And if he lost this gamble, then he would go down proud as a king.
In his case, pride might be all he had left.
The reception, Billy discovered, was local, an annual thing Pennington did for his employees and board and investors once a year at the country club in Martinsville.
He'd get to see the place once in his life, after all.
And it was formal. All right, he'd be damned if he wasn't formal, too.
But in the middle of his plans, one thing shook him: When he opened the check Bell had given him for Chase to cash it, it wasn't for the agreed amount. It was for more, for five thousand dollars.
Maybe Bell thought he was saving the marriage, Billy thought wryly, but there was gratitude in him, too.
It took two hours to find something long enough and big enough for him to wear: a coal black tuxedo jacket, cut like a gambler's frock coat, and a white shirt with tiny, crisp, distinct little pleats sewn into it, running up and down the front. They were nearly invisible, they were so small, but they gave a richness to the shirt.
The tie—he was going to do this right if it killed him, and this damn tie just might—was black, too, and it looped into a knot under the snowy lapels.
But no shop had pants long enough to fit his legs, and there wasn't enough time to lengthen the ones the shop did have.
So he'd wear jeans and the big belt buckle and his cowboy boots. And it'd be better this way: she and her old man both would see that Billy Bob Walker wouldn't toe the mark completely for anybody, not them or society in north Mississippi, either, such as it was.
He showered and shaved and brushed his blond hair back until it glistened. And still he didn't like it. He was nearly thirty. It was too long. He didn't need it to prove a point anymore. When he got dressed, he counted out thirty-five hundred dollars from what was left of the five thousand, snapped a rubber band around it, and stuffed it into the inside breast pocket of the black coat.
Ellen and Willie hovered anxiously in the kitchen when he came down the stairs. The afternoon had slipped away into dusk. It was seven o'clock according to the timepiece that hung on the kitchen wall.
"Good Lord," Willie muttered in shock as Billy entered the room. "The only time a man oughta look this high-falutin' is when they bury him, boy."
"Then I'm dressed right. I figure I'm going to my funeral, Grandpa."
"I figured you were going to crash a party."
"She crashed mine," Billy answered laconically.
"Will, you've got such a hot temper, and you're hurt right now. Please, don't do somethin' that's pure foolishness. If you've got to go, then at least give her a chance. I know she loves you, and she'll take to you easy and sweet as sugar the way you look now. She's been missing you, I know."
"When did she have the time? And anyway," he tried hard to tease, "you're the mother-in-law. You're supposed to be an old witch to her."
"Just remember what I've said, or I'll be an old witch to you instead."
♦ ♦ ♦
Leland Ritter was sweeping up his shop when Billy knocked on the door. Leland glanced up, his lined face irritated. "I'm closed," he hollered.
"I'll pay you double, Leland," Billy returned, and the tiny little man straightened. Under the bright fluorescent lights, the white fringe around his bald, shiny head looked like a halo.
"Is that you, Billy Bob?" he asked in amazement, squinting toward the glass doors. "Yeah."
Leland came to the door, unlatching it and speaking simultaneously. "You must need a trim awful bad."
"I do." Billy sat down in the barber's first chair, before he could change his mind.
"Um-huh-huh, look at you." Leland gazed in awe. "Where you going, Billy?"
"I'm going to Greenview Country Club."
"To Pennington's big party?" His voice rose.
"That's right. And I'm not invited. I want to look real good, Leland, so when they throw me out, and when I get up and walk right back in, I'm going to do it in style." Billy's half-serious, half-joking tone made the barber pause a minute.
"It's your hide," he murmured, "but I can trim this hair fast as lightnin' for you. It ain't like you ever get too much cut," he noted disapprovingly, and reached for his scissors.
"I want it short. I want it cut off—all of it." Billy's steady gaze met the startled barber's in the mirror before them.
"The back?" he questioned weakly. "After years of me beggin', you're gonna let me take off the back?" "Just hurry and do it, before I change my mind." "Thank you, Lord," Leland whispered, rolling his eyes heavenward a minute. Then the scissors poised, took aim, and snipped.
Whatever Leland did, it didn't make him look any more like the Sewells, which he'd half feared. The short, thick layers shaped his skull, and he tried not to feel naked when it was over.
"You'd look like a Memphis lawyer if you'd just—" Leland began.
"No. Whatever it is, no. I've done enough."
And after Billy paid, Leland stopped him. "You're gonna crash your father-in-law's party, right? All the bigwigs in two, three counties gonna be there, I hear."
"So's my wife."
"You've got everything except—" Leland hesitated. "Wait a minute."
He vanished into his back room, and when he returned, he held out a glass bottle with a black label on it. Whiskey.
"You take this. You're gonna need it more'n I do." His grin was a white gash in his face.
He started twice across the dark paved parking lot to the Greenview Country Club, and twice he turned around and walked back.
Just go in, the brassy side of his nature screamed. Go get her.
But this wasn't his world. What if he made a fool of himself? What if she didn't want to see him? What if that last fight had really been the last fight, and it was over?
He'd locked the fears away all day, concentrating with effort on action.
Now all of them hit him at once, all of his insecurities.
What if when she'd gone back home, she'd realized that they really didn't belong together, that she didn't love a rough-edged farm worker who kept clinging to childish ambitions?
Leaning hard against the truck, bracing himself on its hood, Billy fought with himself. And in that dark corner of the crowded parking lot, he reminded himself: I will not be the victim anymore. I'm as good as any of them.
On the truck seat, the bottle caught the light from a security pole, offering Dutch courage. The two or three stiff shots of whiskey he took straight burned the thoughts into his brain, as well as the back of his throat, and reminded him what he didn't like about the stuff.
Why was he hanging around out here, philosophizing? He wasn't Socrates.
He was William Robert Walker from Briskin County, Mississippi. He wanted his wife. He wanted to prove to her he was worth something.
He was telling himself all of that when he walked through the leaded-glass double oak doors that led to the world of the Greenview Country Club.
Ellen Walker's rowdy son had arrived.
"Go tell Shiloh Walker that her husband is here. I've been out of town. She wasn't expecting me back tonight; that's why my name's not on the list." It sounded good, thought Billy in satisfaction, and the doorman at the entrance marked Banquet Hall must have thought so, too. He hurried into the room deferentially, leaving the doors unguarded, and Billy strolled in leisurely.
There was a throng of people; Pennington owned—or controlled—six banks.
Flowers—big vases of yellow rose sprays, fat bowls of dark purple violets, round trays of pinks—covered every space. Green plants—corn plants, twisted jade, mock orange trees—overflowed every corner.
A well-groomed, elegant piano player and a saxophonist were perched on a dais in a corner, playing "Ain't Misbehavin' " to a talking, perfumed, excited throng of guests who didn't hear them.
And at the bar, four or five accountant types sipped and conversed.
The piano player shifted positions, and then Billy recognized him: Aaron Piedr
ow, who played bass and sang lead at the Legion Hall.
They better watch us, he thought in sudden quick amusement: we're moving in, us rednecks.
He was making his way to the piano when he saw her, and she stopped him cold in his tracks, his heart shooting straight up into his brain.
She had on a flame-red dress that swirled and swirled and swirled in a million soft layers around her legs, so tight and tiny around the waist he could have spanned her with his hands and had room to spare.
It fit snugly over her breasts, apparently held up by nothing except hope, with a mile expanse of smooth, richly tanned skin sweeping up from it.
Thank God there was a jacket, even if it was only a tiny bolero thing that was never intended to be buttoned and offered only whispers of glittering sleeves. In fact, the whole jacket sparkled with a coppery color, more brown than the dress and more red than her hair. He wanted that girl, and anger and outrage and longing and a double helping of jealousy and old-fashioned lust burned away his hurt.
He'd suffered agonies over her; she looked as if she'd never shed a tear in her life.
He'd worked for two weeks just because she'd hurt his pride, just so he could reclaim it. Shiloh probably didn't even remember the fight—or him.
He'd sold his horse for that woman in red.
Billy Bob's temper began to sizzle.
"What did you say?" Shiloh frowned at the doorman, looping her hair back behind her ear with its sparkling, chunky earring.
"I said," he began loudly, over the noise, "your husband said to tell you he was here."
"My husband!" she exclaimed, then laughed a little. "You've made a mistake. He's out of town."
"No mistake. He said"—the doorman stepped aside for a waiter with a tray full of smoked salmon hors d'oeuvres—"he'd got back in town early."
"But he wouldn't—"
"I don't see him," the doorman said, inspecting the crowd. "He should be easy to spot, as tall as he was."
Shiloh's throat closed up for a minute. "Tall?" she repeated. Was Billy really here—tonight?
Billy was home.
But here—here? How had he known? What would he think?
"There he is!" the doorman announced in triumph, pointing toward the piano. Her gaze followed his hand, and ran headlong into Billy Walker's stare.
Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord, Lord.
Was that Billy? Her Billy? The one who wore John Deere caps, and came home dirty and muddy from the fields, and spent two weeks in the county jail, and slept sprawled across her, and worried himself sick over money?
"Is that your husband? He said he was." The doorman was looking doubtful now, taking in her wide-eyed, disbelieving stare.
"I—think so." She took a step or two toward Billy.
"She thinks so? How long's the guy been gone?" the little doorman muttered before he went back to his post.
He was leaning on the piano, looking for all the world as if he'd stepped out of a fancy magazine. His hair—his short hair—was heavy and thick; its cropped layers brushed back from his face were more golden blond than the length behind his ears, and it made him look ridiculously young.
But the wide, wide shoulders of the black jacket tapering into his slender body denied that initial impression of youth. In the tuxedo coat, he didn't look lanky: he looked—well, gorgeous.
He straightened as she got closer, warily circling him. Blue jeans. Long, long legs. And cowboy boots.
It was Billy.
How could anybody ever think Michael was handsomer? If they did, they were crazy.
But this man—he couldn't be her sweet, decent, teasing Billy. No man who looked like this fit those adjectives.
And up close, she saw something else: this man was dangerous. It was in the way he watched her, in the blue fire in his eyes.
She stopped in front of him, uncertain and shy.
"Hello, Shiloh."
"Bi—Billy." Her voice cracked a little in shock. "Don't look so scared," he said, his voice tight. "I didn't come to drag you back ho—back to the farm."
"You—you didn't?" What was wrong with her? She sounded like a moron. She wanted to throw herself on him, pull off that silky black tie, jerk open the shirt, and find Billy, her Billy, down inside this beautiful stranger with the furious eyes.
"No, you look like you're having a real good time. I just came to bring you something." He found the money inside his pocket, pulled it out, and showed it to her.
"No—Billy—I know what it is. I won't take it."
"You damn well will take it. Every time I think of that sweet little deal you offered me in jail—and I took—it makes me sick. So for the sake of my stomach, here." His eyes skimmed over her skin. "I would tuck it in your cleavage, but that top might fall off, so—" He tossed it at her, and she caught it instinctively.
"You've been gone two weeks—two, without a word."
"I called. You were gone."
"And you expect me to sit around waiting for you when you're off having fun with some rodeo," she began dangerously.
"I was working. And getting that." He motioned toward the money. "So you and Pennington could never throw it up to me again."
The saxophonist had quit playing, his mouth dropped open slackly as he watched them.
"I didn't mean what I said that night at the Palace," Shiloh got out at last. "I was angry. And you wouldn't listen."
"I listened, to everything you said. About your daddy, and about me. Then you went home and didn't come back. Well, I'm not for sale anymore." His eyes drifted down over her breasts again, down to her long legs. "But before I walk out of here, I'll take a little something on credit."
He towered over her, his arms engulfing her, his body-swallowing hers as he yanked her up against his hard rib cage.
His hand catching in her hair, he pulled her head backward, tilting it up toward his before he crushed her mouth under his.
Sweet and willing . . . her lips were all of that.
And when those insidious thoughts made his mouth gentle and cling to hers in desperation, he dragged himself away. She opened her eyes, breathless.
"Anybody would think," he whispered raggedly, "that YOU wanted to be kissed, the way you hang to me. It must get real lonesome in your daddy's world. You should'a given me a chance, Shiloh. I might have fit a little in here, too. But maybe I don't want to, after all."
He stood her upright on her own feet. He had to get out.
He practically shoved guests out of the way; behind him he heard Shiloh call his name, but he kept pushing.
". . . he's that Walker man. . . . You know, the one Shiloh ran off and married. . . ."
He heard the whispers, and they didn't matter. What mattered was that he was going to get down on his knees and beg her to let them start over if he didn't get away.
Behind him, Shiloh turned to Aaron. "Do you smoke?" she demanded.
"What? Yeah. I mean, yes, ma'am," he stammered.
"I need to borrow your lighter."
Billy got outside by way of a set of French doors, made his escape, and ran headlong into his worst enemy.
Sam Pennington, with a silent T-Tommy behind him, was arguing violently with a tall, blond man.
Michael. It was Michael.
Cold water thrown in Billy's face couldn't have affected him more. He actually staggered backward a little as Pennington turned impatiently to see who had interrupted his little tete-a-tete.
Billy braced himself, but Pennington just stared, then laughed, a dry, wry sound.
"You clean up real good, Walker. You look damn near respectable."
The man seemed smaller, less invincible, nearly . . . defeated. Billy, stunned, looked from him to T-Tommy. "I'm leaving," he said stiffly.
"What the hell? Stay." Pennington said it with a shrug. "The whole county came uninvited tonight." Then he turned back to Michael, who was staring at Billy in open dislike.
Billy had never been this close to his older brother before, and it took a minute f
or him to realize that he just didn't care. Not anymore. Not after all this time.
He hadn't thought of Michael in weeks, and precious little of Robert Sewell.
No longing to be like them. No bitterness that he was the forgotten one.
Shiloh had done that for him, he realized suddenly.
She had given him no time and no room for useless envy or longing.
She had taken away the sting.
Now it was Michael who resented him.
And it was Michael who had tried to rape Shiloh.
"If I'd known you were letting just anybody in—" Michael began to Sam, and Billy started to shrug out of his coat.
"I think I owe you something, Sewell," he said, cutting across his half brother's words. They'd never spoken before, not in all of his twenty-seven years.
"Are you talking to me?" Michael said, a sneer in his voice.
"I'll let my fists do the talking," Billy answered, his voice heavy, dark, determined. He tossed the coat at T-Tommy, who wailed, "Aw, Billy, don't hit him in front of me. If he takes you to court, I'll have to be a witness against you. Let me at least get turned around—"
"You put your filthy hands on Shiloh. You tried to hurt her."
"She's told you the same lies she—"
Billy cut off his words with a solid, meaty fist right across Michael's face. The blow made a sodden sound, Michael grunted, blood flew.
And as Sewell staggered upright, grabbing at his nose, Billy hit him in the stomach. It bent him over double.
The third blow, just below his neck and across his shoulders, toppled him to the ground, where he spread-eagled face down.
"You make sure," Billy said, panting, going down on one knee beside the prostrate body and speaking clearly in his ear, "that you stay away from Shiloh and you be careful what you say about her."
No answer from Michael.
When he clambered to his feet, he looked for T-Tommy and his coat. But instead, Shiloh stood there clutching it to her, the money still in one hand, her eyes wide and dark.
Billy Bob Walker Got Married Page 36
