Billy Bob Walker Got Married (9 page)

This was not the girl he'd once loved, he reminded himself, but whoever she was, she was hurting.

"Billy," she whispered at last, her voice dark with heavy emotion, and she slid her hand up the bars to touch his, where it clenched the bar above hers.

He felt the touch. It shocked him, but he didn't move.

"I'm in trouble," she gasped out at last.

His hand jerked. "Trouble? What does that mean?"

"I don't want to be Michael Sewell's wife. I told him. And I told Sam."

His heart nearly stopped, and finally, he tested his hearing with caution. "You don't want to marry Sewell," he repeated.

"No, I don't."

"Is he the reason you were running?"

"He—and Sam. I'm scared that one morning, I'm going to wake up and find that I am married to him, no matter what. Sam will make it happen. He always makes it seem right."

"What did Michael do to you?"

"Do!
Nothing."

"Don't lie. You were scared to death when you woke up and thought I was him." "I said, nothing."

Billy took a deep breath of pure frustration. "I could shake you, did you know that? You're so sure until your father gets mentioned. Then you're weak-kneed and spineless."

She tried to jerk away, but his hands flashed out, catching hers. "Don't marry him. Hell, you walked out on me. You can do it to him."

"I don't want to hurt Papa. He's had so many hurts—"

"Dammit, he's a bitter old man. So he fell for a woman twenty years his junior. He married her and she made a fool out of him with every man in town. He's not the first one it ever happened to. He's been feeding his pride and building his ego ever since at your expense. Your mother was gone for most of your life. She's dead now.
Dead.
Just because they screwed it up, you don't have to pay."

His hands were hurting her, nearly bruising her fingers.

"I know all that," she said resentfully, "but it's not that

easy."

"Yes, it is. Just say no. Run to Mexico again. Shoot both of them.
Do
something, Shiloh."

They stared at each other a long moment, then she swallowed and whispered, "You look like Michael."

He shoved away from her as if her presence burned him, taking two steps back. Then he said tautly, "No. Michael looks like
me."

Back at the cot again, he wondered why he'd ever tried. Her words hurt.

"I didn't mean it the way it sounded," she protested, then laughed a little in frustration. "I don't know how this happened. I haven't seen you in ages. But here you are— here I am. And I'm telling you things I didn't mean to say. You always did that to me." Her voice held a trace of resentment.

"Yeah, well, the feeling's mutual."

At last she, too, moved back to the cot in her cell, but she was restless. He could feel it even across the space that lay between them.

"So, are you still seeing that girl?" she asked at last.

"If you're talking about Angie Blake, sometimes."

"And—somebody else?"

"Sometimes."

"You're still living at home, too."

So she knew something about him after all.

"I kept telling myself I'd leave," he answered, slowly. "And I did once in a while, but I always came back. I kept remembering that peach orchards take a lot of work. So do pecan groves. And he's an old man. Then there were all those acres of trees the two of us planted—dogwoods and pines and more peach and pecan. He kept saying, 'Hold on, Billy. They'll be worth something one day.' He had a lot of hope for them. So I just kept planting and tending, but I didn't mean it. I was thinking about other things, working on other things. Then he had a stroke, and I had to stay. Mama couldn't run the place by herself, and we had to live."

Why tell Shiloh all this? It didn't matter to her. But he'd said it without thought, just another truth dragged out of one of them by the isolated intimacy of the dark cells.

"But you don't get to work with animals, like you wanted."

He hoped to God that wasn't pity in her voice, and he answered brusquely, "Yeah, I do. I train horses for Harold Bell." He'd give her no more than that; he'd told too much about himself already.

"The man who does the traveling rodeos?" she asked.

"That's the one. I used to travel with him once in a while, taking care of his stock. Mostly in the summer. That's why I was in Tupelo when you called."

"Is that what you're going to do when you get out of here?"

"If
I get out of here, you mean," he corrected. "But I don't have the fine, so I'll be here the rest of the month. At the best, I'll work all summer—somewhere—to pay Bud back. At the worst, they'll put me in here again because I can't come up with it."

"Why do you fight all the time? And hang out at all those places and stay in trouble? You never used to do that."

"Because I want to."

"Was the fight over a girl?"

He didn't answer.

"That's what I thought," she said flatly.

"It's nothing to you," he shot back. "At least I'm not running around town with somebody I don't even like, wearing their ring. Look—just go back to sleep, okay?"

"I can't," she said at last, her voice apologetic. "I might dream again. This jail is too quiet. It's lonesome, too."

He meant to shut her up with some insolent, rude remark, but there it was again, the lost-little-girl quality in her voice that made him go weak at the knees.

Some impulse made him stand, then drag his cot over to the bars between them. She heard his movement, saw what he was doing in the barely discernible light of dawn.

He stretched out on it, then let his hand linger on the bars.

"Well? I thought you were lonely," he questioned at last.

In one sudden, decisive movement, she stood, then copied his movements. They lay there on their separate cots, just the bars between them. Then he reached his fingers through, and she slowly caught them in hers.

There were no words between them. He watched her a long time in the gray light as she slept, clutching his hand like a child instead of the ultrachic Miss Shiloh Pennington. Her lashes lay like
heavy
fans on her cheeks, her lips were barely open as she breathed. But her long, shapely legs belonged to a woman.

It was easy to remember now the hold she'd once had on him—and why he had to keep hating her for what she'd done.

He fell asleep himself on the thought, and didn't wake until T-Tommy aroused him with a loud exclamation, staring through the bars at the cots so close together, at the entwined hands. Billy's was cramping, his fingers half asleep.

"Good God a'mighty, Billy Bob. What do you think you're doin'?"

₅

He got no
answer from either of his two prisoners; Billy moved hastily, pulling his hand free of Shiloh's and rolling off the other side of the cot. The rude movement woke her up.

"What's wrong?" she asked groggily, sitting up painfully.

"You tell me," T-Tommy muttered, glaring at Billy Bob as he leaned one shoulder against the wall and yawned.

"Is it—Sam? Did he come after me?" Shiloh asked hesitantly.

"No, leastways, not yet," T-Tommy answered, diverted for the moment from his suspicions. "I just got in myself. But I gotta call him, Shiloh. If he ain't already mad and worried, he will be when he comes through town and sees what's left of your car over at the body shop."

"Do it, then," Shiloh told him quietly, although her heart had already started a rabbity jumping motion at the thought of what Sam was going to say. "Call him."

"And besides, you gotta get a way home," T-Tommy added, rationalizing a little more. But still he hung around the door of the cell which he'd swung wide, jingling the keys that hung from his belt, before he asked anxiously, "Reckon you'll be all right when he gets here, Shiloh?"

"Good Lord, T-Tommy, he won't beat me," Shiloh answered, laughing a little.

"You hope," Billy murmured, then fell into silence when T-Tommy shot a glance at him.

"Come on, then, let's go," the sheriff said to Shiloh, standing back and motioning her out the door ahead of him. "No sense in you hangin' around back here any longer."

Shiloh hesitated. She wanted to say something to Billy Bob; there had to be some explanation from her as to why she'd spent four years treating him like a stranger, and then last night just lost it and told him everything.

She felt the heat that crawled up into her face as she remembered that emotional breakdown this morning after the dream she'd had. What in the world had possessed her to tell him about Michael?

Her eyes were beseeching as she looked over at him. He was no fool; he knew exactly what she wanted.

"Don't worry," he said brusquely, as he straightened off the wall and began buttoning his shirt. "Your little secrets are safe with me. And if we ever run into each other again, we'll be strangers."

"Did he do something?" T-Tommy demanded of the girl. "I wouldn't have thought it of him, in spite of everything. But if he—"

"No. I had a bad dream," Shiloh cut in. "I—I used to know him. He worked on the yard. That's why he was holding my hand. So don't say anything to him—there's nothing else to say, anyway."

She meant the pointed words for Billy Bob, and she was sure he knew it.

"Then come on, Shiloh. Let's go call Sam and get it over with," T-Tommy said reluctantly.

Her father was at the jail within thirty minutes. To a stranger, he might have looked normal. But there was a white line around his lips, and the pearl tie tack that he used every morning was not in place.

Shiloh faced him squarely when he walked in the sheriffs office, trying to act her age. Now was a fine time to start, she thought wryly.

"Now, Sam," T-Tommy began placatingly, but the other man was in no mood for small talk.

"Is she charged with anything? Can she go?"

"Yeah, she can go. The trooper wrote up this ticket, and there's a fine." He held out the slip of paper toward Sam, but Shiloh stepped up, trying to balance on her broken heel, and pulled it out of his hand first.

"It's my fine. I'll pay it," she said quickly.

"You damn well will," Sam said angrily. "And you can buy the next car you drive, too. I don't suppose you've seen what damage you did to the other one yet."

She didn't answer, just going to the door, where she stood waiting for him.

"I thought it might do her some good if she stayed here last night," T-Tommy announced, a little belligerently.

"You mean you thought I'd kill her if you brought her home," Sam corrected him tersely. "Well, don't worry. She'll live. Laura told me she was safe—that was all—so I've had time to cool down. I
think,"
he snapped as he turned to follow his daughter.

Neither of them said a word as they sank into the cream leather seats of Sam's Cadillac, but he turned purposely, not toward home, but toward Randy Tate's body shop.

Shiloh knew why; she didn't move a muscle until he pulled up alongside the garage—and there sat what was left of her red Porsche. She couldn't stop the wince of regret and dismay before she climbed out of Sam's car and limped over to it.

Randy himself came out to greet them. "You sure made a mess out'a this one, Miss Pennington," he said cheerfully as he tucked a pencil behind his ear. All three of them gazed at the crumpled left side of the car. Both the front windshield and the window were shattered, and the fender was nearly touching the door. The right door—the one Shiloh had scrambled out of to safety— wouldn't shut.

Randy touched the open door regretfully. "Frame's all bent up," he said. "I might could fix it, but I doubt it. And it'd cost way yonder too much. You'd be better off just buyin' a new one."

"The next new car she gets," Sam interpolated grimly, "it'll do well to make sixty miles an hour. No more speed cars for her."

Randy glanced from one to the other. "Oh," he said at last. "Well, your insurance will total it. But if you should want to sell it to me, I might could use parts of it. I couldn't pay much, of course. It ain't worth much anymore. But I might come up with more than you'd expect."

"I'll think about it," Shiloh said, feeling a little sick at the sight of the damage.

"Are you ready to go? Now that you've seen your handiwork?" Sam asked.

Without a word, she got in the Cadillac again.

His silence lasted until they got into the house. Then she spoke, to forestall him.

"I want to take a shower. I have to get ready for work," she announced.

"Oh, no, you don't," Sam snapped, pushing open the door to the study. "We're going to talk, me and you. You need to see a doctor to make sure you're not hurt. And don't even start about work. You've got no way to get there unless I loan you a car, and right now, that's not something that strikes me as real smart. Sit down, Shiloh."

She wanted to remind him that she was no child to be ordered around, but she was too tired and the effort seemed too great. She might as well get it over with, so she followed him reluctantly into the room, defying him only by going to the window instead of sitting down as he motioned her to do.

Neither of them said a word for a long moment, then he spoke harshly, "You could have been killed."

"But I wasn't."

"And if you think I like coming to the jail—the Briskin County Jail, of all places—to get my daughter, then you can think again." He made an angry gesture. "What is it with you? You've never given me much trouble, Shiloh, until now. You wait until you're twenty-two and then rebel, like some snot-nosed kid."

"I didn't rebel," she objected "I only said no. Maybe you're just not used to hearing it."

"I can't stand by and let you mess up your life, girl. You're throwing away Michael and a chance to be a part of the most respected family in this section of the state."

"Sam," she said bluntly, turning toward him, "the judge is all for this marriage because of your money. Because of your pull."

"What's wrong with Papa,' like you used to call me?" he asked irritably. "And as for the judge, I know that. Both of us want something that the other one's got, so we join. That's good business."

"But I'm not business," she answered passionately.

"Nobody ever said you were. But if you and Michael hit it off—and you did—there's that much more to the good."

He was as stubborn as a brick wall, and she felt as if she'd run full-tilt into one. Taking a deep breath, she put out her arm to try to hold off the force of his personality while she explained one more time that she couldn't marry Michael. Bight here in the bright light of this spring morning, she would have to tell her father what he'd done.

But he caught sight of the same marks that Billy Bob had seen the night before. "Who grabbed you?" he demanded, his face darkening.