Billy Bob Walker Got Married (28 page)

"Please, Papa—" The words clung to her throat; it was hard to speak past the tears and despair that waited in her heart, ready to strike as soon as she stopped fighting them off.

Sam held out his hand; four years fell away. Shiloh loved her father. And she loved Billy with all the passion of a first love, just as she had then, but now she knew the cost of Sam's outstretched palm. No halfways, no compromises.

"It's either him or me," Billy had said all those long days ago.

She blinked back the tears and let her body rest against Billy's, against the heavy thud of his heart, and she shook her head.

Sam's face blanched white, his eyes blazed; he let his hand drop slowly away.

"You don't know what you're doin', Shiloh. I'll cut you off without a dime. Without a home. You'll have no place to go. You don't think you'll live with him, do you?"

She didn't know; she hadn't thought that far.

But Billy's hand was there suddenly, wrapping her waist, pulling her into him a little; she looked up into his eyes, pleading silently with him for help, and she knew what to say.

"Why can't I live with him?" she answered steadily. "He's my husband."

A hard shudder went through him at her words as she gazed steadfastly up at him, into the sudden blaze of promise in his face.

The three men opposite them didn't move. Shiloh thought she'd remember forever the way the lawyer's coat hung from his limp hand. Davis's toothpick dropped from his suddenly slack jaw.

Sam choked out, "What?"

"We got married in Memphis more than a month ago."

Her father's face flooded with a tide of red blood. "All this time, you've been in my house, I've been beggin' you, thinkin' you might reconsider Michael, and you've been
married
to Billy Bob Walker?"

Billy pulled her a little tighter against him; he hadn't said a word until now, but his movement and his still, calm face as he looked Sam dead in the eye spoke it all.

"That's right," he said. "She's my wife, just like I meant for her to be four years ago." For his life, he couldn't keep the tiny touch of triumph out of his voice.

"And you were waitin' for her all this time, weren't you? Like a damned vulture. I could feel it, the way you were watching for her to come home. I should'a run you out of town years ago, Walker."

"It wouldn't have changed the way things have worked out," Shiloh said pleadingly. "Can't you give him—us—a chance?"

Sam pulled himself into order. "You've made your bed, like your mother did. But there's one difference. I wouldn't let Caroline come back the last time. She finally tried to, but you didn't know that, did you? You've lied to me, stuck a knife in my back just like she did. But I raised you. A parent can forgive a lot. The day that you get through with Walker, you come back home. I might forgive you, and we might patch up the mess you've made of your life. Until then, I don't have a daughter."

He had to push J.C. aside to get out the door. His back was straight, his head high, his steps sure. He would live after all, Shiloh thought in misery.

Sam Pennington was tougher than nails.

And she had Billy. She didn't want him to see her cry, so she twisted into his arms, pressing her face against his chest, clutching his waist tightly.

His embrace was hard as he squeezed her against him.

Maybe he wouldn't notice the wetness of her face if she stood here for a minute, wondering if here, in his arms, was really where she belonged.

Sweetwater had been waiting all afternoon to hear what was going on in that jail.

Billy and Sewell and the Pennington girl and Sam himself—it was going to be good, the story that explained this day. The parade had dulled long ago in light of these events.

Luscious tendrils of gossip had already seeped out: Pennington's daughter and Billy Bob had been caught. Or maybe she'd told. Caught doing what? some nitwit wanted to know.

Now rumors floated that it was Michael and not Billy whom the driver in the wreck had identified. There was a terrible irony in that, one which Sweetwater savored on the street corner and the courthouse steps.

But the most shocking piece of news was yet to come.

Cotton was the first to wring anything from Davis as the deputy emerged from the jail in the late, late afternoon, and the news he brought back to the courthouse after that encounter sent an already dizzy Sweetwater reeling again.

"I swear it on a stack of Bibles," Cotton recounted fervently to his listeners. "That girl's gone and married Billy Walker!"

15

"Like I said,
you're free to go," T-Tommy finally told Billy, his voice uneasy.

Shiloh waited for him at the door while Davis returned his personal belongings. Billy shoved the knife and the wallet back into his pocket, then looked at the ring an instant before he slid it on his finger. When he faced Shiloh, he seemed almost confused.

"You need me to drive you home? Since you don't have your truck here?" the sheriff offered tentatively, looking from him to the girl.

Billy hesitated, then he, too, glanced at Shiloh. "He can ride with me," she offered, and after a moment's pause, Billy nodded.

T-Tommy followed them out to the car and after Billy docilely climbed into the passenger seat, the sheriff caught the door before it closed.

"I'm sorry about this mess, Billy Bob. And you and Shiloh sure knocked me flat with your news. But I want you to know that I wish you well. You be good to her, you hear me?"

Billy answered without looking at the other man. "Yeah. I will."

T-Tommy watched him a minute, then spoke to Shiloh as she buckled herself into the driver seat.

"And you, Shiloh, you take care of him. If you need anything—"

"We'll be fine." Billy's words cut off T-Tommy's admonitions. Neither his face nor his conversation held much emotion.

The sheriff nodded, then reluctantly closed the door.

Shiloh pulled out of town silently, going south, mostly because neither of them had any family in that direction. She'd stood all the family she could today.

They had nowhere to go.

The truth was both painful and embarrassing, but she might have handled it better if Billy Bob had been acting differently. He couldn't seem to shake the dark stillness, the silence, that she'd felt in him when she walked in the cell.

He'd barely said three words the entire time. Even if she understood why he'd waited for her to take a stand before Sam, she didn't understand it now. All she had to go on was the way he'd held her, his arms certain and secure, and the way his face had held reassurance when she'd confessed the marriage.

"Take care of him." T-Tommy's odd words seemed the most appropriate ones she'd heard all day, because Billy—this one sitting quietly beside her in the car— seemed lost, dazed.

Something had happened in that jail cell, something between him and Sewell.

It had left Billy like this, somewhere deep inside himself, thinking. Or maybe grieving.

Shiloh knew Billy Bob Walker, the semi bad boy, the teasing flirt. But she didn't know this one, the one that hurt.

"Where are you taking me?" He asked the question uninterestedly, turning his head on the high seat back to look at her, startling her. He
was
alive; he
could
speak.

"I don't know," she admitted. "Do you . . . want to go home?"

He thought about it. "No," he answered at last, shaking his head, his face dark. "I want to get away. Out of this county. Out of . . . out of me."

He shifted his position, gazing out the window, but Shiloh wondered if he saw anything at all.

Okay, she thought in a mixture of anger and compassion. You want to leave everything to me. Well, I don't know what to do, where to go. So, we'll just drive until you decide to talk.

Inside her, the loneliness and the stark anguish grew. Today had been harder than she'd ever imagined; she had harbored a secret hope that Sam would come around.

Now she knew that would never happen.

She needed Billy to touch her, to hold her, to reassure her. Instead, the heart and soul had gone out of him, too.

They were two empty, miserable people speeding down the highway, going nowhere.

Fifty miles down the road, a storm broke. Huge dark thunderclouds had been building overhead for the last hour, turning the early dusk into darkness, and big gusts of warm wind whipped tree branches into wild contortions.

Up ahead, big blue neon letters that said Dreamland Motel glowed against the metallic, heavy gray of the sky. The shy, reserved Shiloh of a few years ago would never have taken Billy there; the hurting, confused, angry one of today pulled the Cadillac under its covered entrance without even asking him.

He glanced at her, his face questioning.

"We can't keep on driving, not in this," she answered him defiantly. "We have to stop."

We have to face each other, and our actions, and our fathers, she wanted to say.

"I'll get the room." He was out of the car before she could speak, and a tiny tendril of relief curled through her. At least he'd come to life a little.

Shiloh watched him stride across the parking area toward the office, the wind molding the shirt against his ribs, making his shirttails flap as they hung outside his jeans. He looked so familiar, so much like the man whom she'd once met in her father's backyard.

It was her wedding night.

Not even that thought had much joy in it, and she sat numbly waiting for his return.

"It's room 20," he said as he opened the car door. A gust of wind blew the smell of rain to her as thunder cracked across the sky. "I'll move the car. Do you want to go on and beat the storm?"

She took the keys from the polite stranger who held them out to her. Even hurrying, she got damp as the fat drops of rain tumbled down on her in the run across the pavement. The lock was stiff, and the motel room smelled stuffy as she pushed the door open.

Two double beds. One for him, one for her? A television. A bathroom and a separate dressing area. A green Bible from the Gideons. Perfect motel decor.

Inside Shiloh, the depression mushroomed, and when the storm blew Billy in through the door, fear threaded through her as well.

He shook the rain off, his movements rough, shoving the wet hair out of his face. He was too big and too masculine for the room when the door was shut behind him.

Here she was, all alone with two beds and Billy Walker, and this time nobody was coming to pull him away.

He shoved his hands down in his pockets, looking around.

"Not too great, is it?" His words were flippant, casual. "It's fine."

Her words were swallowed in another booming crash of thunder, and she crossed to the curtain along the back wall. Opening it, Shiloh looked out at the gray dusk and the heavy gray rain that beat against the glass. Homesickness and misery and tension made her whole body ache.

When he walked up beside her, his footsteps were so muffled by the storm that she didn't even realize he was there until her arm brushed his. She jumped violently.

Billy never moved, but just watched her face, gauging her reaction to him before he, too, looked outside.

"Some Fourth of July."

She tried to laugh. "A big one for me. I'm—I'm independent, now."

Billy reached behind her to grip the curtain with its straw weave of greens and pale blues, and he played with it, staring into the rain.

"You can still go back." He said the words clearly, and his voice didn't hold even a tiny amount of emotion. "If you went right now, Pennington would forgive and forget sooner or later."

"Is that what you want me to do?" She watched his fingers on the curtain at her elbow.

"It's up to you."

Hold me, Billy. Tell me you need me, that you want me. Say "I love you." Please. Then it will be worth it. But he didn't.

"I'll think about it," she managed. "You don't have long."

She twisted to look up at him. They stood so close that the heat from his body warmed hers—and they were miles apart.

"What's wrong?" she demanded unsteadily.

He never looked down. "Nothing."

"Did you get what you wanted when I told Sam I was going with you? Your own back on him for what happened all those years ago? You won today. I heard it in your voice when you talked to him. Is that all you wanted?"

"I didn't win anything. And I think you'd better go home."

He moved away from her, finally sitting down on the edge of the bed with his back to her. Shiloh watched him, her heart aching and suddenly panicky. She was losing him, and she didn't know why or how. She couldn't seem to hold him.

In the dusky room, his big body, his square shoulders, the tilt of his head—all had a stiff, harsh defiance. So why did her fingers want to reach out to caress him? Why did he seem so forlorn? So abandoned?

"What did Robert Sewell say to you, Billy?"

She had found the right button to push: he visibly flinched as if he'd been stung. But he didn't turn around.

"Nothing much. And it's nobody's business but mine."

"You're wrong. It's mine, too, because whatever it was, it's taking you away from me." Pushing her hair back with both hands, Shiloh walked to the edge of the bed and looked down on his head, on his hard profile as he turned his head away stubbornly.

"Do you think you're the only one who's had a bad day? The only one who feels anything around here?" Her voice was rising in anger. "I've done everything I know to do for you today—"

"Nobody asked you to."