Disclaimer: Same as always. :)

A/N: Well, I should moan more often! I gots me a whole buncha reviews! Thanks to all of you, hugs and kisses all around (from Bo, not me, (grin)), and as it is yet another Saturday night, I have yet another update. This is one of those rare situations when the fic is already finished. It has exactly ten chapters, and one will be updated every Saturday night, come heck or high water. I'm currently working on the second story, which should be done by the time I finish posting this, which means (you guessed it!) more story. And considering the compliments I've received so far, I'm guessing that news will make y'all happy.

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Spending time in Shelly's company was refreshing. The woman had a bit of a single-track mind, and her weakness had always been gossip.

Balladeer: Now that girl Shelly…she could talk and talk until she went hoarse and she'd still keep talking, as long as there was something new to tell, or a particularly juicy tidbit to retell. By the time lunch was over, Henna had been effectively caught up on the last seven years of Hazzard History. Of course, the best part about listening to Shelly was that one could listen with one ear, and think with the other.

The kitchen of the hotel did have big, wide windows, so that the cooks could open them to air out the place, should something start to smoke. The windows overlooked the side alley, and directly across the way was the Hazzard County Bank, also owned by Boss Hogg. Into that alley, a particularly noticeable orange car pulled up, and two men came out.

Almost against her will, Henna's eyes were drawn to Bo. She hadn't allowed herself much of a look yesterday, not with those eyes staring back at her. She'd always found those eyes so hard to take…so warm and apparently honest, they could make her think or do anything they liked.

But now, watching him from a distance, and unobserved, it was a different matter. Now she could look at him freely.

"Hasn't changed much, has he?" Shelly said, noticing as she sipped her coffee.

"A little," Henna commented. "He's gotten…thicker."

"Yeah, he always was pretty skinny for a football player," Shelly agreed. "But he wore down those two tackling boars, remember?"

"I remember," Henna murmured.

"But I was talking about other things," Shelly said carefully, watching Henna's face.

Balladeer: Now if I didn't know better, I'd say that girl was trying to get ol' Henri-Mae upset.

"You mean he's still a cheater?" Henna said caustically, but her tones were low, so as not to carry.

"He's a player," Shelly corrected. "If he was running around getting girls pregnant, there would be hell to pay. Most daddies run him off their property before he can even get that far, usually wish shotguns. He keeps it in his pants, mostly, but that doesn't stop him from staring at every set of legs that goes by, or trying to kiss every pair of female lips pointed his way."

Henna nodded. "Doesn't surprise me." He'd been that way in high school, too, until she'd come along. Flinching, she looked away, but it was a matter of seconds before she was looking back.

Damn him. Damn his pretty smile, his pink lips, his perfect cheekbones, the soft blond down on his arms that she could still feel against her back in her half-waking dreams. Damn those eyes that shone huge and blue, flickering from innocent to wicked with a twitch of his cheek. Damn him for being so…Bo. Damn him to hell.

"You're gonna break that cup," Shelly said in a low voice. Henna looked down and saw the grip she had on her coffee cup. Abruptly, she set it down, sending the blood rushing back to her fingertips.

"So he got anyone official?" she said, musing to herself. Maybe she could break him up with whoever he was with. That would at least cause him a headache. But then again, it was Bo. He never stuck long.

"Nobody right now," Shelly said. She eyed Henna thoughtfully. "You're still pissed at him, aren't you?"

"No shit," Henna muttered. "You'd be too."

Shelly shrugged. "Henri, let's be honest. You're the one who made the mistake. You wanted a notch on your belt. You should have kept it at that."

Henna nodded. "Maybe."

"Maybe," Shelly went on, "you need to just go back and do that."

"Excuse me?" Henna turned to her, surprised. "What?"

"Make a notch on your belt," Shelly said with a half-wicked smile. "Get him out of your system. Unless you're still hung up on him."

"I'm not," Henna said through clenched teeth.

"Uh huh. Well, forget I said anything. It's a bad idea, anyway."

No, Henna thought. Actually, it's not a bad idea at all.

Balladeer: I don't like the look on that girl's face.

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Balladeer: The Boar's Nest on any given night was the hotspot in town. It was particularly hopping when Boss Hogg's speedtrap was working and he managed to land himself a celebrity country singer to bring in the crowd. Unfortunately, this was not one of those nights.

Bo and Luke sat at a table, mulling things over. The events of that morning had not sat well with them – primarily because they knew that Uncle Jesse had done everything he could for Cyrus, but the old man hadn't listened. And secondly…well, it was mostly Bo's concern.

He drank his beer slowly. It tasted particularly bitter on his tongue tonight, and while he normally liked that, the buzz just wasn't there.

It didn't help when she walked in.

If anything, Henrietta Mae Locke had only gotten prettier in the last seven years. She'd lost any semblance of baby fat she might have been clinging to, and her legs had been muscled out into the finest pair he'd seen in a while. Most southern girls had good legs, but hers were outstanding by their soft shade of cream, probably from being in those leather pants for so long.

Tonight she was wearing a loose-fitting sundress that draped around her shoulders, a pale blue that brought out her eyes, a low neckline that showed off her cleavage. But she wasn't dressed for attention. She had a shawl wrapped about her upper body as if she wanted to hide.

He remembered her face from earlier that morning. The red cheeks, the bright nose, how her eyes had glittered at them, hard with malice and still bright with tears. While she seemed to be back to her regular skin tones now, there was a sadness about her that just wrenched at him.

He wanted to go talk to her. He wasn't sure he dared.

Bo turned back to see that Luke was looking generally in the same direction. The cousins' eyes met. Bo looked away first.

"I don't think apologizing is going to do much good," Bo muttered.

"I didn't say anything," Luke said.

"You were thinking it," Bo returned.

Suddenly Luke's eyebrows shot up. "Hang on," he said, his voice slipping from between unmoving lips. "Here it comes."

Bo ducked his head up, surprise on his features to see that she had noticed them and was approaching, a pitcher of beer in one hand. She gave them a tentative smile. "Hello, Bo…Luke."

The cousins eyed her warily, afraid of another explosion, but knowing full well that being rude to her, considering her current situation, was unthinkable, no matter how much of a scene she might make. People in stages of grief weren't always themselves, as Uncle Jesse said, and had to be given some extra, extra room.

"I, uh…" she set the pitcher down on the table. "I wanted to apologize for my outburst earlier today. I know you were just being friendly. I was upset."

Upset. It was a small word for what she'd really been, but there was no way she was going to elaborate.

"That's okay, Henri-Mae…I mean, Henna," Bo corrected himself, straightening.

She gave him a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Henri-Mae's fine, Bo," she said. "Well, I bought you a pitcher to say I'm sorry…and please pass it on to your uncle Jesse. Dad would never want me to be rude to him, no matter what."

Balladeer: If you ask me, rude was the least of what she was to him.

"Please, Henri-Mae," Luke said, leaning forward and nudging a chair closer to her. "Have a seat, we'll get you a glass, you can join us."

She shook her head. "No, thank you." Her fingers absently tapped at the handle of the plastic picture. "This is all I really came in here to do." She glanced once more at Bo, a touch longer than at Luke, and smiled at them again, again it not reaching her eyes. "Well, I'll see you around for a bit, then. Bye." And she gracefully withdrew herself from them, heading toward the door.

Bo looked back at his cousin. Luke had always been faster with his head than his fists, and Bo the exact opposite. The fact that Bo deliberately looked to Luke before bursting off at the top was a sign that he knew how serious this situation was.

"Go talk to her," Luke said with a nod. "Can't hurt too much, can it?"

Bo got up and followed. Henna had already stepped outside the Boar's Nest and was half-way across the parking lot by the time he caught up with her.

"Henri-Mae!" Bo called, skidding to a stop a few feet from her. She jumped, as if he'd startled her. "I'm sorry," he said quickly. "Look, I just wanted to say—"

"I'm so sorry!" Bo was practically on his knees, the girl Henri-Mae had punched curled into a fetal position on the ground, currently ignored in spite of the blood pouring from her nose. "God help me, Henri-Mae, I'm so sorry!"

Henna shook the vision off. "—I just wanted to say that I hope that you and I…well, I want to make up to you what happened."

"Please, she said with a shake of her head, as if it didn't matter. "That was seven years ago, Bo."

"I'll never forgive you for this, Bo Duke," she spat at him, letting it fly right onto his face. She barely managed to keep her fist from connecting with one of those pleading eyes. "Not as long as I live! I'll rot in hell before I ever spare you so much as a kind word again!"

He seemed to blush. "That isn't what you said then."

She frowned. "Do we have to talk about unpleasant memories?" she said, her voice trembling a bit. "I just…I just wanted to make some peace. I mean, so many things have changed…"

Bo's hand was warm on her shoulder. It temporarily took away the chill that the shawl hadn't been able to shake. His fingers slid close to her neck, a gesture she remembered all too well. "I'm sorry," he said again. "Look, I want to do something for you…anything. Anything you want, I'm here."

She sighed. The tremble in her voice before hadn't been faked, but she ignored it, sucking it up as all part of the plan. "Well," she said, folding her arms, "maybe I could use a little company. Could we go for a walk?"

"Sure," he said with a smile.

As they turned, she ducked her head down, letting the curtain of her honey-brown hair shield her face. "Could you…maybe put your arm around me?"

He complied instantly. She was drawn into the glow of his body-heat, and she shut her eyes for a moment, relishing it as it thawed that half of her body.

"Hope I'm not being too forward," she said, her voice a little smaller.

"Not at all," Bo said, his smile in his voice. "It is a pretty chilly night."

Balladeer: Now normally, Bo with his arm around a pretty girl wouldn't be a cause for concern, but he ain't seen the things we've seen about that girl he's with.

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They walked until they came to the old creek, which was the place where kids went to play in the daytime, and teenagers came to make out in the evenings. With it being early in the school year, the teenagers hadn't quite made it out there yet, leaving it open and empty for whoever wanted to take advantage of the small patch of land that seemed to be mysteriously free from the mosquitoes.

Bo didn't know what to talk about. It seemed that everything that came into his head was a bad subject. He couldn't talk about high school, as that was all but ruined by what had happened between them. He couldn't talk about her family, as she had none to speak of now, and while he ventured that asking her what she'd been doing for the last seven years seemed safe enough, the knowledge that at least one of those years had been spent in a prison didn't bode well.

"You're quiet," she said when they paused.

"Can't think of much to say," he said awkwardly.

"That doesn't sound like the Bo Duke I knew," she said, smiling up at him. She pulled away and found a place to sit on one of the larger boulders that had been a part of that creek bed since before there had been white men in Hazzard. Bo settled himself beside her. She reached out for one of his hands. "If you could say anything, what would you say?"

"Come again?"

"You're worried about upsetting me, I can tell." Her eyes shone up at him, reflecting some of the moonlight that slipped down through the tall, slowly thinning trees. "Go ahead, ask me anything."

"But I don't want to upset you," he said softly, closing his fingers around hers.

"I won't get upset, I promise."

He drew a breath. "You…I just don't understand why you seem to have decided to forgive me, that's all," he said. "I mean, what happened then…"

"Did you ever do it again?" she asked, her voice just a touch sharper than she intended.

"No, ma'am," Bo said with a heavy sigh. "A mistake like that only deserves to be made once, if ever. If I did it again, well…that would make me scum."

He couldn't read her face, as she had tipped it to the side and cast it in shadows. "So you've changed?" she ventured.

He shrugged. "Can't say that I have. I've just been more careful."

Henna pulled her hand away. "Not to let the girls find out," she said bitterly.

"I knew this was going to upset you," Bo said, reaching for her hand again. "Look, what happened between us…I've been looking for it ever since, in every girl I meet. But none of them have ever been you. I know I'll never deserve your feelings again, Henri-Mae, but if you could really forgive me…maybe we could both heal and move on."

"You're really sorry, aren't you?" she said in barely a whisper.

"With everything that I am," he replied sincerely.

She fell silent. Long moments passed. Finally she shook the hair away from her face and met his eyes. "You said you'd do anything for me. Did you mean that?"

He nodded, swallowing.

"Kiss me," she whispered. He hesitated; he was sure he'd heard her wrong.

"What?" No, not wrong, not by that look on her face. "Are you sure? I mean, I know I ruined everything, I don't deserve another chance, but—"

"Bo," she said, her voice a bit harder, "please, just shut up and kiss me."

He did.

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Come back the Sunday after Thanksgiving and you'll find out where this leads. Although I can say this...you wont' be expecting it. :)