The Taming of Billy Jones

by Christine Rimmer

  It was a damn good night at Bad Billy's. And with the lights on him and his mind all wrapped up in the music, Billy could almost forget the kid he didn't know what the hell to do about – and that damn Prudence Wilding, who kept leaving him messages he knew he should return, but somehow never did.

  * * *

  Prudence came in just as Billy started singing a slow song. She stood in the back, not far from the door, listening. It was a song about a dying cowhand and the little boy who idolized him. A certain country-western star had made it famous, but Prudence knew it was Billy's song.

  Once, during the time when he and Randi had been lovers, Prudence had heard him sing it. At the mansion, out by the pool. The music had drifted into the house through an open window. Prudence hadn't even realized that she was eavesdropping when she'd stopped to listen. The song was so sad and tender, so full of hopeless yearning and wounded, bewildered love. It reeled her in and wrapped itself all around her so that she couldn't help but try to get closer to it.

  Outside, she saw Randi, sleek and gorgeous on a chaise longue, wearing nothing but a smile. Billy, bare-chested, but decent enough in old faded blue jeans, sat on a lawn chair right beside her, cradling a guitar, strumming and singing the beautiful song.

  When the last note faded, Randi sighed. "You should have recorded that one yourself. That other guy didn't do it justice."

  Billy laughed. "Come on. I just write 'em. You know that."

  "You could be a star yourself, Billy."

  "Naw. I'm too damn lazy to be a star." He put the guitar aside and leaned toward Randi. Slowly, still smiling, she'd turned her head so that their lips could meet.

  Prudence had shaken herself then and turned away.

  "You looking for a table?" a voice asked in her ear.

  "No, not right now."

  The waitress shrugged and moved on.

  Up on the stage, Billy finished that magical song. There was silence, followed by an explosion of applause. Billy smiled shyly. Prudence found herself wondering how a man who could write a song like that could be such a complete jerk as a human being.

  Right then, Billy turned to the band and gave a signal. They swung into a fast number that got everyone clapping and singing along.

  Prudence stayed in the back, waiting, through three more songs. Then the band took a break. Prudence watched Billy, saw him sit down at a table not far from the stage, along with the drummer and the bass player and a big, noisy group that was already seated there.

  Through the speakers mounted all around the club, recorded music began playing. Prudence started forward, weaving her way through the tables along the platform on the side of the huge room.

  Billy had just received a shot glass full of whiskey and a look of blatant invitation from a waitress young enough to be his daughter when Prudence reached his side. She stepped right up to him before her nerve had a chance to desert her.

  "Excuse me, Mr. Jones."

  Billy set down his drink at the sound of that voice. He looked to his left and saw a white button-down-style shirt. He adjusted his gaze upward. Sure enough: Prudence.

  He'd had a nice buzz on. But the sight of her sobered him up fast. Not knowing what else to do, he gave her a big smile. "Prudence. How the hell are you?"

  She stared at him, those bug eyes hard with disapproval. "I'm just fine. And I'd like a few words with you, please. Alone."

  Someone down the table chuckled. Billy hardly heard the sound. He was too busy feeling rotten and small and guilty. He knew he should have called her. He'd been planning to call her. Soon. Real soon.

  "I assume you have an office, or some room where we can speak privately."

  He decided he wouldn't let her railroad him. He stood. "Just a minute here."

  "No, I really do want to—"

  "Let me introduce you to a few of my best friends."

  "Mr. Jones—"

  "Prudence Wilding, meet Terry Sanduster." He ran right over her, gesturing around the table, reeling off names. "And Belle Evans, VanDyke Smith and, uh…"

  The drummer's girlfriend grinned. "I'm Lucy. Billy always forgets my name."

  Prudence forced a tight little smile. "Nice to meet you." She looked at Billy again. "Please. Let's go to your—"

  "Wilding?" asked Loretta, still standing there holding her tray. "I love that name, Wilding. Randi Wilding – the movie star? – she was my idol." She turned all those shining teeth on Billy again, in a smile that said she knew about him and Randi.

  Lucy, the drummer's girlfriend, had to toss her two cents in, then. "Randi Wilding was a woman who knew how to be a woman. But she was in-your-face, too. Someone nobody messed with. Remember Firestorm? I loved her in that."

  "Yeah," said Loretta. "Firestorm was hot. And Kerrigan's Honor. She should have won the Oscar for that one."

  Billy watched Prudence. She was looking way too polite. "Randi was my sister, actually." She surrendered the information reluctantly.

  "Wow," said Lucy.

  Loretta let out a little squeal. "No kidding?"

  The fiddle player whistled low – probably in disbelief.

  Billy muttered, "Damn hard to feature, isn't it?" before he let himself admit how nasty it would sound. Next to him, Prudence flinched. He told himself he didn't give a damn. He turned and looked right at her. "Were you the younger sister – or the older one?"

  She glared back at him. "Are you going to talk to me or not?"

  He gave her a slow smile. She backed up a step, betraying herself. She was scared. She didn't have a clue what he might do or say next. He found he liked her scared. Scared, she didn't seem so threatening to his peace of mind. Scared, he could handle her.

  He pretended to study her. "You were the older sister, right?"

  She said nothing, only went on glaring.

  "What's the matter, Prue?"

  "My name is Prudence."

  "Am I all wrong about you?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about. And I am not the issue here, anyway. You and I need to—"

  "No. Really, Prue. If I've been a blind fool, I'll be the first to admit it."

  "Mr. Jones. I am not here to—"

  He moved then, swiftly and surely, closing the distance she'd created between them, reaching out as he stepped forward – and whipping off her glasses.

  She gasped and blinked. Her eyes slid out of focus. "Mr. Jones!"

  Before she could gather her wits, he stuck her glasses into his breast pocket, reached behind her and began pulling pins from her hair. Too stunned to protest, she let him do it, staring up at him through those unfocused eyes of hers the whole time.

  He stared right back as her hair came loose. It fell over his hands as if it were a live thing, soft and thick and heavy. And it was so warm. And damned if it wasn't red. Dark red. Like cinnamon.

  Like wine…

  The bass player let out a whoop. "Hey, not half bad!"

  "Yeah, not bad at all," another of the men agreed. Everyone at the table started clapping. Billy kept on looking into those wounded, unseeing eyes. They were pretty eyes, really, without those hideous glasses over them, as blue as an innocent summer sky. And her heart-shaped face might not stop traffic or sink ships, but it could definitely lure a man who really bothered to look.

  The truth, which he'd managed to ignore for the past several minutes, dawned like the morning after: inevitable and unpleasant. She was only trying to do the right thing, to talk to him about his son. She'd made a real effort, over the past several days, to get through to him. And for her pains, he had gone and made a spectacle of her in front of all of his yahoo buddies.

  The applause slowly faded. Prudence went on staring at Billy, though she saw nothing beyond a blurry outline of his head. She wished her eyes could burn him; she wished she could sear him to a cinder right where he stood.

  She commanded, with scalding civility, "Please return my glasses."

  He handed them over without a word.

  She put them on,
carefully, taking her time about it. Then she smoothed her hair, squared her shoulders and faced him again. She felt a tiny flare of satisfaction to see that he looked just a little ashamed. "Now," she said briskly. "May I have a moment alone with you?"

  One of his buddies let out a suggestive hoot. "Baby, if he won't go, you give me a try."

  Billy actually shot the man a scowl.

  The man put up both hands. "Hey. Sorry. No harm intended."

  Suddenly everyone at the table became very interested in their drinks. Billy turned to Loretta. "A round on the house."

  "Sure." She began taking orders.

  Billy faced Prudence again. "We can talk in my office. This way."

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  « ^ »

  In his office, Billy shut the door and gestured at a chair. "Have a seat."

  Prudence looked at him for a moment, not trusting him one bit, wondering what trick he might pull next.

  "Aw, come on. I'm sorry about your glasses. And your hair. I shouldn't have done that."

  "That's correct. You shouldn't have."

  "I won't do anything else like that. I swear. We'll just talk."

  She watched him apprehensively, wishing her hair was safely pinned in place again, instead of hanging down around her shoulders, feeling so loose and out of control.

  His expression was truly contrite. He crossed his heart with an index finger. "Honest. I'll behave."

  Warily she lowered herself into the chair.

  Just as she was settling back, he picked up a remote and pointed it at the row of stereo components on the wall. Roy Orbison began singing "Only the Lonely." Loud.

  She looked at the stereo components and then at him. "We have to talk!" she shouted.

  "I hate quiet!"

  "Would you please turn it down?"

  He swore silently – she saw his lips move, forming the curses – but he did lower the volume enough that she wouldn't have to shout to be heard. Then he tossed the remote onto the chaos of his desk and dropped into the other guest chair, which was right beside hers. "Okay. What's up?"

  "I have a few things to say to you. Concerning Jesse."

  "Fine. Say 'em." He leaned an elbow on the metal arm of the chair and looked at her with an expression clearly meant to convey interest.

  She decided a small amount of background was in order. "To understand what I have to say to you, it's important that you know something about Randi."

  He shrugged. "Okay. Like what?"

  "Randi really did change a lot, when Jesse came along."

  "Yeah, you said that."

  "I did?"

  "On the six o'clock news, as a matter of fact."

  She recalled the interview she'd given for the sake of the children's fund. "Yes. All right. Good. So you know she changed?"

  "Okay, fine. She changed."

  "She spent a lot of time reevaluating, thinking about what really matters in life."

  "And?"

  "She wanted Jesse to have those things."

  "What things?"

  "The things that money can't buy."

  "Things like?"

  "Well, like a normal kind of life."

  He frowned. "A normal kind of life. What the hell does that mean?"

  "It means that she wanted him to grow up … ordinary, I guess is the word. She wanted him to have a real family around him, to go to public school, to play Little League…"

  Billy made a snorting noise. "A pretty tall order, considering his mother was the most notorious sex goddess since Marilyn Monroe." Prudence hated it when people called Randi a sex goddess, and it must have shown in her face, because Billy smirked, "What's the matter, Prue? Something I said?" Already, he seemed to have completely forgotten his promise to behave.

  She shouldn't let him get to her, she knew it. He was just one of those people who refused to grow up. And he seemed to derive real pleasure from saying aggravating things. His opinion of her sister shouldn't matter in the least. Still, she couldn't help arguing, "Randi was a beautiful human being and a talented actress."

  Insolence personified, he slouched low in the chair and stretched out his long legs in front of him. "Oh, come on. People didn't show up in droves to see her movies because of the beauty of her spirit."

  Prudence sat taller, which allowed her to look down her nose at him. "She was a fine actress."

  He grinned up at her. "I never said she wasn't. I only said—"

  "This is pointless. We're getting off the subject."

  "So?"

  "I didn't come here to argue about Randi."

  "I know." He had the nerve to let out a low laugh. "You look like you just sucked a lemon, Prue. And those glasses." He shook his head. "They've gotta go."

  She sat even taller. "Do you want to hear what I have to tell you, or not?"

  He hiked a boot up on his thigh and studied the leather tooling. "Fine. Sure. Get on with it."

  "All right, then." She tried to think where she'd left off.

  He glanced up from his boot and cocked an eyebrow at her. "Well?"

  "Yes. All right." She remembered what she'd meant to tell him next. "As long as Randi was alive, Jesse would have been unlikely to ever have the kind of life she wanted for him. But now that she's gone, the situation has changed. As his guardian, I can be considerably more low-profile than Randi would have been. I can move anywhere I want and put down roots there. I don't have to take off for months at a time to go on location with a film."

  Billy shifted impatiently in the chair. "So let me guess. You're getting married."

  The idea seemed so preposterous, that she burst out with, "Me? Married?" Then she felt foolish. Struggling to regain her composure, she carefully folded her hands in her lap.

  He watched her – still grinning, still insolent. "Okay. So you're not getting married."

  "Correct. I am not."

  "Then how do you plan to give Jesse a family and a chance to play shortstop?"

  "Well, that's what I came to tell you."

  "You mean you're about to get to the point here?"

  Again, she let his rudeness pass. She imagined she'd never get anywhere in a conversation with him if she took him to task every time he said something she found objectionable. "I've made some plans recently."

  "Yeah?"

  She hesitated. From a few things Oggie had said, she was pretty sure Billy wouldn't be thrilled with her news – which was the real reason she was taking so long to break it to him.

  "Spill it, Prue," Billy said.

  So she did. "I've decided to move with Jesse to North Magdalene."

  Billy sat absolutely still for a moment. Then he shot to his feet, grabbed the remote off the desk and aimed it at the stereo. Roy Orbison, who had just started wailing his heart out to someone named Leah, went silent.

  In the deathly quiet, Billy turned and pointed the remote at her. "What did you say?"

  He looked very angry. And the room seemed awfully small, all of a sudden. She tried for a combination of courage and calm reason. "Please do not point that thing at me."

  His furious gaze shifted slightly. He looked at the remote. Then he swore and threw the device over his shoulder. It landed back on the desk, in almost the same spot it had been before he picked it up. He loomed over her, suddenly seeming bigger than before. She thought of that old television show "The Incredible Hulk," where a perfectly normal, handsome man kept turning into a huge green monster with muscles like boulders and hands like concrete slabs.

  "North Magdalene," Billy said, very low and deliberately. "I could have sworn you just told me that you were taking my son and moving to North Magdalene."

  Her anxiety made her speak with pained precision. "That is exactly what I told you."

  "What the hell do you know about North Magdalene?"

  "Jesse has a big family there."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Uncle Oggie told me."

  His lip curled, so he looked like a mean dog a
bout to bite. "Uncle Oggie?"

  "He … he said for me to call him that. He thinks of me as part of his family, too."

  "Oh, he does, does he?"

  "Yes."

  "And just how did you meet him?"

  "He came to find us, at the mansion."

  "When?"

  "About two and a half weeks ago."

  Billy just glowered. And then he turned, walked to the door and punched it hard with a fist. The door was made of metal, apparently, because Billy's bones made an unpleasant sound when they hit the door, although nothing happened to the door at all. For a moment after impact, Billy held his fist and moved his lips in a string of profanities that surely would have burned the air, had he uttered them aloud.

  Prudence knew she shouldn't say anything, but she just couldn't help pointing out, "That can't be very good for your guitar playing, can it?"

  He whirled and glowered at her some more, still cradling his hand. Then he muttered, "It's fine. It'll be fine."

  "Well," she said. "That's good. I suppose."

  He came closer to her once more. She really wished he wouldn't. But there he was, standing over her. He said, "I told that old coot to stay out of it."

  Prudence looked up at him, unwavering, determined that he wouldn't know how much he frightened her. "Well, Oggie didn't do what you said. And I'm so grateful he didn't." She felt better, stronger, just thinking of Oggie. "He's a wonderful old man, a man who knows how important a family is. Jesse is part of his family. And I'm honored that he considers me a part of it, too."

  Billy glared at her for several more nerve-racking seconds before he said softly, "I will kill him. And then I'll stake his ancient carcass out in the desert to fry in the sun."

  Prudence gasped in outrage. "You will do no such thing." She tried to look absolutely unyielding, though it wasn't easy, with him towering above her.