Billy Bob Walker Got Married (41 page)

She was talking in his ear, her tiny hand lost on his wide shoulder, her body practically draped over his side.

As Billy listened to the voice of the siren, he turned the silver can on the table in front of him restlessly between his hands, looking up into her face as she reached over to force his jaw up toward her.

Shiloh's blood pressure shot through the roof; she forgot about being afraid as she advanced like an enraged tigress on this ball of fluff and her low-down scoundrel of a husband.

Either the Country Palace had lost its appeal (it never had been blessed with a whole lot of it) or he had changed. He didn't want to be here.

He wanted Shiloh, at home, happy with him. Why couldn't he be enough to satisfy her?

The women here were hard and brittle. There wasn't a one of them whose arms would have held him while he cried. They would have thought he was a fool.

And he'd never wanted to kiss any woman's foot—not her lips, but her foot—the way he had Shiloh's that day in the shoe store.

On the other hand, none of these women would have run home to Daddy, either, or dished it out like she had.

Billy Bob was miserable, wishing he hadn't shot off his mouth to Shiloh about coming here, wishing he could go home.

Then Angie turned up.

She was all he needed.

He just looked up, and she was standing there, watching him.

"Well. It's been a while, sugar." Her face was immobile, quiet. "So, did you come back to sow some more wild oats? Or did you and your sweet college girl get sick of each other?"

Straightening in the chair, Billy answered, "I don't want to talk about Shiloh."

"Oh, don't you? Well, maybe I do. I love you, Billy."

He jerked, looking up at her in surprise.

"I never told you because I was waiting for you to decide to settle down, and I was gonna be there."

"I didn't—"

"Don't say you didn't know. You did."

"I was about to tell you that I didn't mean to hurt you."

"No, probably not. You're just like most men—I
was handy and willin', so you helped yourself. But you got paid back, it looks like. You're one miserable-lookin' hound dog tonight. Why'd you marry her, Billy? To slap Michael Sewell in the face?"

He pushed the can away. "Damn it, Angie, leave me alone. You made me feel guilty, okay? Is that enough?"

Instead, she came to his side, leaning against him, her heavy perfume smothering him, and she put a hand on the far side of his face to turn him to her. "You should'a married me, Billy. We're alike. She's gonna hurt you bad one of these days, and when she does, look me up. I'll be—"

"If you don't get your hands off him," the furious voice snapped, "I'm going to pull those false fingernails off and stick them down your throat."

Angie jumped, instinctively springing away.

Billy stared. "Shiloh?"

She was right in front of him, right in the middle of the

Country Palace, aflame with anger and radiating it like heat, her hands on her hips. She looked country clean, nearly boyish in the denim shorts.

"That's right. Shiloh. Remember me?"

"What are you doing in here?"

"I ought to ask you the same thing, you—you double-crossing, two-timing rat!" She shoved her heavy fall of thick brown hair back behind her ears with both hands; her eyes were huge and sparking lightning.

"Now wait a minute—"

"No, you wait. I wanted to go see my father—that's all. But you came here. You let her hang all over you"— she shot fire at Angie, who took another step back—"and touch you. If I'd been ten minutes later, you'd have been in bed with her."

By now the people around them were listening avidly, straining to hear them. Even the music seemed to have gotten a little quieter.

"I was just sitting here," he began again, heatedly.

"Which you had no business doing. You have a home and a wife—"

"Who had run off to Daddy's," he roared at last, shooting up out of the chair in frustration. He didn't care anymore who was listening; let the whole county if they wanted to.

"You should have understood. I've been blind as a bat. I've spent all these weeks thinking how sweet and kind and gentle you are—"

Okay, he wasn't ready for the county to hear that. Toy Baker had already burst into laughter, and Billy struggled for composure, finding it in sarcasm, knowing it was the wrong solution even when he used it. "Yeah, well, honey, I guess I had you fooled."

She looked about eighteen again for a minute, her eyes hurt, then she struck back. "You know that money you were talking about this afternoon? The thirty-five hundred dollars? Well, I got ripped off. Because,
honey,"
she mimicked his sarcasm,
"you're not worth it."

She walked out in the closest thing to silence that the Country Palace had ever known, slamming the door behind her.

Somebody in the crowd whistled in awe, then spoke. "Brother, did you get told."

Angie grabbed at his shirt as he started purposefully out the door, his face white, grim, furious.

"Billy, listen," she cajoled frantically, "don't do something stupid. Women say things . . . Our tongues are the best way we've got of fighting somebody bigger. She didn't mean it—"

But he tore away from her, getting outside just in time to see Laura Kershaw's car roaring off down the highway.

If she'd turned a knife in his stomach, he couldn't have hurt worse.

She was old man Pennington's daughter, right enough: she went for blood.

₂₀

Shiloh didn't have
a mother to go home to, so she did the next best thing: she went straight to Laura with her car, and she stayed there.

Laura took one look at her tear-stained face and put her in her one extra bedroom, where Shiloh pulled pillows over her head in hot mortification.

She—Shiloh Pennington, no, Walker—who had been well bred and polite most of her life, had caused a public scene in a horrible joint. She had brawled with her husband and, worst of all, she had threatened to do the same with Angie Blake.

She was never leaving Laura's house again, never going out in public, never looking any man in Briskin County in the eye again for fear he'd been in that honky-tonk tonight and witnessed the whole embarrassing mess.

She had actually threatened Angie Blake, acting like some heathen, violent and primitive.

But then, she'd discovered she
was
violent and primitive where Billy Walker was concerned.

So here it was at last, the real heart of the matter, the thing she was trying to avoid facing: what she'd said to him.

Well, he deserved it.

She had wanted to kill him when he let Angie drape herself all over him; he hadn't done much more than touch his own wife in a week.

Why couldn't he tell her what was wrong sooner?

She didn't ask, her mind accused. She kept waiting for him to spill his guts, but he kept important things down tight inside him.

She'd had to drag the story of his encounter with Sewell out of him forcibly. And then she remembered the way he had at last collapsed emotionally, the way his wet face had felt against hers.

Why didn't she ask? She already knew the answer: She had been afraid he would tell her something about Sam that she didn't want to hear.

If she could take back words, she'd swallow whole those last ones: "You're not worth it."

Everything could have been patched up right until that moment.

Oh, Billy, what have we done? What have I said? I didn't mean it. You know that, don't you?

If only the whole world hadn't been listening, if only his pride hadn't been involved. If only.

Now there was one thing she could do. Oh, Papa, why couldn't you just leave us alone?

She confronted her father the next morning.

In the huge, gleaming kitchen he sat alone at a table, eating and turning the pages of a highly colored sales booklet from a local hardware store. The rustling of the pages was the only noise in the lonely, beautiful room.

Watching him, Shiloh wondered if he knew how isolated he looked. And as he peered over the top of his reading glasses to gaze down at his plate, she remembered him doing the same thing every night for years as he read tales of Richard Scarry and Judy Blume to her before she went to sleep.

He'd started that habit after Caroline left, and he had done it until Shiloh was twelve. Part of his attempts to give her the perfect childhood, part of his fight to keep her from noticing that her mother had abandoned her without a single glance back.

She loved him. She didn't want to hurt him. But it had come down to her marriage—if she had one left.

"Hello, Papa."

He jerked so hard that his hand hit the china coffee cup and its hot brown liquid splashed on his wrist. He never noticed.

"Shiloh!" And for a dazzling, unguarded moment, there was a blaze of welcome in his face before he remembered and tamped it down.

"I didn't know if you would even admit to knowing my name or not."

He looked around, toward the door. "How did you get here? I didn't—"

"I spent the night with Laura. And no, Billy Bob's not with me. We had a fight, a horrible fight, and most of it was over you."

Sam pushed back his chair, stood, and reached for a napkin to wipe off his hand. "Over me! Well, I'm flattered. It does me good to hear I've caused Mr. Walker some misery. You've been gone a long time, girl. Five weeks and a day."

"You told me I couldn't come back, that you didn't have a daughter anymore."

The delicate line of blood crept from his high cheekbones up to his temples. "That was pride talkin'. You know that. If you want to come home, you can. I'm willin' to forgive, Shiloh."

She laughed a little under her breath and took a step toward him. "Thanks. If I ever do anything that calls for you to forgive me, I'll remember. But I'm not slinking home just yet. I want to know what it is that's going on between you and Billy."

Her father's momentum toward her stopped; his keen blue eyes sharpened and his face went blank. "So that's what you've come for, to run interference for him. Well, what's between me and him is between us, Shiloh. If he can't play the game, he shouldn't have stepped into the ring. And that's what he did when he took you. All the plans and dreams and opportunities—"

"You planned. You dreamed. Me, I got what I wanted."

"Billy Bob Walker? He's what you wanted? Then you're a fool. But I already knew it. Any woman who lets a man talk her out of thirty-five hundred dollars before they're even married—"

Shiloh sucked in her breath sharply. "So I was right. You did talk about it with him. Well, I know he didn't tell you, so I will. I went to that jail and begged him to take it." She couldn't tell it all; she couldn't give Sam another weapon against them. "I wanted him out, I wanted to be married to him—because I was afraid of Michael. I wanted to get away from you. And mostly—" she could see it so clearly now—"I wanted to be Billy's wife."

"To get away from me!" His face was blood-red now as he came around the corner of the table toward her. "I gave you everything."

"That you wanted me to have. But we've been through this before. So again, I'm asking you. What's between you and Billy?"

"Ask him."

"I already have. I dragged a little of it out of him. Now I'm giving you a chance to tell me all, and you won't. You know why? Because what you're doing is wrong, and you know it. You're breaking a good man just because I married him."

"I'm breaking him because he's using you. I know what he is, an opportunist pulling himself up any way he can. First, all that college work, now you, with your money. Well, he can climb up on somebody else's back. I cut the legs right out from under him twice before, and I'll do it again."

He might have been taking an oath, he was so passionate.

As she stared at her furious father, Shiloh knew only one thing: He wouldn't stop until somebody made him.

"Why do you hate him so much? If I'm happy, why can't you leave us alone?"

"You don't know what's best for you. You're like a wild teenager who runs away from home because she's mad at her parents. I know exactly why you're with him," Sam answered violently, his face mottled with anger. "You're out on that old farm because you're rebelling against me—and because Walker is a good lay." He spit the words out, crude and vicious. "I'm speakin' it plain, girl. You're ruining yourself—just like your mother did—just so you can crawl in bed with a man who's good between the sheets and between—"

"Shut up!" Her hands flew to her face, and behind them, her cheeks flamed and blistered with shocked, outraged embarrassment.

"I'm only tellin' the truth." But his voice shook.

Lowering her hands slowly, Shiloh stared at him through tears, her heart twisting. "You've spent years expecting me to be like Caroline, hiding me from men. And I've spent years trying to prove I wasn't and paying for her sins. Billy is my husband. What I do with him in our bedroom is our business, and it's right. I thought I could talk to you, beg you to make your peace with him—"

"There isn't any peace."

"No. I see that now. You're wrong, but it makes it easier to tell you something that I should have told you years ago." Funny how nothing in her seemed to be working; she couldn't feel her heart or even the rise of her diaphragm. Everything had just shut off, except her tongue. "All this time, I've been your everything. Your family when Caroline left. Your top scholar at school. Your dutiful banker. Because I was trying to be your daughter. Your real daughter. But I'm not.
I'm not."

He put his hand to the collar of his soft golf shirt, as if it choked him. 'What are you talkin' about?"

"I'm not your daughter. You should have suspected it, knowing Caroline." Her teeth were chattering a little. "Laura told me that Caroline came here. It was the year I was fifteen, the year you sent me to the girls' school. She told you she knew where I was. But she didn't tell you that she'd already come to me, several times. She told me how much she missed me, how girls my age needed a mother, how she wanted me to forgive her and let her be with me. She wanted me to leave the school and go with her. Now I know it was so she could hit you up for money to get me back. She always needed more cash. But she got the money a different way, didn't she? I realized that the other day when Laura and I talked. Even though I wanted Caroline to want me,
1
couldn't leave you—and when I wouldn't go with her, she turned into a petty, spoiled—" Shiloh shuddered. "Then she told me. I wasn't yours."