Rainsinger (7 page)

She grinned. He was showing off. Now she knew to watch that jump shot—no doubt it was a killer. He ran down the court and, as if to illustrate her suspicion, sprang impossibly high to dunk the ball. For a brief, purely female moment, she was distracted by his rear end, shown to perfection in a pair of soft, worn jeans. She swallowed a smile.

“Let’s play,” she said.

“Play a girl?” he asked, his voice now dripping irony.

Winona realized he, too, had been watching. And maybe he wasn’t quite as dumb as most men. “Yeah. To twenty?”

From the sidelines, Joleen spoke up. “Mr. Lynch, she’s hustling you.”

Winona gasped. “Thanks a lot, little sister.”

“It’s not fair, Winona.”

“He’s a big boy, Joleen.”

Daniel materialized beside Winona, bending to murmur in her ear, “‘Man’, sweetheart. I’m a big
man.”

His breath rustled the tiny, invisible hairs on her earlobe and neck, sending a current of sensation straight to hitherto quiet regions of her body. Against her better judgment, Winona turned her head to meet his gaze and found his dark eyes glittering with humor and challenge.

“Too big for your britches, maybe,” she said. One brow arched wickedly. “Sometimes.”

Winona rolled her eyes at the double entendre.

“Are you a basketball whiz?” he asked. Boldly he touched her upper arm. “Bionic limbs?”

“When she graduated from high school, she got more college-recruitment offers than any other woman before or since,” Joleen said, as if by rote.

“Oh, yeah?” His eyes narrowed. “Where did you play?”

“Tennessee.”

A slow, delighted grin moved on his mouth. “I’ll be damned. That would be about. . . what, five years, six?”

“Six.”

“I remember. Winona Snow. Well, well, well.”

She glared at him. “Cut it out. Will you play or won’t you?”

His grin broadened. “Hell, I’ll play. I’m not a-scared of some girl.” With a whoop, he stole the ball out of her hands and took off.

The game was on. And to Winona’s delight, he was as good as he had pretended to be. She loved being able to play full force, without holding back.

He also played a very physical game, which had been Winona’s specialty. People always said it was okay for women to play basketball because it wasn’t as physical as football. Poppycock.

Ironically, at first it was Daniel holding back. She could sense it—he couldn’t quite get over the “girls are fragile” message he’d been indoctrinated with since birth, and Winona had three baskets before he had even scored one. In a split second he reassessed, and she saw the change.

She laughed in exhilaration.

They slammed together and he stole the ball. And from there, neither asked nor got any quarter. A wild ball sent them both hurtling toward it, then connecting at the shoulder with a jarring smash. Daniel went down on one knee, hard. Winona heard him swear and saw he’d torn a hole in the knee of his jeans. She grabbed the ball and paused. “Better wear shorts next time...babe.”

And she was off.

They played hard. Six to nothing, Winona. Ten to eight, Daniel. A wild play, and twelve to ten, Winona. A scramble, a fight, and the score was sixteen to sixteen. Standing at midcourt, the light fading fast, they faced each other. Both were panting for breath, both wore a layer of sweat. Winona felt her hair stuck to her forehead, and saw that Daniel’s braid was ragged. He lunged for the ball, she danced around him, made a wild break—and tripped on the concrete, landing flat on her belly with a whoosh.

Daniel got the ball and she heard him chortle as he snagged a basket. She coughed as the wind came back to her, and got to her feet.

Solicitously he paused. “You all right?”

“Fine,” she growled, and took possession of the ball while his guard was down.

In the end, Winona won by two. She did a little victory dance under her basket.

“Gloating is a singularly unattractive trait in a female,” he said, wiping his brow with the back of his wrist.

She tossed him the ball. “I’ll give you another chance.”

“You’re on. Tomorrow, same place, same time.” He tossed Joleen the ball. “Thanks for the warning, kid. She would have killed me.”

The girl beamed at him. In that blazing second, Winona realized her little sister was quite helplessly smitten with the handsome, athletic man. Even as the knowledge sank in, Joleen jumped to her feet and hurried to match her steps to Daniel’s as they headed for the house in the cricket-shot evening.

Winona trailed behind, a tiny worry in her heart. Joleen was very fragile, and easily wounded right now. Winona didn’t want her to get so attached to Daniel that the end of the summer—and its resultant separation from him—would cause more pain. She would have to keep an eye on the situation.

Absently she rubbed her aching elbow and smiled. He sure could play a mean game of basketball, though. She anticipated their next game with no small measure of excitement.

* * *

His knee was bleeding, and once they were safely in the house, Daniel used that excuse to take himself off to the bathroom to doctor it.

Safely out of sight behind the door, he sank down on the side of the bathtub with a quiet groan. The knee alone would have been punishment enough, but every muscle and joint in his whole body hurt. His arms. His rear end. His hip where he’d landed against the concrete, his shoulder where she’d slammed into him.

As much as he ached now, he knew it was nothing to what tomorrow morning would bring. And she wanted to play again tomorrow night!

If he lived that long.

But even as he poured hydrogen peroxide over the pebble-infested cut on his knee, Daniel felt good. She had been a star in college. Good enough, everyone said, that she could have gone pro. With men. That he could hold his own against her made him feel pretty damned proud. He wasn’t over the hill yet.

When he returned to the kitchen, a baggy pair of sweats concealing his torn-up knee, a tall glass of tea awaited him. Winona leaned on the counter, her curls springing out from below the sweatband in wild wisps, her arms glowing with sweat. Her simple cotton tank had a smear of dirt at the hem, and her knees looked a little beat up, too.

“I thought I was the only one,” he said with a chuckle, pointing out the marks on her knees.

“Nope.” She lifted her elbow to show him the scrape there. “I’m going to go to town for roller skating pads before I play you again. You’re crazy.”

The brilliant gleam in her eye told him she meant it as a compliment.

“Thanks.” He lifted his glass in a toast. “So are you. Where’s Joleen?”

“Watching movies downstairs.” Winona drank deeply and sighed. “Great game, Daniel, really. I don’t meet many people who can play me that hard.”

He laughed, and was surprised at the sound of it rolling out of his chest, so free and natural. “I can imagine.” He settled in a chair gently and grunted. “Who taught you?”

“My uncle. Right out there.” She gestured with her glass of tea in the general direction of the court. “Jericho was crazy about basketball, and when I started getting so tall, he had that slab poured so he could teach me.” She brushed at dirt on her tank top. “Did you play in college?”

“No. Didn’t go until a lot later.”

“Really? Why not?”

He shrugged. “I just didn’t really understand that it was possible, not then. So I joined the army.”

“And discovered computers.”

He chuckled. “Yes.”

“I’ve been out of the country so long it’s a little bewildering to see all this computer stuff that’s taken off in the past few years. I don’t understand any of it.”

He’d never given it much thought, but now that he considered it, he realized that for all its complexity, the revolution in PCs was a relatively recent movement. “It’s a lot of fun. There’s so much to do you wouldn’t believe it.”

“So I’ve heard. But I think I’m going to have to bypass the computer revolution. It happened when my back was turned, and now they’re just too complicated for me to understand.”

“No, you’ve got it wrong. What happened while your back was turned is they got easier.” In a sudden decision, he stood up. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

“That’s okay.” She waved a hand. “I’m really too—.”

“No, you aren’t.” Playfully he grabbed her hand and tugged. “Come on.”

She capitulated, allowing herself to be led into the living room and to his elaborate computer setup. Daniel nudged her into his chair, grabbed a second one from beside the desk and sat down next to her. “You turn it on by pushing that red button,” he said.

“Don’t you have to work?”

“I’m sick of working today.” Their bare arms brushed as he leaned close to turn on the screen. “This is a lot more fun.”

“You know, I’m like Pigpen. Everywhere I go, messes follow. I’m bound to screw something up here.”

“No, you won’t. It’s pretty hard to do any damage at your level of expertise.” He smiled at her, aware in some dim part of his mind that he was enjoying her closeness very much. She smelled faintly of dust and sweat, and deeper of the talcum she used. From this position, he enjoyed a nice view of an ever-so-slightly freckled breast. A little dizzy, he gave her instructions to get to the main directory.

To start with, he showed her a game and the word processing program, but she seemed a little awed by it all. With a flash of insight, he remembered something that caught a lot of computer-phobics: bulletin boards. He clicked the icon for one of the easiest national boards, complete with fancy graphics and all kinds of directions and help screens.

“What’s this?” she asked, cocking her head as the sounds of a number being dialed came from the machine, followed by the strange, high-pitched sound of the modems connecting.

He grinned. “My computer just talked to another one a long way away.”

“Wow.”

“This,” he said as the brightly colored screens for the service came up, flashing a welcome message, “is the world of communications. E-mail. Bulletin board. Go ahead and push a button. Anything you want.”

Her hands stayed frozen in her lap. “What do all those little symbols mean?”

He’d made a mistake, he realized, in putting her in the driver’s seat the first time out. It scared her to touch the keys. She really was afraid of messing things up. “Let’s trade places.”

“I’d like that better.”

She pushed her chair back, and her hair brushed his chin. The whisper-light sensation electrified his nerves. He tried to move out of her way, but they both put their feet down at the same time and bumped knees. A chair fell backward and they both reached for it. Her arm and his met, wrist to wrist, and Daniel froze, willing himself to stop acting like a hormonal adolescent.

Even if that was how Winona made him feel.

Her cheeks were flushed as she bent to pick up the chair, and she murmured, “Sorry. Told you I’m clumsy.” She didn’t look at him.

Daniel didn’t move. He wanted to capture that chin and kiss away the telltale flush under her skin. What an unusual woman she was. He’d noticed she was always confident when in the midst of something, like cooking or playing basketball. Her body was graceful and well trained, and there was confidence and power in the way she moved.

But whenever the man-woman hunger rose between them, she grew shy. It was plain she had not had much experience with men, and he had to wonder why. What had kept her so naive?

As if she sensed his thoughts, she looked up. “I’m not usually as awkward as this anymore,” she said in a breathy voice. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately.”

And then he knew the answer to his question. Her size was the problem. Not only her height, but the combination of the siren body and her strong, athletic movements probably scared a lot of men away. Something inside him pinched. For her, and for him.

He knew he shouldn’t do it. He knew he needed to keep up his guard, that he was already too intrigued by this woman to allow anything physical to grow between them, but he couldn’t help it. He reached out and put his hand on her upper arm, skimming his palm over her firm flesh.

Glibness was not his style, not in these circumstances, and he didn’t try it now. “It’s okay,” he said.

He knew something of not belonging. His family’s bad reputation on the reservation had kept most of the girls from wanting to date him. Out in the other world, women fell into two camps: girls who wanted to date him because they thought Indians were romantic and girls who didn’t see in him the kind of life they wanted.

As a result, he’d never learned to put women at ease, to be quick with compliments and pretty words. His talent with people lay in spurring them onward and upward, in organizing groups to do their best. By dealing with groups instead of individuals, he could remain the observer, never the observed or the involved, and he liked it that way. The one time he’d let his heart lead him, he’d been deeply wounded. He’d sworn never to make the same mistake again.

And yet, under his hand, Winona’s arm was smooth and strong, and he let his thumb explore the new territory with ginger sweeps. Winona stood as still as a tree, her wide, pale eyes focused utterly on his face. Her gaze flickered, touched on his mouth, then flew back to his eyes.

To his astonishment, he found he didn’t want to clamp down on his attraction to her at the moment. What had happened in the past or might happen in the future mattered far less than the promise of pleasure he sensed in her lush, sinfully rich mouth.

He took one step closer to her, and felt the brush of her legs against his. She didn’t bolt. Didn’t look away. Only stared up at him, as if waiting.

So Daniel bent slowly, to give her plenty of time to move away if she wanted, and put his mouth against hers. Lightly. He didn’t close his eyes, but she did, and he felt her body soften even as her hand landed on his chest as if to push him away. He broke the kiss after an instant, suddenly breathless with fear and a fierce rush of unaccustomed desire.

A long moment stretched between them, her hand on his chest, his on her arm, their eyes tangled in wary surprise. His lips tingled with the slight taste of hers, and without thought, he bent again, tugging her arm to bring her a little closer.