Billy Bob Walker Got Married (45 page)

His hand catching in her hair, he pulled her head backward, tilting it up toward his before he crushed her mouth under his.

Sweet and willing . . . her lips were all of that.

And when those insidious thoughts made his mouth gentle and cling to hers in desperation, he dragged himself away. She opened her eyes, breathless.

"Anybody would think," he whispered raggedly, "that
you
wanted to be kissed, the way you hang to me. It must get real lonesome in your daddy's world. You should'a given me a chance, Shiloh. I might have fit a little in here, too. But maybe I don't want to, after all."

He stood her upright on her own feet. He had to get out.

He practically shoved guests out of the way; behind him he heard Shiloh call his name, but he kept pushing.

". . . he's that Walker man. . . . You know, the one Shiloh ran off and married. . . ."

He heard the whispers, and they didn't matter. What mattered was that he was going to get down on his knees and beg her to let them start over if he didn't get away.

Behind him, Shiloh turned to Aaron. "Do you smoke?" she demanded.

"What? Yeah. I mean, yes, ma'am," he stammered.

"I need to borrow your lighter."

Billy got outside by way of a set of French doors, made his escape, and ran headlong into his worst enemy.

Sam Pennington, with a silent T-Tommy behind him, was arguing violently with a tall, blond man.

Michael. It was Michael.

Cold water thrown in Billy's face couldn't have affected him more. He actually staggered backward a little as Pennington turned impatiently to see who had interrupted his little tete-a-tete.

Billy braced himself, but Pennington just stared, then laughed, a dry, wry sound.

"You clean up real good, Walker. You look damn near respectable."

The man seemed smaller, less invincible, nearly . . . defeated. Billy, stunned, looked from him to T-Tommy. "I'm leaving," he said stiffly.

"What the hell? Stay." Pennington said it with a shrug. "The whole county came uninvited tonight." Then he turned back to Michael, who was staring at Billy in open dislike.

Billy had never been this close to his older brother before, and it took a minute for him to realize that he just didn't care. Not anymore. Not after all this time.

He hadn't thought of Michael in weeks, and precious little of Robert Sewell.

No longing to be like them. No bitterness that he was the forgotten one.

Shiloh had done that for him, he realized suddenly.

She had given him no time and no room for useless envy or longing.

She had taken away the sting.

Now it was Michael who resented
him.

And it was Michael who had tried to rape Shiloh.

"If I'd known you were letting just anybody in—" Michael began to Sam, and Billy started to shrug out of his coat.

"I think I owe you something, Sewell," he said, cutting across his half brother's words. They'd never spoken before, not in all of his twenty-seven years.

"Are you talking to
me?"
Michael said, a sneer in his voice.

"I'll let my fists do the talking," Billy answered, his voice heavy, dark, determined. He tossed the coat at T-Tommy, who wailed, "Aw, Billy, don't hit him in front of me. If he takes you to court, I'll have to be a witness against you. Let me at least get turned around—"

"You put your filthy hands on Shiloh. You tried to hurt her."

"She's told you the same lies she—"

Billy cut off his words with a solid, meaty fist right across Michael's face. The blow made a sodden sound, Michael grunted, blood flew.

And as Sewell staggered upright, grabbing at his nose, Billy hit him in the stomach. It bent him over double.

The third blow, just below his neck and across his shoulders, toppled him to the ground, where he spread-eagled face down.

"You make sure," Billy said, panting, going down on one knee beside the prostrate body and speaking clearly in his ear, "that you stay away from Shiloh and you be careful what you say about her."

No answer from Michael.

When he clambered to his feet, he looked for T-Tommy and his coat. But instead, Shiloh stood there clutching it to her, the money still in one hand, her eyes wide and dark.

Then he remembered: he'd been going to impress her with how civilized he was, with how well he could fit into the proper country club set.

T-Tommy spoke from behind Billy, startling him. "Well, it looks like somebody went a round with Michael.

Sewell just won two major endorsements a few days ago. That means that
somebody
cold-cocked the son of the next governor." His voice was mournful.

"He ran into something in the dark, that's all," Pennington said thoughtfully.

Billy straightened, confused at Shiloh's father's behavior, and he wiped the back of his hand across his face where sweat was blurring his vision.

"My coat," he said, breath whistling through the words.

But Sam spoke. "You did me a favor, Walker." His head motion indicated Michael. "So I'll do you one. Try selling your trees again. That warehouse might be more interested this time. You're right on the verge of making a little money. But don't think I'm getting friendly. I'm not. If you make it, you'll damn well do it on your own."

His voice was brusque.

Stunned, Billy ran a hand back through his hair, remembering only then that Leland had chopped it off.

"I guess you won't be home when this party is over," Pennington said ruefully to his daughter.

"I don't know. It depends on—" She flashed a glance at Billy.

"I'll send one of the waiters to clean him up and get him out of here." Pennington motioned toward Michael, who was beginning to stir a little, and then he walked away, T-Tommy on his heels.

"My coat," Billy repeated at last, and she handed it to him this time.

Was this it? Was he just going to walk away? Shiloh wondered.

Is she going to let me leave? Billy asked himself, panicky.

At the door of his truck, he turned, trying to think of what to say—or do—that would bring out the fire in her.

She had followed him, at least part of the way. A distant light shone from an ornate metal post designed after the Ionic columns of Southern mansions, and it turned her outline into something ethereal.

"I—" he began.

"You're not going anywhere, Mr. Billy Bob Walker." Her voice slicing across the dark, shadowy parking lot was determined, and, praise God, there was that streak of temper in it that meant she cared.

"I'm not?" he asked hopefully.

"Your keys were in the pocket of your coat."

He clutched the coat.

"You took them," he said in relief. She really wasn't going to let him go. "Where are they?"

She pointed out across the night-laden green, where it sloped into a pocket of pines. "Remember how you threatened to throw mine away? Well, I don't make idle threats, and there's the fifteenth hole."

"You threw my—Lord, Shiloh, how'm I going to find them?" he demanded, giving the coat an exasperated fling onto the truck seat.

"I don't care if you ever do." She headed away from him furiously. "You deserve to be stuck out here."

"Where are you going?" he called after her, confused. "Wait a minute—
wait."

Then he took out after her, out toward the same pine grove she'd motioned toward. She was talking to herself—to the air—to whoever would listen as she marched.

"Gone two weeks, and I'm sick of hearing about Angie. I walk into the Palace, which is one of the most repulsive dives I've ever been in in my entire life—"

"Been in a lot of'em, have you?" He couldn't resist the dig as he caught up with her.

She stopped. "About as many of them as you have country clubs. And I didn't knock anybody senseless while I was there."

"No, you just wanted to tear her fingernails off."

"What were they doing on your shoulder?"

"The same thing Michael's hands were doing all over you one night in front of Sweetwater. I didn't ask her to be there, Shiloh, and it wouldn't have gone any further. I got married, remember?" He looked down in her face, his own serious. She looked away.

"And there was Papa. I didn't know all he was doing, but we've talked. It's over, Billy. He knows he has to accept you, or else."

His throat worked; he tried to speak. "And what about you? Can you accept me?"

"Which one of you is asking?" she demanded. "The one from the jail? Or the one who's been going to school without telling anybody, even me? I'm your wife, Billy."

"I was going to. I was afraid to tell you. It sounds ridiculous, me in school."

"You're afraid of me, too. Of where I came from."

"What are you—"

"I'm talking about this." She held up the thirty-five hundred dollars. "I know what it's about. Pride, and the stupid thing I said at the Palace. I should never have offered you the money. I did it because I wanted to marry you. But it's more than that with you. This money bothers you so much that I'm going to have to get rid of it all to satisfy you. If I mean to have you, it has to go. And, Billy Walker"— she raised her other hand then; she had a Bic lighter in it—"I mean to have you. I swear it."

Across the flickering flame, their eyes met. Then she shoved it under the edge of the money. And as it curled around the corner of the green bills, he saw the gold of her wedding band. She was wearing it, right here tonight in full view.

The fire caught.

Let it burn, he thought, recklessly. It would make some kind of romantic, idealistic statement about love. But this was real life. That was real money.

And it looked like he had a wife to support again.

"For God's sake, Shiloh," he expostulated, then knocked the bills from her hand to stomp out the flame at the corner with his boot. "If that's not just like you Penningtons," he said, his voice unsteady, as he caught her hand, kissing the ring. "Money to burn."

"Someday, I'm going to tell you a story about us Penningtons," she whispered. "But not tonight. You didn't let the money burn, Billy, because deep down inside you, you know it's not important between us. I just needed it as an excuse to get to you."

Her hands were free now, and she used them to loosen his tie. Right here, in the cool, free air, out in the wide-open world with the whippoorwills, she tugged the tie undone.

In his ears, the blood began to pound.

"I used it, too," he rasped. "For a reason to come tonight. To show you I was as good as any of them. That I could fit in with that crowd. But I screwed it up, Shiloh. I don't know what happened ..."

The tie hung free now, on either side of his throat. Then she moved to the top button of his shirt, and his hands reached convulsively for her waist. Now the blood beat in little points across his body.

"You threw money at me and kissed me blind," she whispered humorously. "You didn't fit in—you outshone.

There's hardly a woman in that club who didn't notice my wild man tonight. But you just remember one thing, Billy." Her hand finished with the second button, sliding under his new shirt, cool against his heated skin. Up his nape, to the shorn hair. "I love you in your boots and muddy T-shirts and in that old truck of yours, too, not just when you look like this. I love you whether you're growing trees or you're the rising young vet."

"Thank the Lord," he murmured. "Because I may never make it." He hoped he was talking about vet school.

The fourth button was his undoing. He caught her up against him as she spread the shirt open, nudging her head back for his kisses, pushing her down to the short, wet grass in the piney shadows of the fifteenth hole, right here in this dark little cove of the country club green.

"I was trying to be civilized and proper tonight," he panted. "But I'll be damned if you're not wilder than me. Here, Shiloh?"

Her answer was to pull him down to her, to stop his questions and reach for his belt.

"You've been drinking," she managed to say at last, when she came up for air.

"Yes, ma'am," he returned hoarsely, his breath hot on the skin at her ear. "Jack Daniels, to be exact. The barber gave it to me."

"It took whiskey to get you through a haircut?" Her laughing lips tried to reach to kiss him.

"No. To get up enough nerve to come in this cold place after a wife who'd left home." His words were as serious as his face.

"You were gone for two weeks, Billy. I came back, and you weren't there.
Two weeks.
" She bit him sharply on the neck, but her hands had reached his waist again, pulling his shirt free of the loosened pants.

"I had to get the money." He let her push him over on his back, letting go of his breath as she pressed kisses into his flat, bare stomach, her own breath warm on his skin.

Desperate, he reached for her and yanked at the sparkling jacket, twisting her out of it. He'd been right— nothing but hope. Her shoulders were warm and smooth, as fragrant as the grass around them.

"You got it from Bell?"

"I sold Chase to him."

She stopped all movement. "Oh, Billy. I never meant for you to do it."

"I'd do it again, a hundred times over for you, Shiloh." He pulled her face up to his. "For us to be together, like this."

She didn't know when she started crying; the tears dripped onto his chest, onto her hands riding him.

Impatiently, he pushed down the top of the red dress, his lips finding her breasts, lifting her to him so tightly she could barely breathe.

Looking down on his blond head, feeling the touch of his lips on her skin, she remembered everything: the way he'd struggled with the trees, the way he'd pushed with dogged determination to get through the university, the way he loved her, and now, the way he'd been willing to sacrifice for that love.