"You were never that."
"I was always that. I was fighting myself as much as I was you. All of it was over something deeper. I knew down inside myself, whether I admitted it or not, that I loved Billy Bob. That I couldn't marry Michael. You're closer to me than any other person in the world—you could sense it, too. You've always known that Billy was the real threat because . . . you're my father. You know me."
Sam came unsteadily out of the chair, grasping it for support as he stumbled.
Laura tried to reach for him. "You've not had a bite in three days, have you? Let me—"
But he pushed her away, snarling like a cornered, injured animal. "Don't you touch me. Don't you touch me."
Laura stepped back, fright and hurt blending on her face as she twisted to Shiloh.
"Laura, let me talk to him. Alone."
"Are you sure?" T-Tommy asked dubiously. "Sam, you're in a bad way. Let us—"
"Alone. Please." Shiloh's voice was near desperation, and Laura heard it.
"Come on," she told her brother. "Do as she asks."
Then it was just the two of them—a pleading girl and a broken old man.
"Papa, Laura loves you. We all do."
"You betrayed me," he rasped, hitting his open hand on his chest. "No."
"You knew all along. And Caroline did. And he—he did." His face twisted.
"They're strangers to me. I don't know what they knew. But I know what you're feeling." She wouldn't let him look away from her gaze, trying to press the truth on him. "I was sick to my stomach for four days. Then I hated them and God and everybody else in the world. I hated you because you were such a gullible fool where she was concerned. I wished I'd never been born. But it passed, those feelings about you. And I began to see that what makes a father is something more than biology. It's love and concern and discipline and protection"— she laughed, the tears making her voice rough—"and God knows, you've given me that."
He put both hands to his head, raking his wild hair back with hands that shook. "You just don't take a child from its parent and expect the parent to go on living. To go on being normal. I can't, Shiloh. I can't." His voice broke, then pleaded like a child's.
"Then she'll beat you," she whispered thickly, daring to catch at his wrists. He was sick, burning up to the touch. "She'll take the rest of our lives and ruin them, too. Don't let her have us, Papa."
His mouth quivered, but he didn't shake her off. Tears welled at the corner of his eyes, spilling down onto his cheek, catching in the long furrows of his face.
"I'm not your father."
"Yes, you are. I never even saw David. He's no more to me than—than the judge is to Billy. He's a father, a real, live, biological father, and it's worth nothing. Billy's got nobody if Sewell's all there is. But between me and you, there's all the nights you read to me, and the arguments over how much makeup I wasn't supposed to wear, and the day you went to a board meeting with blood on your shirt because I got hurt on the playground at school and you came to the school from the bank, even though you didn't have the time, to patch me up and let me bleed and cry on you."
Pulling his hand up to her face, she pressed the palm to her cheek.
"Papa," she said insistently. "I love you. I love you. I—"
And he reached out, his movements rusty and uncertain—so unlike himself—and gathered her clumsily against his heart.
"Help me," he whispered shakily. "Help me, Shiloh."
She couldn't leave him, not then. They talked until he fell asleep on the bed while Laura and T-Tommy hovered in the kitchen. Shiloh stood looking down on her sleeping father, and she had the strangest, most topsy-turvy feeling in her life. She was young—nearly twenty-three, that was all—but for just a few minutes, she'd felt older than Sam, as though he were the child.
But she was happy. They would make it.
"You'll stay, won't you?" asked Laura, anxiously. "For a day or two, until he's back to normal."
He won't ever be the same, Shiloh thought, like I never was. But all she said was, "I'll stay."
Relief made the housekeeper sag against the sink. "Thank goodness. I was scared to death. And a week from Friday, whether he remembers it or not, he's got the big bash he holds every year for the people connected with the banks. I don't know what to do. Cancel it? Let it go on? I'm scared to ask him."
"Let it go on," Shiloh said. "He needs to have it to think about, and it would only cause talk if it got cancelled."
Laura laid her hand over Shiloh's. "I don't know what's happened. But if you hadn't come, I believe Sam would've killed himself." The words were quiet.
"We won't let him," she answered.
Two days later, her father went back to the bank. Quieter, more subdued. But he wasn't completely defeated anymore. He had hope.
She called the farm. Billy hadn't returned. Shiloh didn't, either.
She tried to convince herself that Ellen was right, that he would come back and forgive her. But Ellen didn't know the whole story—not about the money or Angie or her own father's schemes.
She couldn't sleep in her room at home without tossing and turning, missing him, longing to reach out and touch him. And the house stifled her until she couldn't breathe. Some nights she opened the French doors and let the breeze blow in, listening for a whippoorwill, longing for the buzz of the fan and the rich smell of the orchards. And mostly, for his hands on her, his husky, teasing laughter in her ear.
Finally, she got up one morning with a headache, a heartache, and a stomach full of righteous indignation. Enough was enough. He'd done as much as she had— kept things from her, shouted at her, been sarcastic—and he'd had a blond floozy sprawled all over him, to boot.
He'd had a fit when Michael had kissed her, and she'd apologized as sweetly as she knew how.
Why couldn't he apologize?
If he waited much longer, there was going to be nobody to apologize to.
Shiloh was through mourning. He was probably off at some rodeo with a bunch of cowboy groupies hanging on his every word.
So she called Rita and asked her to lunch.
And she would stay at Sam's a while longer.
21
Bell Rodeo was in town for one night only.
Under the blazing lights of the fairground arena in this east Tennessee county, the big red stallion which the rodeo had brought with it drew all eyes. Fiery in both looks and temperament, a little edgy out in all the noise and excitement, glittering in the bronze and gold trappings, Chase was clearly unpredictable.
That element lent excitement to his movements, even when he was only on the sidelines.
He was a show stealer, born to be here in the limelight.
Billy slid off his back as the rodeo drew to a close, leading the sweating, twitching animal back to the stalls that ran along one side of the arena.
"You're going to be fine, boy," he murmured to him, running his arm up under Chase's head to stroke him. "You like it, don't you?"
The horse didn't answer as Billy went about his business furiously, stripping off the saddle, pampering the stallion, trying not to remember that this was the last time.
Bell made his way back to them as the lights dimmed in the arena. The hum of the crowd; the scent of cigarette smoke thick in the night air; a loud, raucous burst of laughter; these were the sounds that told of the audience's departure as they swarmed to the parking lot.
"Good show tonight," Bell grunted, reaching to stroke the horse's nose. Chase knew him, snorting at him in a friendly sort of way.
"My last night with you," Billy Bob said flatly, reaching down to remove the leather chaps.
"You sure? I like havin' you with the rodeo."
"I'm sure. That was our deal—two weeks with you, to get Chase used to things." The words were clipped, the tone sparse. If he clung strictly to business, Billy thought, he would get through this.
Bell pulled off the heavy leather gloves he wore. "So you're sticking to it, that deal."
&
nbsp; "I gave you my word . . . and my horse."
"Fair enough." Bell fumbled in his inside vest pocket. "I'm prepared to keep my end of it. Here."
Billy dropped the chaps over the high back of the wooden stall, hesitated, then reached for the check. He never looked at it, just dragged out his wallet to push the paper in it.
Bell watched. "You in some kind of trouble, boy?" His black eyes were keen as daggers. "Something's bad wrong, or you wouldn't be selling me this horse."
"Nothing you can help me with," Billy returned shortly.
"It's that girl, ain't it?"
"It's just me." His voice said plainly that it was none of Bell's business.
"No matter. I'm gettin' what I want from the deal," Bell answered.
Billy Bob looked at the horse. "Well, so long, fella. I'll see you in the lights out there." He brushed his hand down the big chest, still heaving a little from Chase's exertions in the arena.
Bell looked at Billy's face. "You know you can always come to see him. You're always welcome at Bell Farm, Billy."
The big blond man nodded wordlessly, then walked away. He got to the edge of the stall area before he stopped sharply, wheeling to return, taking big steps. He wrapped both arms around Chase's neck, hugging him fiercely, burying his face against the hot, sleek coat.
And Harold Bell turned away, understanding exactly.
Billy Bob drove all night.
The brilliant green, thrusting ridges of the Appalachians sloped gradually into rolling, pine-covered hills.
Down through Knoxville, through Nashville, through Selmer, across the state line. Corinth, Tupelo, farther south, then west.
Billy was nearly home when the sun rose, as red as the dirt along the edges of the highway.
A few cotton fields and rice paddies mingled now with pecan groves. The loud tourists, the strange accents, the brash feel of Tennessee—all those irritants slid away as Mississippi flowed around him, soothing and gentle.
Home to the land.
To the farm.
To Shiloh.
He let the thought escape at last, testing his emotions to see what he felt, nearly two weeks after that knockdown-drag-out fight. Anger and hurt and—now he could admit it—a longing to see her.
This time he would face her with nothing, absolutely nothing, between them. The money was here in his pocket, and when he shoved it at her, he meant to begin this marriage again. This time they'd begin on equal terms.
If she'd let him. Remembering how she'd flamed with anger at Angie, Billy had a few doubts.
But he had his own indignation to fuel him. "You're not worth it."
She was going to eat those words, he swore to himself.
The three or four buildings that made up Seven Knobs rose up over the first rise. The grocery store was already open; so was its post office window at the side of the store. Mary Haile was out sweeping off her front porch, and a cat licked its paws contentedly at the edge of her yard.
When Billy made the turn beside the fruit stand, he could see the white of the farmhouse in the distant bright morning light as it filtered through the leaves of the big trees. When he followed the gravel road around to the back, his eyes went automatically to Shiloh's windows.
She hadn't come back the night of the fight. With a sinking heart, he had faced the facts: she had gone home, to the man who might have the power to take her away, just as he had done four years ago.
But across these two weeks he had hoped against hope that she would return, remembering how she seemed to love the place, reminding himself that Shiloh was a woman now, not Sam's little girl, that she'd married him and lived with him against her father's wishes. But when he called home several times, she was never there.
Maybe he had no right to hope she would be; he had hit the high road and stayed gone for thirteen days. But he'd had no choice, he argued with himself: Bell made the deal that way. For thirty-five hundred dollars, Billy gave him the horse and two weeks of his time.
The fan was not on in the window; his heart stumbled just a little.
"Why, Will!" His mother's shocked voice dragged him out of his reverie as she came out the back porch door to throw away a pan of water.
"I just got home and you're already dumping on me?" he inquired humorously, setting down the big blue duffel bag on the porch steps.
Ellen began to smile, and her mouth lifted her whole quiet face into sudden happiness. "You're back, and you're not raving mad like you were when you left here." Her eyes sparkled like emeralds as she set down the pan and reached out to clasp his arms. "It's good to see you. Daddy!" she called over her shoulder. "Come see what's in the backyard this fine mornin."
The scent of Willie's pipe preceded him. "Did you say morning' glories are in the back-—Billy!"
" Lo, Grandpa."
"It's about time." The old man nearly smiled. "You've been two weeks gone. Whose truck is that you're drivin'?"
"Bell's. I'm supposed to take it to his farm sometime this week." He stepped up on the porch, looking toward the door. Her door. Then he asked the question beating at the back of his brain. "You haven't seen Shiloh, then?"
"Uh." That was Willie's only answer as he looked anxiously over at Ellen. Billy Bob caught the tail end of the look as he turned from surveying the door, and a weight settled heavily in the pit of his stomach.
"She's gone home, hasn't she? For good."
"She came back on Sunday, after you left, Will," his mother answered soothingly.
"And?" His one word was impatient.
"Her father needed her. He was sick."
Billy opened the door roughly, shoving it open on the quiet, empty room. "He's no more sick than I am."
"Now you just wait," Ellen cut in, her voice sharp. "You two have a fight, then you take off for two weeks. Don't blame her for this completely, Billy."
"It was over him and a lot of other things. She gave me the money to get out of jail. I shouldn't have taken it. It's been between us the entire time. Then he found out about it. What was I supposed to do? Let him keep beating me at every turn?"
Billy hunched his shoulders up around his neck as he gripped the banister. Then Ellen reached out to lay her hand on his back, as if she might ease the keening agony that tore through him.
"She had a talk with her father. I don't know about what. All I know is, he told her about you going to the university, for one thing. She didn't understand why you'd kept it a secret."
Billy swallowed, then swallowed again.
"That's not enough reason for her to go back to him," he managed.
"I'm tellin' you, there was something wrong," Ellen insisted. "It was in the Kershaw woman's face. And Shiloh has called. She came by two days ago, on her way to Martinsville. She was pickin' up something there for a—a reception of some kind she was helping with tonight. She said she just meant to say hello, but she really wanted to come by to see if there was any trace of you here."
"Don't try to sweeten it, Mama," he said wearily, straightening. Now that there was no rush of adrenaline keeping it at bay, the night's loss of sleep was beginning to wear on him. "I guess I'll get some sleep ... in my old bedroom."
She'd meant it when she walked off after the fight. She'd left him.
He dreamed of Chase.
The stallion side-danced across a misty field, cocky and beautiful. And the girl that rode his back was every inch as gorgeous, her wine-streaked brown hair nearly the same color as his gleaming coat.
They belonged out there. He had no right to either of them.
He awoke with the thought in his head and misery in his heart, and lay there for a long rime in the hot room, wondering what he would do without her.
Her kiss on his lips that spawned hope in the middle of a horrible joke of a marriage ceremony.
Her arms locked around him in a dance.
Her breast beneath his lips.
Her touch burning away the hurt in a dark motel room.
Her sleepy smile. "You're
not worth it."
He winced as those last words jarred on his memory.
She was angry. Maybe she was jealous; Angie had been glued to him.
That was no excuse for her to run home and not come back. She knew how he'd take her actions. He would understand that she'd decided she preferred fine cars and expensive receptions, like the one tonight.
When he couldn't bear his own gloomy thoughts anymore, he got up and went downstairs, opening the door to the room. She was here—everywhere.
He turned on the fan and sat down on the bed, and then he began to burn.
She was his wife, by her own choice.
And no matter what people said or thought, he was as good to her as any other man could ever be. Didn't she know he was trying? Couldn't she understand he was reaching for better things?
He loved her, dammit.
He wanted her.
He'd sold his one prize possession to try to show her all of that.
And by God, she loved him, too, if she'd just admit it, completely and wholly.
So why had she gone home? Because she wanted to be back in her own world and she didn't think he could fit there, no matter how hard he tried?
Was love not enough?
He made a sudden motion, nearly knocking off the table lamp, and as he caught it, he remembered: he'd put the ring here.
It was gone. Not on the dresser, not in her jewelry box.
She had to have it. She'd carried it with her to Pennington's house.
He looked at himself in the mirror, and he made up his mind. A poor man can't afford pride, somebody once said, but Billy Walker meant to take his own life by the scruff of the neck tonight and see what shook out of it.
He was tired of being the victim. Tired of feeling inferior. Tired of hiding his dreams because the town might think they were too big for him to aspire to. Tired of being intimidated by Sewell and Pennington and Shiloh herself, even if she never understood how she'd made him feel that way.
Billy Bob Walker Got Married Page 35
