Belle Pointe Read online

  He probably knew as much as she. By refusing Buck’s calls, she relied on Marcie for updates on his injuries. “He’s undergoing pretty intensive physical therapy,” she said. “And yes, he’s out for the season.”

  “Rotten luck,” he said. After a pause, he added, “We played baseball together in high school. He pitched. I played shortstop.”

  “The thinking man’s position,” she said, smiling.

  “I don’t know about that, but we made a good team.” He gazed at his feet, remembering. “Those were good times. I was thrilled when he finally made it into the majors.”

  “Not as much as Buck, I bet,” she said.

  He turned his head to look at her. “And now here you are reporting on an obscure political race in Mississippi while he’s recuperating in St. Louis. What’s wrong with that picture?”

  She pulled a tape recorder from her bag and set it on his desk. After checking to see that it was on, she asked, “Is that how you see the position as state senator in this district…obscure?”

  He paused with a look of chagrin. “I apologize if I trespassed into personal territory.”

  “Apology accepted.” She let her gaze wander to the window. Then, because she liked him, she said, “For what it’s worth, Chief Breedlove, Buck belongs to his public, but I don’t. So I’m just having a little break from all that while I’m here in Tallulah.”

  It was probably more than he wanted—or needed—to know, but it was the explanation she planned to give while in Tallulah. He wouldn’t be the only person who would ask outright why she wasn’t with Buck.

  He straightened from his desk. “Call me Jack,” he said.

  She smiled. “Okay, Jack.” While he went back to his chair, she checked to see the tape was still running, then opened the flap of her notepad and clicked her pen to start writing. She liked to have tape as backup, but she usually wrote from her notes. “First question: Why do you think you’re the better man for the job than your opponent?”

  “Are you kidding?” He grinned, enjoying himself. “How much time do you have? This could take a while.”

  Six

  After interviewing Jack Breedlove, Anne shopped for groceries before heading home. She was forced to pull up behind a strange SUV parked in the Marshes’ driveway. Frowning, she got out of Beatrice’s car at the same time the driver door of the SUV opened. It was dusk, but had it been pitch-black, she would have recognized that profile.

  Buck.

  “Hey, babe.” Tall, broad-shouldered, hips cocked, he braced on the door frame of the SUV with one hand and leaned on a crutch with the other. She stood in the open door of her car fighting back a rush of emotion. Paige’s wrong-headed assumption that any woman was lucky enough to be married to him had left her feeling depressed because once upon a time, as Buck Whitaker’s wife, she had felt like the luckiest woman in the world. So it was not joy she was feeling now, she told herself firmly. She was not happy to see him. Drawing in a long breath, she hitched the bag of groceries on one hip and walked toward him.

  “What are you doing here, Buck?”

  “At the moment trying to stay upright long enough to go inside if I get an invitation. Otherwise, I might just topple over on my face.” He gave a boyish grin. “You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”

  She glanced at the huge SUV, then back at him in disbelief. “Have you driven all the way from St. Louis?”

  “Only from the local airstrip. I chartered a plane to get here. The SUV’s newly leased.” He managed to shrug without losing his balance. “No matter how bad I wanted to see you I couldn’t drive three hundred miles.”

  She glanced down at his knee, noting that he wasn’t putting any weight on it. From the set of his mouth, she guessed he was in pain, but she knew from experience that, like many athletes, he made light of an injury that would put an ordinary person out of commission for days. “How did you get permission to leave?”

  “I didn’t exactly. I guess you could say I’m AWOL.”

  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 m
ean, 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.”

  “Why wouldn’t you want to endorse him? He’s your brother.”

  He bent his head, touching his bruised temple gently. “I have some serious concerns about Pearce. In a position of power—and in the right circumstances—I’m not sure he wouldn’t break the law. Or finagle a way around it. He can be really ruthless.” He knew firsthand just how ruthless his brother could be, but he hoped Anne didn’t ever have to know about it.

  “You paint a pretty harsh picture,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know. And I’ve never said that to anyone else…” he paused, “that is, anyone who’s living. I tried to talk to my dad once, but—” He shook his head. “Maybe it’s best to just leave it at that.” He was rubbing the muscle above his knee again. “Where was I?”

  She spoke quietly. “You were going to step in and help your mother after John died.”

  “Yeah, that was always the plan. I’d do the actual farming and as Pearce interacted well with the gentry of the county and state, he’d eventually wind up in politics.”

  “Looks like half the plan is now set to go,” Anne said. “What went wrong?”

  “First, we made our plans without consulting my mother,” Buck said. Staring straight ahead and focused on the past, he saw it all as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.

  With his father buried only two days, Victoria came into Buck’s bedroom as he was packing to return to college. With only half of his final semester to go, he was tempted to just forget it since he couldn’t see the value of a diploma. He’d already aced the courses for an undergraduate degree. And spring was a time of intensive work at Belle Pointe. With Pete Wilcox gone and his mother needing help, he planned to go back to Tallulah every weekend until graduation. But Victoria had a very different plan.

  “Pearce will be assuming his role immediately as primary heir to Belle Pointe, Buck,” she told him. “Arrangements are in place to begin planting Monday morning with Pearce supervising. I want you to continue to pursue a career in professional baseball.”

  Stunned, he dropped a double handful of toilet articles on the bed and stared at her. “Pearce is a lawyer, Ma. What are you talking about?”

  “His law practice must take second place to his responsibilities at Belle Pointe now,” she told him. “I’m aware that your father has given you a completely false notion of your role here. However, it is absolutely appropriate for Pearce to take John’s place.”

  “Yeah, but not to actually get his hands dirty. Pearce hates dirt.” What false notion? “You’ve found a replacement for Pete Wilcox already?”

  “With Pearce stepping up to take his rightful place, that won’t be necessary.”

  “Ma, this is crazy! He doesn’t know shit from shinola about farming and he doesn’t want to know. Have you talked to Pearce about this?”

  “Don’t be vulgar. And of course, I’ve talked to Pearce. He sees his duty.”

  Meaning, Buck guessed, that she’d talked to him and, bottom line, it was Victoria’s way or else. “And he’s okay with giving up his practice to farm cotton?”

 
; “We’ve agreed that he doesn’t have to give it up, but it has to be secondary, especially just now when we’re in the throes of spring planting. I’m prepared to assist him, of course.”

  He looked at her in disbelief. She couldn’t be serious. “You don’t assist anybody now, Ma, you run things and Dad was good to go with that. But you always had Pete’s help. Without a qualified manager, there’s no way you can do this.” He made a sudden decision and flipped the top of his suitcase closed. “Look, I can drop out of school. I’ll graduate in a couple of months anyway. I won’t get a diploma, but I don’t need a piece of paper. My future is here at Belle Pointe and always has been. I have ideas about crop management. There are new seeds constantly being developed. They’re resistant to disease, they’re hardy. I was talking to Dad and he—”

  “Buck.” She spoke sharply, stopping him cold. “I’ve just told you what your future is. You will continue at the university until you have your degree. You are being courted by professional sports representatives—”

  “In the minors, Ma, not majors.”

  “…and you have excellent prospects. You will continue to pursue a career in that arena. You will thank me later for urging this decision on you.”

  “No, Ma. Dad and I—”

  “I have no interest in anything your father discussed with you!” she said with exasperation. “He was hopelessly sentimental and now he’s gone. His will gives me full authority here, so this discussion is pointless. Pearce is his heir, not you. And I want him to immediately assume the role that he was born to.”

  He was shaking his head. “You can’t be serious, Ma. You—”

  “Stop addressing me by that ridiculous, childish name!” she snapped. “I am indeed serious and that’s the end of it.”

  But he couldn’t let it go. What she was suggesting was all wrong. He had to convince her. “Just hear me out, Mother. You may want Pearce to step up to the plate here, but he doesn’t have any feel for the land. He doesn’t like farming the way you do, the way I do. Since I was old enough to see the difference in your way and Dad’s way, I’ve known that. I’m more in tune with the way you feel about Belle Pointe than Pearce will ever be. You have to admit that.”