century sometime soon,” Serena said, shooting Lucky a sweet smile. “People use motors nowadays.”
Lucky stared at the gas and oil bleeding into the water from the outboard as the fat man yanked on the rope. He frowned, brows pulling low over his eyes as he took up his push-pole. “Not me.”
He poled the pirogue away from the dock and let the nose turn south.
Serena jerked around, looking up at him over her shoulder with alarm. “This isn’t the way to Chanson du Terre or Gifford’s fish camp. Just where do you think you’re taking me, Mr. Doucet?”
Lucky scowled at her. “I got other things to do besides haul your pretty face up and down the bayou.”
It was apparently all the answer he was going to give her. He had set his face in an expression that declared the subject closed, and Serena decided not to push her luck. After all, he wasn’t running a taxi service. She had no claim on his time. Considering his attitude, it was a wonder he had agreed to take her at all.
She faced forward and tried to concentrate on the scenery instead of the sinuous feel of the boat sliding through the dark water. They were at the south edge of town, and the only buildings along the banks of the bayou were the occasional bait shop and a couple of dilapidated tar-paper shacks on stilts with boathouses made of rusting corrugated metal.
A spindly legged blue heron stood among the cattails near the bank, watching them pass. Serena focused on it as if it were the subject of a painting, its graceful form set against a backdrop of orange-blossomed trumpet creeper and clusters of dark green ferns. Rising in the background, hackberry trees reached their arms up to a china-blue sky and live oak dripped their tattered banners of dusty gray Spanish moss.
Their destination eventually became clear as Lucky poled toward the bank and a wharf hung with barnacle-encrusted tires to buffer its edge. The structure that rose up on stilts some distance behind it was as big as a bam, an unremarkable clapboard building with peeling white paint and a sign hanging above the gallery that spelled out mosquito mouton’s in two-foot-high red letters. Rusted tin signs advertising various brands of beer were nailed all along the side of the building above a long row of screened windows. Even though it was only the middle of the day, cars were parked on the crushed-shell lot and Zydeco music drifted out through the double screen doors in swells of sound accented by occasional shouts and laughter.
“A bar?” Serena questioned imperiously. She looked up at Lucky, incredulous, as he brought the boat alongside the dock. “This is where you had stop to delay us? A bar?”
“I’ve got some business here,” he said. “It won’t take long. You wait in the boat.”
“Wait in the-?” She broke off, watching in disbelief as he hauled himself onto the dock and headed for the bar without looking back. “Swell.”
God only knew what his business was or how long it would take. In the meantime she could sit and rot in his stupid boat. The sun beat down on her, its heat magnified by the humidity. She could feel her linen suit wilting over her frame like an abused orchid. Not that it was going to be salvageable after today anyway, she thought, grimacing at the greasy handprint on the sleeve of her jacket.
She cursed her temper for getting her into this. If she hadn’t let Shelby goad her into rushing right out to find a guide… If she hadn’t let old feelings of inadequacy push her… If she had taken the time to think the situation through in a calm and rational manner, as she would have back in Charleston…
This was what coming home could do to a person. She had an established persona back in Charleston, an image she had fashioned for herself among acquaintances she had chosen. But this was home, and the minute she came back here, she became Gifford Sheridan’s granddaughter, Shelby Sheridan’s twin, the former captain of the high school debate team; old feelings and old patterns of behavior resurrected themselves like ghosts, peeling away the veneer of adulthood like a pecan husk.
It was part of the reason she stayed away. She liked who she was in Charleston -a professional woman in control of her life. Here she never felt in control. The very atmosphere wrested control away from her and left her feeling unsettled and uncertain. This place, Mosquito Mouton’s, was a perfect example. It was the most notorious place in the parish. She had been raised to believe it was frequented by hooligans and white trash, and no decent girl would come within shouting distance of it. Sitting in Lucky Doucet’s pirogue, she had to quell the urge to look around for anyone who might recognize her. She felt as if she were a teenager cutting class for the first time. Crossing her arms in front of her, she heaved a sigh, closed her eyes, and thought of her cool, pretty apartment back in Charleston. It was done in soft colors and feminine patterns and had a view of the water. There was a garden in the courtyard, and it was a long, long way from the swamp and Lucky Doucet.
The instant the screen door banged shut behind him, heads turned in Lucky’s direction.
The place was about half full and would be bursting at the seams by sundown. Mouton’s was the hub of trouble. There was gambling in the back and girls who might do anything for a few bucks or just for the hell of it. From here a man could find his way to a dogfight or a fistfight or a whorehouse or any number of dens of iniquity that were no longer supposed to exist in the civilized South.
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 bowline 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’.”