"Yes, you did."
"I'm trying to be honest."
"With who? Not me. You brought me here because you like the way I make you feel. Nobody else makes you feel that way. Oh, I know all about it," he said quietly.
"That's not true. I wanted us to be together for a while without demands. I just wanted—a relationship, I guess. To see if there was more there."
"I hate that word, relationship. It's bloodless and gutless. Some word Hollywood came up with because they're scared of the real ones. Like you are. And we know already that we can't be together without demands."
He looked away, then back at her.
"We're married, Shiloh. That's our relationship."
"It's just a piece of paper."
"A paper's all it ever is until two people make it more. Come with me. Walk out of here, and come with me."
"I can't, Billy. Not until I'm sure. You don't want to be married. And we did it for the wrong reason. You resent
"Then make it for the right ones. I'll get over the resentment."
She shook her head.
"That's what I thought," he said, his voice nearly flippant. "I saw it clear as day when your housekeeper walked in here. You couldn't bear to tell her you'd married me. You'd rather she think you were easy than my wife. And if it's possible, we'll get a quiet little divorce, and maybe you'll never have to tell even Sam about it, if he'll just drop his plans for you without a fuss. You want me to make you feel good, but you don't want to be a part of my life."
"You're making it something it's not," Shiloh whispered. "Making me out to be—and think—things I'm not."
"Yeah? Well, you're making me feel like dirt," he answered, emotionlessly. "So we're even. The fact is that you don't want to risk everything on me."
"Give me a reason to, Billy. I want to believe in you."
"Do you? Maybe I feel the same way about you."
His face was so sad in the shadows that Shiloh hesitantly reached out and brushed her fingers down his cheek. He jerked away.
"I don't feel like touching right now, Shiloh. When you get ready to claim me out there, if you do—when you're ready to tell them that I'm your husband—when you're willing to treat me like a man, then you come and get me. But no more meetings in secret. This stopped being fun a long time ago."
Angered by his rejection, torn by her own emotions, ashamed of the motives he'd laid out as hers, Shiloh retorted in self-defense, "What if I never come crawling to you on your high-and-mighty terms?"
He shrugged. "I'll catch on after a while. It won't be much different from what it was before."
But she couldn't stop herself from asking as he turned, "Billy, when will I see you again?"
"Whenever you want to. I'll be around. I always am." He started toward the door, then stopped to pull the chain from his neck. "If this ever means anything to you, if I do—then you can give it back."
And he lifted her hand from her side, dropped it in her palm, and pushed her fingers closed over it, a cold, golden memento of one of the worst nights of her life.
10
"It's a blasted nuisance, but every Tom, Dick, and Harry at city hall gets his feathers ruffled if we don't participate," Sam told Shiloh as they surveyed the interior of the bank. Miniature flags stood all over the place, little drops of red, white, and blue that echoed the same color scheme in the giant ribbons and streamers that festooned the glass doors.
The Fourth of July was plainly approaching, and all of Sweetwater was getting ready for the annual festivities and parade.
"It looks nice," Shiloh said dutifully. She'd been seeing these decorations every Fourth for years now.
Sam snorted. "Looks like the Republican National Convention. Every place in town does, even the funeral home. But I figure I got off lucky. Sue Ellen Terry has been headin' up the parade committee. She actually tried to get the bank to build a float out of chicken wire. Said it could be green with George Washington's head sitting on it like a dollar bill. She thought that was patriotic."
"Lord," Shiloh said, laughing.
"It gets worse. She wanted you to ride on it."
"Me!"
"Well, she sure knew better than to ask me. But I got you out of it. I told her you'd help give out the prizes after the parade."
Shiloh said in aggravation, "But I don't want to. I don't know the first thing about judging floats."
"You don't judge. You just stand on the platform with a few other dignitaries in the morning and let 'em introduce you. Then you come back in the afternoon and hand out trophies. It's easy."
"Then why don't you do it?"
"I have before. But the town's kind of curious about you. And you're easier on the eyes. You'll do fine. Where's Rita? She was supposed to see about a banner for the front of the bank."
Shiloh watched him head off in the unsuspecting Rita's direction. "Why is it," she asked the air, "that I didn't have any courses like Parades 101 back in college when I was studying for this job?"
There was little point in trying to get much accomplished that week. The whole bank—the whole town, in fact—was in an uproar, and would be until Thursday, the Fourth. Sweetwater's parade had been written up in National Geographic two years before and now they felt they had a tradition to uphold.
Outside on the square, all sorts of booths were going up around the edges of the courthouse yard. The sound of skill saws and the smell of fresh-sawed lumber cut through the air as Shiloh left for lunch, trying to get away from the hubbub at the bank.
Danny Joe's was packed; he found her a stool near the back wall by shooing one of his teenaged grandsons off it. And as she ate, Billy walked in.
She'd seen him twice since that night two weeks ago when he'd delivered his ultimatum, and he'd been in her dreams over and over, accusing her of cowardice, of being afraid to come to him.
Once he'd even been in the bank at the end of a hot, dusty day. He had walked in and out without a word to her, but his blue gaze had searched her face for an instant. And he'd pulled in to the service station one Friday afternoon as she and Sam sat in the car at the pumps on their way home. Sam never saw him; he was talking to the station owner. But Shiloh watched Billy park, just on the other side of the gas island, and her heart ached.
His hair had been vigorously brushed, shining like burnished gold against the brown of his skin. His shirt hung open over a T-shirt, and he looked so clean, so cool, so good that Shiloh felt an unreasonable spurt of anger.
Where was he going? She wished that the glittering gold chain was hanging around his neck now, letting her ring dangle against the snowy shirt for all the world to see, instead of lying on her dressing table at home. You're taken, she wanted to cry.
He looked at her a long, long moment, and the demand in her face was answered by the one in his: tell them. Tell the world if you want me. Pride and longing strained silently between the two of them. Then Sam drove away, and they left Billy behind.
She hadn't seen him again until today—and today was somehow different. He'd walked in here deliberately, knowing she was here, and her breath began to come in uneven jerks as he started toward her.
There was no room to sit anywhere except along the walls; he worked his way around through the greetings and the backslapping until he found a place to stand and wait.
It was directly behind her.
Between the double-time thumping of her heart and the way she could feel his gaze boring a hole through the back of her cream-colored dress, Danny Joe's meal went unappreciated.
"Okay, Billy, what you want?" Danny called out his question over her head.
"A coke and a sandwich."
"Ham, chicken, reuben. That's what we got today." "Ham, then."
A simple enough conversation, except that Billy stepped up behind her, so close her dress brushed his faded red shirt. She could feel him, hear him, nearly taste him he was so near.
Not daring to look around, she laid down her own sandwich and carefully wiped her mouth
with the napkin. She had to get up.
But the wall blocked her on one side, and Billy on the other.
He was looking right down at her as she finally faced him, and he took the words and the thoughts right out of her head.
"Hello, Shiloh."
"B—Billy."
"Miss me?"
She didn't answer his low question. All around them, the world according to Danny Joe's tumbled on; but here in this quiet, intense well there was nothing but her and him.
"Because I sure missed you." He didn't wait for her answer; he gave his own. "You could invite me to eat lunch with you."
Shiloh was vaguely aware that on the other side of Billy's broad shoulders, on the next seat, was a huge fat man with a New Jersey accent. "There's no room," she said, her voice as low as his.
"Then maybe the next time I'm in here. You could then. People will talk, but you'll live." He said it quizzically, but he was serious.
And his heart was beating under her arm.
In that one minute, she made up her mind. "You think I won't. But I will. The next time I see you here. In front of everybody."
"Even if Sam is here?"
She took a deep breath. "Even Sam."
"We'll see, Shiloh," he said quietly.
"Here's your sandwich, Billy Bob," Danny Joe announced, handing a white paper bag to him. "And I put a doughnut in there for Willie. He's in town with you, ain't he?"
"He won't let me build the booth without him," Billy answered easily.
"You about to get it done?" "Yeah, maybe this afternoon."
He paid no attention to Shiloh as she stood, too. But after he pocketed his change from Danny Joe, just before he moved away, Billy ran his hand lingeringly down her back, from above her waist down over her hips, in a quick, sweeping, proprietorial move that left her shocked to her toes.
He was gone before she even got her breath back, and nobody in the bakery was any the wiser, except, of course, her.
She couldn't get it out of her mind. Indignant, that's what she was. "No touching," he'd said, but he'd laid hands on her fast enough, in a decidedly personal way.
He was making it easier for her to approach him again if she wanted to. And it wasn't indignation at all that she felt when she thought about that.
She saw him that afternoon when she pulled out of the tiny road that led to the bank parking lot. He was across the street, under the big magnolia tree, drinking from a Coke can.
He must have finished the booth. Most of them looked completed, and most of the workers had either gone home or settled around the courthouse yard to rest.
Billy was in a group with two old farmers, and T-Tommy, and two men Shiloh didn't know, but he wasn't paying much attention to their conversation.
He was watching her drive by.
You devil, she thought, remembering his smooth handwork today. But something had lightened in her heart, and a sudden spurt of pure mischief hit Shiloh.
He thought she was too afraid to do anything as reprisal for that little episode. Maybe she had been until he'd actually done it.
But Billy Walker was in for a surprise.
She parked the car just down the block in the first available space, then got out, the full skirt of the dress with its tiny, cinched-in waist swinging around her calves.
She had Billy's attention the minute she crossed the street. Even from this distance, she could see the blue of his eyes as he stood still, one shoulder propping up the tree, bathed in a ray of sunshine that filtered through the leaves, turning him golden.
T-Tommy's mouth dropped a little in surprise as she approached, and the conversation stopped completely.
"You lookin' for me, Shiloh?" T-Tommy asked in mild confusion.
"No. I was just looking around at the booths. Looking for—something to drink."
T-Tommy stared as if she'd lost her mind. She didn't dare even look at the four other men. Only Billy.
"There's a water fountain on the other side of the courthouse," one of the old farmers offered.
"Not water."
Her gaze dropped to the can Billy held in his hand; he looked from it to her incredulously. And at last, he slowly held it out.
She took it, brushed his long fingers with their rough knuckles, tilted it to her lips, and drank. The liquid was a little too warm, but the stunned look on his face made it delicious.
Nobody moved a muscle as she offered it back to him.
"Thanks." She wanted to run her hand down the opening of the red shirt, bnishing the smooth brown skin, but she didn't have that much nerve. Not in front of these staring men.
"Anytime," he returned, but his intended nonchalance came out choked and unsteady.
T-Tommy came to his senses and snapped his mouth shut. "Here, Shiloh, I'll walk you back to your car." His voice dripped disapproval. "Since you quenched that thirst of yours."
She went docilely enough, but not before she heard part of the conversation that erupted in her wake.
"Good God a'mighty, Billy, that was Pennington's daughter. Ain't you got no sense at all?"
And one comment that she didn't like: "Everybody knows she's engaged to Michael Sewell."
T-Tommy stopped by her car, his face grim. "That's the second time I've seen you go after Walker, Shiloh. This will be all over town. Toy Baker was watching, and he's got the biggest mouth this side of the Mississippi River."
"And you think I'm a shameless hussy because I talked to Billy," Shiloh returned tiredly. She was tired, tired of hearing it.
"I don't know why you're doin' it. You're gonna marry Michael. Sam will get mean if this gets back to him. Then he's gonna take it out on Billy Bob. He don't need Sam as an enemy. You think about that the next time you decide to flirt with him. You've got all the aces where Billy's concerned, Shiloh. Be careful how you play em."
11
What would Sam do to Billy? What could he do? Shiloh wondered, but she meant to keep her promise to him the next day at Danny Joe's. If she didn't, Billy Bob might not be back for more of this delicious teasing.
But she never got to Danny Joe's. Just before lunch, Noah Ledbetter walked in, freshly arrived all the way from Dover to see her. And by the time she was through with his grievances, it was nearly two.
There was no sign of Billy Bob anywhere when she left to go home, and no time to hunt for him. She had to be at supper early, then back at the square at six o'clock for the kickoff to the next day's festivities. Somehow she'd become Sam's official representative.
Sweetwater lay in a rich, warm glow from the late afternoon sunshine as she headed home; a news crew down from WTVA television station in Tupelo was setting up across the street from the temporary podium and platform that had been erected. This was one of the oldest Independence Day celebrations in Mississippi, but Shiloh wondered when it had grown to be so important that television got involved. Surely one out-of-date Geographic article couldn't cause all this.
There was a line of cars in the drive at home. Inside, she stumbled over the mayor and two city councilmen at Laura's kitchen table. She might have asked the housekeeper what was going on, but they'd barely spoken in two weeks, so she said nothing when Laura informed her tersely that Sam needed her in the study.
His voice was gruff on the other side of the door when she knocked. "Come in."
She shut the door behind herself carefully. "Laura said you needed to see me. Where did all these people come from? And why are—"
The words died on her lips as she turned. Judge Sewell sat in the wingback chair beside her father's desk, his face calm, cool, handsome.
Not a hint of the anger he'd shown at the country club.
"Good afternoon, Shiloh," he said courteously as lie arose. "It's good to see you. It's been a while."
You'd never know this sophisticated man in the cool gray suit had ever stooped to a messy illicit affair that had produced something as earthy as Billy Bob.
"Judge," she acknowledged, wondering if her dress was clean. H
e always looked too pristine, too perfect, too together. "I didn't realize you and Sam were in a meeting."
Sam pulled off his eyeglasses and laid them on the desk. "Judge Sewell is here on both business and family matters, Shiloh. He's come to a major decision. He's decided to run for governor."
There was a small, expectant pause. Was she supposed to be surprised?
"I see," Shiloh murmured at last, then held out her hand. "Congratulations, sir."
He shook her hand, then he said humorously, smiling at her, "Or maybe condolences."
The man actually had a dimple, and a sudden charm, all the more disarming because he seemed so proper the rest of the time.
He had bequeathed the charm at least to his illegitimate son.
A sudden insight hit Shiloh. "The news crew from Tupelo—that's what they're doing here."
"Have they already arrived?" The judge frowned, looking at his watch. "They're two hours early."
"Robert is going to make an informal announcement tonight, just for his home county," Sam told Shiloh. "The official one will be next week at the capital."
Small hometown, patriotic holiday, parades and floats and kids and dogs. Who said Robert Sewell didn't know how to run a campaign? Shiloh thought wryly. Or maybe, Sam knew.
"Are you his adviser?" she asked her father bluntly.
"More like a backer, that's all," Sam demurred. "But I have a stake in this, just as the judge here does, just as you do."
Nobody spoke for a minute. Shiloh knew what was coming; she braced herself for it.
"This needs to be straightforward. Simple. No confusion." Judge Sewell reached out to take her by the wrists, his face kind as he looked down at her. "This mess with you and Michael needs to be straightened out. He's kept his distance for over a month, mostly because Sam has assured him that there are no other men in your life, that you love him, that you only needed time. My son wants to talk to you. All of us—and that includes Lydia and myself and Sam—we want you to be a part of the Sewell family. I hope you've come to the right decision, Shiloh, a mature, thinking, responsible one that will allow Michael to stop worrying himself ill over you."
Billy Bob Walker Got Married Page 18
