Something exploded in Billy's brain as he stared in an incredulous rage at Shiloh's father. He'd heard the man was a bare-knuckles, down-and-dirty fighter when he wanted to be, and neither he nor Shiloh had dared to hope for his blessing, but Billy hadn't expected this.
"Billy?" Shiloh strained upward from his painful grasp to gaze at his too-white face above hers. "What's he—"
"He's a bastard. Didn't he tell you that?" Sam interrupted, his voice calm. "No father. Doesn't even know who he is."
"You know damn well who fathered me," Billy got out, strangled. Then he looked down into Shiloh's shocked face, and he turned her loose. "It's him—Sam Pennington—who's the bastard," he said, bitterly.
"It doesn't matter to me about your not having a father." she said, but her voice was shaken. "But there's no need to call Papa names. He's just trying to protect me."
"You don't need protection from me—" Billy began.
"Shiloh, listen to me," Pennington cut in. "I'm not asking you to give up this boy. I can see you care about him. But at least give me a little time to get used to the idea. Come with me to Mexico on this next business trip so we can talk this through. At least let me have a chance to—to adjust before you marry him."
Pennington's words were entreating, and as he spoke, he advanced on his daughter, his hand open palmed and outstretched in front of him, making a silent plea for him.
She stared at him, at his hand, as she stood indecisively between the two of them.
"If I can't talk you out of this thing with Walker." he
I
told his daughter quietly, "I'll learn to accept it. Come to Mexico."
"No," Billy said in quick, panicky protest, and then he made a fatal mistake out of pure desperation. "You can't have both of us. Choose, Shiloh. It's either me—or it's him." What else was he to do? He couldn't compete with a glamorous trip, where Sam Pennington was going to spend his time pointing out Billy’s shortcomings. He'd suddenly become painfully aware himself of his old clothes—the tan shirt, the faded Wranglers—and the less-than-mint condition of his Ford truck. How could she help but disdain him? He knew right then that she'd
have to be crazy to choose him for anything, let alone a husband. "All I can say is—I love you," Sam told his daughter quietly. "And unlike him, I'm not asking you to give anything up. I just need time." There were tears in his eyes—Billy himself saw them—before Sam turned away from them. Shiloh saw them, too.
"Papa," she'd whispered, and the one word was choked with emotion.
When she hesitantly put her hand in Sam's, Billy turned and stalked out.
Shiloh called his name, then ran after him to catch him outside on the porch. He could still remember how the low-cut white cotton top had accented the smooth, tanned hollow between her breasts where her heart beat as he looked down at her.
"Don't grab at me," he blazed at her, shaking off her hand. "Not unless you're comin' with me."
"I love you, Billy," she said pleadingly.
"What difference does that make now? You love him, too, but he means to see that there's no room for me in your life. And you'll let him."
"He needs me, Billy. I'm all he has. It's been that way ever since my mother left. Let me talk to him. It won't hurt to give him the time. We'll have the rest—"
He interrupted her harshly. "We'll have nothin'. Didn't you hear him? I reckon I'm not good enough for you, and he's not gonna let me try to be. That's okay. There's other girls. And their daddies, they're not so particular."
She looked stricken, then she flushed with anger. "You so much as touch another woman, Billy Walker, and we're through."
"That's what I'm tryin' to tell you. baby," he retorted. "You chose Daddy, remember? And you had a lucky escape, because he's right—I'm going nowhere much, and I was born on the wrong side of the blanket. Now, get out of my way."
She had not said another word as he walked away, his shoulders squared. But he'd seen her face as he drove off, and she had looked then much as she did right now, across the jail cell from him—angry and hurt.
But she had learned to conceal her emotions better in their years apart, and her face smoothed even as he stared at her.
"I didn't understand why you were so angry that night," Shiloh said haltingly, and her huge brown eyes looked right up into his. "It knocked me off balance when you told Sam you meant for us to marry. We hadn't talked about it much, but it was all you could say when he jumped you about things. You must have been scared, too, like I was when he caught us." Billy Bob didn't answer.
"And there was more," she said haltingly. "Sam hurt your pride. And somehow, so did I. I didn't know that then, but I do now."
"You don't know anything," he answered shortly.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"I'm not," he returned, his voice flat. "Because if you let Sam Pennington talk you out of me in thirty minutes, we never stood a chance, anyway."
"I called you," she said suddenly, as if it made a difference after all this time. "I'd been in Acapulco three weeks before I finally . . . got over being mad. Your mother answered. I didn't tell her who I was. I didn't know if she knew about me. She said you were in Tupelo."
He stared at her, his eyes bright blue even in the dusky shadows. "I left town. Took a job on the road for the summer. You didn't come back."
"No," she answered, looking down at her hands. "Things—business—kept us down there until September. I came home for a day or two before I left for college. You weren't here. And . . . things had changed.
"I saw you once in town at Christmas. You never spoke," he remembered.
"I'd seen you before then. Maybe when I was home for Thanksgiving," she said, so low he had to strain to hear her. "But I knew it was over. There wasn't any point in talking to you."
"And then Michael Sewell started hanging around," he said starkly. She would never know how difficult it was for him to get that simple sentence out.
Shiloh didn't try to answer him, just watching him mutely. Then he pulled away from the bars and turned his back to her.
"Damn you, Shiloh." There was absolutely no emotion in his voice.
He lay down on the narrow cot again, turning his face to the wall. Even if he already knew it, it hurt to hear how easy it had been for her to forget him.
She lay on her own cot, silent too. When T-Tommy came in a few minutes later, he must have thought his two prisoners were asleep. He snapped off the light, and the cells lay in darkness.
Billy Bob stared at the patterns of light that the moon outside cast on the distant walls, hating the girl who lay not twelve feet from him. The breeze that blew in his window was cold on his arms, so he fumbled for the rough blanket and dragged it half over him. and his movement seemed to shatter the stillness around them.
"I saw you with another girl," she said suddenly, in the darkness.
He froze. "What?"
"I hadn't been back in town a good day that November when I saw you in a car with another girl. She was driving, and she let you out in front of the courthouse. You kissed her, and she was all over you."
Slowly, Billy twisted on the cot, dragging the blanket with him. "And that made a difference?"
"No. No. Not to me, not then. It just proved Sam was right, that's all. We weren't supposed to be together."
"I see."
This time the silence seemed eternal. In the darkness, he struggled with himself. It didn't matter, not now, what had happened then. It was over, in the past. He didn't love her anymore; most of the time he hated her. Especially when he remembered that in a few weeks' time, she was set to marry Michael. His own brother.
But . . . it didn't matter. They deserved each other.
Still, he couldn't stop the explanation that tumbled from his lips at last.
"The only reason I was with Angie was that you were gone." He said it suddenly, shattering the long silence. He didn't turn from the wall.
But there was nothing from her.
"Sh
iloh?"
At last he sat up. She lay sideways, facing him with the light of the big moon falling over her shoulders—sound asleep.
"Really tearing your heart out over this, aren't your he asked the sleeping girl fiercely. "I think I'm sorry for Michael."
She woke him up just before dawn, crying in her sleep and calling Michael's name. The word froze his sudden, startled, awakening movements and an old, better-forgotten jealousy stabbed him.
But that was before his mind registered the fear in her voice.
"No—no," she was whimpering, over and over, twisting on the bed. "Michael—"
"Shiloh!" he said it sharply, rising to go to the bars. "Wake up. Shiloh!"
She stilled, then gasped.
"Shiloh, are you awake?"
The moonlight touched his face this time, coming in from a different angle, and she gave a short, choked cry that was full of fear.
"Wake up, Shiloh, you're having a bad dream."
He could hear her breathing change as she tried to orient herself, then she asked tentatively, "Billy?"
"What?"
"I thought you were—-" "I know what you thought."
She sat up abruptly. "I'm . . . I'm sorry." But her teeth chattered.
"What for?" he asked dismissively. "Just forget it. Try to go back to sleep."
But instead she stood up, moving away from the tangled cot as if she were afraid of it, and she came hesitantly across the cold concrete floor toward the bars that separated them.
He stilled, watching her warily as she advanced, her bare, silk-stockinged feet making only a slight wisping sound.
"Did you ever think that God does funny things? You ask Him for help, and there's no telling where you'll wind up," Shiloh whispered, putting her hands on the bars between them. Another moth circling another light, that was what she reminded him of as she gravitated unwillingly toward him.
"What are you talking about?" he asked suspiciously.
"Things have been going wrong ever since I came home from college. I want to please Sam, but I can't. And this past week"—she laughed a little—"it's been like something out of a horror story. Here I am now, in jail, with the one person who doesn't want to see me, the one person I never meant to speak to again."
"Let me guess," he said ironically. "You're not talking about T-Tommy."
"So help me, Billy Bob," she choked out, and she was crying—crying, for God's sakes. "I must be in here for a reason."
"What's the matter? What?" he demanded, and he rose, too, and went to the bars where she stood. He could feel the warmth from her body this close—it was too close—and smell the rich scent of her perfume. It, too, was different from the one he remembered.
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."
H
e 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.
Billy Bob Walker Got Married Page 8
