Billy Bob Walker Got Married (15 page)

She watched him a minute. He was looking down at a napkin that he was methodically tearing in shreds, his long fingers slow and steady. Her gold ring glinted as he worked.

He infuriated her some times, but she wanted him to understand that there was no chance she would seesaw back to Michael. Maybe she had used him handily today; she still owed Billy this much. And she thought he needed to know.

"I won't ever be back with Michael," she said decisively. "So don't think, no matter what you hear, that there's a chance in a million of it happening."

He gave her one of his slanting glances; it was speculative.

"And what am I gonna hear?"

"Who knows? Sam may insist on having a wedding." "And you'll do what?"

"If I can't make him believe that I'd rather be horsewhipped than look at Michael, I'll tell him that there's a small problem. You," Shiloh said steadily.

He put down the napkin and reached for the iced tea the waitress set down in front of them.

"I'm asking you to let me know before you tell your daddy," he said. "There's people I've got to talk to first."

A sharp little arrow of anger shot through Shiloh. Of course, she thought. "There'll be time for you to break the news to An—to your girlfriends. They'll never notice you're married, it'll be over so fast. I promise."

"I was talking about Mama and Grandpa," he retorted. "And maybe it won't be over so fast. Maybe I'll have to wait a little while for this—this divorce for their sakes. I can't tell 'em about the money. Not without—"

"Billy," she said quietly, a little ashamed, "I never meant to make you feel like, well, like you'd been bought and paid for. You're doing me a favor, really."

"Don't ask me for any more like this one," he answered darkly, and the waitress brought the huge platters of golden, battered catfish and baked potatoes oozing butter.

After they'd been eating a few minutes, Billy observed as he licked butter off his thumb, "You don't eat like a New York model, at least."

"What does that mean?" she demanded, putting down her fork.

"No salads, or fruit dishes, or lemon ice water," he answered, and there was a hint of a grin on his face.

"I happen to like catfish," she informed him.

"That's fine by me. So do I." He slid another look over at her. "Since you're the little wife now," he said daringly, and the word sounded strange to Shiloh's ears, "does this mean you do my cooking and cleaning?"

"I wouldn't want to deprive your mother of the pleasure," Shiloh told him sweetly.

"She won't mind. You can scratch my back every night, too. Mama doesn't do that."

"Neither do I," Shiloh answered primly, reaching for her napkin.

"Well, I'll be liberated about it," Billy offered, and his long blue eyes sparkled with humor and suggestiveness. "I'll come over to your house and scratch yours. Anytime. And once Pennington and Michael get wind of that, you won't need to tell 'em anything."

"Thanks, anyway," Shiloh answered. "But you don't have to give up your spare nights for me. You can just keep on with your life."

He put down the glass and pushed his plate away. His face held little or no humor as he looked at her, and he asked abruptly, "So it's okay if I show up at the Palace Saturday night with whoever. Or at the Legion Hall dance. That's where you meet all the girls like you. The ones who don't go to the Palace, who—"

"That's right," Shiloh interrupted. What had he been expecting? That she had thought today would mean something? "It's okay with me."

He looked at her a minute, then gave a little, under-his-breath laugh. "I'd'a swore you were different from this, Shiloh."

"I understand the rules, that's all," she said, shrugging. "But if this were a real marriage, if we'd really run off and gotten married, I'd keep my husband at home, Billy Bob. I'd make sure he wanted to stay there. And—and I'd skin him alive if I caught him out at the Legion Hall with another woman." She flung her napkin down. "Look, I'm ready to go."

She reached for the check, and he got there first, pushing her hand away in determination.

"You know what?" he said in exasperation. "You and your money are gettin' to be a real pain in the neck. I'm payin' for it. And you know what else? I'd rather be married to some ordinary girl who cared enough to skin me alive than to you and your little rules of the game. She'd be a whole lot more fun."

He towered over her for a minute, his eyes blazing blue, before he reached for the cap and slung it on, then walked away.

Shiloh watched him go and wondered why he had the power to hurt her. Why did it matter what he said? He was probably mad because she hadn't fallen for that line of his. And he needn't pull that "I'd rather be married" stuff on her; he could have had Angie long ago if he had wanted to settle down.

The waitress said something to him at the checkout. He laughed. —.—

And for a second, Shiloh wondered what it would be like if she took him at his word, went over there and slid her arm around his narrow waist and told him—this new husband of hers—that she wanted to go home with him.

He'd change his tune then, but he might take her up on part of her offer, at least for the night.

But outside, she tossed the keys at him, and as he caught them against his chest, she told him casually, "You drive. I'm tired." She was no fool; she'd caught on fairly rapidly that his lack of control over this situation was getting to him, and it seemed to be symbolized by this car. So she would give in to his masculine ego a little—let him drive if he wanted to.

But she watched him on the way home.

"What's the matter?" he asked at last.

"Just wondering what kind of husband you'd really make."

"A damned good one," he answered flatly. "I don't believe it."

"Wait and see. Someday I'm going to find a woman that I'm crazy about—"

"And reform. Bight?" There was a sharp pain in her throat that made it hard to get the words out.

When he looked at her again, his face was serious. "I'm not nearly as bad as you think I am. Nor the town, either. They like to gossip. I hear things I'm s'posed to have done that I never thought of doing. And I'm gonna be somebody . . . have something. I'll do as well as Michael. Wait and see. It's just taking me longer."

A hard blur of tears suddenly rose up in her throat, and she looked down at her clenched hands.

"You're already better than Michael, Billy. Believe me."

He looked at her sharply; she felt it.

"Why'd you get with him, Shiloh?" he asked at last, painfully. "Of all the people."

She couldn't tell the truth, couldn't say after all these years, He reminded me of you for a while. So instead, she shrugged. "It was easy. He was there. Sam liked him. And he's smooth, or he used to be."

"You loved him."

"No. I never did. And I'm no liar, Billy."

He clenched the steering wheel with both hands, his knuckles turning white. "Then that makes it worse than ever, seems to me."

Shiloh said nothing; it suddenly seemed that way to her, too.

They rode in silence for a while, until at last the old gin came into sight. Behind it, in the late evening shadows, his truck sat parked in a brilliant yellow clump of black-eyed Susans as if nothing had happened.

As if she hadn't left here this morning brash and defiant and single, and returned this evening married and filled with old regrets.

He climbed out of the Cadillac quickly, and she followed more slowly. At the truck, he turned.

"Well." The one word was nearly lost on the dewy air, sweet with fresh-blooming honeysuckle. "You know where to find me if you need me," he said at last. The long afternoon shadows touched his face, made the blue of his eyes and the white of his teeth all that showed up distinctly.

He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and stood looking down at her.

"I once imagined being married to you," Shiloh said suddenly, the words spilling before she could stem them.

A muscle ticked in his cheek. "Maybe this way's better. Now you get to go back to your own little world, with your housekeeper and your Cadillac."

"And you can go back to the Legion Hall," she said flatly, "and the Palace."

"Yeah."

He reached up to rub his neck, and she saw the gold ring.

"My ring," she said, motioning toward it. "You won't need it."

He looked at her a minute, then at the ring. "I can't get it off," he said at last. "You'll have to wait until I get home and put soap on it."

"Then what? You'll mail it to me?"

"Something like that," he answered quizzically.

She nodded, then started to turn away.

Quick as a flash, his right hand shot out to catch her arm. She looked back at him, startled.

"What—"

"Why'd you kiss me in the judge's office?" His question threw her completely off balance, into a stammering shock.

"He—the judge told me to."

"And you do everything he told you?" A shimmer of humor lighted his face for a second. "That's good to know—because you made a promise in front of him— something about being faithful to me."

"Don't get any ideas about this marriage being real, Billy."

"I've already got 'em, Shiloh. Ideas. . . and questions. Like, why'd you marry me? Why'd you kiss me? And I've got some for myself: why'd I agree? And why'd I
let
you kiss me after all you'd said? But most of all, I wonder why I liked it. I ought'a hate you."

He was nearly smiling down into her face, such an odd mix of teasing and sobriety in his expression that she could only stare up at him in an uneasy, angry caution.

She tried to wrench her arm free without success. "Is that all?" she demanded.

"Just one more thing," he said mildly. Then he grasped her chin in his left hand and pulled her mouth up to his fiercely.

The kiss took her by surprise, his lips hard and sure, and she felt his tongue as he touched her lips but went no farther. The tips of his fingers warm and tight on her jaw—she felt them, too, and her heart as it thudded up into her throat, under his hand as it wrapped her neck.

Then he pulled away, letting his lips linger, letting his fingers brush through her hair, down to the hollow of her throat, and into the vee of her blouse, and his eyes were bright and vivid as he said huskily, "We may have some kind of weird marriage here that's not for real, but I'm not as big and understanding about it as you are, honey. Every time I see you in town, I'm gonna think, that woman is my wife. I'm not gonna like it one damn bit if you're off with somebody else, and I'll get plain mad if I see you wearing Michael's ring again."

"I told you," she began hotly, about to argue fair play, about to protest, when he flattened his hand against the warm bare skin of her chest, his palm heavy and deliberate against her breasts.

The insolent touch knocked her off balance, left her gasping, and she grabbed his wrist with both hands, meaning to push him away, but he put his other hand lightly across her lips to cut off her words and said cheerfully, "Yeah, I heard you. All those rules of yours for me. I can do anything, right? But these are my rules for you, baby—you can't. As long as you're my wife, stay away from other men."

Then he pulled away, slid in the truck, and said with a flashing grin, "See you at the Legion Hall."

"Billy!" She got her breath back in time to scream after him as the old truck roared away and left her in a cloud of red Mississippi dust. "Billy Bob Walker—you come back here! Right now!"

₈

"Where have you
been?"

Her father's voice came out of the shadows at the side of the porch to take her by surprise. It wasn't dark yet, but here, under the roof and the big trees, it very nearly was.

"You scared me." She caught back any confessions; she couldn't give away her ace-in-the-hole—that swaggering blond devil—just yet. "I took a day off."

Sam rose from the wicker chair to face her as she halted uneasily at the edge of the porch. "Without tellin' anybody?"

"I told Mr. Parsons."

"Family business? That was a lie, Shiloh. Now, where have you been?" His face was contained and stiff; his voice was furious.

"I don't have to tell you everything I do!"

"No? Maybe not, but what am I supposed to think when two days ago you yell at me that you're gonna leave for good, and today, nobody knows where the hell you

are?" His voice shook an instant before it hardened into anger again.

"You thought I'd left home," Shiloh whispered at last, as realization dawned.

"It's what you wanted me to think," Sam answered accusingly, and he reached up to unbutton the top button of his shirt, only to find he'd already undone it and loosened the tie. He breathed heavily. "Well, wasn't it?"

"No. I just needed to get away and think," Shiloh offered lamely.

"You don't miss work for such lame reasons as that," he snapped. "You've had Laura worried sick."

"I didn't mean to. It's good to know
you
couldn't have cared less," she snapped back.

He turned, rumpling up his already wrinkled suit jacket to ram both hands into his pockets and stand staring at her. Even in the shadows, she saw the pinched lines around his nose and mouth, the tiredness in his face.

"Papa," she said involuntarily, and he let go of all his breath in a sudden expulsion of defeat.

"I thought you'd gone, Shiloh," he said at last, wearily. "I'm tired of fighting. Why can't we get along?"

She swallowed the emotions choking her and rubbed her forehead where a headache had begun to pound. "You want everything your way," she told him. "We get along when I don't fight it."

"Shiloh." He said her name abruptly. "I'll be damned if I ever understand you, but I'll give a little, if you will."

She dropped her hand to stare at him in surprised wariness. "Give what?"

"I told Michael today to give you time, to leave you alone for a few weeks."