If he'd thought he was completely welcome in this room.
As it was, he took a deep breath and went to the kitchen just at the end of the tiny hall.
Grandpa came to join him for sandwiches and iced tea while Ellen kept the stand; the two of them took turns at the stand most days.
"Have we got another window fan?" Billy asked suddenly, his thoughts on the fluff of hair that clung to Shiloh's temple, the way it had cajoled him to brush it away from her skin.
"I don't think so. What you need one for?"
"Shiloh's asleep in the back room." Billy jerked his head in that direction. "It was a little hot back there when I checked on her."
"That room's got windows on the east and north," Grandpa said consideringly. "That means it ought to stay pretty cool. It gets lots of morning sun and afternoon shade. But come next month, ain't no place cool. Not ever, not in Mississippi."
"I swear I thought I'd have the money to have this house insulated again this summer, and central air put in," Billy said, turning up his glass to drain it.
"You needed the tractor-trailer more, to haul the nursery stock. Like you'll need some for this fall, if you've got any left. Where'd you get the money to pay that jail fine?" his grandfather asked curiously.
"I just—had it, all right?"
Willie snorted. "Don't get hot with me, boy. It's just gonna be a shame if you had to use the money you've saved for good purposes to pay a fine for-"
"Grandpa, don't say anything to Shiloh about this, you hear me?"
"You mean you ain't told your own wife—"
"That's right. Not yet, anyway." Billy held his grandfather's stare for a long moment.
"This is the funniest marriage I ever heard of in my life," Willie groused at last, disapproval in his voice.
"I've not got time to worry about that," Billy returned, pushing his chair back to stand. "I don't want Shiloh havin' to sleep in a hot room. She's used to something different"
"She'd better get used to you, and you to her."
Willie's words were in his ears when he lingered by Shiloh's room on his way out to the farm. She was awake, sitting up drowsily in the middle of a wedding-ring circle stitched into the quilt, raking her hair back off her face.
As he stood in the doorway, she caught sight of him and smiled, a sleepy, sensual smile that gave him more hope than he'd had all day.
"Feel better?"
She nodded wordlessly, then yawned and stretched, her movements lifting her breasts against the blue dress, lifting her upper body into an innocently erotic pose.
"I'm going out on the farm. Want to go with me?" His voice was careless as he tried hard not to care whether she did or not.
Shiloh moved, then she looked down blankly at her dress.
"I don't think I can," she said, whimsically. "Why not? If you're hungry, we can get you a sandwich first."
"It's not that. Billy, haven't you noticed? I don't have any clothes."
He pulled his gaze from her rueful dark eyes and scanned her body. "I believe I'd notice if you didn't have on anything, honey. Yes, ma'am, I definitely would," he informed her humorously.
She stood up abruptly, letting the blue dress skim down around her legs. "I put this dress on yesterday morning so I could take the town by storm with Billy Walker."
"We sure did that. I don't know if they'll remember what we were wearin' or not, though."
She sighed in exasperation. "I've been wearing it ever since. I either have to wash it, and wear a sheet while it dries—"
"Sounds like a good idea. Whose sheet?" he interrupted daringly, a glint in his eye.
Her face flushed pinkly as she took a step backward, but her voice was severe. "This is serious. I have to get some other clothes. I've got closets full at home that I—"
"No."
"Some of them are mine, bought with my own money, Billy. Not his."
He took another step into the room, his hands going to his hips. "If you go back now, no matter for what reason, you'll only get tore up again, Shiloh. Looks like to me that we're having a hard enough time today without that. You're scared to set foot in my bedroom."
Tucking her hair behind one ear, Shiloh ignored the challenge in his words and looked at her bare feet. "So, what am I going to wear? I have a little money with me, and a checking account, if Sam hasn't closed it."
"Don't you think," Billy said tightly, his face angry, "that I might buy you clothes? You're my wife. Most men do."
"But you don't have any—" She clipped the words off sharply, and hastily substituted, "I don't want to take your money, Billy. It would feel funny."
"Tell me about it. It felt pretty funny to me to take yours, too, but sometimes you've got to do things." He took another step closer to her, so close now she could have reached out and touched him; his eyes searched hers. "I'm supposed to buy clothes for you, Shiloh. The sooner you let me, the sooner this will start to feel normal."
"Where are you—where are we going to get the money?" she whispered at last, her eyes luminous.
Billy's face lightened instantly, and he laughed a little as he reached out to graze her face with his knuckles. "I made a deal with a chain of stores over in Arkansas. Sold a whole acre of trees to them last month. Remember when I came to the bank? See, I had more on my mind than just aggravating you." His eyes teased her a minute. "That's the first deal that big I've ever made. I'm due to sell the same amount to them every month right up until Thanksgiving. That's several thousand dollars every time I make a sale, even after I cover my expenses."
"And can you live on that?"
"All winter, if we're careful."
"Oh, good."
Shiloh fumbled for an answer, all too aware that Sam put out not thousands, but tens of thousands, every week, and he brought in double that amount.
They hesitated for a long second or two, then Billy reached out and ran his long brown finger down her throat, to the hollow between her breasts.
"It's Friday. I've got to check on some things around the farm. If you want to use the washing machine, it's beside the bathroom. You could get ready—we could go to town when I get back. I think you'll feel better if it's just you and me for a while, instead of my whole family crammed down your throat."
"Not Sweetwater."
"No. Maybe Martinsville. There's a shopping center there. Then we'll do something—eat, dance, go to a movie."
"Are you asking me for a date?" she asked mischievously, trying to ignore the hand at her breasts. "An honest-to-goodness, public date?"
"There's a first time for everything," he retorted, unevenly. "Isn't this the way we're supposed to do it? Get married and then date?" As his eyes held hers, his big hand flattened slowly across her, his fingers slipping under the blue fabric with the insidious strength of sweet outlaw honeysuckle in a prim garden, to lie heavily, hotly against her skin.
She never looked down, just up at him as she said unsteadily, "I think you're awfully free with your hands for a man who doesn't even know if I've agreed to go out with him or not."
"I'm trying to persuade you."
"And do I get more of this"—she caught his marauding hand with hers—"if I say yes? Or will you behave?"
He eyed her face for a minute, then let his hand drop away. "I think I'd better behave." He sighed.
Unexpectedly, she reached out to flatten her own hands against his shirt, rubbing her palms over him sensually. "That's a shame," she said regretfully, stepping up into him, against him, feeling the breath as it caught in his chest. "All of my dates who are also married to me have to fool around"—she reached to rain a kiss into the warm hollow of his throat—"when they take me out, or I don't go." She kissed the side of his throat. "So if you're going to behave—"
"I take it back. It was a lie. I won't," he interrupted fervently, his blue eyes laughing down at her in a combination of shock and delight as he caught her hands and pulled them around himself, locking her to him. "I'll put every move I've ever heard
of on you, baby. I'll be a regular octopus."
"Is that a promise?" she teased, just as his lips bent to hers.
"Honey, that's a blood oath," he breathed into her mouth. "
So she spent the afternoon wearing a long T-shirt of Billy's that she found folded up in the tiny laundry room, while her clothes washed. No one except her was at the house, and its silence and heat began to wear at her until she finally dared to walk outside on the back porch barefooted. The shirt came to her midthigh; surely if nobody got close enough to realize she had on nothing under it, it would be all right to walk outside.
In fact, the only person to discover such an embarrassing thing was likely to be Billy, and Shiloh doubted if he would mind it much at all.
The yard had an old, established feel to it, probably because of the size of the trees that shaded it, and it was welcoming in an unassuming way. No elaborate lily ponds or strategically placed brown gravel paths here. Instead, an old well house stood off to the far left, its roof barely three feet out of the ground. Over the years, it had been nearly swamped with ivy and the overhanging vines of forsythia.
A wild rose bush sprawled across the old wire fence that ran down the right length of the yard, and its tiny, dusky pink blooms were so heavy and profuse that the fence dipped slightly under its weight, laden down with its honeyed load.
Old-fashioned, shade-loving impatiens ran wild around the bases of the two spreading oaks at the back of the yard, their vivid, lush blooms even more deeply pink than the roses.
A swing—the biggest one Shiloh had ever seen—hung from a frame suspended between the two oaks, and the way the grass had been worn away until the dirt had been exposed under it told her how often that swing was used.
Besides it, there were only three other chairs in the backyard; one of them, a heavy wooden one, sat near the swing. The other two, both rockers, were here, on the back porch. One held a faded, dented cushion. The other sat near the bannister, and the fronds of the huge Boston fern that hung from the basket near it reached down to brush its high back. Beyond the trees and the fence, the land rolled. Seven Knobs was the one section of Briskin County that dipped and rose a little instead of being nearly flat; it dipped and rose seven times, in fact, in long, slow, graceful sweeps.
Peace lay over this place, as did sunshine that sprinkled through the heavy leaves of the trees. The only sounds were the birds and the occasional blast from a horse, probably beyond the distant barn, and the rumble of a far-off tractor.
Was it Billy?
She closed her eyes and pictured him at work in the hot sun, the ever-present cap covering his thick blond hair; the long, sleek muscles in his back pulling upward as he bent to watch the ground beneath him, the sure, deft, brown hands on the wheel.
Friday night, going into town with Billy Bob, promises of kisses and caresses and fun.
She would make this work, in spite of everything—his family, her uncertainty in this house, the lack of money.
And she would begin tonight.
"Mama, Grandpa, we just wanted to tell you that we're going out, and we'll probably be late getting back home," Billy said cheerfully, as he led Shiloh out the kitchen.
Ellen looked up from the salad she was making at the sink; it was the first time Shiloh had seen her since this morning. Ellen offered a tentative smile; that, too, was a first. "Have a good time."
"No need to stay out until all hours tonight," Grandpa drawled outrageously from his chair beside a tiny little television where the local news was being broadcast in shimmering images. "This time you can bring the girl home with you. Now if you can just get her in the right bed."
Billy muttered an expletive under his breath, his cheeks red as he pulled Shiloh out the back screen door. "That old man's getting on my nerves."
"I don't know how many Friday nights you've laid out with some girl, Billy," Shiloh said dangerously, as he opened her truck door, "but tonight is different. Tonight is your honeymoon."
"I've told you before about those other girls. And one Friday night not so long ago I watched you climb in Michael's Jag in front of the bank and pull off into the sunset," he said brusquely.
Both looked away; neither wanted to fight. Not now.
Then he opened his own door and slid in beside her.
"Shoot," he muttered, looking toward the garage. "I forgot to take the Cadillac back. Just remembered it." He hesitated, then made up his mind. "It'll have to wait until tomorrow. I'm not ruining a date with you for Pennington's car."
Two miles down the highway, he looked over at the girl in the truck with him.
"I like your dress," he said teasingly. "Have I seen you wear it before?"
She relaxed, then fell in with his mood. "At least it's clean. I loved it when I put it on yesterday. Now I'm beginning to wish I'd never seen it. I wore your T-shirt while I washed this, and even it looked better to me."
Billy considered the vision he had of her wrapped in one of his extra-long, tall-men white Fruit of the Looms.
"You'll have to let me see you in it. That way I can give you my opinion. Of course, it's hard to see much with you sitting way over there." He raised his eyebrows question-ingly, patting the seat beside him suggestively with his sprawled, lazy hand.
After a second's pause, Shiloh gave a tiny laugh under her breath and slid over to him. His right arm wrapped around her, squeezing her up tight for a second.
"I can't get too close," she informed him.
"Why not? I don't bite."
"No, but this stick shift in the floor won't let me."
"Next truck I own, I'll definitely go for an automatic," he said regretfully, letting her straighten a little. "So where are we going?"
Shiloh stared at him blankly. "I don't know. The only times I ever came to Tobias County, it was to Greenview Golf Course with Sam. I've never been shopping here."
He'd never been to the golf course, he thought, then reminded her quietly, "You came with me once, to a dance."
She thought for a second. "That night was the first time I'd ever been anywhere with you. I couldn't see or hear anything else but you. We could have been on the moon for all I remember of the place."
Her words took the shadows away that had chased across his face.
"If I get real lucky, maybe you won't remember much else tonight, either," he said huskily, and his hand squeezed her arm. "Maybe neither of us will."
But by the time he got to Martinsville, he'd definitely remembered a few things, such as the name of the store where Angie shopped. It was in the Delta Shopping Center, along with a Wal-Mart, which suited him fine: the big department store carried fans.
A fancy Atlanta architect had designed the place, determined to make it look as southern as Gone With the Wind. He'd even tried to induce Spanish moss to droop and sway from two oaks that guarded the sweltering, sticky span of asphalt, broken at four-foot intervals by neatly lined boxes marking off Bradford pear trees.
A Dodge Dakota truck was tooling out of a spot directly under one of the oaks; Billy beelined for it.
Then he pointed Shiloh in the direction of the clothing store, which she looked over solemnly. "I've never been here before."
"I hear it's okay." He wasn't about to say, I saw its labels in Angie's clothes. Awkwardly, he took the bill he'd carefully creased and folded earlier, lifted her hand, and pushed it in it. "Spend it all. It's not that much anyway."
Embarrassed, she didn't look down. "Aren't you coming with me?"
He grinned. "If you'll let me help in the dressing room, I might. If we didn't get thrown out of the store." Dipping toward her, his lips caressed her jaw, then his teeth nipped playfully.
"Billy Bob Walker, is that all you think about?" Shiloh demanded, glancing around to make sure no one had heard, nudging his mouth away with a finger.
"I've been married—really married—about twenty-four hours. I've been with you one time. One time, for four years of waiting." His face had gone serious; his hands gripped her sho
ulders as they stood lost in the rows of the parking lot. "So I'm doing well to walk and talk, Shiloh. Yeah. It's all I can think about. Don't you think about it?"
She remembered the way she'd spent the afternoon mooning over him, imagining him at work, his body controlling the tractor.
"Well? Do you?"
"You know I do," she capitulated hurriedly.
"So let's forget this and go somewhere to be together," he suggested swiftly, pushing her face against the open neck of his shirt. "I can say it a whole lot plainer, what I want to do, if you'll let me."
"I've got to have something to wear," she managed.
He released her reluctantly. "Okay. So go get some clothes that I can yank off you in a hurry." Then he smiled, ending the teasing. "That funny pinky-red color you wore to the Legion Hall—I thought you were the prettiest thing I'd ever seen in it, baby."
"Where will you be?" she demanded.
"There. At Wal-Mart. I've got some things to buy."
"Billy." She caught at his arm as he headed away and worried her lip in embarrassment when he obligingly stopped to listen. "I wasn't expecting us to get together this fast, you know."
"So?" He waited patiently, puzzled, running his hand down her bare arm. So warm, so soft. Wal-Mart was a mighty poor second choice to her wet mouth, her luscious body; and what'd she need clothes for, anyway?
"I never had time to—" She looked away, blushed.
He frowned.
"Oh, good gracious, don't you understand, Billy Bob? I haven't seen a doctor about—"
He sucked in his breath as her meaning hit. "This is a fine time to talk about birth control," he murmured ruefully, glancing around them at the cars and the people hurrying past, his stomach tightening, his hands clenching, his whole body pulling in like a big tiger's.
"I didn't remember it last night," she told the second button on his shirt. "I couldn't think at all. But if we keep on like that, things are liable to happen." "Not things, honey. They have names—babies." "I didn't think I should wait until, well, you know, to tell you that we'd have to stop tonight unless you were . . . were prepared. Because I'm not. But I will be, in a few weeks. Is that how long it takes?" She was rambling, babbling, trying to say these extremely embarrassing words in broad daylight, directly to him.
Billy Bob Walker Got Married Page 27
