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 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.”