“You don’ like my boat, chere?” he drawled, an unmistakable note of challenge in his voice.

“A-um-“ Serena pulled herself out of her trance with difficulty, trying to focus not on her memory but on the boat and the man standing in it leaning indolently against a long push-pole. “It’s not exactly what I had in mind. Don’t you have something a little… bigger?”

“Like a yacht?” he asked sarcastically. “This ain’t Saks Fifth Avenue, sugar. I don’t have a selection for you to try on for size. Now, are you gonna get on down here or do I get to spend the rest of the day lookin’ up your skirt?”

A welcome surge of reckless anger warmed the chill that had shaken Serena from within. She narrowed her eyes as she pressed her knees together demurely and pulled her slim skirt tightly around them. Clutching her purse and shoe in one hand, she lowered herself awkwardly to the rough planks of the dock, dropping her legs over the edge and grimacing as she felt her pantyhose run all the way down the back of one leg.

She looked down at the pirogue bobbing gently on the oily water and a second wave of apprehension rose up to her tonsils. She hadn’t gone out on the bayou in a boat of any kind in fifteen years. She doubted she would have felt safe on the Queen Elizabeth II, let alone this simple shell of cypress planking. Still, why couldn’t he at least have had a nice big bass boat with a motor on it? Nobody used pirogues anymore… except Lucky Doucet.

“My pirogue is all the boat I need,” Lucky said as he reached up for her. “What’d you think-that I’d go around in a cabin cruiser on the off chance I might have to give some belle a ride somewhere she hadn’t oughta be going in the first place?”

Serena flashed him a glare. “No. I was just hoping against hope that you weren’t as uncivilized as you appear to be.”