“That’s not what your eyes are tellin’ me, chere catin.”

Serena dragged in a ragged breath and held it, feeling as if she were going to explode from sheer fury. She slapped his hand away and took a step back from him. “I didn’t come here to be insulted or manhandled. I came here to hire a guide, Mister-“

“Doucet,” he supplied. “Etienne Doucet. Folks call me Lucky.”

Serena vaguely remembered a Lucky Doucet from high school. He’d been several classes ahead of her, an athlete, a loner with a reputation as a bad boy. The girls whose main interest in school had been guys had swooned at the mere mention of his name. Serena’s interests had lain elsewhere.

She looked at him now and thought whatever reputation he had sown back then he had certainly cultivated since. He looked like the incarnation of the word trouble. She had to be half mad to even consider hiring him. But then she thought of Gifford. She had to see him, had to do what she could to find out what had made him leave Chanson du Terre, had to do her best to try to convince him to come home. As tough as Gifford Sheridan liked to pretend he was, he was still a seventy-eight-year-old man with a heart condition.

“I’m Serena Sheridan,” she said in her most businesslike tone.

Lucky Doucet blinked at her. A muscle tensed, then loosened in his jaw. “I know who you are,” he said, an oddly defensive note in his voice. Serena dismissed it as unimportant.

“I came here to hire a guide, Mr. Doucet. Gifford Sheridan is my grandfather. I need someone to take me out to his cabin. Mr. Gauthier has informed me that all the more reputable guides are booked up for the weekend, which apparently leaves you. Are you interested in the job or not?”

Lucky moved back to lean negligently against the counter again. Behind him, Lawrence had switched off his wrestling program in favor of live entertainment. In the background Iry Lejeune sang “La Jolie Blonde” in crackling French over the radio. The pretty blonde. How apropos. He took a deep pull on his cigarette, sucking the smoke into the very corners of his lungs, as if it might purge the feelings shaking loose and stirring inside him.