Belle Pointe

She frowned. “What?”

“Absent without leave. That’s—”

She gave an impatient shake of her head. “I know what AWOL means. I’m just stunned that you’ve taken a chance on permanently damaging your knee.” Her eyes narrowed. “Does Gus Schrader know you’re here?”

“Physical therapy doesn’t have to be in St. Louis.” He shifted and she saw by the way he sucked in a breath that it hurt him. “Look, can we talk about this inside where I can sit down?”

There was little she was ready to talk to him about, but he probably wouldn’t leave without making a scene until he explained why he’d come. He could be as stubborn as a mule when he had a plan.

Without a word, she brushed past him on the sidewalk, climbed the steps and unlocked the door. Stepping back, she gave him ample space to shuffle past her and watched him make his way across the foyer to the sofa in Beatrice’s formal living room. “I can’t believe you did this, Buck. Gus Schrader must have had a stroke when you told him you were leaving.”

“Almost, but he’s too tough to have a stroke.” He propped his crutch within easy reach and eased down on the couch, a dead giveaway that he was in pain.

“The air must have turned blue,” she said dryly.

“I admit Gus and I have had friendlier conversations.”

She sat gingerly on a chair, still holding the groceries. “Isn’t there something in your contract that forbids you doing anything that might jeopardize your ability to play?”

“There’s no jeopardy,” he said stubbornly. “I’ll do whatever Steve Grissom suggests, except it’ll be here in Tallulah, not in St. Louis. It’s taken care of.”

“Here?” she repeated with astonishment. “In Tallulah?”

“Yeah, unless I can talk you into coming home with me. And we can talk about that after you tell me how you’ve been,” he told her. “Are you okay? You wouldn’t take my calls, so I’ve been keeping tabs on you through your dad and he says you are, but—” He broke off, seeing her surprise. “I asked him not to tell you. I figured you weren’t in any mood to hear anything I said.”

“You and Dad were talking behind my back?”

“I was pretty desperate to hear from you and Franklin was…understanding. I owe him. But I need to hear it from you that you’re okay. I mean, Franklin says he thinks going back to work has been good for you and I think that’s great, but—” He spread his hands, running out of words. “So…are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Buck.”

“He tells me you’ve jumped into your job with both feet.” His smile skewed sideways. “Already you’ve covered a meeting of the school board, a shoplifting at the Piggly Wiggly, a fender bender in front of the bank on the square and a domestic disturbance at the mobile home park.”

She shrugged. “What can I say? Tallulah is just like the rest of the world, only in microcosm.”

“Yeah.” He was studying her intently. “So everything’s fine?”

She bent over and set the groceries on the floor beside her. “Not really. I wanted that baby more than anything in the world, so it’s taking some time to come to terms with losing it. With how I lost it.”

“The accident,” he guessed.

“Among other things, yes.”

“Like the fact that I wouldn’t take you home that night when you asked? My God, I wish I had that evening to live over, Anne.”

She drew in a long breath. “Buck, if you’re here thinking to talk me into going back to St. Louis, you’ve wasted a trip. I’m still not sure our marriage is worth saving.”

“And I’m positive it is, Anne. I’m hoping to change your mind. Going up against Gus Schrader to get here was easy compared to the mountain I have to climb to win my wife back. I’m here for the duration.”

“You hate it here! We’ve never visited more than a weekend at a time. Have you thought about being stuck here for weeks—months maybe—in a place you hate?”

“We need to talk about that. I mean, I need to try and explain why I never want to visit Belle Pointe, why you and I are poles apart on the subject of family.”

“Dad and Beatrice will be here any minute, Buck. It’s not a good time.”

“Well, until they show up, please, Anne, let me get this out. I don’t know when you’ll give me another chance to talk to you.” He made a face, shifting to stretch his leg out on the couch. “Muscle gets stiff if I sit too long,” he explained, rubbing the muscle at the side of his knee. When it eased, he said, “Will you listen?”

She gave a resigned huff. “Go ahead.”

“I guess the major turning point in my life was my dad’s death.” His gaze strayed to the grandfather clock, an antique from Beatrice’s family. “I’ve never liked wallowing in the past. Seems to me obsessing about it never changes anything. So I’ve never told you why it was so devastating, other than the fact that my dad was dead and gone forever.” He paused as the clock struck the hour. “It was an accident on the interstate. He was with Pete Wilcox, the Belle Pointe foreman. It was late and they were heading home after attending an auction of farm equipment. Pete was driving. We think he fell asleep at the wheel and the car ran head-on into a bridge abutment. They were both killed instantly.”

“I know how it feels to lose a parent,” Anne murmured.

He gave a wry laugh. “For me it turned out to be more than just the shock of losing Dad suddenly. It changed the career path that I’d been preparing for all my life.” Without looking at Anne, he knew he had her full attention now.

“I was at Mississippi State and it was my senior year. I had a baseball scholarship, but even though I was being scouted by a couple of the teams in the minors, what were the chances of getting into the majors? Slim to none. So I didn’t really plan to make baseball a career.”

“I didn’t know that,” Anne said with a look of surprise. “You live and die for baseball now. I can’t imagine you being interested in any other career.”

“Well, as they say, shit happens. Two days after my dad died, I was in for another shock.” While he spoke evenly, it was still such a bitter memory that he felt agitated just thinking about it. “I grew up with a real passion for the land, not just the Whitaker land at Belle Pointe, but for the whole Mississippi Delta. It’s nothing we humans have done. Mother Nature took eons to create land so fertile and crops planted here grow like crazy. It’s truly amazing.”

“Now you sound like my father,” Anne remarked.

“Yeah, well, like Franklin’s obsession rubbed off on you, my dad’s reverence for Belle Pointe—for the Delta—sure enough rubbed off on me. He respected and cherished the five generations of history rooted in Belle Pointe, but unfortunately my dad wasn’t cut out to actually farm. In fact, if he hadn’t been the only child of Southern aristocrats, he probably would have been a college professor. He would have had a lot in common with your dad.”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” she said.

“He was definitely an intellectual. He was a gentle, introverted man who was happy to leave the management of Belle Pointe to an overseer, at least, until he married my mother. I don’t know this for sure, but I bet the ink wasn’t dry on the marriage license before she was running things. I do know that from the time I was old enough to see it, she was in charge.”

Anne was listening raptly, hearing things Buck had never confided before.

“I was due to graduate in a couple of months when Dad died,” Buck said. “My degree was in business and horticulture. As god-awful as it was to lose him, the timing could have been worse since I told myself I’d be able to step in and help my mother run Belle Pointe.”

“Where was Pearce at this time?” Anne asked.

“Practicing law. He never had any interest in being a cotton farmer. All I heard when we were growing up was how boring it was. There’s a lot of plain physical labor involved in growing cotton. You have to clear the fields, plow, plant, nurture and then defoliate the plants. Even mechanized, it’s hard work. When the cotton matures, it has to be picked, then transferred from the fields to the gin for processing. There’re times throughout the year when you’re up early and work late. Even though there’s a fine crew at Belle Pointe, not everybody is suited to it. But it’s fulfilling…at least I found it fulfilling.”

“But not Pearce,” Anne guessed.

“No. From the start, he planned to do other things. That’s why this foray into politics now doesn’t surprise me.”

“You’ve known about his run for the senate?”

“From day one. He’s called me half a dozen times trying to get me over here to endorse him. I’ve put him off every time.”

“I never knew he called.”

He saw temper kindling in her eyes and rushed on. “It wasn’t important enough to mention since I didn’t want to get involved. But count on it, as soon as he realizes I’m here, he’ll be all over my case.”