Belle Pointe
Belle Pointe
Karen Young
BELLE POINTE IS WAITING LOR SOMEONE TO UNCOVER ITS SECRETSAnne Whitaker: Faced with an unexpected loss, Anne returns to the hot and sultry Mississippi Delta, leaving her husband, Buck, to ponder his future–with or without her. Looking for distraction, she immerses herself in the history of Belle Pointe, the plantation house that has been home to generations of Whitakers, including her husband.Buck Whitaker:A professional athlete, Buck is in an emotional tailspin when his career is jeopardized by scandal. Then his wife adds to his troubles by threatening divorce and fleeing to Mississippi, a place that holds bitter memories for him.Victoria Whitaker: By marrying into the Whitaker family, Victoria has enjoyed a life of privilege and position as matriarch of Belle Pointe. But now her daughter-in-law Anne has unwittingly uncovered family secrets that Victoria does not want revealed–secrets that will change the course of Whitaker family history…secrets that will change Anne's own life, as well.
Praise for KAREN YOUNG
“The suspense is almost unbearable.”
—Romantic Times BOOKclub on Never Tell
“Karen Young is a writer who delivers intense, gripping
and dark suspense…bound to keep you hooked.”
—Romantic Times BOOKclub
“Young skillfully mixes romance with
edge-of-your-seat suspense.”
—Library Journal
“…a powerful novel that was extremely
hard to put down.”
—Romance Reviews Today on In Confidence
“…a moving tale of second chances.”
—Romantic Times BOOKclub on Private Lives
“Karen Young is a spellbinding storyteller.”
—Romantic Times BOOKclub
Also by KAREN YOUNG
NEVER TELL
IN CONFIDENCE
PRIVATE LIVES
FULL CIRCLE
GOOD GIRLS
Belle Pointe
Karen Young
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
Acknowledgments
As in all my books, I’m indebted to so many people who helped make this one happen. I took a leap of faith when I chose to build the story around a professional baseball superstar. Most of what I know about baseball I learned in grade school.
Therefore, I relied on guidance from Doug Simmons, my son-in-law, for the technicalities of the game and the effect of injuries on a pitcher. For guidance on the workings of a cotton plantation, I relied on Peggy Peal, my grandson’s other grandmother, whose family has lived on and worked a cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta ever since God invented dirt.
For insight into the social culture of the Delta, I owe thanks to Gloria Dunbar. For the business stuff, Bob Wood, my lawyer son-in-law, proved, as always, a fabulous asset. Finally, to my editor, Valerie Gray, for insightful critique. Thanks to you all.
For my grandson, Josh.
Baseball, football, basketball—
the family’s very own super athlete!
Contents
Chapter One (#ua6217082-c4e0-5520-b2ec-45e3ff763148)
Chapter Two (#ucbf771d8-c010-5269-8bfb-b5fb5daaaa94)
Chapter Three (#ub95dcd43-304e-5ea3-96d6-f8198fa25d08)
Chapter Four (#u4fc0eb29-61ef-55ba-b46e-8bf255e49b01)
Chapter Five (#u42d04367-7233-5432-946d-85f803251d15)
Chapter Six (#ud198fa2b-1b9c-59fe-ac4e-8d2a129018f2)
Chapter Seven (#u70617aab-aebf-549c-ad4a-d62085afcfc5)
Chapter Eight (#u5c46e958-f212-55db-876a-722f16d359c5)
Chapter Nine (#uc55942b4-7436-51e6-86dc-27948c759423)
Chapter Ten (#u58812ac9-fbb6-5a3d-8a3b-446126f7e03f)
Chapter Eleven (#u0bb3c024-199f-5fbe-9d94-620bf07349cc)
Chapter Twelve (#u90b99316-1c39-50ef-afcd-36345f9a9cca)
Chapter Thirteen (#u700c03f8-1a5f-58d2-bed4-3c47855bbdcc)
Chapter Fourteen (#u4ac14f40-5de8-57d9-834a-dca437056761)
Chapter Fifteen (#u1c2ddac3-9924-54ce-9df0-7b8ffefe50e1)
Chapter Sixteen (#u976e2e19-ef5f-5ad2-ad1e-8d81edac95aa)
Chapter Seventeen (#ud9b5b7d7-a2c3-56d9-9da1-968feb7a0e4b)
Chapter Eighteen (#udaf7428c-29c5-5364-aec2-0a61d9314da4)
Chapter Nineteen (#uf1d1be5c-42fc-566d-9112-28534fbff839)
Chapter Twenty (#ua6442512-5548-5be0-8bdc-1a8d4c09f5d7)
Chapter Twenty-One (#u582e7504-8695-54a6-828a-1c43eccdc877)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#u7f9dc131-6db8-5205-b746-4797b690d512)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#u385ac865-b947-5d02-9a26-542a3a5f5244)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#udfcec9fd-37c2-5cac-ae2c-4a8ffe685ec8)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#u430714c3-b25f-5874-a79e-d306544b0ce8)
Epilogue (#ueb581fa1-8e21-5d79-933d-0062a53d7160)
One
As it always happened at these events, the room was filled to capacity. Scanning the crowd, Anne Whitaker estimated the number at better than three hundred, well surpassing the goal of the nonprofit sponsor. Amazed that all it took for folks to plunk down five hundred dollars a plate was the appearance of the star pitcher of the St. Louis Jacks—who just happened to be her husband. Buck’s name was a strong draw, so he was constantly in demand. Not only was he a gifted speaker and utterly relaxed in front of an audience, but he was genuinely funny. And, perhaps most appealing of all, he came across as modestly unimpressed with his superstar status.
Anne smiled politely and murmured in response to a comment from the baseball commissioner’s wife seated on her left. With the din of voices and the music of a live band, it was impossible to have any real conversation. As distracted as she was, she wouldn’t have been able to talk anyway. She was ten weeks pregnant and feeling distinctly ill. It wasn’t the classic nausea that came with pregnancy, but something different and it filled her with panic. During the cocktail hour, she’d made no less than four visits to the powder room fearing the worst, but so far nothing. More than anything, she wanted to go home. But a glance at her watch told her it would be a while yet before that was possible.
When she glanced up to find Gene Winston, Buck’s agent, watching her narrowly, she managed what she hoped was a natural smile. No surprise that Gene had picked up on her distraction. Even if he knew the reason she was distracted, he would be unmoved. Buck’s public image was all he cared about. He never needed to remind her of her role at these events. She knew it and played it well.
Buck, finally sensing something, let his napkin fall to the floor. Leaning close on a pretext of retrieving it, he murmured in her ear, “You feeling okay, sugar?”
“I’m just a little…queasy,” she told him, hoping against hope that what she feared wasn’t happening.
“We’ll be out of here soon.” He squeezed her hand and turned his attention back to the commissioner.
She longed to lean against him just for the comfort it would bring but—again—not possible here and now. Even if she weren’t okay, there was nothing to be done about it. The sponsor’s spokesman would soon be up introducing Buck.
She shifted to allow a waiter to refill her water glass and caught the concerned look on Marcie Frederick’s face. Marcie, wife of Monk Frederick, one of the Jacks’ managers, had already commented on the odd fact that Anne was refusing wine lately. Although Marcie was a friend, she didn’t know about the pregnancy. No one knew.
Not even Buck.
Which was the cause of much of Anne’s agitation. She was going to have to tell him and soon. Probably tonight. But after the initial surprise, she told herself he was bound to be pleased. He knew she’d dreamed of having a baby for years. Time would tell if he’d be happy enough to forgive her for the way she’d gone about getting pregnant.
A waiter removed her untouched dessert, while another appeared at the table with after-dinner coffee. Anne put a hand over her cup to refuse just as sharp pain struck in her lower abdomen. She gave a small, involuntary gasp but, in the noisy ballroom, nobody noticed except Marcie. For a stunned moment, Anne didn’t move, and then another searing pain struck.
Rising shakily to her feet, she murmured a distracted apology to the table at large. Buck looked a little surprised at her untimely exit. It had been barely fifteen minutes since she’d last left. But she was too intent on getting to the now all-too-familiar powder room to explain.
Flashing a strained smile to a waiter who courteously opened the exit door, she slipped out and dashed down the hall. Thankfully, the powder room was empty. Her heart thumping with dread, she entered the first stall.
Please, don’t let it be blood.
But it was. Not much, but it was there. She closed her eyes and fought an urge to scream a denial. But no time now to panic. It wasn’t so much that it signaled disaster, she told herself, but she would have to leave. She had strict instructions from her doctor if there was ever any sign of spotting.
Go to bed immediately. Feet up. Total bed rest.
She would have to ask someone to deliver a note to Buck so that they could leave. As for Buck’s speech, he would just have to make some kind of explanation. Their baby’s life was at stake.
A few moments later, she stood at the ballroom door and saw, to her intense relief, that Buck was not on the podium yet. But it would not be long until he was introduced. She stopped a passing server and thrust a note into the startled man’s hand. “Will you give this note to Buck Whitaker, please?”
Slipping back out of sight, she watched as Buck was handed the note which he read without any show of emotion. He was good at that. He had plenty of practice keeping his cool under extreme pressure. No one who played major league baseball panicked easily.
Meanwhile, waiting for him, it was all she could do not to panic. With her insides in a knot and dread in her heart, she took a deep breath. The cramping was irregular, but every nerve in her body screamed at her to run to the escalator and leave. Which would definitely cause a stir. As it was, she was not going to be voted most popular when, because of her, the guest speaker had to bow out early, but there it was.
Their baby’s life was at stake!
Another peep through the crack in the door and she saw Buck finally making his way toward the exit. The instant he reached her, she opened her mouth to tell him, but he shushed her with a look. Taking her arm, he guided her toward an alcove across a sea of hotel carpeting. Even then, before he said anything, he checked to see that they were well out of earshot of anybody. Facing her finally, he asked bluntly, “What’s wrong?”
She struggled to keep a tremor from her voice. “Buck, we have to leave.”
“What are you talking about? We can’t leave. I’m on in five minutes.”
“I know, I know, but we have to go. Now.” She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to tell you this way, but I’m bleeding.”
His mouth dropped open. “Bleeding? What—”
“I’m pregnant, Buck.”
With a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, he said, “Are you kidding me?”
She couldn’t keep the terror from her voice. “No! No, I mean it, Buck. I’m pregnant and I’m cramping and there’s spotting.”
He made a restless movement, turning away before looking at her again. “How could you be pregnant?”
She shook her head, impatient with the question. “Can we just not talk about it, at least not right now? Right now I need to go home and go to bed.”
He rubbed at the side of his neck, still struggling to take in what she was saying. “I thought the Pills—I mean, they’re supposed to be just about foolproof, aren’t they?”
“Didn’t you hear me, Buck? I’m bleeding!” Her voice rose frantically. “Something is going wrong. Bleeding is a warning that can’t be ignored.”
“Ah…I guess you’ve sort of caught me off guard here.” He glanced back at the closed doors of the ballroom where three hundred plus guests waited. “Does…uh, this…uh, bleeding necessarily mean that something serious is happening?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m not willing to take that chance. Are you?” She’d had ten weeks to adjust to her pregnancy and he’d had less than ten minutes. Maybe he was entitled to a shocked reaction, but she didn’t have time to deal with his feelings. “I’m telling you we have to go home, Buck, now,” she repeated firmly.
“We can’t, Anne. Think about what you’re saying. I’m the freaking guest of honor. I can’t just up and leave. These people have paid a lot of money.”
“Money? Money? I don’t care about money! This baby is what I care about.” She pressed her fingers to her mouth, trying to calm herself. “Don’t you care at all, Buck?”
“I’m still trying to take it in that you’re pregnant. But one thing I do care about is that I have an obligation to three hundred people waiting in that room.”
What about their baby? Didn’t he feel an obligation there? She felt her heart sink. To her mind, the threat to their baby overruled everything else, but he was worried about disappointing a bunch of people who, if he’d just go in there and explain, would probably understand what was at stake. But from the look on his face, that wasn’t going to happen. His agent would be aghast and Jacks management wouldn’t be too happy either.
“Be reasonable, Anne,” he pleaded, looking at his watch. “It’s too late to walk out.”
“And I’m sorry, but the baby—” Words caught in her throat as she sighed. “I just don’t want to risk losing this baby, Buck.”
“Jesus.” He stood for a minute, thinking. Anne saw there was nothing on his face to reveal the gravity of their conversation. He had to be stunned to learn he was going to be a father, but he was so conditioned to keeping his feelings under wraps that she couldn’t tell one way or another. “Can you hold on for thirty or forty minutes? I’ll be done with the speech and as for the party afterward at the commissioner’s house, I’ll make some excuse for us to skip it.”
“Oh, Buck…” Her voice caught and she fought back tears. She didn’t have his expertise at hiding her emotions. “I know it’s awkward,” she said, pleading with him, “but I’m sure they’ll understand when you tell them it’s an emergency.”
“But is it really? You said yourself you’re not sure.” He frowned, struck with another thought. “You don’t need to go to the hospital, do you? It’s not that serious, is it?”
“I don’t know whether it’s serious or not, Buck,” she said, with bitter disappointment. “I just know my doctor told me if there was any spotting I was to go to bed immediately.”
“And you will.” He started back, taking her hand. “It’ll be okay to delay it an hour or so, won’t it? I’ll cut the talk short.”
She leaned into his shoulder and gave a dispirited sigh. “I guess another thirty or forty minutes won’t make much difference.”
“You’ll be sitting down the whole time,” he said, throwing a reassuring arm around her shoulders. He was already guiding her across the floor toward the doors. Before entering, he dropped a quick kiss on the top of her head. “C’mon, beautiful, let’s knock ’em dead.”
It was the longest forty minutes of her life. While waiting for Buck to make his excuses after the speech, she’d gone again to the powder room and found fresh spotting. Although it was still minimal, she was scared. Desperate to leave, she caught his eye across the ballroom and something in her face must have told him she was nearing the end of her rope. With a last quiet word to Gene Winston, he started toward her. She had to admire his skill in avoiding the many attempts to hail him in passing. Finally, he reached her and, with a flash of his famous smile, slipped his arm around her waist and whisked her away.
“You okay?” Buck said, as they pulled away from the hotel.
“I’m not sure. I just need to get home.”
“You can recline that seat,” he told her.
At least she was now in a prone position, she thought. Buck was quiet, winding his way toward the interstate ramp. Once on a straight stretch, he opened up the Porsche with a roar. He liked speed and tended to exceed the legal limit, especially when he was upset. “How could you be pregnant? Did you forget to take the Pill?”
“No, it was nothing like that.”
Hearing something in her voice, he glanced at her. “Then what?”
She thought about asking him to wait until they got home, but maybe it was best to get it behind them now. “It isn’t an accident that I’m pregnant, Buck,” she said quietly. “I quit taking the Pill.”
In the muted glow of the dash, she saw his features darken in a fierce frown. “You quit? Just like that?”
“Not just like that.” Her hand rested protectively on her abdomen. “I didn’t do it on a whim. I thought about it a long time.”
“I wish you’d thought to consult me.” Not quite openly sarcastic, but close.
“I’m not proud of the way I went about it, Buck ,and for what it’s worth, I apologize. We’ve gone round and round about this forever and you always come up with a thousand reasons to put off having a child. I knew what your answer would be if I told you.” With both her hands cradling her abdomen, she longed to make him understand. “I’m thirty-four years old, Buck. The longer we wait, the harder it’ll be for me to conceive.”
“I thought we agreed to put off having kids.”
“For how many years? Another four or five? Eight? Ten?” She swallowed disappointment. She’d so longed for a joyous reaction from Buck, but she now had to let that wish go. “It was your idea to wait, Buck, not mine.”
“So you just decided to ignore my wishes and go ahead with your idea.”
She turned away. They were in open country now and she was looking at total darkness. “I guess that’s one way to put it,” she said quietly.
“I don’t see any other way to put it,” he said, shifting restlessly in his seat. “This is something we should have decided together, Anne. Having a baby isn’t like going to the pound and picking out a puppy. A baby changes everything in a couple’s life.”
“And would it be such a bad thing to change our life, Buck?”
He gave her a quick look. “Does that mean you think something is missing?” When she took too long to answer, he added, “I guess you do. And you think having a baby will make it all better? Don’t you think that’s a bit naive?”
“Maybe to you, but not to me,” she said, bracing as he down-shifted and shot past a huge semitrailer truck. If she’d been uncertain about his state of mind, she now had no doubt that he was angry. “You should slow down, Buck,” she cautioned.
He did…barely. “I didn’t realize you were so miserable,” he said after a moment.
She thought about that, trying to fix on her feelings before deciding to get pregnant without telling him. Slightly bored? Somewhat unfulfilled? She’d had an interesting and successful career as a television journalist when she first met Buck at a Special Olympics event. She’d asked for that assignment when her research had revealed that Buck Whitaker was from Tallulah, Mississippi. During the civil rights struggle, her father, a journalist, had spent a summer in Tallulah with a PBS crew from Boston filming a documentary. Anne had grown up listening to him tell about his experience, which had so influenced him that he’d later written a book about it. She’d been thrilled at a chance to meet someone from Tallulah.
She studied Buck’s profile now, sternly set. So unlike that day at the Special Olympics when he’d smiled constantly at the kids. He had been so kind, so natural and at ease with them. She’d thought then what a great father he’d make. And within six months of that meeting, they’d been married.
Deep in her thoughts now, she was blind to the view out her window. She supposed other people might look at her situation and say she had it all. She was married to a pro baseball superstar who was generous and loving. He never forgot her birthday or their anniversary. He was outgoing and sociable on the surface—few people knew Buck was actually an extremely private man—so they had a busy life. Off season, they traveled extensively to interesting and exotic places. As a result of his incredible contract as the Jacks’ star pitcher, they had a fabulous home in St. Louis, condominiums in Vail and Palm Beach. But sometimes—more and more frequently of late—Anne had begun to wonder if she weren’t one of Buck’s possessions, too. Arm candy to his sports hero image. To her way of thinking, the prospect of a baby promised to give some measure of reality to their bizarre lifestyle. Children had a way of grounding a marriage.
In an attempt to make him understand, she said, “We live in a fishbowl, Buck, you posing for fans, me playing the adoring wife and smiling when I don’t always feel like smiling. And yes, I admit it. I haven’t found all that so fulfilling.” She paused, searching for words. “To me, a constant round of fun and games has become sort of…I don’t know…empty, I guess. Maybe I’ve outgrown it.”
“I didn’t hear all these complaints when I signed that last multimillion-dollar contract. And I didn’t see any misery when I bought you that sweet little Mercedes for your birthday. I also didn’t notice any pain on your face when we paid cash for the condo in Vail.” His foot was heavy on the accelerator again.
“I’ve never denied enjoying the things your job makes possible for us,” she said quietly. “But they’re only things, Buck. They don’t take the place of a baby. At least, not for me. I want us to be a real family.”
“What’s a real family? I can tell you from experience that mine is a dysfunctional, screwed-up bunch. You and I don’t need a baby to feel like a family.”
“I know you don’t have a good relationship with the Whitakers, but that doesn’t mean you won’t make a good father. You’d have a chance to change the things your parents did that were wrong.”
He gave a bitter laugh. “I couldn’t live long enough to do that.”
“Just think about it, Buck. Already you’ve endowed a program for inner city kids and almost every year you participate in Special Olympics. You make time to talk to high school athletes about avoiding drugs and getting a diploma. You do any number of things that show you’ve got a good heart. You sell yourself short when you say you wouldn’t make a good father.”
As an adopted only child, Anne’s childhood had been lonely. In spite of having very loving adoptive parents, she’d longed for brothers and sisters. When she married Buck, she’d dreamed of having her own babies, her own family. Buck’s heritage as the son of a “gentleman planter” in the Mississippi Delta was intriguing, so different from her rather ordinary roots in New England. Belle Pointe, his family home, fascinated her. Why couldn’t he see all the reasons they should start their own family?
“How far along are you?” he asked abruptly.
“Ten weeks.” But maybe not for long. While they’d been on the road, the cramping had worsened. Maybe she should call her doctor. Maybe going straight to bed wouldn’t be good enough. She might very well wind up in the hospital tonight. With a glance at the speedometer, she saw the needle pushing eighty and, feeling anxious to get home, she said nothing.
“To tell the truth, I’m having trouble with this, Anne,” Buck told her. He sat hunched over the steering wheel, a sure sign of his agitation. “I’ve got a lot on my mind that we haven’t had a chance to discuss. The Jacks are playing hardball in the negotiations on my new contract. It’s a disadvantage that I’m thirty-seven years old. They claim they’re uncertain whether my arm will hold out. Plus, they’re harping on the bad publicity that came after Casey’s death. I couldn’t help it that he was at my house when his heart gave out, but they don’t see it that way. The press hinted at steroid abuse and no matter how I deny it, I think the Jacks suspect I had something to do with it. So a baby right now is a complication I didn’t expect. I guess you could say it’s…well, it’s just bad timing. Frankly, I feel blindsided.”
He saw their baby as a complication? “When would have been a good time, Buck? I’ve apologized for the way I went about getting pregnant, but I’m not sorry for conceiving the baby. It’s done.”
“I would never have expected you to do something like this, Anne.”
“Well, I did it.” She crossed her arms stubbornly. “And I’m sorry it’s bad timing for you. You’ll simply have to get over it. It’s not like I can just reverse a pregnancy. There’s only one way to do that and I know you don’t want me to have an abortion. Do you?”
The words were tossed off impulsively, but when Buck didn’t instantly deny it, she looked at him in shock. He had a right to be upset, she gave him that, but surely he wasn’t contemplating aborting their baby. Appalled, she stared at his stony profile. “I’m waiting to hear you answer that, Buck.”
“Hell, Anne, it’s just that—” He broke off abruptly. “Hold on!” he shouted over the screech of brakes.
Anne’s startled gaze caught sight of a deer square in the Porsche’s headlights. Later, she’d recall the flash of its white tail as Buck instinctively swerved to avoid the animal. But with the maneuver, the Porsche fishtailed off the pavement onto the gravelly shoulder of the road. As it careened wildly, Anne realized they were going to crash. She had the odd sensation that the whole thing was happening in a kind of distorted slow motion. Her mind took it all in, the blur of trees as the car hurtled at breakneck speed, the sudden specter of a green highway sign and Buck’s desperate wrench on the wheel to miss it, then the drag as pavement gave way to a grassy bank. With the car now moving sideways at a dizzying speed, she realized it was going to tumble down into a deep ravine. Her last thought before the sickening impact was of her baby.
Please, God…
When Anne was wheeled out of the recovery room it wasn’t Buck who appeared instantly at her side. It was Marcie Frederick. Anne had no strength—or heart—to greet her. She still reeled from the news delivered by her doctor in recovery as she regained consciousness.
Miscarriage. Her baby, gone forever.
“So, how’re they treating you, sweetie?”
Anne felt a tear leak out of the corner of her eye. “I can’t say I recommend this place.”
“I know, darlin’.” Marcie lifted her hand and squeezed it. “I’m so sorry.”
“I d-don’t think I can b-bear it, Marcie,” she whispered brokenly. “I wanted this baby more than anything in this world.”
“Of course, you did.” Marcie dug in her purse for a tissue and gently blotted at Anne’s tears. “I feel silly for not guessing you were pregnant. After three pregnancies myself, I should have recognized the signs.”
“Nobody knew. I wanted to wait until all chance of m-miscarriage was over.” She felt another overwhelming urge to cry. “I’m sorry. I just can’t—”
“It’s okay, you just go right ahead and cry, honey. You’ve had more than enough trauma tonight to make anyone cry. That was a bad crash. I’m just thankful you both survived.”
Her mind was fuzzy, but she had no trouble recalling the accident. Buck, angry and speeding. The deer appearing out of nowhere. The horror as the car tumbled down into that steep gully. Anne closed her eyes. “Is Buck okay?”
“He’s banged up, but okay,” Marcie said as an orderly appeared. She didn’t volunteer details and Anne didn’t ask. Nobody spoke as they rode in the elevator to the third floor. Anne had been told that most patients recovered quickly from a miscarriage, but she’d taken a bump on her head in the crash and a few scrapes and bruises, so she would probably be staying in hospital for a day or two.
“Here we are,” the orderly said, maneuvering the gurney out of the elevator. “Third floor. We’ll just get you tucked in all nice and cozy, then the nurse will get a reading of your vitals and you can take a nice long rest.”
When he was gone, Marcie looked at her watch. “I expect Monk to show up any minute now. He’s with Buck on another floor and I made him promise to call us as soon as he can get away.” When there was no response from Anne, she asked, “Do you recall much of what actually happened in the accident?”
“I had my seat belt on, but my head hit the side window and I think I was out for a minute or two.”
“Time and details have a way of becoming distorted in a situation like that,” Marcie remarked.
“I remember enough.” Anne’s gaze was focused on the view from the window. “People were on the scene right away and the EMTs had me out and on a stretcher pretty quickly, I think.” She paused, remembering. “All I was aware of is blood…so much blood…”
“And Buck?”
“He was unconscious. I remember that. He didn’t have his seat belt on.”
Marcie clucked with disapproval. “That guy! What was he thinking? The high muckety-mucks at the Jacks aren’t going to be happy to hear that.” She picked up Anne’s chart and studied it with a professional air. She was a nurse, but hadn’t worked since having her first child. “They didn’t give me much information while I was waiting for you in the O.R.”
“Will I live?” Anne asked. Not that she cared at the moment. She didn’t care about anything.
“Yes, darlin’. And you’ll have more babies, too. Don’t you fret.” Marcie slipped the chart back into a holder on the wall. “I just wanted to make sure nothing was removed to keep that from happening. You and Buck can still have a houseful of young’uns.”
“I don’t think that’s in Buck’s life plan,” Anne said, turning her face to the window.
“Aww, no man thinks he wants a baby until he gets a look at that precious little face.”
“Buck is different, Marcie. He really doesn’t want any children.”
“Well, you could fool me. He’s so good with kids. They hover around him like bees to a honey pot wherever he shows up.”
“Those are other people’s children,” Anne said bitterly.
She saw the look on Marcie’s face and regretted saying anything. Fortunately, they were interrupted when a nurse appeared to get Anne settled. She was told how to use the remote which operated the television set, how to lower or raise the bed, how to turn a light on and off and how to summon help, should she need it. Since anybody could have figured it all out without help, Anne tuned the woman out long before the monologue was over.
“While you were in surgery your daddy called,” Marcie said when the nurse left. “He and your new stepmother were frantic. They were as surprised as the rest of us to hear about your pregnancy. Even though they know you’re okay, they’ll want to hear it from you. I told them you’d probably need to sleep off the anesthetic before making any calls.”
“That’s good. Thank you.” She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She turned her head to look outside. The view framed in the wide window was spectacular. Although it was long after midnight, high-rises were fully lit and traffic still flowed on the streets. “It’s so late, Marcie. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Shoot, girl, if I wasn’t here with you, I wouldn’t have anything to do.”
Anne managed a weak smile. “Tell that to somebody who doesn’t know you have three kids under six.”
“And they’re with their nanny, so don’t go worrying about them. You just worry about getting yourself on your feet again. The sooner you’re up and healthy, the sooner you can try again.”
Anne didn’t have to reply to that. Marcie’s cell phone buzzed. “It’s Monk,” she said, looking at the caller ID. She stepped outside the room, but Anne could hear bits and pieces of the call, but she had little interest. She was again gazing out the window when Marcie came back into the room.
“Well, looks like the two of you are in the same boat,” Marcie said with a determinedly cheerful smile. “Buck’s basically okay, but his knee took a bad hit. Also, he’s got a nasty concussion, which is the reason he hasn’t been up here checking on you.”
“Frankly, I don’t want to see him, Marcie. It’s because of his recklessness that I’ve lost my baby.”
“You can’t be sure about that.” Marcie moved closer and took one of Anne’s cold hands in both of hers. “Didn’t you say you were spotting at the hotel before you even got into the car?”
“Yes. And I wanted to leave, but he wouldn’t.”
“Oh, hon…” Marcie sighed and squeezed Anne’s hands. “Before I had my first child, I had a miscarriage, too. It happens. I was an emotional wreck, too. I cried for weeks. Even now, today, I think about that baby and wonder what he would look like, what personality he’d have. So I can understand your heart is breaking. But this is a time when you need Buck and he needs you. He’s suffered a loss, too. You know how these jocks are. Even when they’re dying inside they don’t whine, they don’t cry, they don’t get emotional. I understand you want to crawl in a hole and pull your grief in with you, but right now, you and Buck need each other.”
“Maybe that’s the way it is with you and Monk, Marcie, but Buck isn’t going to grieve over losing this baby,” she said sadly. “I actually think he’s going to be relieved.”
Marcie stared at her in amazement. “You can’t believe that.”
Anne tucked her hands beneath the blanket and wearily turned her face to the window again. “I’m not good company right now, Marcie. Please…just—” She swallowed, blinking back tears. “Will you please go out to the nurses’ station and tell them I don’t want any calls and I don’t want to see anybody?”
Marcie studied her in silence for a long moment. “Yes, of course. If that’s what you want. Your doctor has been pretty effective in keeping quiet that you’re here, so if your stay is short, you’ll probably be gone before the media figures out a way to bug you with a visit.”
Out in the hall, the hospital intercom paged a doctor by some anonymous number. Anne looked wistfully out the window. “Don’t you wish they could figure out a way we could be anonymous in this business, Marcie?”
“Most of the time, we wives are anonymous. It’s the players who can’t even go to the bathroom without somebody rubbernecking.” She bent and picked up a jacket from the small settee. “Look, I’m not wishing Buck any grief, but maybe it’s not all bad that this accident forces him to hang around the house awhile. The two of you can use the time to work through your problems.”
“There’s only one thing wrong with that plan, Marcie,” Anne said quietly. “Since I’m no longer pregnant, Buck considers our problem solved. You’re a good friend and I’m grateful you’re here tonight. Thank you for that.”
“Well, what are friends for, darlin’?” Then, with a resigned sigh, Marcie crossed her arms. “Okay, I can tell the nurses that you don’t want any other visitors, but you have to see Buck.” She held up a hand when Anne opened her mouth to argue and repeated, “You have to see Buck…for this reason. If I go out there with your no visitors message, the whole hospital would soon be abuzz with the juicy news that the wife of the St. Louis Jacks star pitcher, who was in the accident with him and has just suffered a miscarriage, has barred him from her room. How long do you think it would take that to reach talk radio and the six-o’clock news? They’ll have a field day with it, Anne. And it won’t stop here in St. Louis. Doggone it, they’ll follow you to the ends of the earth. You know I’m right.”
“I hate living in a fishbowl, Marcie,” Anne cried. “I hate it!”
“It’s not for wimps,” Marcie agreed. As the wife of one of the team managers, she knew firsthand how hard it was to have a private life. For every move a player made, he had to keep in mind that there was someone watching.
Anne sighed deeply. “I guess I have to see him.”
“You do.” Marcie leaned over and kissed her cheek. “One look at that guy’s pretty face and, trust me, you’ll feel a lot better.”
On Sunday mornings, Franklin Marsh enjoyed making breakfast for his wife. He was frying bacon for breakfast when he heard the phone ring. They’d both been anxious since learning of Anne’s accident sometime after midnight. Thinking it was early for calls, he quickly removed the skillet from the hot burner, turned off the stove and by the time he reached the bedroom, Beatrice was already talking. He knew instantly by the look on her face that it was Anne.
“Yes, he’s just starting breakfast, Anne. Oh, it’s so good to hear your voice. We’ve been so worried. How are you?” With a hand on her heart, Beatrice sank down on the edge of the bed to listen. They’d both been holding their breaths waiting to hear from his daughter.
“It was such a close call, Anne, but thank God you’re okay.” She paused, nodding slowly. “Yes, he’s right here.” Reluctantly, she handed the phone to Franklin. “She wants to speak to you.”
Franklin took the phone and sat down on the side of the bed beside Beatrice. “Hey, Annie-girl. You gave us a good scare last night, love.”
“I know, Dad, but I’m all right. Is this too early? Did I wake anybody?”
“Oh, no, we’ve been up awhile, both of us. Are you sure you’re okay? Marcie told us about…everything.”
“Uh-huh. I’m just…” He heard a catch in her voice. “…just so sad.”
“Of course you are. We’re both as disappointed as we can be. I know how much you wanted a baby. Buck must be hurting, too. How’s he doing?”
“He’s okay. I don’t know if you’ve heard the details of the accident yet. It’s already all over the news here.”
“And by the time I get to work, it’ll be the talk of the town here,” he predicted. “Tallulah’s favorite son doesn’t do anything that’s not reported up one side and down the other.”
“I wanted you to know some details since the media will distort it somehow.” She drew a shaky breath. “Buck was speeding, which won’t be a surprise to anybody. He swerved to avoid a deer that just appeared out of nowhere. It’s kind of murky, but I remember the car went careening down a steep embankment. I had my seat belt buckled, but Buck didn’t. He has a concussion and his knee is injured. I haven’t seen him yet so I don’t know how bad it is.”
“Uh-oh, that could mean big trouble for the Jacks if he’s out any length of time.”
“I guess.” He heard her take another unsteady breath and after a moment, she added in a different tone, “He should have thought of that before being so reckless.”
Franklin met Beatrice’s concerned gaze. “Are you sure you’re okay, Anne?”
“I will be, Dad. Don’t worry. I…I just haven’t been able to…to…” Her voice caught on a sob. “Actually, that’s why I’m calling. I was wondering if you would like some company.”
Surprised, Franklin again looked at Beatrice, who was watching him with anxious eyes, her fingers pressed to her lips. “If by company, you mean you and Buck, nothing could be nicer.”
“Not Buck, just me, Dad. I…I’d like to come for a visit, if that’s okay.”
“Well, sure, Annie-girl. But with Buck’s injury—”
“Buck has all of the St. Louis fan base and the whole Jacks organization rallying around him,” she said grimly. “He doesn’t need me. So I’d like to come for a visit if it won’t inconvenience you. I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying.”
“Come away. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, you know that.” He stood up, now alarmed by her tone. “You sound…” He hesitated, worried about pushing her and maybe changing her mind about coming. Bea would kill him. “Are you sure it’s the right thing to do—leaving Buck by himself at such a…well, such a delicate time? He’s suffered a loss, too, you know.”
“We’ll talk about that when I get there. I just needed to let you know before making any flight reservations. I’ll probably be discharged tomorrow morning. Once I get home, it’ll take me a while to pack. I don’t know which flight or my arrival time, but you needn’t worry about meeting me at the airport. I’ll rent a car and—”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” he told her. “I’ll pick you up no matter what time it is, day or night.” He glanced at Beatrice, who was nodding eagerly, pointing to herself. “We’ll both be at the airport. Just let us know when.”
“I appreciate this, Dad,” Anne said in a husky tone. “I know it’s short notice, but—”
He heard the catch in her voice. “Anne, a miscarriage can be emotionally devastating. You and Buck—”
“I need some time away from Buck, Dad. Don’t ask me to explain just now.” And before he had a chance to say more, she hung up.
“What’s the matter?” Beatrice asked urgently. “Tell me.”
Still holding the phone in his hand and looking troubled, Franklin shook his head. “I’m not sure, sweetheart. She wouldn’t say anything except she needed some time away from Buck.”
“And she’s coming here?” With a stunned look, Beatrice put both hands to her cheeks.
“That’s why she called. She was apologetic as it’s short notice, but she’s made up her mind.” He frowned. “She’s in an emotional state, Bea. I wonder—”
“I knew we should have left last night! The minute her friend called, we should have gotten a flight. We’d be there for her right now, Franklin. She’s all alone.”
“Hindsight,” Franklin said.
Beatrice stood at the window, looking out. “I know this is an awful thing to say and I grieve for her loss, but I’m thankful for an opportunity to have her visit. I had only a few hours with her on our wedding day before Buck whisked her back to St. Louis.”
“He sure doesn’t spend any time in his hometown if he can avoid it,” Franklin said, rising to go to her. “And even though the circumstances aren’t ideal, it’s—as you say—an opportunity for you to get to know her.”
With her hands clasped and pressed against her heart, Beatrice looked ready to cry. “I want that so much.”
“I know, my darling.” He went to her thinking to comfort her with a hug. Only when he tipped up her chin to kiss her did he see the tears.
Two
It was midmorning that same day before Buck made it to Anne’s room. She was awakened by a light kiss on her forehead. She opened her eyes to find him leaning close, fumbling for her hand. She evaded his touch by clutching the blanket.
“Hi,” he said.
She felt oddly detached, studying his face. One cheek was bruised and he had a black eye. Above it was a sizeable bandage covering what she assumed was the blow that caused his concussion. Day-old stubble darkened his jaws, giving him a rakish look that the nurses probably found sexy. “Hello, Buck.”
“Finding a way to visit my wife around here is harder than trying to finagle a pass to get out of jail,” he said with a smile. “Good thing I know some people.”
He was going to play it with humor, she thought. Okay. Whatever. “Should you be walking around? Monk seemed concerned about your knee.”
“Like they say, I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet.” His smile was a little off-center, aimed at charming her. “But I’m okay. How’re you doing?”
“I’m fine.” She turned to look out the window. “How’s the Porsche?”
“Totaled,” he said wryly. Then a pause. “Anne, I—”
“The staff at the hospital’s buzzing over you being here.” She watched a couple of birds—blue jays, she decided—quarreling in flight. “More than one person has told me we’re both lucky to be alive.”
“Yeah. It was a close call…and stupid on my part. I was speeding and I didn’t have my seat belt on. Thank God you did.”
“The Jacks will no doubt think of some way to exonerate you.”
“But will you?”
“I don’t know, Buck.”
He put out a hand and caught her chin. “Anne, please look at me.” Reluctantly, she raised her eyes to his. “I’m sorry. I know those words won’t begin to be enough for you, but I am so sorry. I wouldn’t have this happen for the world.”
“You wouldn’t?” Her eyes locked with his. “Really? Even to rid yourself of a baby you didn’t want?”
He was shaking his head. “I know that’s how it sounded and I wish I had those few minutes in the hotel to live over again. I wish I’d left when you asked me to. I wish I hadn’t driven so fast.” He made a distressed sound. “I…you…I guess I was just floored when I heard you were pregnant. I know that’s no excuse—”
“You’re right. It’s no excuse.” She turned away again. “So what’s the point of talking? I’ve miscarried. The baby’s gone. I accept that you’re sorry. It’s just—” She shrugged. “I guess it just seems…too little, too late.”
“I need you to forgive me for this, Anne,” he said. “I want us to go home and spend some time talking. I want us to—”
She made an impatient sound. “It’s always what you want, isn’t it, Buck? Well, right now I really don’t care what you want. I don’t think you even begin to suspect what has happened to us—to our marriage. I know you made it plain that you didn’t want a baby, but I honestly thought that you’d come around once you knew we had created a child. I was wrong about that and you can rest easy that you won’t have to cope with my silly wishes for a baby ever again.”
She felt a wild urge to throw the covers aside. She wanted to go at him nose to nose to tell him exactly how completely beyond redemption he was to her now. Instead, she made an effort to draw a calming breath. “I want you to leave now, Buck, before we both say things we’ll probably regret.”
His face had gone pale at her attack. Shaken, he said, “I don’t want to leave you like this.”
“Too bad.” She sighed then and gave him a sad look. “Are we strangers, Buck? After six years of marriage, do we actually know each other? Did you really not realize how important it was to me to have a child?”
“I don’t think I did,” he said slowly, looking like a man walking a path through a minefield. “I know that sounds selfish and egotistical, but we can work this out, Anne.”
“I don’t know if I want to work it out.”
“You don’t mean that.” He paused, choosing his words cautiously. “I mean, you’re upset and you have a right to be. When we get home and you’ve had a chance to rest and…you know, sort of recover, we’ll talk.”
She gave him a straight look. “Recover from losing my baby? Just like that?”
“Not ‘just like that.’ Of course not.” Looking exhausted, he rubbed a hand over his beard. “I was told you’re going to be released tomorrow morning. Is that right?”
She was so emotionally spent that it was a moment before she answered. “I don’t know. I’d leave now, but my doctor insists that I stay another day. Which is irrelevant as far as you’re concerned. The Jacks aren’t going to let you leave.”
“I want to take you home.” He shifted on his feet, squared his shoulders and got a stubborn look on his face. “I mean, I’m going to take you home. They—the Jacks—do want to keep me in here, but I’m leaving when you do, so don’t go without me. As ticked off as you are, I wouldn’t put it past you to check out early.”
“What’re you going to do to stop me? Camp out in the parking lot?” She sighed, too tired for sarcasm. “Besides, you can’t drive with that knee. You’re in pain. I know the signs whether you admit it or not.” She could tell by the strain pulling at his mouth and the fact that he was sweating. “If you’ve really got a concussion, I don’t think it’s smart for you to be driving. If you don’t worry about your own safety, then I care about mine. Marcie will come for me if I call her.”
“I’ll hire a limo and driver. We’ll go home together. Then we’ll talk.”
“A limousine?” He blinked at the sudden fury on her face. “Do. Not. Hire. A limousine. I repeat, Buck, do not do it. I hate the publicity this has already stirred up. All I need is to get discharged and find a forty-foot limo with a driver waiting to take me away in style. I’m leaving to escape that kind of smothering publicity.”
He frowned as if he hadn’t heard her correctly. “What do you mean, you’re leaving?”
She closed her eyes and looked away again, unwilling to get into it with him now about her plans. “I’m tired, Buck. I don’t have the energy to talk about this anymore. You can go home with me tomorrow morning…if you’re able to leave. Otherwise, I will ask Marcie.”
“Is that a promise?” he asked.
She turned to look at him. “I don’t want more gossip, so that’s the way it has to be.”
“Then I’ll be here,” he said, speaking with a clamped jaw. “Come hell or high water, I’ll be here.”
She waved a hand weakly. “Whatever, Buck.”
“I’m sorry, Anne.” When the words came out huskily, he cleared his throat. “I swear to God I’ll make it up to you.”
She turned back to the window without speaking and after a minute, she heard him leave.
Buck was in mortal pain when he got back to his room. In order to get his doctors—and the Jacks on-staff sports medicine physician—to allow him a visit to his wife, he’d finally agreed to being pushed in a wheelchair by an orderly. Turned out, the guy was a Jacks fan and Buck bribed him with prime seat tickets to park him outside the door and wait. Somehow, in spite of his throbbing knee, he had managed to limp to Anne’s bedside. He had been determined not to be in a wheelchair when they talked.
But he was glad to be wheeled back to his room. The effort had taken a toll and he was shaken by Anne’s reaction. She might never forgive him for this. He didn’t know how he’d manage to drive her home tomorrow, but he was determined to do it. No way was he going to let her check herself out of the hospital and him not be there. Judging from her mood today, he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t go to a hotel to keep from looking at him. With his knee throbbing now, he was on the point of buzzing for a nurse when a huge black man strolled into the room.
“Time for your meds, Mr. Whitaker.”
Buck made an attempt to look less than half-dead. “Call me Buck. Mr. Whitaker is my big brother.”
“And you can call me Eddie.” He looked more like a wrestler than a nurse, but he moved with the grace of a dancer. He held out the tiny paper cup. “I brought you something that’ll take you to paradise…temporarily. Considering how you look, it should be welcome.” He watched Buck toss it back and offered water from a decanter on the bedside table to swallow it down.
“How long do these things last?” Buck asked, shuddering.
Eddie tossed the paper cup. “The concussion, the banged-up knee, the bruised ribs, the narcotics or your rotten mood?”
Buck rubbed a hand over his face wearily and grunted an obscenity.
“I guess you mean the dope,” Eddie opined. “With that concussion, a couple hours. It wears off, you can call me and there’s more where that came from.”
“I don’t want to sleep through checkout time tomorrow morning.”
“Why, you got a ball game?”
Everybody’s a comedian, Buck thought, staring at his knee, now elevated on some kind of foam wedge-thing and wrapped securely. It was worse than he’d thought at first. He’d seen athletes with similar injuries and he was worried that it could be a long time before he played ball again. “I can veg at home just as well as here,” he told Eddie. “I don’t want to sleep past six-thirty.”
“No problem there,” Eddie said cheerfully as he adjusted the wedge. “You know that old saying, doncha? A hospital is no place to get any rest. There’ll be folks in and out of here starting around daybreak. Sleep through all that and you’re closer to dead than alive.”
With that bit of macabre humor, he stripped off his disposable gloves and tossed them into a receptacle near the door. “You take my advice, you’ll do what your orthopedic man recommends with that knee. I can’t see him liking it that you want to leave here while it’s puffed up like that. You mistreat your knee now, you’ll pay for it later.” At the door, he added, “Whatever your reason for wanting to leave, you might ask yourself if it’s worth your career. ’Cause if you don’t treat it right, that knee can ground you for good.” He flashed a grin as he pulled the door open. “Just my take on it, buddy.”
Buck closed his eyes and prayed for the drug to kick in. He didn’t need homespun advice from anybody to know what to do to be back on his feet the soonest. The concussion was nothing new. He’d had more than a few. In a day or so he wouldn’t even have a headache. But the knee was serious. It could give him grief long enough to knock him out for the season. He worried whether or not he had the time. The Jacks had a major investment in him and would pull out all the stops to give him the treatment necessary to put him on his feet again. He wouldn’t have a choice about it. But Anne was the wild card here. She wasn’t thinking about his career. Hell, she wasn’t even thinking about him as he’d just discovered.
Jesus, he’d really screwed up this time.
Ten minutes later, he had a nice buzz on from the narcotic Eddie had given him. He turned drowsily at a cursory tap on his door as the coach of the St. Louis Jacks let himself in the room. Buck instantly came alive.
Gus Schrader was a squat, red-faced man with attitude. While most of the team he coached was bulked-up athletes who towered over him, Schrader, at about five foot nine, took no guff from anybody. His word was law and Buck respected him more than any coach he’d ever had. Last year, with Buck as starting pitcher, Schrader had shepherded the Jacks into a wild card status and it was his mission in life to actually win the league championship this year and wind up in the Series. He would not be happy that his star pitcher was laid up with a bum knee, especially when he heard how it happened.
“How’s it going, Buck?”
Buck struggled to clear a narcotic haze from his brain and stuck out his hand to greet Schrader. “I’m okay. Ears ringing a little from cracking my head on the windshield,” he said, tossing a grin and hoping not to show how he dreaded whatever the next few minutes would bring. “Otherwise, nothing’s broken.”
Schrader looked at the knee. “Think you’ll be able to walk on that anytime soon?”
“A couple weeks, give or take.” Buck used the remote to raise the head of his bed.
“That so?” Arms crossed, Schrader eyed him skeptically.
“What were you thinking, Coach?”
“I’m thinking your guestimate is a little too optimistic. Grissom’s take on it is more realistic.” He paused. “Plumb grim, if you want the truth.”
Buck winced. Steve Grissom was head of the sports medicine team for the Jacks. “What did he say?”
“Said he examined it within an hour of you checking in. No estimate of how long, but he thinks you’ll need extensive physical therapy before you can pitch. You put any pressure on that knee prematurely and get out on the mound…blam—” He snapped his fingers. “You think it’s in bad shape now. Wait’ll you see the damage then. No, we don’t want to be risking that.”
“I’m with you there, Coach.”
“So Grissom’s arranging a program,” Schrader said, as if Buck hadn’t already agreed. Not that it mattered. Nothing Buck could say was going to change Schrader’s mind if Steve had already passed judgment on the extent of damage to his knee. “It starts the day you leave the hospital.”
“That’ll be tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Schrader’s eyebrows rose.
“I need to get out of here, Gus,” he said, shifting to sit up straight. He had to pause to quiet a shaft of pain from his rib cage before he could speak again. “I know the knee will still give me some grief, but I need to be at home right now. I’ve got some personal issues I need to deal with. I’ll cooperate with the physical therapy. Whatever Steve suggests I’ll go along with a hundred percent.”
“Damn right you will.” He gave Buck a keen look. “What kind of personal issues? I know Anne’s in a room on another floor. Word is the accident brought on a miscarriage.” Schrader didn’t consider anything private if it interfered with an athlete’s performance.
“She’s having a bad time, Gus. I need to be with her right now.”
“Well, I’ll leave it to you whether you go home tomorrow, but if you damage that knee beyond repair, you’ll be writing your own ticket to nowhere. You know that, don’t you?”
“I hear you.”
“Bad publicity’s following you like stink follows a skunk, Buck. I don’t like it.”
“Tell me,” Buck muttered.
“What the hell were you thinking driving that automobile at top speed with your wife beside you and your seat belt off?”
“It was stupid. I was speeding. I admit it. Then that deer just materialized out of nowhere. I acted on pure instinct to avoid it.”
He cut Buck off with a disgusted snort. “Excuses. I don’t hear a reason for anything I mentioned.” His bushy eyebrows beetled with the force of his frown. “I don’t know what’s goin’ on with you and your wife, but after this caper, I’m surprised the woman isn’t ready to walk away from you. I’m assuming that’s part of the personal issues you mentioned, so I’m not ordering you to stay put here in the hospital. Been my experience that a man handling marital problems is almost as useless as tits on a boar hog. You get out on the mound, you need your head clear. You see where I’m coming from, Buck?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I’ll leave you to think it over…that is, if that stuff they’ve given you for pain hasn’t turned your brain to mush.” He turned on his heel without waiting for a reply and stalked to the door. Then, just before pulling it open, he turned back. “I’m heading up to see Anne right now. I’ve always considered you a lucky man having a woman like that for a wife. You screw that up, you’re more than a fool.”
Which pretty much summed up what Buck thought of himself. When Schrader was gone, he closed his eyes with a tired sigh and welcomed the oblivion of the narcotic.
Anne waited until the sound of the Fredericks’ SUV faded away before sitting up and tossing aside the soft throw that Marcie had thoughtfully tucked about her. The bedroom she shared with Buck was beautiful, a tasteful blend of buttery yellows with touches here and there of red and brown. The art on the walls was original, carefully chosen. The furniture was top-of-the-line. And why not? When they’d built the house, money had been no object and she’d taken a lot of pleasure in decorating it. Unfortunately, it would not echo with the sound of tiny feet, nor would she rock her baby in the chair she’d bought a month ago and secretly stowed away from Buck in the attic.
Her baby. Before she was engulfed in anguish, she went to the sumptuous walk-in closet and took down a piece of luggage. At the chest of drawers built in on her side, she began removing what she’d need for the foreseeable future—bras, panties, socks, T-shirts, pajamas. After packing them, she went back to the closet and chose a few pairs of pants and jeans, some tops, blouses, a running suit. It was too chilly right now for shorts.
Coming out of the closet she lifted her head to see Buck propped in the doorway on his crutches. He looked at the half-packed suitcase and then back at her with a ferocious frown. “What are you doing? You’re supposed to be in bed.”
“I’m leaving. And you’re supposed to be off that knee.” She dropped the clothes on the bed and began folding them.
“C’mon, Anne. This is no way to deal with our situation.”
“It’s the way I choose,” she told him. Her hands were shaking, so she kept them moving, folding, placing this piece and that in the suitcase, reaching for the next one. “However you deal with it is up to you.”
He was at the bed now, trying to get a look at her face. “I’ve said I’m sorry for the way I acted…about the baby and the accident. I mean it, I’m sorry. But it was…hell, I guess I was in a state of shock or something, Anne. For you to just quit taking the Pill…I never expected you to do something like that.”
Moving back to the closet, she picked up a pair of running shoes and came out with the shoes in one hand and another smaller carryall in the other. “I never thought I’d do something like that either,” she said, “but I did.”
“And you think what you did is justified because you wanted a baby?”
She stopped in the act of stuffing the shoes in the bag and looked him squarely in the eye. “I’m going to tell you this one more time, Buck, and if you don’t get it, then it’s plain that the differences in the way we think are so major that we really won’t be able to get beyond it.”
She briefly closed her eyes to gather her thoughts before laying it on the line. “My ovaries are thirty-four years old, which means I’m already past peak childbearing years. I simply couldn’t wait any longer for you to change your mind about having a family. I convinced myself that once you knew I was carrying our child, you’d be as thrilled as I was and your objections would just fade away. Okay, that was dumb. I was wrong about that. It was a serious betrayal of trust and I sincerely apologize.” She gave him a weak smile. “Serious mistakes require serious thinking and I need to be away from you to do it.”
With a bleak look, he watched her throw more stuff in the suitcase. “You blame me for the accident and bringing on the miscarriage, don’t you?”
She paused with a makeup bag in her hand. “Yes, I guess so,” she said slowly. “I wish you’d left when I begged you to.”
“I’ll make it up to you, Anne, I swear I will.”
“Just…leave it, Buck. Don’t go there right now. I need to be away from you for a while.” She closed the suitcase and began zipping it up. “I need to decide whether there’s anything left of our marriage worth saving.”
Seeing he was about to argue, she stopped him by raising a hand. “Please, don’t say any more. It’s not only our differences about whether we should have a baby, Buck. We have differences about the way we live our lives. I’m uncomfortable living in a fishbowl, you know that. I’ve said it enough. But I accepted it for the joy of one day having your babies. That’s something else that went with this miscarriage. I’m not so sure I’m willing to compromise about that anymore.”
“Jesus, are you saying you’re through? You want a divorce?”
“I’m not sure what I want right now. I am sure that I need some time to sort out my thoughts. So I’m going to stay with my dad and Beatrice.”
Buck sat down hard on the side of the bed. “You can sort your thoughts out here,” he said. “You don’t have to be in another part of the country—especially not there.”
“Like where, Buck? A hotel? How long do you think it would be before the media would be all over me if I were to check into a hotel? Or maybe the condominium in Vail? Same thing and you know it.”
“Yeah, but Tallulah?” He looked incredulous.
“My dad will welcome me. And Beatrice, too, I hope. I’ve called and made arrangements. It’s done, Buck.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes, just like that.”
He got up abruptly, forgetting his knee, then swore when it almost folded beneath him. Grabbing a single crutch, he glared at her. “This is bullshit, Anne! I’m up to my ass in trouble with the Jacks. I’m grounded with this damn knee for who knows how long and now my wife ups and leaves. Add that to the scandal of Casey dying at my house and the gossips will have a field day.”
“Well, too bad, Buck. I’m dealing with some pretty difficult stuff myself, in case you haven’t noticed. Your trouble with the Jacks is temporary—you’re too valuable to be cut and your knee will heal. The thing with Casey will eventually fade away, too.” She straightened then and looked him squarely in the face. “But my baby is gone forever.”
“I tell you, we can work this thing out here, Anne. You don’t have to go to Tallulah.”
“That would save you the embarrassment of explaining my disappearance, wouldn’t it? And it’s understandable for you to assume I’d fall in with what you want since before, when we’ve come to these bumps in the road, I’ve always been the one to compromise. Well, I’m not compromising this time, Buck. I need this time and I’m taking it.”
“Do you realize what’s at stake here? We could lose everything we’ve worked for all these years.”
“Everything you’ve worked for.”
“For God’s sake, Anne, be reasonable.”
“Reasonable.” She looked at him, shaking her head. “You know what? I don’t feel like being reasonable. I’ve had it with the struggle, the ego stuff, the loneliness when you travel and I’m home alone. I haven’t been able to pursue a career because we’ve never been in one place long enough. I don’t expect you to understand because I’ve been remiss in telling you, and that’s my fault. I’m sorry, Buck, but my mind is made up.”
With the suitcase now packed, she got ready to lift it off the bed, but he stopped her with a hand on it. “At least wait a few days. Christ, you just went through an ordeal losing the baby and the accident. You just got out of the hospital.”
“Meaning you think I’m overreacting because my hormones are in an uproar.” She smiled bitterly. “Wrong. My hormones probably are in an uproar, but I know exactly who I am and what I’m doing. And if you don’t like the real me, then for sure our marriage is over.”
She tugged the handle out of his grasp and walked to the door. Hampered by his crutches, it took him a moment to get going. “I’m driving myself to the airport,” she told him as she reached the stairs. “I’ll leave a message on your voice mail telling you where to send someone to pick up my car.”
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Karen Young
BELLE POINTE IS WAITING LOR SOMEONE TO UNCOVER ITS SECRETSAnne Whitaker: Faced with an unexpected loss, Anne returns to the hot and sultry Mississippi Delta, leaving her husband, Buck, to ponder his future–with or without her. Looking for distraction, she immerses herself in the history of Belle Pointe, the plantation house that has been home to generations of Whitakers, including her husband.Buck Whitaker:A professional athlete, Buck is in an emotional tailspin when his career is jeopardized by scandal. Then his wife adds to his troubles by threatening divorce and fleeing to Mississippi, a place that holds bitter memories for him.Victoria Whitaker: By marrying into the Whitaker family, Victoria has enjoyed a life of privilege and position as matriarch of Belle Pointe. But now her daughter-in-law Anne has unwittingly uncovered family secrets that Victoria does not want revealed–secrets that will change the course of Whitaker family history…secrets that will change Anne's own life, as well.
Praise for KAREN YOUNG
“The suspense is almost unbearable.”
—Romantic Times BOOKclub on Never Tell
“Karen Young is a writer who delivers intense, gripping
and dark suspense…bound to keep you hooked.”
—Romantic Times BOOKclub
“Young skillfully mixes romance with
edge-of-your-seat suspense.”
—Library Journal
“…a powerful novel that was extremely
hard to put down.”
—Romance Reviews Today on In Confidence
“…a moving tale of second chances.”
—Romantic Times BOOKclub on Private Lives
“Karen Young is a spellbinding storyteller.”
—Romantic Times BOOKclub
Also by KAREN YOUNG
NEVER TELL
IN CONFIDENCE
PRIVATE LIVES
FULL CIRCLE
GOOD GIRLS
Belle Pointe
Karen Young
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
Acknowledgments
As in all my books, I’m indebted to so many people who helped make this one happen. I took a leap of faith when I chose to build the story around a professional baseball superstar. Most of what I know about baseball I learned in grade school.
Therefore, I relied on guidance from Doug Simmons, my son-in-law, for the technicalities of the game and the effect of injuries on a pitcher. For guidance on the workings of a cotton plantation, I relied on Peggy Peal, my grandson’s other grandmother, whose family has lived on and worked a cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta ever since God invented dirt.
For insight into the social culture of the Delta, I owe thanks to Gloria Dunbar. For the business stuff, Bob Wood, my lawyer son-in-law, proved, as always, a fabulous asset. Finally, to my editor, Valerie Gray, for insightful critique. Thanks to you all.
For my grandson, Josh.
Baseball, football, basketball—
the family’s very own super athlete!
Contents
Chapter One (#ua6217082-c4e0-5520-b2ec-45e3ff763148)
Chapter Two (#ucbf771d8-c010-5269-8bfb-b5fb5daaaa94)
Chapter Three (#ub95dcd43-304e-5ea3-96d6-f8198fa25d08)
Chapter Four (#u4fc0eb29-61ef-55ba-b46e-8bf255e49b01)
Chapter Five (#u42d04367-7233-5432-946d-85f803251d15)
Chapter Six (#ud198fa2b-1b9c-59fe-ac4e-8d2a129018f2)
Chapter Seven (#u70617aab-aebf-549c-ad4a-d62085afcfc5)
Chapter Eight (#u5c46e958-f212-55db-876a-722f16d359c5)
Chapter Nine (#uc55942b4-7436-51e6-86dc-27948c759423)
Chapter Ten (#u58812ac9-fbb6-5a3d-8a3b-446126f7e03f)
Chapter Eleven (#u0bb3c024-199f-5fbe-9d94-620bf07349cc)
Chapter Twelve (#u90b99316-1c39-50ef-afcd-36345f9a9cca)
Chapter Thirteen (#u700c03f8-1a5f-58d2-bed4-3c47855bbdcc)
Chapter Fourteen (#u4ac14f40-5de8-57d9-834a-dca437056761)
Chapter Fifteen (#u1c2ddac3-9924-54ce-9df0-7b8ffefe50e1)
Chapter Sixteen (#u976e2e19-ef5f-5ad2-ad1e-8d81edac95aa)
Chapter Seventeen (#ud9b5b7d7-a2c3-56d9-9da1-968feb7a0e4b)
Chapter Eighteen (#udaf7428c-29c5-5364-aec2-0a61d9314da4)
Chapter Nineteen (#uf1d1be5c-42fc-566d-9112-28534fbff839)
Chapter Twenty (#ua6442512-5548-5be0-8bdc-1a8d4c09f5d7)
Chapter Twenty-One (#u582e7504-8695-54a6-828a-1c43eccdc877)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#u7f9dc131-6db8-5205-b746-4797b690d512)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#u385ac865-b947-5d02-9a26-542a3a5f5244)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#udfcec9fd-37c2-5cac-ae2c-4a8ffe685ec8)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#u430714c3-b25f-5874-a79e-d306544b0ce8)
Epilogue (#ueb581fa1-8e21-5d79-933d-0062a53d7160)
One
As it always happened at these events, the room was filled to capacity. Scanning the crowd, Anne Whitaker estimated the number at better than three hundred, well surpassing the goal of the nonprofit sponsor. Amazed that all it took for folks to plunk down five hundred dollars a plate was the appearance of the star pitcher of the St. Louis Jacks—who just happened to be her husband. Buck’s name was a strong draw, so he was constantly in demand. Not only was he a gifted speaker and utterly relaxed in front of an audience, but he was genuinely funny. And, perhaps most appealing of all, he came across as modestly unimpressed with his superstar status.
Anne smiled politely and murmured in response to a comment from the baseball commissioner’s wife seated on her left. With the din of voices and the music of a live band, it was impossible to have any real conversation. As distracted as she was, she wouldn’t have been able to talk anyway. She was ten weeks pregnant and feeling distinctly ill. It wasn’t the classic nausea that came with pregnancy, but something different and it filled her with panic. During the cocktail hour, she’d made no less than four visits to the powder room fearing the worst, but so far nothing. More than anything, she wanted to go home. But a glance at her watch told her it would be a while yet before that was possible.
When she glanced up to find Gene Winston, Buck’s agent, watching her narrowly, she managed what she hoped was a natural smile. No surprise that Gene had picked up on her distraction. Even if he knew the reason she was distracted, he would be unmoved. Buck’s public image was all he cared about. He never needed to remind her of her role at these events. She knew it and played it well.
Buck, finally sensing something, let his napkin fall to the floor. Leaning close on a pretext of retrieving it, he murmured in her ear, “You feeling okay, sugar?”
“I’m just a little…queasy,” she told him, hoping against hope that what she feared wasn’t happening.
“We’ll be out of here soon.” He squeezed her hand and turned his attention back to the commissioner.
She longed to lean against him just for the comfort it would bring but—again—not possible here and now. Even if she weren’t okay, there was nothing to be done about it. The sponsor’s spokesman would soon be up introducing Buck.
She shifted to allow a waiter to refill her water glass and caught the concerned look on Marcie Frederick’s face. Marcie, wife of Monk Frederick, one of the Jacks’ managers, had already commented on the odd fact that Anne was refusing wine lately. Although Marcie was a friend, she didn’t know about the pregnancy. No one knew.
Not even Buck.
Which was the cause of much of Anne’s agitation. She was going to have to tell him and soon. Probably tonight. But after the initial surprise, she told herself he was bound to be pleased. He knew she’d dreamed of having a baby for years. Time would tell if he’d be happy enough to forgive her for the way she’d gone about getting pregnant.
A waiter removed her untouched dessert, while another appeared at the table with after-dinner coffee. Anne put a hand over her cup to refuse just as sharp pain struck in her lower abdomen. She gave a small, involuntary gasp but, in the noisy ballroom, nobody noticed except Marcie. For a stunned moment, Anne didn’t move, and then another searing pain struck.
Rising shakily to her feet, she murmured a distracted apology to the table at large. Buck looked a little surprised at her untimely exit. It had been barely fifteen minutes since she’d last left. But she was too intent on getting to the now all-too-familiar powder room to explain.
Flashing a strained smile to a waiter who courteously opened the exit door, she slipped out and dashed down the hall. Thankfully, the powder room was empty. Her heart thumping with dread, she entered the first stall.
Please, don’t let it be blood.
But it was. Not much, but it was there. She closed her eyes and fought an urge to scream a denial. But no time now to panic. It wasn’t so much that it signaled disaster, she told herself, but she would have to leave. She had strict instructions from her doctor if there was ever any sign of spotting.
Go to bed immediately. Feet up. Total bed rest.
She would have to ask someone to deliver a note to Buck so that they could leave. As for Buck’s speech, he would just have to make some kind of explanation. Their baby’s life was at stake.
A few moments later, she stood at the ballroom door and saw, to her intense relief, that Buck was not on the podium yet. But it would not be long until he was introduced. She stopped a passing server and thrust a note into the startled man’s hand. “Will you give this note to Buck Whitaker, please?”
Slipping back out of sight, she watched as Buck was handed the note which he read without any show of emotion. He was good at that. He had plenty of practice keeping his cool under extreme pressure. No one who played major league baseball panicked easily.
Meanwhile, waiting for him, it was all she could do not to panic. With her insides in a knot and dread in her heart, she took a deep breath. The cramping was irregular, but every nerve in her body screamed at her to run to the escalator and leave. Which would definitely cause a stir. As it was, she was not going to be voted most popular when, because of her, the guest speaker had to bow out early, but there it was.
Their baby’s life was at stake!
Another peep through the crack in the door and she saw Buck finally making his way toward the exit. The instant he reached her, she opened her mouth to tell him, but he shushed her with a look. Taking her arm, he guided her toward an alcove across a sea of hotel carpeting. Even then, before he said anything, he checked to see that they were well out of earshot of anybody. Facing her finally, he asked bluntly, “What’s wrong?”
She struggled to keep a tremor from her voice. “Buck, we have to leave.”
“What are you talking about? We can’t leave. I’m on in five minutes.”
“I know, I know, but we have to go. Now.” She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to tell you this way, but I’m bleeding.”
His mouth dropped open. “Bleeding? What—”
“I’m pregnant, Buck.”
With a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, he said, “Are you kidding me?”
She couldn’t keep the terror from her voice. “No! No, I mean it, Buck. I’m pregnant and I’m cramping and there’s spotting.”
He made a restless movement, turning away before looking at her again. “How could you be pregnant?”
She shook her head, impatient with the question. “Can we just not talk about it, at least not right now? Right now I need to go home and go to bed.”
He rubbed at the side of his neck, still struggling to take in what she was saying. “I thought the Pills—I mean, they’re supposed to be just about foolproof, aren’t they?”
“Didn’t you hear me, Buck? I’m bleeding!” Her voice rose frantically. “Something is going wrong. Bleeding is a warning that can’t be ignored.”
“Ah…I guess you’ve sort of caught me off guard here.” He glanced back at the closed doors of the ballroom where three hundred plus guests waited. “Does…uh, this…uh, bleeding necessarily mean that something serious is happening?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m not willing to take that chance. Are you?” She’d had ten weeks to adjust to her pregnancy and he’d had less than ten minutes. Maybe he was entitled to a shocked reaction, but she didn’t have time to deal with his feelings. “I’m telling you we have to go home, Buck, now,” she repeated firmly.
“We can’t, Anne. Think about what you’re saying. I’m the freaking guest of honor. I can’t just up and leave. These people have paid a lot of money.”
“Money? Money? I don’t care about money! This baby is what I care about.” She pressed her fingers to her mouth, trying to calm herself. “Don’t you care at all, Buck?”
“I’m still trying to take it in that you’re pregnant. But one thing I do care about is that I have an obligation to three hundred people waiting in that room.”
What about their baby? Didn’t he feel an obligation there? She felt her heart sink. To her mind, the threat to their baby overruled everything else, but he was worried about disappointing a bunch of people who, if he’d just go in there and explain, would probably understand what was at stake. But from the look on his face, that wasn’t going to happen. His agent would be aghast and Jacks management wouldn’t be too happy either.
“Be reasonable, Anne,” he pleaded, looking at his watch. “It’s too late to walk out.”
“And I’m sorry, but the baby—” Words caught in her throat as she sighed. “I just don’t want to risk losing this baby, Buck.”
“Jesus.” He stood for a minute, thinking. Anne saw there was nothing on his face to reveal the gravity of their conversation. He had to be stunned to learn he was going to be a father, but he was so conditioned to keeping his feelings under wraps that she couldn’t tell one way or another. “Can you hold on for thirty or forty minutes? I’ll be done with the speech and as for the party afterward at the commissioner’s house, I’ll make some excuse for us to skip it.”
“Oh, Buck…” Her voice caught and she fought back tears. She didn’t have his expertise at hiding her emotions. “I know it’s awkward,” she said, pleading with him, “but I’m sure they’ll understand when you tell them it’s an emergency.”
“But is it really? You said yourself you’re not sure.” He frowned, struck with another thought. “You don’t need to go to the hospital, do you? It’s not that serious, is it?”
“I don’t know whether it’s serious or not, Buck,” she said, with bitter disappointment. “I just know my doctor told me if there was any spotting I was to go to bed immediately.”
“And you will.” He started back, taking her hand. “It’ll be okay to delay it an hour or so, won’t it? I’ll cut the talk short.”
She leaned into his shoulder and gave a dispirited sigh. “I guess another thirty or forty minutes won’t make much difference.”
“You’ll be sitting down the whole time,” he said, throwing a reassuring arm around her shoulders. He was already guiding her across the floor toward the doors. Before entering, he dropped a quick kiss on the top of her head. “C’mon, beautiful, let’s knock ’em dead.”
It was the longest forty minutes of her life. While waiting for Buck to make his excuses after the speech, she’d gone again to the powder room and found fresh spotting. Although it was still minimal, she was scared. Desperate to leave, she caught his eye across the ballroom and something in her face must have told him she was nearing the end of her rope. With a last quiet word to Gene Winston, he started toward her. She had to admire his skill in avoiding the many attempts to hail him in passing. Finally, he reached her and, with a flash of his famous smile, slipped his arm around her waist and whisked her away.
“You okay?” Buck said, as they pulled away from the hotel.
“I’m not sure. I just need to get home.”
“You can recline that seat,” he told her.
At least she was now in a prone position, she thought. Buck was quiet, winding his way toward the interstate ramp. Once on a straight stretch, he opened up the Porsche with a roar. He liked speed and tended to exceed the legal limit, especially when he was upset. “How could you be pregnant? Did you forget to take the Pill?”
“No, it was nothing like that.”
Hearing something in her voice, he glanced at her. “Then what?”
She thought about asking him to wait until they got home, but maybe it was best to get it behind them now. “It isn’t an accident that I’m pregnant, Buck,” she said quietly. “I quit taking the Pill.”
In the muted glow of the dash, she saw his features darken in a fierce frown. “You quit? Just like that?”
“Not just like that.” Her hand rested protectively on her abdomen. “I didn’t do it on a whim. I thought about it a long time.”
“I wish you’d thought to consult me.” Not quite openly sarcastic, but close.
“I’m not proud of the way I went about it, Buck ,and for what it’s worth, I apologize. We’ve gone round and round about this forever and you always come up with a thousand reasons to put off having a child. I knew what your answer would be if I told you.” With both her hands cradling her abdomen, she longed to make him understand. “I’m thirty-four years old, Buck. The longer we wait, the harder it’ll be for me to conceive.”
“I thought we agreed to put off having kids.”
“For how many years? Another four or five? Eight? Ten?” She swallowed disappointment. She’d so longed for a joyous reaction from Buck, but she now had to let that wish go. “It was your idea to wait, Buck, not mine.”
“So you just decided to ignore my wishes and go ahead with your idea.”
She turned away. They were in open country now and she was looking at total darkness. “I guess that’s one way to put it,” she said quietly.
“I don’t see any other way to put it,” he said, shifting restlessly in his seat. “This is something we should have decided together, Anne. Having a baby isn’t like going to the pound and picking out a puppy. A baby changes everything in a couple’s life.”
“And would it be such a bad thing to change our life, Buck?”
He gave her a quick look. “Does that mean you think something is missing?” When she took too long to answer, he added, “I guess you do. And you think having a baby will make it all better? Don’t you think that’s a bit naive?”
“Maybe to you, but not to me,” she said, bracing as he down-shifted and shot past a huge semitrailer truck. If she’d been uncertain about his state of mind, she now had no doubt that he was angry. “You should slow down, Buck,” she cautioned.
He did…barely. “I didn’t realize you were so miserable,” he said after a moment.
She thought about that, trying to fix on her feelings before deciding to get pregnant without telling him. Slightly bored? Somewhat unfulfilled? She’d had an interesting and successful career as a television journalist when she first met Buck at a Special Olympics event. She’d asked for that assignment when her research had revealed that Buck Whitaker was from Tallulah, Mississippi. During the civil rights struggle, her father, a journalist, had spent a summer in Tallulah with a PBS crew from Boston filming a documentary. Anne had grown up listening to him tell about his experience, which had so influenced him that he’d later written a book about it. She’d been thrilled at a chance to meet someone from Tallulah.
She studied Buck’s profile now, sternly set. So unlike that day at the Special Olympics when he’d smiled constantly at the kids. He had been so kind, so natural and at ease with them. She’d thought then what a great father he’d make. And within six months of that meeting, they’d been married.
Deep in her thoughts now, she was blind to the view out her window. She supposed other people might look at her situation and say she had it all. She was married to a pro baseball superstar who was generous and loving. He never forgot her birthday or their anniversary. He was outgoing and sociable on the surface—few people knew Buck was actually an extremely private man—so they had a busy life. Off season, they traveled extensively to interesting and exotic places. As a result of his incredible contract as the Jacks’ star pitcher, they had a fabulous home in St. Louis, condominiums in Vail and Palm Beach. But sometimes—more and more frequently of late—Anne had begun to wonder if she weren’t one of Buck’s possessions, too. Arm candy to his sports hero image. To her way of thinking, the prospect of a baby promised to give some measure of reality to their bizarre lifestyle. Children had a way of grounding a marriage.
In an attempt to make him understand, she said, “We live in a fishbowl, Buck, you posing for fans, me playing the adoring wife and smiling when I don’t always feel like smiling. And yes, I admit it. I haven’t found all that so fulfilling.” She paused, searching for words. “To me, a constant round of fun and games has become sort of…I don’t know…empty, I guess. Maybe I’ve outgrown it.”
“I didn’t hear all these complaints when I signed that last multimillion-dollar contract. And I didn’t see any misery when I bought you that sweet little Mercedes for your birthday. I also didn’t notice any pain on your face when we paid cash for the condo in Vail.” His foot was heavy on the accelerator again.
“I’ve never denied enjoying the things your job makes possible for us,” she said quietly. “But they’re only things, Buck. They don’t take the place of a baby. At least, not for me. I want us to be a real family.”
“What’s a real family? I can tell you from experience that mine is a dysfunctional, screwed-up bunch. You and I don’t need a baby to feel like a family.”
“I know you don’t have a good relationship with the Whitakers, but that doesn’t mean you won’t make a good father. You’d have a chance to change the things your parents did that were wrong.”
He gave a bitter laugh. “I couldn’t live long enough to do that.”
“Just think about it, Buck. Already you’ve endowed a program for inner city kids and almost every year you participate in Special Olympics. You make time to talk to high school athletes about avoiding drugs and getting a diploma. You do any number of things that show you’ve got a good heart. You sell yourself short when you say you wouldn’t make a good father.”
As an adopted only child, Anne’s childhood had been lonely. In spite of having very loving adoptive parents, she’d longed for brothers and sisters. When she married Buck, she’d dreamed of having her own babies, her own family. Buck’s heritage as the son of a “gentleman planter” in the Mississippi Delta was intriguing, so different from her rather ordinary roots in New England. Belle Pointe, his family home, fascinated her. Why couldn’t he see all the reasons they should start their own family?
“How far along are you?” he asked abruptly.
“Ten weeks.” But maybe not for long. While they’d been on the road, the cramping had worsened. Maybe she should call her doctor. Maybe going straight to bed wouldn’t be good enough. She might very well wind up in the hospital tonight. With a glance at the speedometer, she saw the needle pushing eighty and, feeling anxious to get home, she said nothing.
“To tell the truth, I’m having trouble with this, Anne,” Buck told her. He sat hunched over the steering wheel, a sure sign of his agitation. “I’ve got a lot on my mind that we haven’t had a chance to discuss. The Jacks are playing hardball in the negotiations on my new contract. It’s a disadvantage that I’m thirty-seven years old. They claim they’re uncertain whether my arm will hold out. Plus, they’re harping on the bad publicity that came after Casey’s death. I couldn’t help it that he was at my house when his heart gave out, but they don’t see it that way. The press hinted at steroid abuse and no matter how I deny it, I think the Jacks suspect I had something to do with it. So a baby right now is a complication I didn’t expect. I guess you could say it’s…well, it’s just bad timing. Frankly, I feel blindsided.”
He saw their baby as a complication? “When would have been a good time, Buck? I’ve apologized for the way I went about getting pregnant, but I’m not sorry for conceiving the baby. It’s done.”
“I would never have expected you to do something like this, Anne.”
“Well, I did it.” She crossed her arms stubbornly. “And I’m sorry it’s bad timing for you. You’ll simply have to get over it. It’s not like I can just reverse a pregnancy. There’s only one way to do that and I know you don’t want me to have an abortion. Do you?”
The words were tossed off impulsively, but when Buck didn’t instantly deny it, she looked at him in shock. He had a right to be upset, she gave him that, but surely he wasn’t contemplating aborting their baby. Appalled, she stared at his stony profile. “I’m waiting to hear you answer that, Buck.”
“Hell, Anne, it’s just that—” He broke off abruptly. “Hold on!” he shouted over the screech of brakes.
Anne’s startled gaze caught sight of a deer square in the Porsche’s headlights. Later, she’d recall the flash of its white tail as Buck instinctively swerved to avoid the animal. But with the maneuver, the Porsche fishtailed off the pavement onto the gravelly shoulder of the road. As it careened wildly, Anne realized they were going to crash. She had the odd sensation that the whole thing was happening in a kind of distorted slow motion. Her mind took it all in, the blur of trees as the car hurtled at breakneck speed, the sudden specter of a green highway sign and Buck’s desperate wrench on the wheel to miss it, then the drag as pavement gave way to a grassy bank. With the car now moving sideways at a dizzying speed, she realized it was going to tumble down into a deep ravine. Her last thought before the sickening impact was of her baby.
Please, God…
When Anne was wheeled out of the recovery room it wasn’t Buck who appeared instantly at her side. It was Marcie Frederick. Anne had no strength—or heart—to greet her. She still reeled from the news delivered by her doctor in recovery as she regained consciousness.
Miscarriage. Her baby, gone forever.
“So, how’re they treating you, sweetie?”
Anne felt a tear leak out of the corner of her eye. “I can’t say I recommend this place.”
“I know, darlin’.” Marcie lifted her hand and squeezed it. “I’m so sorry.”
“I d-don’t think I can b-bear it, Marcie,” she whispered brokenly. “I wanted this baby more than anything in this world.”
“Of course, you did.” Marcie dug in her purse for a tissue and gently blotted at Anne’s tears. “I feel silly for not guessing you were pregnant. After three pregnancies myself, I should have recognized the signs.”
“Nobody knew. I wanted to wait until all chance of m-miscarriage was over.” She felt another overwhelming urge to cry. “I’m sorry. I just can’t—”
“It’s okay, you just go right ahead and cry, honey. You’ve had more than enough trauma tonight to make anyone cry. That was a bad crash. I’m just thankful you both survived.”
Her mind was fuzzy, but she had no trouble recalling the accident. Buck, angry and speeding. The deer appearing out of nowhere. The horror as the car tumbled down into that steep gully. Anne closed her eyes. “Is Buck okay?”
“He’s banged up, but okay,” Marcie said as an orderly appeared. She didn’t volunteer details and Anne didn’t ask. Nobody spoke as they rode in the elevator to the third floor. Anne had been told that most patients recovered quickly from a miscarriage, but she’d taken a bump on her head in the crash and a few scrapes and bruises, so she would probably be staying in hospital for a day or two.
“Here we are,” the orderly said, maneuvering the gurney out of the elevator. “Third floor. We’ll just get you tucked in all nice and cozy, then the nurse will get a reading of your vitals and you can take a nice long rest.”
When he was gone, Marcie looked at her watch. “I expect Monk to show up any minute now. He’s with Buck on another floor and I made him promise to call us as soon as he can get away.” When there was no response from Anne, she asked, “Do you recall much of what actually happened in the accident?”
“I had my seat belt on, but my head hit the side window and I think I was out for a minute or two.”
“Time and details have a way of becoming distorted in a situation like that,” Marcie remarked.
“I remember enough.” Anne’s gaze was focused on the view from the window. “People were on the scene right away and the EMTs had me out and on a stretcher pretty quickly, I think.” She paused, remembering. “All I was aware of is blood…so much blood…”
“And Buck?”
“He was unconscious. I remember that. He didn’t have his seat belt on.”
Marcie clucked with disapproval. “That guy! What was he thinking? The high muckety-mucks at the Jacks aren’t going to be happy to hear that.” She picked up Anne’s chart and studied it with a professional air. She was a nurse, but hadn’t worked since having her first child. “They didn’t give me much information while I was waiting for you in the O.R.”
“Will I live?” Anne asked. Not that she cared at the moment. She didn’t care about anything.
“Yes, darlin’. And you’ll have more babies, too. Don’t you fret.” Marcie slipped the chart back into a holder on the wall. “I just wanted to make sure nothing was removed to keep that from happening. You and Buck can still have a houseful of young’uns.”
“I don’t think that’s in Buck’s life plan,” Anne said, turning her face to the window.
“Aww, no man thinks he wants a baby until he gets a look at that precious little face.”
“Buck is different, Marcie. He really doesn’t want any children.”
“Well, you could fool me. He’s so good with kids. They hover around him like bees to a honey pot wherever he shows up.”
“Those are other people’s children,” Anne said bitterly.
She saw the look on Marcie’s face and regretted saying anything. Fortunately, they were interrupted when a nurse appeared to get Anne settled. She was told how to use the remote which operated the television set, how to lower or raise the bed, how to turn a light on and off and how to summon help, should she need it. Since anybody could have figured it all out without help, Anne tuned the woman out long before the monologue was over.
“While you were in surgery your daddy called,” Marcie said when the nurse left. “He and your new stepmother were frantic. They were as surprised as the rest of us to hear about your pregnancy. Even though they know you’re okay, they’ll want to hear it from you. I told them you’d probably need to sleep off the anesthetic before making any calls.”
“That’s good. Thank you.” She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She turned her head to look outside. The view framed in the wide window was spectacular. Although it was long after midnight, high-rises were fully lit and traffic still flowed on the streets. “It’s so late, Marcie. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Shoot, girl, if I wasn’t here with you, I wouldn’t have anything to do.”
Anne managed a weak smile. “Tell that to somebody who doesn’t know you have three kids under six.”
“And they’re with their nanny, so don’t go worrying about them. You just worry about getting yourself on your feet again. The sooner you’re up and healthy, the sooner you can try again.”
Anne didn’t have to reply to that. Marcie’s cell phone buzzed. “It’s Monk,” she said, looking at the caller ID. She stepped outside the room, but Anne could hear bits and pieces of the call, but she had little interest. She was again gazing out the window when Marcie came back into the room.
“Well, looks like the two of you are in the same boat,” Marcie said with a determinedly cheerful smile. “Buck’s basically okay, but his knee took a bad hit. Also, he’s got a nasty concussion, which is the reason he hasn’t been up here checking on you.”
“Frankly, I don’t want to see him, Marcie. It’s because of his recklessness that I’ve lost my baby.”
“You can’t be sure about that.” Marcie moved closer and took one of Anne’s cold hands in both of hers. “Didn’t you say you were spotting at the hotel before you even got into the car?”
“Yes. And I wanted to leave, but he wouldn’t.”
“Oh, hon…” Marcie sighed and squeezed Anne’s hands. “Before I had my first child, I had a miscarriage, too. It happens. I was an emotional wreck, too. I cried for weeks. Even now, today, I think about that baby and wonder what he would look like, what personality he’d have. So I can understand your heart is breaking. But this is a time when you need Buck and he needs you. He’s suffered a loss, too. You know how these jocks are. Even when they’re dying inside they don’t whine, they don’t cry, they don’t get emotional. I understand you want to crawl in a hole and pull your grief in with you, but right now, you and Buck need each other.”
“Maybe that’s the way it is with you and Monk, Marcie, but Buck isn’t going to grieve over losing this baby,” she said sadly. “I actually think he’s going to be relieved.”
Marcie stared at her in amazement. “You can’t believe that.”
Anne tucked her hands beneath the blanket and wearily turned her face to the window again. “I’m not good company right now, Marcie. Please…just—” She swallowed, blinking back tears. “Will you please go out to the nurses’ station and tell them I don’t want any calls and I don’t want to see anybody?”
Marcie studied her in silence for a long moment. “Yes, of course. If that’s what you want. Your doctor has been pretty effective in keeping quiet that you’re here, so if your stay is short, you’ll probably be gone before the media figures out a way to bug you with a visit.”
Out in the hall, the hospital intercom paged a doctor by some anonymous number. Anne looked wistfully out the window. “Don’t you wish they could figure out a way we could be anonymous in this business, Marcie?”
“Most of the time, we wives are anonymous. It’s the players who can’t even go to the bathroom without somebody rubbernecking.” She bent and picked up a jacket from the small settee. “Look, I’m not wishing Buck any grief, but maybe it’s not all bad that this accident forces him to hang around the house awhile. The two of you can use the time to work through your problems.”
“There’s only one thing wrong with that plan, Marcie,” Anne said quietly. “Since I’m no longer pregnant, Buck considers our problem solved. You’re a good friend and I’m grateful you’re here tonight. Thank you for that.”
“Well, what are friends for, darlin’?” Then, with a resigned sigh, Marcie crossed her arms. “Okay, I can tell the nurses that you don’t want any other visitors, but you have to see Buck.” She held up a hand when Anne opened her mouth to argue and repeated, “You have to see Buck…for this reason. If I go out there with your no visitors message, the whole hospital would soon be abuzz with the juicy news that the wife of the St. Louis Jacks star pitcher, who was in the accident with him and has just suffered a miscarriage, has barred him from her room. How long do you think it would take that to reach talk radio and the six-o’clock news? They’ll have a field day with it, Anne. And it won’t stop here in St. Louis. Doggone it, they’ll follow you to the ends of the earth. You know I’m right.”
“I hate living in a fishbowl, Marcie,” Anne cried. “I hate it!”
“It’s not for wimps,” Marcie agreed. As the wife of one of the team managers, she knew firsthand how hard it was to have a private life. For every move a player made, he had to keep in mind that there was someone watching.
Anne sighed deeply. “I guess I have to see him.”
“You do.” Marcie leaned over and kissed her cheek. “One look at that guy’s pretty face and, trust me, you’ll feel a lot better.”
On Sunday mornings, Franklin Marsh enjoyed making breakfast for his wife. He was frying bacon for breakfast when he heard the phone ring. They’d both been anxious since learning of Anne’s accident sometime after midnight. Thinking it was early for calls, he quickly removed the skillet from the hot burner, turned off the stove and by the time he reached the bedroom, Beatrice was already talking. He knew instantly by the look on her face that it was Anne.
“Yes, he’s just starting breakfast, Anne. Oh, it’s so good to hear your voice. We’ve been so worried. How are you?” With a hand on her heart, Beatrice sank down on the edge of the bed to listen. They’d both been holding their breaths waiting to hear from his daughter.
“It was such a close call, Anne, but thank God you’re okay.” She paused, nodding slowly. “Yes, he’s right here.” Reluctantly, she handed the phone to Franklin. “She wants to speak to you.”
Franklin took the phone and sat down on the side of the bed beside Beatrice. “Hey, Annie-girl. You gave us a good scare last night, love.”
“I know, Dad, but I’m all right. Is this too early? Did I wake anybody?”
“Oh, no, we’ve been up awhile, both of us. Are you sure you’re okay? Marcie told us about…everything.”
“Uh-huh. I’m just…” He heard a catch in her voice. “…just so sad.”
“Of course you are. We’re both as disappointed as we can be. I know how much you wanted a baby. Buck must be hurting, too. How’s he doing?”
“He’s okay. I don’t know if you’ve heard the details of the accident yet. It’s already all over the news here.”
“And by the time I get to work, it’ll be the talk of the town here,” he predicted. “Tallulah’s favorite son doesn’t do anything that’s not reported up one side and down the other.”
“I wanted you to know some details since the media will distort it somehow.” She drew a shaky breath. “Buck was speeding, which won’t be a surprise to anybody. He swerved to avoid a deer that just appeared out of nowhere. It’s kind of murky, but I remember the car went careening down a steep embankment. I had my seat belt buckled, but Buck didn’t. He has a concussion and his knee is injured. I haven’t seen him yet so I don’t know how bad it is.”
“Uh-oh, that could mean big trouble for the Jacks if he’s out any length of time.”
“I guess.” He heard her take another unsteady breath and after a moment, she added in a different tone, “He should have thought of that before being so reckless.”
Franklin met Beatrice’s concerned gaze. “Are you sure you’re okay, Anne?”
“I will be, Dad. Don’t worry. I…I just haven’t been able to…to…” Her voice caught on a sob. “Actually, that’s why I’m calling. I was wondering if you would like some company.”
Surprised, Franklin again looked at Beatrice, who was watching him with anxious eyes, her fingers pressed to her lips. “If by company, you mean you and Buck, nothing could be nicer.”
“Not Buck, just me, Dad. I…I’d like to come for a visit, if that’s okay.”
“Well, sure, Annie-girl. But with Buck’s injury—”
“Buck has all of the St. Louis fan base and the whole Jacks organization rallying around him,” she said grimly. “He doesn’t need me. So I’d like to come for a visit if it won’t inconvenience you. I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying.”
“Come away. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, you know that.” He stood up, now alarmed by her tone. “You sound…” He hesitated, worried about pushing her and maybe changing her mind about coming. Bea would kill him. “Are you sure it’s the right thing to do—leaving Buck by himself at such a…well, such a delicate time? He’s suffered a loss, too, you know.”
“We’ll talk about that when I get there. I just needed to let you know before making any flight reservations. I’ll probably be discharged tomorrow morning. Once I get home, it’ll take me a while to pack. I don’t know which flight or my arrival time, but you needn’t worry about meeting me at the airport. I’ll rent a car and—”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” he told her. “I’ll pick you up no matter what time it is, day or night.” He glanced at Beatrice, who was nodding eagerly, pointing to herself. “We’ll both be at the airport. Just let us know when.”
“I appreciate this, Dad,” Anne said in a husky tone. “I know it’s short notice, but—”
He heard the catch in her voice. “Anne, a miscarriage can be emotionally devastating. You and Buck—”
“I need some time away from Buck, Dad. Don’t ask me to explain just now.” And before he had a chance to say more, she hung up.
“What’s the matter?” Beatrice asked urgently. “Tell me.”
Still holding the phone in his hand and looking troubled, Franklin shook his head. “I’m not sure, sweetheart. She wouldn’t say anything except she needed some time away from Buck.”
“And she’s coming here?” With a stunned look, Beatrice put both hands to her cheeks.
“That’s why she called. She was apologetic as it’s short notice, but she’s made up her mind.” He frowned. “She’s in an emotional state, Bea. I wonder—”
“I knew we should have left last night! The minute her friend called, we should have gotten a flight. We’d be there for her right now, Franklin. She’s all alone.”
“Hindsight,” Franklin said.
Beatrice stood at the window, looking out. “I know this is an awful thing to say and I grieve for her loss, but I’m thankful for an opportunity to have her visit. I had only a few hours with her on our wedding day before Buck whisked her back to St. Louis.”
“He sure doesn’t spend any time in his hometown if he can avoid it,” Franklin said, rising to go to her. “And even though the circumstances aren’t ideal, it’s—as you say—an opportunity for you to get to know her.”
With her hands clasped and pressed against her heart, Beatrice looked ready to cry. “I want that so much.”
“I know, my darling.” He went to her thinking to comfort her with a hug. Only when he tipped up her chin to kiss her did he see the tears.
Two
It was midmorning that same day before Buck made it to Anne’s room. She was awakened by a light kiss on her forehead. She opened her eyes to find him leaning close, fumbling for her hand. She evaded his touch by clutching the blanket.
“Hi,” he said.
She felt oddly detached, studying his face. One cheek was bruised and he had a black eye. Above it was a sizeable bandage covering what she assumed was the blow that caused his concussion. Day-old stubble darkened his jaws, giving him a rakish look that the nurses probably found sexy. “Hello, Buck.”
“Finding a way to visit my wife around here is harder than trying to finagle a pass to get out of jail,” he said with a smile. “Good thing I know some people.”
He was going to play it with humor, she thought. Okay. Whatever. “Should you be walking around? Monk seemed concerned about your knee.”
“Like they say, I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet.” His smile was a little off-center, aimed at charming her. “But I’m okay. How’re you doing?”
“I’m fine.” She turned to look out the window. “How’s the Porsche?”
“Totaled,” he said wryly. Then a pause. “Anne, I—”
“The staff at the hospital’s buzzing over you being here.” She watched a couple of birds—blue jays, she decided—quarreling in flight. “More than one person has told me we’re both lucky to be alive.”
“Yeah. It was a close call…and stupid on my part. I was speeding and I didn’t have my seat belt on. Thank God you did.”
“The Jacks will no doubt think of some way to exonerate you.”
“But will you?”
“I don’t know, Buck.”
He put out a hand and caught her chin. “Anne, please look at me.” Reluctantly, she raised her eyes to his. “I’m sorry. I know those words won’t begin to be enough for you, but I am so sorry. I wouldn’t have this happen for the world.”
“You wouldn’t?” Her eyes locked with his. “Really? Even to rid yourself of a baby you didn’t want?”
He was shaking his head. “I know that’s how it sounded and I wish I had those few minutes in the hotel to live over again. I wish I’d left when you asked me to. I wish I hadn’t driven so fast.” He made a distressed sound. “I…you…I guess I was just floored when I heard you were pregnant. I know that’s no excuse—”
“You’re right. It’s no excuse.” She turned away again. “So what’s the point of talking? I’ve miscarried. The baby’s gone. I accept that you’re sorry. It’s just—” She shrugged. “I guess it just seems…too little, too late.”
“I need you to forgive me for this, Anne,” he said. “I want us to go home and spend some time talking. I want us to—”
She made an impatient sound. “It’s always what you want, isn’t it, Buck? Well, right now I really don’t care what you want. I don’t think you even begin to suspect what has happened to us—to our marriage. I know you made it plain that you didn’t want a baby, but I honestly thought that you’d come around once you knew we had created a child. I was wrong about that and you can rest easy that you won’t have to cope with my silly wishes for a baby ever again.”
She felt a wild urge to throw the covers aside. She wanted to go at him nose to nose to tell him exactly how completely beyond redemption he was to her now. Instead, she made an effort to draw a calming breath. “I want you to leave now, Buck, before we both say things we’ll probably regret.”
His face had gone pale at her attack. Shaken, he said, “I don’t want to leave you like this.”
“Too bad.” She sighed then and gave him a sad look. “Are we strangers, Buck? After six years of marriage, do we actually know each other? Did you really not realize how important it was to me to have a child?”
“I don’t think I did,” he said slowly, looking like a man walking a path through a minefield. “I know that sounds selfish and egotistical, but we can work this out, Anne.”
“I don’t know if I want to work it out.”
“You don’t mean that.” He paused, choosing his words cautiously. “I mean, you’re upset and you have a right to be. When we get home and you’ve had a chance to rest and…you know, sort of recover, we’ll talk.”
She gave him a straight look. “Recover from losing my baby? Just like that?”
“Not ‘just like that.’ Of course not.” Looking exhausted, he rubbed a hand over his beard. “I was told you’re going to be released tomorrow morning. Is that right?”
She was so emotionally spent that it was a moment before she answered. “I don’t know. I’d leave now, but my doctor insists that I stay another day. Which is irrelevant as far as you’re concerned. The Jacks aren’t going to let you leave.”
“I want to take you home.” He shifted on his feet, squared his shoulders and got a stubborn look on his face. “I mean, I’m going to take you home. They—the Jacks—do want to keep me in here, but I’m leaving when you do, so don’t go without me. As ticked off as you are, I wouldn’t put it past you to check out early.”
“What’re you going to do to stop me? Camp out in the parking lot?” She sighed, too tired for sarcasm. “Besides, you can’t drive with that knee. You’re in pain. I know the signs whether you admit it or not.” She could tell by the strain pulling at his mouth and the fact that he was sweating. “If you’ve really got a concussion, I don’t think it’s smart for you to be driving. If you don’t worry about your own safety, then I care about mine. Marcie will come for me if I call her.”
“I’ll hire a limo and driver. We’ll go home together. Then we’ll talk.”
“A limousine?” He blinked at the sudden fury on her face. “Do. Not. Hire. A limousine. I repeat, Buck, do not do it. I hate the publicity this has already stirred up. All I need is to get discharged and find a forty-foot limo with a driver waiting to take me away in style. I’m leaving to escape that kind of smothering publicity.”
He frowned as if he hadn’t heard her correctly. “What do you mean, you’re leaving?”
She closed her eyes and looked away again, unwilling to get into it with him now about her plans. “I’m tired, Buck. I don’t have the energy to talk about this anymore. You can go home with me tomorrow morning…if you’re able to leave. Otherwise, I will ask Marcie.”
“Is that a promise?” he asked.
She turned to look at him. “I don’t want more gossip, so that’s the way it has to be.”
“Then I’ll be here,” he said, speaking with a clamped jaw. “Come hell or high water, I’ll be here.”
She waved a hand weakly. “Whatever, Buck.”
“I’m sorry, Anne.” When the words came out huskily, he cleared his throat. “I swear to God I’ll make it up to you.”
She turned back to the window without speaking and after a minute, she heard him leave.
Buck was in mortal pain when he got back to his room. In order to get his doctors—and the Jacks on-staff sports medicine physician—to allow him a visit to his wife, he’d finally agreed to being pushed in a wheelchair by an orderly. Turned out, the guy was a Jacks fan and Buck bribed him with prime seat tickets to park him outside the door and wait. Somehow, in spite of his throbbing knee, he had managed to limp to Anne’s bedside. He had been determined not to be in a wheelchair when they talked.
But he was glad to be wheeled back to his room. The effort had taken a toll and he was shaken by Anne’s reaction. She might never forgive him for this. He didn’t know how he’d manage to drive her home tomorrow, but he was determined to do it. No way was he going to let her check herself out of the hospital and him not be there. Judging from her mood today, he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t go to a hotel to keep from looking at him. With his knee throbbing now, he was on the point of buzzing for a nurse when a huge black man strolled into the room.
“Time for your meds, Mr. Whitaker.”
Buck made an attempt to look less than half-dead. “Call me Buck. Mr. Whitaker is my big brother.”
“And you can call me Eddie.” He looked more like a wrestler than a nurse, but he moved with the grace of a dancer. He held out the tiny paper cup. “I brought you something that’ll take you to paradise…temporarily. Considering how you look, it should be welcome.” He watched Buck toss it back and offered water from a decanter on the bedside table to swallow it down.
“How long do these things last?” Buck asked, shuddering.
Eddie tossed the paper cup. “The concussion, the banged-up knee, the bruised ribs, the narcotics or your rotten mood?”
Buck rubbed a hand over his face wearily and grunted an obscenity.
“I guess you mean the dope,” Eddie opined. “With that concussion, a couple hours. It wears off, you can call me and there’s more where that came from.”
“I don’t want to sleep through checkout time tomorrow morning.”
“Why, you got a ball game?”
Everybody’s a comedian, Buck thought, staring at his knee, now elevated on some kind of foam wedge-thing and wrapped securely. It was worse than he’d thought at first. He’d seen athletes with similar injuries and he was worried that it could be a long time before he played ball again. “I can veg at home just as well as here,” he told Eddie. “I don’t want to sleep past six-thirty.”
“No problem there,” Eddie said cheerfully as he adjusted the wedge. “You know that old saying, doncha? A hospital is no place to get any rest. There’ll be folks in and out of here starting around daybreak. Sleep through all that and you’re closer to dead than alive.”
With that bit of macabre humor, he stripped off his disposable gloves and tossed them into a receptacle near the door. “You take my advice, you’ll do what your orthopedic man recommends with that knee. I can’t see him liking it that you want to leave here while it’s puffed up like that. You mistreat your knee now, you’ll pay for it later.” At the door, he added, “Whatever your reason for wanting to leave, you might ask yourself if it’s worth your career. ’Cause if you don’t treat it right, that knee can ground you for good.” He flashed a grin as he pulled the door open. “Just my take on it, buddy.”
Buck closed his eyes and prayed for the drug to kick in. He didn’t need homespun advice from anybody to know what to do to be back on his feet the soonest. The concussion was nothing new. He’d had more than a few. In a day or so he wouldn’t even have a headache. But the knee was serious. It could give him grief long enough to knock him out for the season. He worried whether or not he had the time. The Jacks had a major investment in him and would pull out all the stops to give him the treatment necessary to put him on his feet again. He wouldn’t have a choice about it. But Anne was the wild card here. She wasn’t thinking about his career. Hell, she wasn’t even thinking about him as he’d just discovered.
Jesus, he’d really screwed up this time.
Ten minutes later, he had a nice buzz on from the narcotic Eddie had given him. He turned drowsily at a cursory tap on his door as the coach of the St. Louis Jacks let himself in the room. Buck instantly came alive.
Gus Schrader was a squat, red-faced man with attitude. While most of the team he coached was bulked-up athletes who towered over him, Schrader, at about five foot nine, took no guff from anybody. His word was law and Buck respected him more than any coach he’d ever had. Last year, with Buck as starting pitcher, Schrader had shepherded the Jacks into a wild card status and it was his mission in life to actually win the league championship this year and wind up in the Series. He would not be happy that his star pitcher was laid up with a bum knee, especially when he heard how it happened.
“How’s it going, Buck?”
Buck struggled to clear a narcotic haze from his brain and stuck out his hand to greet Schrader. “I’m okay. Ears ringing a little from cracking my head on the windshield,” he said, tossing a grin and hoping not to show how he dreaded whatever the next few minutes would bring. “Otherwise, nothing’s broken.”
Schrader looked at the knee. “Think you’ll be able to walk on that anytime soon?”
“A couple weeks, give or take.” Buck used the remote to raise the head of his bed.
“That so?” Arms crossed, Schrader eyed him skeptically.
“What were you thinking, Coach?”
“I’m thinking your guestimate is a little too optimistic. Grissom’s take on it is more realistic.” He paused. “Plumb grim, if you want the truth.”
Buck winced. Steve Grissom was head of the sports medicine team for the Jacks. “What did he say?”
“Said he examined it within an hour of you checking in. No estimate of how long, but he thinks you’ll need extensive physical therapy before you can pitch. You put any pressure on that knee prematurely and get out on the mound…blam—” He snapped his fingers. “You think it’s in bad shape now. Wait’ll you see the damage then. No, we don’t want to be risking that.”
“I’m with you there, Coach.”
“So Grissom’s arranging a program,” Schrader said, as if Buck hadn’t already agreed. Not that it mattered. Nothing Buck could say was going to change Schrader’s mind if Steve had already passed judgment on the extent of damage to his knee. “It starts the day you leave the hospital.”
“That’ll be tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Schrader’s eyebrows rose.
“I need to get out of here, Gus,” he said, shifting to sit up straight. He had to pause to quiet a shaft of pain from his rib cage before he could speak again. “I know the knee will still give me some grief, but I need to be at home right now. I’ve got some personal issues I need to deal with. I’ll cooperate with the physical therapy. Whatever Steve suggests I’ll go along with a hundred percent.”
“Damn right you will.” He gave Buck a keen look. “What kind of personal issues? I know Anne’s in a room on another floor. Word is the accident brought on a miscarriage.” Schrader didn’t consider anything private if it interfered with an athlete’s performance.
“She’s having a bad time, Gus. I need to be with her right now.”
“Well, I’ll leave it to you whether you go home tomorrow, but if you damage that knee beyond repair, you’ll be writing your own ticket to nowhere. You know that, don’t you?”
“I hear you.”
“Bad publicity’s following you like stink follows a skunk, Buck. I don’t like it.”
“Tell me,” Buck muttered.
“What the hell were you thinking driving that automobile at top speed with your wife beside you and your seat belt off?”
“It was stupid. I was speeding. I admit it. Then that deer just materialized out of nowhere. I acted on pure instinct to avoid it.”
He cut Buck off with a disgusted snort. “Excuses. I don’t hear a reason for anything I mentioned.” His bushy eyebrows beetled with the force of his frown. “I don’t know what’s goin’ on with you and your wife, but after this caper, I’m surprised the woman isn’t ready to walk away from you. I’m assuming that’s part of the personal issues you mentioned, so I’m not ordering you to stay put here in the hospital. Been my experience that a man handling marital problems is almost as useless as tits on a boar hog. You get out on the mound, you need your head clear. You see where I’m coming from, Buck?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I’ll leave you to think it over…that is, if that stuff they’ve given you for pain hasn’t turned your brain to mush.” He turned on his heel without waiting for a reply and stalked to the door. Then, just before pulling it open, he turned back. “I’m heading up to see Anne right now. I’ve always considered you a lucky man having a woman like that for a wife. You screw that up, you’re more than a fool.”
Which pretty much summed up what Buck thought of himself. When Schrader was gone, he closed his eyes with a tired sigh and welcomed the oblivion of the narcotic.
Anne waited until the sound of the Fredericks’ SUV faded away before sitting up and tossing aside the soft throw that Marcie had thoughtfully tucked about her. The bedroom she shared with Buck was beautiful, a tasteful blend of buttery yellows with touches here and there of red and brown. The art on the walls was original, carefully chosen. The furniture was top-of-the-line. And why not? When they’d built the house, money had been no object and she’d taken a lot of pleasure in decorating it. Unfortunately, it would not echo with the sound of tiny feet, nor would she rock her baby in the chair she’d bought a month ago and secretly stowed away from Buck in the attic.
Her baby. Before she was engulfed in anguish, she went to the sumptuous walk-in closet and took down a piece of luggage. At the chest of drawers built in on her side, she began removing what she’d need for the foreseeable future—bras, panties, socks, T-shirts, pajamas. After packing them, she went back to the closet and chose a few pairs of pants and jeans, some tops, blouses, a running suit. It was too chilly right now for shorts.
Coming out of the closet she lifted her head to see Buck propped in the doorway on his crutches. He looked at the half-packed suitcase and then back at her with a ferocious frown. “What are you doing? You’re supposed to be in bed.”
“I’m leaving. And you’re supposed to be off that knee.” She dropped the clothes on the bed and began folding them.
“C’mon, Anne. This is no way to deal with our situation.”
“It’s the way I choose,” she told him. Her hands were shaking, so she kept them moving, folding, placing this piece and that in the suitcase, reaching for the next one. “However you deal with it is up to you.”
He was at the bed now, trying to get a look at her face. “I’ve said I’m sorry for the way I acted…about the baby and the accident. I mean it, I’m sorry. But it was…hell, I guess I was in a state of shock or something, Anne. For you to just quit taking the Pill…I never expected you to do something like that.”
Moving back to the closet, she picked up a pair of running shoes and came out with the shoes in one hand and another smaller carryall in the other. “I never thought I’d do something like that either,” she said, “but I did.”
“And you think what you did is justified because you wanted a baby?”
She stopped in the act of stuffing the shoes in the bag and looked him squarely in the eye. “I’m going to tell you this one more time, Buck, and if you don’t get it, then it’s plain that the differences in the way we think are so major that we really won’t be able to get beyond it.”
She briefly closed her eyes to gather her thoughts before laying it on the line. “My ovaries are thirty-four years old, which means I’m already past peak childbearing years. I simply couldn’t wait any longer for you to change your mind about having a family. I convinced myself that once you knew I was carrying our child, you’d be as thrilled as I was and your objections would just fade away. Okay, that was dumb. I was wrong about that. It was a serious betrayal of trust and I sincerely apologize.” She gave him a weak smile. “Serious mistakes require serious thinking and I need to be away from you to do it.”
With a bleak look, he watched her throw more stuff in the suitcase. “You blame me for the accident and bringing on the miscarriage, don’t you?”
She paused with a makeup bag in her hand. “Yes, I guess so,” she said slowly. “I wish you’d left when I begged you to.”
“I’ll make it up to you, Anne, I swear I will.”
“Just…leave it, Buck. Don’t go there right now. I need to be away from you for a while.” She closed the suitcase and began zipping it up. “I need to decide whether there’s anything left of our marriage worth saving.”
Seeing he was about to argue, she stopped him by raising a hand. “Please, don’t say any more. It’s not only our differences about whether we should have a baby, Buck. We have differences about the way we live our lives. I’m uncomfortable living in a fishbowl, you know that. I’ve said it enough. But I accepted it for the joy of one day having your babies. That’s something else that went with this miscarriage. I’m not so sure I’m willing to compromise about that anymore.”
“Jesus, are you saying you’re through? You want a divorce?”
“I’m not sure what I want right now. I am sure that I need some time to sort out my thoughts. So I’m going to stay with my dad and Beatrice.”
Buck sat down hard on the side of the bed. “You can sort your thoughts out here,” he said. “You don’t have to be in another part of the country—especially not there.”
“Like where, Buck? A hotel? How long do you think it would be before the media would be all over me if I were to check into a hotel? Or maybe the condominium in Vail? Same thing and you know it.”
“Yeah, but Tallulah?” He looked incredulous.
“My dad will welcome me. And Beatrice, too, I hope. I’ve called and made arrangements. It’s done, Buck.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes, just like that.”
He got up abruptly, forgetting his knee, then swore when it almost folded beneath him. Grabbing a single crutch, he glared at her. “This is bullshit, Anne! I’m up to my ass in trouble with the Jacks. I’m grounded with this damn knee for who knows how long and now my wife ups and leaves. Add that to the scandal of Casey dying at my house and the gossips will have a field day.”
“Well, too bad, Buck. I’m dealing with some pretty difficult stuff myself, in case you haven’t noticed. Your trouble with the Jacks is temporary—you’re too valuable to be cut and your knee will heal. The thing with Casey will eventually fade away, too.” She straightened then and looked him squarely in the face. “But my baby is gone forever.”
“I tell you, we can work this thing out here, Anne. You don’t have to go to Tallulah.”
“That would save you the embarrassment of explaining my disappearance, wouldn’t it? And it’s understandable for you to assume I’d fall in with what you want since before, when we’ve come to these bumps in the road, I’ve always been the one to compromise. Well, I’m not compromising this time, Buck. I need this time and I’m taking it.”
“Do you realize what’s at stake here? We could lose everything we’ve worked for all these years.”
“Everything you’ve worked for.”
“For God’s sake, Anne, be reasonable.”
“Reasonable.” She looked at him, shaking her head. “You know what? I don’t feel like being reasonable. I’ve had it with the struggle, the ego stuff, the loneliness when you travel and I’m home alone. I haven’t been able to pursue a career because we’ve never been in one place long enough. I don’t expect you to understand because I’ve been remiss in telling you, and that’s my fault. I’m sorry, Buck, but my mind is made up.”
With the suitcase now packed, she got ready to lift it off the bed, but he stopped her with a hand on it. “At least wait a few days. Christ, you just went through an ordeal losing the baby and the accident. You just got out of the hospital.”
“Meaning you think I’m overreacting because my hormones are in an uproar.” She smiled bitterly. “Wrong. My hormones probably are in an uproar, but I know exactly who I am and what I’m doing. And if you don’t like the real me, then for sure our marriage is over.”
She tugged the handle out of his grasp and walked to the door. Hampered by his crutches, it took him a moment to get going. “I’m driving myself to the airport,” she told him as she reached the stairs. “I’ll leave a message on your voice mail telling you where to send someone to pick up my car.”
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Karen Young
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: BELLE POINTE IS WAITING LOR SOMEONE TO UNCOVER ITS SECRETSAnne Whitaker: Faced with an unexpected loss, Anne returns to the hot and sultry Mississippi Delta, leaving her husband, Buck, to ponder his future–with or without her. Looking for distraction, she immerses herself in the history of Belle Pointe, the plantation house that has been home to generations of Whitakers, including her husband.Buck Whitaker:A professional athlete, Buck is in an emotional tailspin when his career is jeopardized by scandal. Then his wife adds to his troubles by threatening divorce and fleeing to Mississippi, a place that holds bitter memories for him.Victoria Whitaker: By marrying into the Whitaker family, Victoria has enjoyed a life of privilege and position as matriarch of Belle Pointe. But now her daughter-in-law Anne has unwittingly uncovered family secrets that Victoria does not want revealed–secrets that will change the course of Whitaker family history…secrets that will change Anne′s own life, as well.