Sugar Daddy (Travis Family #1)(15)

The autumn sun was strong. It had been good melon weather, the hot days and cool nights bringing the local crops of casabas and muskmelons to full-slip sugar. After five minutes of shooting practice, I was streaked with sweat and dust. Plumes of powdered fire rose from the paved ground with each impact of the basketball.

No dirt on earth sticks to you like East Texas red clay. The wind blows it over you and it tastes sweet in your mouth. As the clay lurks under a foot of light tan topsoil, it expands and shrinks so drastically that in the driest months Martian-colored cracks run across the ground. You can soak your socks in bleach for a week, and you won't get that red out.

As I puffed and struggled to get my arms and legs working together, I heard a lazy voice behind me.

"You've got the worst free-throw form I've ever seen."

Panting, I tucked the basketball against my hip and turned to face him. A hank of hair escaped my ponytail and dangled over one eye.

There are few men who can turn a friendly insult into a good opening line, but Hardy was one of them. His grin held a wicked charm that robbed the words of any sting. He was rumpled and as dusty as I was, dressed in jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves ripped off. And he wore a Resistol hat that had once been white but had turned the olive-gray of ancient straw. Standing with relaxed looseness, he stared at me in a way that made my insides do somersaults.

"You got any pointers?" I asked.

As soon as I spoke Hardy looked sharply at my face, and his eyes widened. "Liberty? Is that you?"

He hadn't recognized me. Amazing, what removing half your eyebrows could accomplish. Suddenly I had to clamp my teeth on my inner cheeks to keep from laughing. Pushing the loose hair back from my face, I said calmly, "Of course it's me. Who'd you think it was?"

"Damned if I know. I..." He tipped his hat back on his head and approached me cautiously, as if I were some volatile substance that might explode at any moment. That was certainly how I felt. "What happened to your glasses?"

"I got contacts."

Hardy came to stand in front of me; his broad shoulders creating a shadowed lee from the sunlight. "Your eyes are green." He sounded distracted. Disgruntled, even.

I stared at the front of his throat, where the skin was tanned and smooth and dappled with a glitter of moisture. He was close enough that I could smell the intimate salt of his sweat. The crescents of my fingernails dug into the pebbled surface of the basketball. As Hardy Gates stood there looking at me, really seeing me for the first time, it felt like the whole world had been snatched up in a great unseen hand, its motion arrested.

"I'm the worst basketball player in school." I told him. "Maybe all of Texas. I can't make the ball go in that thing."

"The hoop?"

"Yeah, that."

Hardy studied me for another long moment. A smile curled one corner of his mouth. "I can give you some pointers. Lord knows you couldn't get any worse."

"Mexicans can't play basketball," I said. "I should be given a waiver because of my heritage."

Without taking his eyes from mine, he reached for the ball and dribbled a few times. Smoothly he turned and executed a perfect jump shot. It was a show-off move, looking all the better for being done in a cowboy hat, and I had to laugh as Hardy glanced at me with an expectant grin.

"Am I supposed to praise you now?" I asked.

He retrieved the ball and dribbled slowly around me. "Yeah, now would be a good time."

"That was awesome."

Hardy managed the ball with one hand while using the other to remove his battered hat and send it sailing to the side. He came to me, catching up the ball in his palm. "What do you want to learn first?"

Dangerous question. I thought.

Being near Hardy brought back the feeling of heavy sweetness that robbed me of any inclination to move. I felt like I had to breathe twice as fast as normal to get the necessary amount of oxygen into my lungs. "Free throw," I managed to say.

"All right, then." Hardy motioned me to the white line that had been painted fifteen feet from the backboard. It seemed an enormous distance.

"I'll never make it," I said, taking the ball from him. "I don't have the upper-body strength."

"You're going to use your legs more than your arms. Square up, honey...spread your feet about as wide apart as your shoulders. Now show me how you've been—Well, hell, if that's how you hold the ball, no wonder you can't shoot straight."

"No one ever showed me how." I protested as he arranged my shooting hand on the

ball. His tanned fingers covered mine briefly, and I felt the strength in them, and the roughened skin. His nails were clipped short and bleached white from the sun. A working man's hand.

"I'm showing you how," he said. "Hold it like this. Now bend your knees, and aim for the square on the backboard. As you straighten up, release the ball and let the energy come up from your knees. Try to shoot in one smooth motion. Got it?"

"Got it." I aimed and threw with all my might. The ball went crazily off course, frightening the wits out of an armadillo that had unwisely ventured out of its hole to investigate Hardy's discarded hat. The armadillo squeaked as the ball bounced too close for comfort. Its long toenails scored the baked ground as it scuttled back into its hiding place.