Billy Bob Walker Got Married (34 page)

She looked like she belonged to him.

The thought hung in his throat and he swallowed the heavy emotion that reached to choke him. Maybe she'd done it deliberately, buying these clothes; or maybe she'd liked them because a part of her was like this—casual and easygoing.

But seeing her dressed this way helped scrub out some of the despair he'd been living with since the night she and Michael had made such a matched set in that expensive spotlight.

"Shoes," he managed at last, looking down at the elaborate leather sandals she was still wearing. "You need white tennis shoes."

"No, Billy, I've already spent—"

"Come on. Let's go get a pair." His fingers shackled her wrist as he headed off determinedly, stalking toward the tiny shoe store nestled between an ice cream parlor and a record barn where Randy Travis's disembodied voice floated through the air.

He liked her in these clothes, Shiloh thought, remembering the way his eyes had reflected first a startled, surprised delight and then a fiery pleasure. An arrow of hot excitement shot through her stomach; Billy had liked her a
lot.

She could barely concentrate on the earnest shoe salesman who removed one sandal and droned on about his sale on Keds, because of her own rattling emotions and because Billy kept watching her face.

He was paying no attention to the salesman, either, except for thinking once or twice that if the man ran his hand much farther up Shiloh s leg while he was taking off her sandals, Billy was going to break his fingers.

"Here," he said brusquely, his voice thick with emotion, "you go get the shoes. I'll do this."

He dropped to his haunches in front of Shiloh, shouldering the ambitious salesman out of the way. The man gasped indignantly, his eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses angry.

"But this is my job!"

Billy never answered, just sliding the last sandal off

Shiloh's foot, looking up at her as she sat perched on the stool above him. The salesman opened his mouth to speak again, then eyed the long, square width of Billy's shoulders and their determined set before he shut his mouth and headed off to get the shoes, without another word.

Billy pulled her feet up between his spread thighs, his hard palms wrapping the tops of her feet, his fingers reaching underneath to caress her soles.

"I like the clothes," he whispered huskily, belatedly.

The light in his blue eyes nearly burned her alive, so she looked away from the hard angles of his upturned face to the sturdy brown throat to the width of his shoulders, the muscles beneath the blue shirt.

Passion—that was what she felt flowing from him.

The cap blocked her angle of view as he ducked his head, then she felt his lips warm on the top of her foot. It was a quick flaming caress, one sheltered from the view of anybody who might have been watching by the spread of his legs around her and the breadth of his shoulders above her, and she reached out to pull the aggravating cap from his head so that she might see him better.

"Ahem. Here is the shoe size you requested." The salesman's voice was repressive as he slammed the box down, beside Billy, who raised his head and lowered her foot as casually as if he hadn't made her quiver with his touch.

But he didn't trust himself to speak as he threaded the laces through the shoes, his big hands deft, if a little shaky. And he slid one on her foot with his other hand around the silky calf of her leg, his long fingers reaching the back of her knee. He repeated the process with the second shoe.

"She needs to walk in them a little," the salesman pointed out in aggravation.

Billy let his lingers linger regretfully on the back of her leg, then slid his hand away and stood.

She stood, too, still clutching his cap against her, her legs so weak from his fingers that they wobbled a little. A few tentative steps later, she announced, "They're fine. Perfect."

He didn't answer, but the slow slide of his eyes down her legs, the tiny smile that hovered at his lips said enough. "I like them, too," he told her at last.

"You two newlyweds, or something?" the salesman asked, disgruntled, as Billy paid for the shoes.

"How'd you know that?" Shiloh asked in surprise.

The man preened himself a little, mollified. "You don't have on rings, but it shows. Believe me, it shows," he added drily.

They bought a huge bucket of chicken and fixin's at some place called Cajun Joe's.

They argued mildly for a few minutes about where they were going with it.

To the drive-in? No, too hot, he said.

To the park? No, too all-American, she said.

To the tables outside the Legion Hall where all of Sweetwater danced and every curious eye in the world would be on them?
NO.

They wound up down on the edge of tiny Angel Lake, where it straddled Briskin and Tobias counties, all alone in the dusky night except for the occasional distant light of some fisherman. The water on this finger of the lake was too shallow for speedboating and skiing, and there were no spots for camping, so few people came.

Tonight, just Billy and Shiloh, out on a rocky point over the misty water, shaded by twisting cedars and gangly pines. He spread a blue tarpaulin he had in the big storage chest that sat in the bed of the truck, and they ate there, watching the stars and letting the fog that was rising off the lake cool them.

When he finished, he rose without preamble and began to unbutton his shirt in the inky darkness above her.

She let the chicken leg she'd been eating fall to the tarpaulin. "What are you doing?"

He let the shirt slip from his hand, then dropped to one knee to loom over her, like a threatening cloud. "What does it look like?"

"Like . . . you're taking off your clothes." Maybe she'd swallowed the chicken bone instead of letting it roll away; something prodded nervously in her throat.

"You, Mrs. Shiloh Walker, are one smart cookie." He found her upturned mouth and kissed it lightly. "And you taste like chicken."

She heard the slide of his belt as he unfastened it, then felt the forward, hunching movements of his shoulders as he bent to tug off his boots. First one, then the other thudded on the ground beside her. When the rough sound of denim dragging over his skin brought her with a gasp to her feet, he paused, peering up at her in the shadowy night, trying to see more clearly.

"Where you running to?" he asked mildly. "Don't you want to go swimming with me?"

"Swimming? You're going
swimming?"

He rose to his full height in front of her. Shiloh wasn't certain, but she thought he was—

"Billy, have you got any clothes on at all?"

His laughter was low. "Why don't you come a little closer and find out for yourself? Scared, Shiloh?"

She swallowed. "Why would I be? I've . . . seen you before."

"Did you, now?" The three words whispered satisfaction across her cheek. "I wondered if you looked—really looked—last night. And if you'd be wanting to look again." His hands reached for her shoulders, guiding her to him inexorably. She resisted briefly, but her hands had a will of their own. They remembered the warmth of his skin from the night before, and they sought it now.

Her breath left her in a rush when her fingers raked him, felt the muscles that sloped from his shoulders down into his chest. And without volition, without thought, her arms slid around him, her cheeks pressed against his hard breastbone, her hands brushed down over his buttocks.

"Billy Walker," she choked out in scandalized arousal, "you really don't have on a stitch."

His arms locked her to him, refusing to heed the momentary struggle she made before she gave it up. "You could scream," he whispered in her ear, taking time to trace it with his tongue. "Water carries sound. Clancy Green and his buddies fish here nearly every weekend. They might come to your rescue."

"Who says I
—
want to be rescued?" she whispered jerkily. She shook back her hair and pressed back against his arm to gaze up at him, piercing the darkness with her eyes. "This is exactly what I should have expected when I agreed to a Friday night date with a wild man like you."

"I'm as ordinary as I can be, Shiloh," he answered, seriously. "I work, and sweat, and worry about rain, and harvests, and money. And if I was wild, it was because I didn't have you."

"Billy, there's not another man I know who could say that, stark naked," she said, with a sobbing intake of tender laughter, "and make me cry."

Pulling her left hand to his lips, he kissed the back of it, lingering at last on her ring finger.

"That salesman with his prowling hands was right about one thing. You need a wedding band."

"I wouldn't mind putting one on you, either, Billy. A great, wide one so everybody would know that you're definitely out of circulation." Shiloh pushed her fingers through his, their entwined hands between them all that kept their bodies from being glued together.

"We'll get them as soon as I make that next sale, okay? Pure gold—to last us fifty years." His tongue traced the finger delicately.

"Is that all?" Her hand twisted to touch his lips.

"I really did mean to swim, Shiloh," he whispered. "First, before anything else."

She pulled his hand down to the front of the blouse, where its buttons lay, and pressed deliberately closer to him, if that were possible. "You can change your plans, can't you?" she returned quietly. "We can swim—later."
₁₈

18

He drifted awake
at dawn the next morning, the sound of birds chirping noisily in his ears, a cool, sweet, early breeze fresh with the scent of nasturtiums and roses blowing across his skin.

For a long, slow, hazy moment, Billy wondered why there was so much sparkling sunlight in his room, making the tiny dust motes glitter as they floated in the air above him. And the sun was coming from the wrong angle, too, striking him from the right, instead of his left as it normally did in his room.

Then the pure, heavy, contented peace in his body chugged through him—and memory returned.

He was in Shiloh's room, not his. In Shiloh's bed, not his. In her arms.

She was the weight against his side; it was her hair spilling like silk across him, her hand on his chest.

When Billy moved to look down at her, she moved a little, too, turning her face away. Under the sheet, under the quilt, her bare legs tangled with his.

Here in the clear, bright light of this Saturday morning, he saw the fading shadows of the mark his mouth had made on her three days before. Only three days, and his whole life had changed.

He shifted on his side, groaning a little. They'd come close to an argument after they finally got back home last night, all over where they were going to sleep.

"I want to sleep with you. And I'm going to get damn aggravated if you don't return the favor. It's not right, us sleeping apart. But you said it was your room," he protested on the dark back porch, wondering how they could be squabbling just a half hour after they'd left the lake, where they'd worn themselves out with each other. "I don't want you mad tomorrow because I invaded your space, or whatever you call it. So we'll have to go to my room."

"I never said that you weren't supposed to come in here with me," Shiloh returned, her hands urging him to follow her.

The rest of the house lay asleep, in blackness, but someone had moved a tiny lamp into Shiloh's new room. They saw its dim yellow light through the shades that had been partially drawn over the windows. And when she opened the door from the porch, tugging him along by one hand, she drew in her breath sharply.

Over her head, he saw what she did: Ellen had made the bed with fresh sheets, turning back the covers to reveal their snowy whiteness. Besides the lamp, his mother had filled two vases with wild roses and a fragrant mix of flowers from the greenhouses. The roses made a vivid splash of color on the old blue dresser; the other, smaller bouquet drifted sweetness from the bedside table.

Even Willie had made a contribution: the old cane-bottomed chair had been replaced by his favorite rocker from the back porch, and a cushion from the living room couch was fluffed up in it.

"Billy," she whispered, looking back at him, a sheen of tears in her eyes.

He tried to laugh, ignoring the swell of gratitude in his heart. "This is about as much decorating as we ever do around here, Shiloh. See? I reckon they want you to know you're welcome here. They're kind of funny about saying things, but that's what this means."

"They did it for you, too."

"Well, let's just say that Grandpa had hopes I was going to get in this room tonight. He said it was foolishness to sleep apart, too. But I thought you wanted that."

"No, not to be away from you. I needed to feel like I had a private place, for me and you together. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, Billy, but I don't think I could be with you like we were at the lake tonight if we were in the room beside your mother."

He grinned at her in the dim room. "You could have a point. I had my hands full trying to keep you quiet. You said you weren't going to scream."

"I didn't."

"Just because I kept your mouth otherwise occupied," he drawled, running his thumb across it now, where it curved up in guilty laughter.

"I've got something for the room, too. It's not much of a wedding present, but it might cool things down in here. The temperature, that is," he added, mischievously. "It's in the back of the truck. Wait a minute."

When he returned with the big blue fan, she watched him set it up in one of the windows and plug it in. Its gentle whirring sucked in the silver night air, rich with the scent of roses and grass and the pines on the edge of the yard, and it blew the fragrance across the foot of the bed, dusting the quilt with coolness.