Free Lucky's Lady by Tami Hoag

knees, snapping her head around to give him the evil eye before turning back toward her grandfather. She pushed her hair out of her eyes with one hand, hanging on to the side of the pirogue with the other to steady herself. Conflicting emotions shoved together in her chest like a logjam as she looked at the man who had essentially raised her. With adrenaline still pumping through her veins and the sound of the shotgun blast still ringing in her ears, anger took precedence for the moment.
    The pirogue slid in beside a weathered dock with gnarled pilings and pitted planks. Serena didn't even wait for the boat to settle. She clambered out of it, awkward in her haste as she pulled herself up onto the rickety wharf. The pirogue scooted away as she pushed off from it and she slipped and hit her shin but managed to keep from falling back into the muddy shallows. Dirty, disheveled, with blood seeping into the previously immaculate white cotton of her pant leg and her hair tumbling in disarray around her shoulders, she stormed for shore, limping.
    “Dammit, Gifford, what the hell do you think you're doing? Shooting at people! My God!”
    Gifford scowled at her. “Jesus Christ. What the hell kind of language is that for a lady to use?”
    “The kind I learned from you!” Serena shot back. She planted herself in front of him, her hands on her hips, staring up at him with as much defiance as she could muster.
    “Well, hell,” Gifford muttered. There wasn't any way around that one. He cracked the shotgun open and extracted a shell, which he slipped into the breast pocket of his faded chambray workshirt. “I'll bet you don't use that kind of language up in Charleston.”
    “I'm not up in Charleston.”
    “For once,” he said with a snort. “What are you doing out here?” he asked, frowning down at Serena again. “I sure as hell never expected to see you riding around the swamp in a pirogue.”
    “Believe me, it's not my idea of fun,” Serena said, shooting a glare Lucky's way. “I can think of a lot better things to do with my free time and much more pleasant company to do them with.”
    “She takes exception to my temperament,” Lucky said with a sardonic smile as he approached, an onion bag of crawfish swinging from his fist.
    “Among other things,” Serena muttered.
    Lucky stopped beside her, dropped the bag at his feet, and lit the cigarette dangling from his lip, his eyes on Serena the whole time.
    He tilted his head back and blew a thin stream of smoke into the air. “Guess I'm gonna have to go back to charm school for a refresher course,” he drawled laconically.
    “Don't you believe him, Miz 'Rena,” Pepper Fontenot said with a gravelly chuckle as he ambled toward them from his lawn chair. Pepper was a thin, wiry man with the same pitch-dark skin and light eyes as his sister, the formidable Odille. He had somehow managed to sustain a very merry personality despite having lived with Odille his entire life, and wore his wide smile as comfortably as he wore his faded old coveralls. He slapped Lucky on the shoulder. “He charm the hide off a 'gator, dis one, if he be of a mind to.”
    Serena arched a brow at Lucky. “He must not have been of a mind, then.”
    “Mebbe it was the company,” Lucky said through his teeth.
    Quelling the juvenile urge to stick her tongue out at him, Serena turned back toward her grandfather. “You might tell me you're glad to see me,” she said, not quite able to hide her hurt at his cool reception.
    “I might say it once I find out what you're doing here.”
    “What
I'm
doing here!” she exclaimed, splaying a hand across her chest. “I'm here because you took off without a word of explanation to anybody. I come down for a visit and the first thing I'm told is that you moved yourself out here two weeks ago and haven't been heard from since. What was I supposed to do? Say, ‘Oh, gee, too bad I missed him' and just go on with my vacation? My God, Gifford, you could have been