Lucky's Lady Read Online Free PDF Page B

his feet. Doubled over with an arm across his belly, he glared at Lucky. “I'll get you, you coonass son of a bitch. You wait 'n' see.”
    Lucky dropped his cigarette and ground it out on the floor with his boot. “Yeah, I'll be losin' sleep over that, I will,” he drawled sardonically. “Stay out of my swamp, Willis.”
    He turned toward the door to make his exit and his heart jolted hard in his chest. Serena Sheridan was standing right in front of him with her little calfskin purse clutched to her chest, her eyes wide and her pretty mouth hanging open in shock. In her prim suit and slicked-back hairdo, she looked like a schoolmarm who'd just gotten her first eyeful of a naked man.
    Lucky swore under his breath. He didn't need any of this. He would have been just as happy never to have to tangle with the likes of Gene Willis and Pou Perret. He sure as hell had never asked to baby-sit Serena Sheridan. This all came back to the other lives that kept insisting on crossing paths with his, and it was damned annoying.
    He took Serena by the arm and ushered her toward the door. “You've got a real knack for showing up in places you hadn't oughta be, don't you?”
    Serena looked up at him but said nothing. She suddenly felt way out of her depth. Anyone with half a brain would have spotted Lucky Doucet for a tough customer, but she hadn't quite realized just how tough, just how dangerous he might be. Somehow, the fact that he knew her grandfather had diluted that sense of danger, but what she'd just witnessed had brought it all into sharp focus.
    He was a poacher, a thief. He was a man who threatened people with knives and thumbed his nose at authority. He had practically laughed in the face of the game warden. God only knew what other laws he might break without compunction.
    “Serena? Serena Sheridan?” Perry Davis stepped in front of them with a questioning look that clearly said he couldn't have been more surprised to see her there on the arm of a gargoyle. “Is this man bothering you?”
    Serena's gaze darted from him to Lucky. This was her chance. This was the part in the movie where everyone yelled at the screen for the heroine to cut and run. But she couldn't seem to find her voice, and then the opportunity was lost.
    “Take off, Davis,” Lucky said on a growl. “The lady is with me.”
    Davis looked anything but convinced, but when Serena made no move to object, he shrugged and turned away.
    “You know that guy?” Lucky asked, steering her toward the door again.
    “He's a friend of the family.”
    Lucky sniffed. “You gotta choose a better class of friends, sugar.”
    Serena almost burst out laughing. She shook her head and marveled at the whole scene. What the hell was she doing here? Why wasn't she taking the opportunity to get away from him?
    “I thought I told you to wait in the boat,” he grumbled irritably, dodging her gaze.
    “I
was
waiting in the boat until a truckload of roughnecks pulled up. Then it became a matter of the lesser of two evils. I decided the riffraff in here was probably safer than the riffraff out there.”
    “And now you're not so sure?”
    He opened the door for her and she stepped out onto the gallery to a chorus of wolf whistles and crude come-on lines. Closing her eyes, she sighed a long-suffering sigh and rubbed her temples. This just wasn't her day.
    The screen door banged behind her and the harassment ceased abruptly as Lucky walked up beside her and put an arm around her waist. It was a possessive gesture, a protective one, not anything sexually threatening. In fact, it was almost comforting. Serena looked up at him, surprised. He was scowling at the oil-rig workers assembled on the wide porch.
    “Don' they teach you respect for ladies where you boys come from?” he asked in that silky-soft tone that raised the hair on the back of Serena's neck.
    No one said anything. The men who worked the oil rigs were a rough breed. They wouldn't back down from a fight, but they