Billy Bob Walker Got Married (13 page)

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"Billy! Billy Bob!"

He came awake with a start, the hot rays of the afternoon sun making his face burn. The jail cell was stuffy and too warm.

"Billy!"

Pulling himself up groggily from the cot, he tried to find the voice. He knew it already, but Shiloh was not at the bars to the cell. Then she called again, and he realized with surprise that she was outside the window.

"Shiloh?"

There she stood, in the empty' parking lot, looking up at his window. But this was not deja vu—there was no red Porsche, and today she had on tight, leggy blue jeans, and her face looked as if she'd been crying. She'd changed her mind—he already knew.

"Were you asleep?"

"Must have been," he answered slowly. "What's wrong?"

"Is it—is it still on for tomorrow?" She swallowed heavily, glancing away. "You mean—" "Our getting married."

He took a long, considering breath. Now was his own chance to cut and run.

"If you still want to do it, it is," he answered instead.

"I still want to," she answered resolutely. "But when?"

"I'll give T-Tommy the money first thing in the morning. After he gets over the shock, I guess he'll have to do things—fill out papers, I don't know. I'll meet you as soon as I can." A little rush of effervescent excitement shot through him, a tiny, quicksilver stiletto of anticipation that slid through his ribs.

"But where? I've already told Mr. Parsons I wouldn't be in tomorrow. Family matters, I said. He won't dare question that," Shiloh told him with a trace of irony. "Now, where? We don't want to be seen."

Why not, he wanted to ask. Instead, he pondered a minute.

"Where are we going to do it?" he asked. "I thought—Memphis. It's a big city. Nobody will notice us."

He frowned. "You've got a point. So, meet me out at the old gin. You can park in the back. Nobody will see anything. I'll come as soon as ... as I get out."

She nodded, then raked her hair back from her face.

She definitely had been crying.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Billy Bob asked her roughly. "I'm sure."

"Then what in the hell have you been crying about?" Her hands went to her cheeks in confusion, then she dropped them. "All brides cry," she said flippantly.

The deserted old cotton gin leaned precariously to the right, a giant, graying skeleton of lumber nearly hidden from the road by a heavy stand of emerald pine trees. The morning air was pungent with the sharp tang of the pine needles.

Once the two-lane asphalt highway that ran past the gin had bustled with business, but a newer road to the north had since turned this one into a leisurely local thoroughfare, so somnolent that farmers on tractors or pulling hay wagons felt comfortable ambling down it.

When Billy Bob turned the truck off the highway and into the gravel road leading behind the gin, no one saw him. He felt a little silly even checking, but then this whole business had a clandestine feel to it that made him act like James Bond.

She was waiting for him when he pulled in, leaning up against a small blue Cadillac—-it was Sam's brand of car— in a pair of dark sunglasses that made her look remote. She wore white, too, though it was hardly bridal. Shiloh's gleaming, snowy suit boasted a jacket whose lapels veed sharply, deeply downward, revealing the hollow between her breasts and making Billy wonder nervously if she was wearing anything at all under it.

Her long legs ended in high white heels that pushed her feet into delicate arches, and his eyes lingered on them before he turned off the motor and climbed out, a sudden dark reluctance in him as he faced the girl who was straightening off her car.

The truth hit him hard: This icy fashion plate with the perfect hair and elegant legs and designer clothes was a stranger. He didn't like the way she looked; she made him feel like a welfare case in his jeans and white shirt. And somehow the contrast between the two of them made it clear that it really was just a business proposition, an ugly one: one rich lady buying herself a commodity—him.

"Sorry I'm late," he told her abruptly, as she took a step toward him. "I gave the money to T-Tommy and his mouth dropped open so far he tripped over it. The old buzzard put me through the wringer tryin' to figure out where I got it."

"Do you think he suspects me?" Her voice eased his tension and took a little of the starch out of him. It was husky and sweet as usual, but there was a little tremor in it.

Shiloh was not as cool and calm as she appeared, thank God.

But he wouldn't apologize for his clothes. "I don't think so. But he made me so late I just got out of the jail and came straight here."

"It's okay. But we'd better hurry."

He nodded, and they both started moving, each to his own vehicle. Then both stopped.

"There's no point in takin' both," he pointed out reasonably. And he didn't add, I'll be damned if I'll crawl in Sam Pennington's Caddy, either.

"You're right. You can ride with me," she offered.

"What's wrong with my truck?" he asked belligerently.

She shrugged. "Nothing, except the car's air-conditioned. And there's more room for those long legs of yours." She glanced downward, and Billy's heart gave a hard jerk of surprise. Shiloh never made personal remarks. Even if this one hadn't been especially provocative, it said clearly that she'd been looking at him.

Billy didn't know whether to be dismayed or pleased. He chose a little of both.

"My legs will be fine in the truck," he answered shortly.

"I don't want to leave the car here. I doubt that anybody would find it, but the whole world knows it's one of Sam's." She gestured toward the license plate with its distinctive "S.P." tag. "If it sits here, and somebody sees it, they'll call T-Tommy again, and this game is over before it gets started."

Then she turned back to the car decisively. "Besides, it's got a full tank of gas."

He'd opened his mouth to argue, but her comment made him shut it abruptly. Billy remembered suddenly that he had exactly $36.00 to his name. If something happened to his truck—and it had one bald tire—he might not have the money to fix it, let alone fill it up with

gas.

So it was with extreme reluctance and a tinge of anger that he finally went after the high-handed miss who was already sliding into the car.

The driver seat, no less. She was clearly the one in charge here.

You sell yourself like so much merchandise, and that's the way you get treated, Billy Bob thought bitterly, and without another word, he climbed into the passenger seat.

It smelled of expensive leather and her light perfume; this princess coach with her alligator purse on the carpet at his feet and a folded yellow umbrella on the dash was a foreign world.

And the squealing little buzzer that went off when he opened the door wouldn't shut up until he wrapped the seat belt over himself and snapped it closed. Caught and imprisoned by his own hand.

Then they sat staring at each other in silence.

Billy finally made a sweeping motion that invited her to move on. "It's your party, honey. You gonna get on with it, or sit here all day?"

And without another word, she pulled away from the shelter of the gin.

They drove in silence for a while, while he slid glances over at her and considered the way she handled the car. Smooth. A little too quick to go for the gas, but that was all.

She looked totally in control, so he moved to break her hold, flipping on the radio without asking her permission.

When he found a steel-rich, fiddle-crazy song about women and drinking, he left the dial right there. Still she said nothing.

"That's the damnedest outfit I ever saw any bride wear," he told her at last.

She glanced over at him in surprise. "What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing, if you want to keep the preacher or the JP or whoever it is who marries us hopped up on pins and needles wondering if you've got on anything under that jacket," he answered bluntly.

Her cheeks flushed. "What's wrong with you these days?" she snapped. "You never used to say stuff like that."

"Don't avoid the question," he retorted. "Do you?"

She opened her mouth as if to spit her anger at him but suddenly seemed to change her mind. Instead, her hand went to the buttons on the coat, twisting them deliberately through the button holes.

"You can see for yourself," she taunted unevenly.

Billy couldn't tear his eyes away from her hand, and when she finally pushed the jacket open, his heart hit several hundred beats a minute.

She had on a cool white camisole top, as deeply veed as the jacket but otherwise completely safe.

His momentary relief wasn't much help. "You never used to do stuff like that," he counter-accused.

"So what's
your
reason?" she demanded, shooting an angry glare at him.

"Why'd I say it, you mean? I guess because I don't like the way you look."

She said derisively, with only a trace of hurt in her voice, "You and Sam. He's out to protect my reputation. Why are you so concerned?"

"You don't look real. You look like—like some ice queen behind those big glasses and in that hot little outfit. You sit on your little throne over there moving the rest of the world around like pawns. Don't you think I'd rather have paid my own way out of jail?" he returned in frustration.

She took a deep breath and her hands tightened on the steering wheel. "Than to marry me, you mean?" He said nothing.

"We don't have to do this," she told him at last. "We can find a place to turn around."

There was a long, stark silence.

"Do what you want," muttered Billy at last. "I'll pay you back the money as soon as I can."

"I don't want the money," she returned hotly. "It's not important."

"Not important!" His voice was incredulous; then he laughed. "That just shows how little you know about the real world, honey. I bet everything I don't have that you've never been without money, or your charge cards, or a nice little checkbook in your whole life, have you?"

Shiloh bit her lip and kept driving.

"That's what I thought," Billy answered triumphantly. "You buy your fancy clothes that I don't even know you in, you'll buy a new car to replace the one you smashed to pieces, you even bought me. Well, I wish I'd cost you a whole lot more, Shiloh. Thousands more. You should have had to pay enough to make you at least think about me and what you were doing to me when you made that offer."

When she stopped the car, they both sat breathing furiously. Where had all the anger come from, Billy wondered wildly. He hadn't known it was in him until it spilled out on her in a dark, acidic tide.

"Forget it," she whispered, never looking at him. "I'll find another way to fight Sam."

"Shiloh, I'm sorry." The words hung in his throat, but he got them out.

She shook her head wordlessly, swallowing heavily. But as her hand reached for the gear shift, Billy caught it, taking both of them by surprise.

It was warm, her skin smooth to his touch—the first touch since the other night in the jail cell. He'd remembered the brush of her hand every day since.

She looked at him in wary shock and tried to pull away, but he held her fingers firmly.

"I said I'm sorry," he told her huskily. "I don't know why I said it, except I'm feeling pretty low right now. I don't like me much, and I'm takin' it out on you."

She just watched him, like a wide-eyed child behind the dark glasses.

Slowly, carefully, he reached out and pulled the dark shades away from her face. Behind them was the girl he'd spent a night in jail with, not the cool snob who'd come home from college with her nose so high in the air she couldn't see him.

"I don't want to marry you now," she told him defensively.

He was so close to her, he could see the pulses beating in her throat.

"So you'll do what? Find somebody else?"

He shook his head before she could answer.

"It won't be the same. I'm perfect for what you need," Billy told her flatly. "If you'll just quit making me feel like a hobo you've picked up out of the goodness of your heart, we'll be all right. Do you think I like gettin' married lookin' like this"—he gestured down at his old clothes— "when my—my bride looks like you do? And she's footin' the bill, too?"

Shiloh let her brown gaze slide from his face, down the brown length of his throat to the open collar of the white shirt, down to his waist, and out his long arm where the sleeve was rolled up to his elbow.

"You look all right," she told him in surprise, as if she'd never even considered him worth looking at before.

"Thanks," he said wryly, then let his own gaze travel down to that deep vee again where her white shirt contrasted sharply with her warm skin. "You look . . . too good."

Her face suddenly flushed, and her lips opened a little.

Billy watched them a minute. He knew what he was going to do. He was going to make his peace on her lips, then he was going to shut up and marry this girl.

"Billy—" The word held a panicky protest as his mouth drew near hers. "Billy, if you kiss me, this whole thing is off, and I want my money back."

He stared at her, his face darkening. "What in hell for?"

"I told you, it's business. I'm not getting into anything else. I just want this mess straightened out." Her words were rushed.

They hurt his ego. "I don't think that's why. I think you're scared to death."

"Of you?" She tried hard to sound scornful.

"Of me, and of kissing me, and of being here with me right now," he accused.