Sugar Daddy (Travises 1)

"I can't imagine anyone not liking Gill," I said shortly. "He's real nice. I've got my breath back. Show me the pump fake."

"Yes, ma'am." Hardy motioned me to stand beside him, and he dribbled the ball in a semicrouch. "Say I've got a defender standing over me, ready to block my shot. I have to fake him out. Make him think I'm taking a shot, and when he takes the bait, it throws him off position, and then I've got my chance." He raised the ball to his sternum, sold the move, and made a smooth jump shot. "All right, you try it."

We faced each other while I dribbled. As he had instructed, I kept my eyes on his instead of focusing on the ball. "He kisses me," I said, still dribbling steadily.

I had the satisfaction of seeing Hardy's eyes widen. "What?"

"Gill Mincey. When we study together. He's kissed me a lot, in fact." I moved from side to side, trying to get around him, and Hardy stayed with me.

"That's great," he said, a new edge to his tone. "Are you going to take a shot?"

"I think he's pretty good at it too." I continued, increasing the pace of my dribbling. "But there's a problem."

Hardy's alert gaze found mine. "What is it?"

"I don't feel anything." I raised the ball, faked the move, and took the shot. To my amazement the ball went through the hoop with a silky swish. It bounced in diminishing strikes on the ground, unheeded by either of us. I went still, cold air searing my superheated throat. "It's boring. During the kissing, I mean. Is that normal? I don't think so. Gill doesn't seem bored. I don't know if something's wrong with me or—"

"Liberty." Hardy approached and paced slowly around me as if a ring of fire separated us. His face gleamed with perspiration. It seemed difficult to wring the words from his own throat. "There's nothing wrong with you. If there's no chemistry between you, that's not your fault. Or his. It just means.. .someone else would suit you better."

"Do you have chemistry with a lot of girls?"

He didn't look at me, just rubbed his nape to ease a pinch of tension in his neck muscles. "That's not something you and I are going to talk about."

Now that I had started along this line. I couldn't stop. "If I was older, would you feel that way about me?"

His face was averted. "Liberty," I heard him mutter. "Don't do this to me."

"I'm just asking, is all."

"Don't. Some questions change everything." He released an unsteady breath. "Do your practicing with Gill Mincey. I'm too old for you. in more ways than one. And you're not the kind of girl I want."

Surely he couldn't mean the fact that I was Mexican. From what I knew of Hardy, there wasn't a bit of prejudice in him. He never used racist words, never looked down on someone for things they couldn't help.

"What kind do you want?" I asked with difficulty.

"Someone I can leave without looking back."

That was Hardy, offering the brutal truth without apology. But I heard the submerged admission in his statement, that I wouldn't be the kind he could leave easily. I couldn't keep from taking it as encouragement, even though that wasn't what he intended.

He looked at me then. "Nothing and no one is going to keep me here, do you understand?"

"I understand."

He took a ragged breath. "This place, this life...Lately I've started to understand what made my dad so mean and crazy he ended up in jail. It'll happen to me too."

"No." I protested softly.

"Yes it will. You don't know me, Liberty."

I couldn't stop him from wanting to leave. But neither could I stop myself from wanting him.

I crossed the invisible barrier between us.

His hands lifted in a defensive gesture, which was comical in light of the difference between our sizes. I touched his palms, and the taut wrists where his pulse rampaged, and I thought, If I never have anything from him except this one moment I am going to take it. Take it now, or drown in regret later.

Hardy moved suddenly, catching my wrists, his fingers forming tight manacles that kept me from moving forward. I stared at his mouth, the lips that looked so soft. "Let go," I said, my voice thick. "Let go."

His breath had quickened, and he gave a slight shake of his head. Nerves were jumping in every part of my body. We both knew what I was going to do if he released me.

Suddenly his hands opened. I moved forward and pressed my body against his, length to length. I gripped the back of his neck, discovering the embedded toughness of his muscles. I tugged his head down until his lips caught mine, his hands remaining half-suspended in the air. His resistance lasted for a matter of seconds before he gave in with a rough sigh, putting his arms around me.

It was so unlike what I had experienced with Gill. Hardy was infinitely more powerful, and yet so much gentler. One of his hands slid into my hair, his fingers cradling my head. His shoulders hunched over and around me, his free arm clamping across my back as if he wanted to pull me inside himself. He kissed me over and over, trying to discover every way our mouths could fit together. A gust of wind chilled my back, but heat surged wherever I touched against him.

He tasted the inside of my mouth, his breath coming in scalding rushes against my cheek. The intimate flavor of him confounded me with desire. I clung to him tightly, shaken and aroused and wanting it never to end. desperately gathering every sensation to hoard as long as possible.

Hardy pried away my clinging arms and urged me back with a forceful push. "Oh,

damn," he whispered, shivering. He moved from me and grasped the pole of the backstop, resting his forehead against it as if relishing the feel of chilled metal. "Damn," he muttered again.

I felt sleepy and dazed, my balance wavering in the sudden absence of Hardy's support. I scrubbed the heels of my hands over my eyes.

"That won't happen again." he said gruffly, still facing away from me. "I mean it, Liberty."

"I know. I'm sorry." I wasn't, actually. And I must not have sounded too sorry, because Hardy threw a sardonic glance over his shoulder.

"No more practicing," he said.

"You mean basketball practice or.. .what we just did?"

"Both," he snapped.

"Are you mad at me?"

"No, I'm mad as hell at myself."

"You shouldn't be. You didn't do anything wrong. I wanted you to kiss me. I was the one who—"

"Liberty," he interrupted, turning toward me. Suddenly he looked weary and frustrated. He rubbed his eyes the same way I had rubbed mine. "Shut up. honey. The more you talk, the worse I'll feel. Just go home."

I absorbed his words, the inexorable set of his face. "Do you... do you want to walk me

back?" I hated the thread of timidity in my own voice.

He threw me a wretched glance. "No. I don't trust myself with you."

Glumness settled over me, smothering the sparks of desire and elation. I wasn't sure

how to explain any of it, Hardy's attraction to me. his unwillingness to pursue it, the

intensity of my response...and the knowledge that I was never going to kiss Gill Mincey again.

CHAPTER 6

Mama was about a week overdue when she finally went into labor in late May.

Springtime in Southeast Texas is a mean season. There are some pretty sights, the dazzling fields of bluebonnets, the flowering of Mexican buckeyes and redbuds, the greening of dry meadows. But spring is also a time when fire ants begin to mound after lying idle all winter, and the gulf whips up storms that spit out hail and lightning and twisters. Our region was scored by tornadoes that would double back in surprise attacks, jigsawing across rivers and down main streets, and other places tornadoes weren't supposed to go. We got white tornadoes too. a deadly rotating froth that occurred in sunlight well after people thought the storm was over.

Tornadoes were always a threat to Bluebonnet Ranch because of a law of nature that says tornadoes are irresistibly attracted to trailer parks. Scientists say it's a myth, tornadoes are no more drawn to trailer parks than anywhere else. But you couldn't fool the residents

of Welcome. Whenever a twister appeared in or around town, it headed either to Bluebonnet Ranch or another Welcome subdivision called Happy Hills. How Happy Hills got its name was a mystery, because the landscape was as flat as a tortilla and barely two feet over sea level.

Anyway, Happy Hills was a neighborhood of new two-story residences referred to as "big hair houses" by everyone else in Welcome who had to make do with one-level ranch dwellings. The subdivision had undergone just as many tornado strikes as Bluebonnet Ranch, which some people cited as an example of how tornadoes would just as likely strike a wealthy neighborhood as a trailer park.

But one Happy Hills resident, Mr. Clem Cottle, was so alarmed by a white tornado that cut right across his front yard that he did some research on the property and discovered a dirty secret: Happy Hills had been built on the remains of an old trailer park. It was a rotten trick in Clem's opinion, because he would never have knowingly bought a house in a place where a trailer park once stood. It was an invitation to disaster. It was just as bad as building on an Indian graveyard.

Stuck with residences that had been exposed as tornado magnets, the homeowners of Happy Hills made the best of the situation by pooling their resources to build a communal storm shelter. It was a concrete room that had been half-sunk in the ground and banked with soil on all sides, with the result that there was finally a hill in Happy Hills.

Bluebonnet Ranch, however, didn't have anything remotely resembling a storm shelter.

If a tornado cut through the trailer park, we were all goners. The knowledge gave us a more or less fatalistic attitude about natural disasters. As with so many other aspects of our lives, we were never prepared for trouble.

We just tried like hell to get out of the way when it came.

Mama's pains had started in the middle of the night. At about three in the morning. I realized she was up and moving around, and I got up with her. I'd found it nearly impossible to sleep anyway, because it was raining. Until we'd moved to Bluebonnet Ranch, I'd always thought rain was a soothing sound, but when it rains on the tin roof of a single-wide, the noise rivals the decibel level of an airplane hangar.

I used the oven timer to measure Mama's contractions, and when they were eight minutes apart, we called the ob-gyn. Then I called Miss Marva to come take us to the family clinic, a local outreach of a Houston hospital.

I had just gotten my license, and although I thought I was a pretty good driver, Mama had said she would feel more comfortable if Miss Marva drove us. Privately I thought we would have been a lot safer with me behind the wheel, since Miss Marva's driving technique was at best creative, and at worst she was an accident waiting to happen. Miss Marva drifted, turned from the wrong lanes, sped up and slowed down according to the pace of her conversation, and pushed the gas pedal flush to the floor whenever she saw a yellow light. I would have preferred Bobby Ray to drive, but he and Miss Marva had broken up a month earlier on suspicion of infidelity. She said he could come back when he figured out which

shed to put his tools in. Since their separation. Miss Marva and I had gone to church by ourselves, her driving with me praying all the way there and back.

Mama was calm but chatty, wanting to reminisce about the day I was born. "Your daddy was such a nervous wreck when I was having you, he tripped over the suitcase and nearly broke his leg. And then he drove the car so fast, I yelled at him to slow down or I'd drive myself to the hospital. He didn't stay in the delivery room with me—I think he was nervous he'd get in the way. And when he saw you, Liberty, he cried and said you were the love of his life. I'd never seen him cry before...."

"That's real sweet, Mama," I said, pulling out my checklist to make certain we had everything we needed in the duffel bag. I had packed it a month earlier, and I'd checked it a hundred times, but I was still worried I might have forgotten something.

The storm had worsened, thunder vibrating the entire trailer. Although it was seven in the morning, it was black as midnight. "Shit," I said, thinking that getting into a car with Miss Marva in this kind of weather was risking our lives. There would be flash-flooding, and her low-slung Pinto wagon wasn't going to make it to the family clinic.

"Liberty," Mama said in surprised disapproval, "I've never heard you swear before. I hope your friends at school aren't influencing you."

"Sorry," I said, trying to peer through the streaming window.

We both jumped at the sudden roar of hail on the roof, a battering shower of hard white ice. It sounded like someone was dumping coins onto our house. I ran to the door and

opened it. surveying the bouncing balls on the ground. "Marble-sized," I said. "And a few golf balls."

"Shit," Mama said, wrapping her arms around her tightening stomach.

The phone rang, and Mama picked it up. "Yes? Hey, Marva, I—You what? Just now?" She listened for a moment. "All right. Yes, you're probably right. Okay, we'll see you there."

"What?" I asked wildly as she hung up. "What did she say?"

"She says the main road is probably flooded by now, and the Pinto won't make it. So she called Hardy, and he's coming to get us in the pickup. Since there's only room for three of us, he'll drop us off and come back to get Marva."

"Thank God." I said, instantly relieved. Hardy's pickup would plow through anything.

I waited at the door and watched through the crack. The hail had stopped falling but the rain held steady, sometimes coming in cold sideways sheets through the narrow opening of the door. Every now and then I glanced back at Mama, who had subsided in the corner of the sofa. I could tell the pains were getting worse—her chatter had died away and she had drawn inward to focus on the inexorable process that had overtaken her body.

I heard her breathe my father's name softly. A needle of pain went through the back of my throat. My father's name, when she was giving birth to another man's child.

It's a shock the first time you see your parent in a helpless condition, to feel the reverse of your situations. Mama was my responsibility now. Daddy wasn't here to take care of her. But I knew he would have wanted me to. I wouldn't fail either of them.

The Cateses' blue truck stopped in front, and Hardy strode to the door. He was wearing a fleece-lined windbreaker with the school panther logo on the back. Looking large and capable, he entered the trailer and closed the door firmly. His assessing glance swept over my face. I blinked in surprise as he kissed my cheek. He went to my mother, sank to his haunches before her and asked gently, "How does a ride in a pickup sound, Mrs. Jones?"