His voice was gentle, wheedling, pleading, and underneath all that was the sting of reproach, barely felt. His hands were too soft, too wet on her arms.
And over his shoulder, Sam waited, watching her sternly.
I'm just the petted, spoiled little girl who got into a silly lover's spat with Michael and made trouble over it to get attention and my own way. That's what they think of me, Shiloh realized suddenly. They don't take me seriously; they never have.
But they were going to have to.
"It's the right decision for me. I can't marry him."
She wondered where the clear, decisive voice came from; surely not her, the one whose heart was jerking like a jackhammer.
"Goddamn it, Shiloh," Sam swore, his face like a thundercloud. He slapped his hand down on the desk so hard a picture fell—hers. "You're a fool."
The judge dropped her hands like they were hot coals. "You told me she was willing," he said accusingly to Sam, his face dark. No charm now. "She's kept Michael dangling for weeks now. I expected better of your daughter, Sam. And of you."
"So did I."
"There are other girls. Michael won't grieve long. But it would have been better to have the two of them together for everybody to see. I wanted this to be cleared up. Things have been in limbo. Sweetwater's a little town, and it talks. A broken engagement between them is just more fodder for gossip, and that damned news crew is out there, waiting to hear it."
Sam was staring at Shiloh, disappointment etched in his face, but his words were blunt. "It's a minor thing. Who pays any attention to a candidate's grown children? It won't even make a ripple that Michael's engagement was broken. If anything, women'll like him better."
The judge thought about that. "You may be right. We might just stay quiet about everything tomorrow. Let people think what they will."
"No."
Shiloh and Sam spoke simultaneously.
"There's no point in dragging this misery out any longer," Sam snapped. "Shiloh's burned her bridges. She can live with her mistakes. We'll tell it tomorrow. The news people will be gone. And when all this—this election hoopla is over this weekend, me 'n her—we're going to have our own conference."
Her stomach was tied in knots, but her heart felt light, wild, fluttery. She was free, just like that. It was her life and her body, and she couldn't share either with Michael Sewell. She'd known it for a certainty ever since a dance with Billy Bob at the Legion Hall.
The crowd in the courthouse square was boisterous and excited that Wednesday night. Word was out: Sweetwater's favorite son was going to announce. It was such a big occasion that every church in town except a diehard Freewill Baptist over on Houston Road had dismissed services.
Cotton and Jackson sat firmly entrenched on their bench, watching the excitement in the crowds around them.
"I'll lay you ten to one odds that Sewell’s the next governor," Cotton offered.
"Not me you won't. He's bound to beat that sorry excuse for one we got now," Jackson retorted. "And the judge has Pennington backin' him. That ornery old man knows things."
"Speakin' of which, there's his girl," Cotton answered, nodding toward the woman who stood hesitantly on the edge of the crowd, scanning it.
"She don't look much like a politician's daughter-in-law," said Jackson doubtfully.
"She ain't never gonna marry into that Sewell crowd. Ain't stiff-necked enough. Did you see the way she sashayed right up to Billy Bob? It's a shame the way women chase men these days."
"I don't know. Billy didn't mind, didn't seem like. But it sure makes you wonder where them two struck up an acquaintance, and what kind of acquaintance it is. Real peculiar, considerin' that Billy's blood kin to Michael."
"She's lookin' for somebody," Cotton observed.
"Michael Sewell?"
"Billy Walker. I'll bet money on it."
"Ain't takin' that bet, either," Jackson returned sagaciously.
She wasn't ready yet to tell Billy everything. Didn't want to talk at all.
But she needed to see him, maybe to touch him in light of this new, exhilarating freedom she'd suddenly found.
He would know without words that she'd taken steps away from Sam. The only thing she was worried about now was if she really wanted to step in Billy's direction. She thought she did, but she needed to see him.
She was a prisoner who'd been cut free, and she had a lot of options.
Where was he?
Not at his grandfather's fruit stand. She could see it from here, through the dusk.
The crackling of a microphone quieted the crowd immediately; the mayor looked a little flustered at the sound, and he blinked in the glare of the big lights the camera crew fixed on him.
"Evenin'," he croaked, then cleared his throat. "We're here tonight in Sweetwater, on the courthouse steps of our fine town, to welcome one of our own. We're real proud of him in these parts; he's come a long way from his raising in the north end of Briskin County. He graduated from the University of Mississippi, then went on to law school there, too. Last few years, he's been a judge that we've all come to respect. But it's time for us to share him and his abilities with the rest of our state. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, our own Judge Robert Sewell announces his candidacy for the governorship of Mississippi."
A huge roar went up from the crowd, and some man across from Shiloh stuck his fingers in his mouth and gave a wild, shrill whistle.
Robert and Lydia Sewell rose from their chairs on the platform, and Jack Sherrill, the song leader at the AME Church, led the crowd in a vigorous, roaring version of "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Bedlam couldn't have sounded worse, but it didn't matter. Because suddenly Shiloh caught sight of the one reason she'd come down here tonight.
Billy Bob walked across the road opposite her, well behind the range of the cameras. He had one of his grandfather's peaches, tearing it with his teeth, and his lanky form made a long, long shadow as he strolled under one of the streetlights that had just come on. The rest of the world might be impressed with Robert Sewell, not him.
Over at his grandfather's stand, he swung himself up to the counter, letting his legs dangle. Only his white shirt and his light hair showed up distinctly.
She could just walk over there. The chains, whatever they'd been made of, were gone.
She took one step—then stopped.
What did she want from him? He would want to know, and she wasn't sure.
"Shiloh." The low, husky voice came from behind; so did the warm hand that clasped her bare arm.
Michael. He'd walked up right behind her, his eyes hot and excited even in the twilight.
"What are you doing here?"
"Dad wanted me to come. I barely had time to speak to him. He says he's talked with you. That it's settled."
And his other hand reached for one of the wild brown curls that the humidity had created against her neck.
"It's a good day, Shiloh. Dad gets to announce his big plans, and I get you back, right where you're supposed to be," he whispered, his hand on her arm tightening.
"Michael, you don't understand," she said frantically, straining away from him, but he held her still.
". . . and my son Michael is in the crowd. He drove here from Memphis to be with us," she heard Sewell say jovially over the big speakers. "Come on up here, son. This boy and Lydia are my only family."
Shiloh froze as a thousand eyes turned toward them; she hated being in the spotlight, but here she was, caught in it, trapped against Michael by his hands and the rules of polite society. Then the big camera lights swept over them.
She couldn't kick or scream or bite. "Come on, Shiloh," he said with a laugh that held excitement and arousal, "you belong up there with me." "No—no, Michael—"
His hand pulled her along after him inexorably—the faces of the laughing crowd danced in front of her eyes— what was she supposed to do?
Billy. Billy would see this. She had to let him know it was wrong, that she didn't w
ant to be here, being dragged like a sacrifice up to the altar of the local politician.
Twisting frantically to look back over her shoulder, she saw him all too clearly. He wasn't sitting on the fruit stand anymore. He'd come out from it only to freeze in a pool of light, and even if she couldn't see his face, his body told it all. Stiff, unmoving, furious. She stumbled, and Michael's hand above her elbow urged her up the steps.
Sewell's face was stunned when he saw his son pulling her up the wooden steps after him. For once, the glib tongue failed him.
Get us out of this one, Judge, Shiloh thought in hysterical despair.
"I just want to say how proud I am of my father," Michael said smoothly. He looked like a young prince in the hot white lights of the camera. "And I wanted to introduce my fiancée, Miss Shiloh Pennington."
The crowd applauded; Shiloh and Robert Sewell never moved.
But things weren't as bad as they could get, after all; Shiloh discovered they could get worse when Michael looked down at her, caught in the crook of his arm, and kissed her full on the lips, bending her head back with his force.
Sweetwater loved it—they screamed and yelped. When Michael turned her loose, she looked frantically for Billy Bob, searching the shadows. He was gone. And he didn't come back.
"I hate you. Hate you. I don't know how much more plainly I can say that. You tried to rape me."
Shiloh's face was as white as Michael's cotton polo top. They stood squared off, facing each other across her father's office, and if words were knives, the silver carpet would have been splotched red. She had been brutal during the last fifteen minutes.
They had retreated here at her insistence when the speeches ended; the judge's fear that she was about to explode outside in front of the crowd made him give in with poor grace to her demands that every one of them hear what she had to say.
"I don't know what you're talking about. I've never touched you," Michael blustered. "Not that way. Maybe you misunderstood."
"Now, Shiloh, don't make any more of a scene," Sam said warningly, from where he stood in front of the closed door, a sentinel at guard. "Think of Lydia. No mother wants to hear things about her son."
"Me—make a scene? I just got dragged up on a podium in front of half of Mississippi and kissed by a man I don't like. Who made that scene?" she demanded.
"There's been a misunderstanding. I didn't have time to talk to Michael," the judge expostulated.
"You said it was taken care of. All worked out," Michael accused, his face blood-red with shock and embarrassment and anger.
"She won't have you, boy."
Sam's words cut across the confusion in the room.
Lydia fairly trembled with rage as she stepped up to take her son's arm.
"She's not worth this, Michael," she said vehemently. "You need a woman who will love you, and behave like a civilized, decent person. Someone who won't make up vicious lies, someone from an impeccable background. Not from—"
"That's enough, Lydia." Judge Sewell cut her short; he knew who had the money in this room, and impeccable backgrounds didn't matter much stacked up to dollars and cents.
"I'm not ashamed of where I came from," Sam said mildly. "But that's got nothing to do with this. The fact is that Shiloh's stubborn as a mule. She won't marry him."
"Michael, are you all right?" Lydia's anxious words fell on deaf ears. Her son's face had two red splotches on each cheek; the vein in his temple throbbed painfully; his eves burned into Shiloh's. "Nobody will ever believe any of these lies even if she tries to tell them."
Shaking his mother's hand off, he stepped across the carpet toward Shiloh, and he said clearly, "If I could do that night over, I'd be rougher. And you wouldn't get up until I was through with you. You'd remember it for the rest of your life."
The room reverberated with his words; the listeners stood frozen in a slow-dawning horror.
"Here, you've got no call to talk to her like that!" Sam sounded apoplectic, horrified, outraged, as he walked toward Michael.
But Michael stopped him cold, shoving him away. "And you, old man, and all your money that my father dances to like a trained bear, you can go to hell. I'll meet you there."
He nearly tore the door off its hinges, then vanished down the hall.
Sewell came out of his trance to rush to the door. "Michael, don't do something stupid," he called after his son.
Lydia Sewell was sobbing quietly, but there was pure fury in her voice. "You've turned the best night of my life into a tragedy, Shiloh. This is your fault. Look what you've done to Michael."
"Michael's thirty years old. He did it to himself," Sam said heavily.
At first black rage consumed him. Under its power, Billy Bob made it to his truck and down the road. Grandpa could catch a ride home with Clancy Green.
His head was full of hot, passionate profanities, waiting to tumble off the tip of his tongue. But something held them back, probably the tremendous iron grip he used to clamp down on his emotions. If he ever really let go of them, he was going to hurt, hurt so much he might not survive.
So he burned up the highway in a deadly silence.
Michael Sewell had just reached out and reeled Shiloh back in. He'd laid hands on her as casually as if he were the one married to her. Right there in front of the whole world, he had claimed Shiloh.
But that wasn't what hurt the most.
She had let him.
That made everything she'd told Billy a lie. A damned lie. What had really happened? She'd used him to get Michael to fall in line? To get something from Sam? She had kissed him and danced with him and lain with him on that couch—and it was all a lie. A game. Another one.
She'd gone right up on that stage and let Sewell kiss her. Kiss her. They had looked good together, matched in their cool whites, his blond head forcing hers back so that her brown mane of hair fell thickly, freely.
"My fiancée," Sewell had said.
Well, buddy, thought Billy viciously, there's one little problem. She's married. And I had my hands on her yesterday, and two weeks ago, and four years ago. But if I could get my hands on her now, it'd be different. I might kill her.
Pain began to trickle into his rage, lessening it. Then he slowed down so that instead of taking the road so fast it was a dark blur, he saw where he'd come: home. The farm.
It was all right. He needed a hole to crawl into, to lick his wounds. So he pulled off, turning not toward the house but toward the dark barn, where Chase was.
He found the bridle but didn't even look for the saddle. The big horse was sleepy and confused as Billy Bob slipped the bridle on his nose, but he made no fuss when Billy led him outside the barn doors and vaulted onto his bare back.
The night air was hot and humid; mosquitoes were out in force. But the horse snorted with the realization of his unexpected freedom, and eased into a trot, ignoring the heat.
Billy let him go, riding out into the dark night past the orchards. Far in the distance, way beyond a stretching field, somebody's porch light glowed dimly.
He ran his hand over his face, trying hard to fight away all sensations. Pain, betrayal, loss.
She'd set him up for it all. And it wasn't like it was the first time she'd done it. Once before she'd made him feel things, gotten to him, then walked away. He just hadn't expected her to go so far. She'd kissed him. Just yesterday, she'd teased him with that Coke can, in front of everybody.
She'd asked for time; she'd made him believe there might be more to this marriage than a desire to get even with her father and his brother. More than a thirty-five-hundred dollar jail fine.
It was all a lie.
The Sewells deserved her.
And Billy Walker had learned all over again that he was the biggest, dumbest fool in this county. Maybe in this state.
He didn't go home until nearly midnight, and he wouldn't have gone then except there was nothing else to do and Chase was beginning to tire. He rubbed the horse down carefully, just to occupy time,
and stopped to stroke one of the dogs that had run up to him from nowhere.
He kept wondering where she was, seeing her on that platform in that white circle of light. But it wasn't that memory that hurt him the most.
No, what stung like hellfire was the one fact Billy finally forced himself to face: she had looked as if she belonged with Michael. Both cool, well-dressed, poised. The up-and-coming country club set.
He kept seeing her walk up those steps, remembering the swing of her hair as she twisted to look back. He'd seen her face clearly in the light—it had been shocked, pleading. For what?
Or had he misunderstood?
He wondered all of that as he climbed wearily up the steps to the white farmhouse that loomed like a ghost under the moonlight, the dog at his heels.
"Will."
He jumped. The voice startled him, coming from the shadows at the swing. Only one person called him that.
"Mama! What are you doin' up this late?"
"There's a girl that keeps calling here. She says her name is Shiloh. And your grandpa claims that's the name of that banker's daughter in town." Ellen was so agitated she could barely get the words out. "She says ever)' time she calls that it's important."
The swing rocked wildly as Ellen stood, her pale cotton robe blowing a little in the late-night breeze. "She's upset. Boy, you've not gone and got yourself in bad trouble, have you?"
Not unless you count the way I hurt right now, he thought.
"No, Mama. But I know what she wants. It's nothing." She'd called. Why? No matter. It was way too late, and it had nothing to do with the clock.
Billy Bob Walker Got Married Page 19
