"No. I just don't want them to think that they owe me anything in return."
"Why?"
She shrugged. "It wasn't any big deal. Calling my aunt was a simple thing to do. It was a shot in the dark that paid off. If she hadn't been on the board of directors, I wouldn't have thought of doing it."
"And the contract?"
"It's only a chance, Buck. It doesn't mean you'll succeed." She looked up at him then and shook her head over the praise she saw in his face. "I'm no saint. Buck."
He grinned at her. "No. You're not. But you're one hell of a woman, Annie." Again she shook her head at him and said good night.
If he thought she was so wonderful, why didn't he ask her to stay with him, she asked herself, as she crawled into his sister's bed a long time later. It wasn't the first time the question had crossed her mind.
She'd stood in front of the window for a long time, already mourning the loses she was about to incur. She tried to tell herself that Kentucky was ugly, that Buck was a stupid hick, and that the people of Webster weren't much better, but she'd failed miserably. In a week's time, all three had come to mean a great deal to her.
Buck had knocked on the door on his way to bed and had again asked if she was all right. She'd told him she was fine, but the truth was, she was far from it. She'd never felt so wretched or heartbroken. She'd taken her leave of a dozen places and hundreds of people in her lifetime, but it hadn't hurt like this. This time only part of her was leaving. She knew the rest of her would remain with Buck and in Kentucky for all of her days.
Already she felt lost and lonely. She let go of the hope of ever feeling as if she belonged. She would survive because it was her nature to do so. But from her present point of view her life looked like a hollow shell. Tears stung her eyes, and her throat constricted with pain. Her heart cried out for Buck; her body ached to be in his arms. All she heard was her heart's echo. All she felt was cold.
"You were only supposed to love him a little bit," she cried bitterly into her pillow. "You never were any good at having nice little affairs, you fool," she admonished herself.
So. Something inside her sighed haughtily. You're giving up. You still have three or four days before you have to leave, but you're cutting Buck out of your life early because you know how it's going to end. Is that it?
Well, what would you do? she asked her better half, the half that had encouraged her to love him in the first place.
Sweetie, I'd lap up every drop of honey in the pot before I left. I sure as hell wouldn't leave any for someone else.
With a new resolve, Anne tiptoed down the hall to Buck's room. The door was open, and she stepped noiselessly into the room. Sheets rustled, and she caught a flash of white as they were thrown back from the bed.
Buck was waiting for her. His arms closed around her readily and held her close, desperately close for several seconds. Then his muscles relaxed a little. He pressed a tender kiss to her temple and murmured, "Wanna talk?"
"No. I just want you to hold me for a while."
"I'm fixin' to."
~*~
Anne refused to allow another sad thought or remorseful moment get the better of her. The rest of the weekend belonged to her and Buck. She wanted to cram it full of happy memories. She wanted to make glorious, rapturous love with Buck a thousand times. She wanted to know every little thing there was to know about him, so that she could cherish it over and over again when they were no longer together.
Their mutual delight was uncontainable, spilling over into the workweek when they walked into the conference room Monday morning. All eyes turned to stare at them expectantly.
"Sorry we're late," Buck said, as a general greeting. Their tardiness might have been passed over lightly or been excused without any notice at all, except that neither of them looked particularly remorseful, and they were both having an exceptionally hard time keeping a straight face. "We—" he looked to Anne for assistance and got a giggle, "we had car trouble."
Doubt settled into each and every face in the room. Buck made a silent, halfhearted plea for mercy, then threw up his hands in resignation. "Okay. I admit it. I can't get enough of her. What can I say?"
By reflex, Anne gasped at his truthfulness and was frantically searching for some way to extricate herself from the situation, when she noticed that the workers had been quickly pacified by Buck's excuse. They acted as if it were far more believable that she and Buck had stopped by the side of the road to make passionate love in the front seat of his truck, than that they'd had car trouble. What's more, they didn't seem to think it was the least bit out of the ordinary. They didn't say a word about it; they simply smiled benevolently and moved on to the day's business.
She looked at Buck. He grinned at her and winked wickedly. "Ya see." He whispered his words so the others wouldn't hear. "I told ya it would be easier if you let me take the blame. They never would have believed us if we'd told them that you were the one who insisted we pull over."
"I was proving a point." She hissed back with great dignity.
Buck frowned. "I think I missed it."
"You said that you thought I should have more of an appetite in the morning. I was trying to prove to you that I have a very good appetite in the morning."
Buck stared at her, dumbfounded, for just a second, and then he gave her a crafty smile. "I meant for breakfast."
She gave him a craftier smile. "I know."
At noon that day, they agreed that they were ready to call Joel Harriman, make a bid, and begin negotiations for the purchase of the mill. When the small delegation of employees, including Buck, went off to Drake Edward's office to make the call, Anne began to watch the clock.
Twenty minutes past. Then thirty. She counted every second and knew that the longer it took, the harder Buck was fighting and the more disappointed and heartsick he'd be when he got the inevitable answer. And the answer was unquestionable. It always had been. She felt like a traitor, knowing all along that the bid would be flatly refused. She knew she was doing her job, being loyal to the people who paid her wages. But in her heart she felt she ought to be flogged for letting the employees work so hard and for getting their hopes up, when she had known from the start how it would turn out for them.
All they had wanted was a chance, a fair chance at trying to save the only life they knew, but they hadn't really gotten one. The cards had been stacked against them long before Anne had come to Kentucky. They never had a chance.
After nearly an hour of battling for a hopeless cause, the workers returned, grim lines on their faces. Anne wasn't surprised, but that didn't lessen the sorrow she felt for them. Buck trailed in last, looking beaten and dejected. Anne could actually feel her heart cracking and tearing as it took on the pain she saw in his eyes.
When he walked past her chair, he didn't say anything and didn't act as if he were truly seeing her. But his hand skimmed across her back and gently gripped the back of her neck in an intimate acknowledgment. It was as if he were wordlessly thanking her for the help she'd given them and apologizing because her efforts had been wasted, as if he'd failed her somehow. Then he joined the other employees at the big conference table in the middle of the room. "We gave it our best shot. We tried," Buck told his friends, trying to buoy their spirits and replenish some of their dignity. "I still think it could have worked, but it just. . . wasn't meant to be, I guess."
"What’ll we do now?" someone asked. The destitution in the voice burned like acid in Anne's soul.
"What we would have had to do, anyway. Find new jobs," he answered fatalistically.
Anne could almost picture Buck's thoughts. He was already mentally selling his land and moving away from his home. He was digging up his roots and slowly dying inside.
She began to tremble from the inside out, reacting to the melee her emotions were in. She felt sorrow and anger. She was regretful and indignant. She was frightened and feeling strangely courageous. Oddly enough, it was her courage that won out. . . or was it
insanity she wondered briefly as she glanced over at the table of woebegone workers.
Maybe she was delirious, she speculated. She'd lose her job for sure if her employers ever heard what she was about to do. Still, using a perverse sense of logic, Anne felt very right about it. She wouldn't go home the superwoman she'd set out to prove herself to be, but she would go home with something better—a smile in her heart.
She leaned over and removed the morning newspaper from the trash can beside her desk. All three of her brothers had had jobs delivering newspapers at one time or another. And so, with the expertise of one who had often been called upon to help deliver those papers, Anne folded this one into a tight loglike object and pitched it over her shoulder with enough precision to have it plunk down in the center of the table.
By now she was very good at using her peripheral vision to watch the workers. They turned. They stared at her in confusion for several seconds, and then they went back to mumbling and grumbling among themselves.
Damn. They weren't picking up on her clue to their solution. She glanced around the room hastily, looking for something else she could use to get her point across. Granted, it would have been easier if she had simply blurted out the answer to their problem verbally, but she felt as if she still owed something to the Harriman Corporation. She could hint, but she couldn't tell them.
She was greatly relieved when her gaze fell across a small electric clock radio that someone had brought to work the week before, because there had been no other way of telling the time in the conference room.
Slowly she scooted her chair away from her desk, stood, and walked over to the radio. She pulled the cord from the electrical socket, and then carried the radio over to the big table, setting it down beside the newspaper.
She had their attention at least. She looked from face to face to face . . . and saw nothing. They all looked stupefied by her weird behavior. Even Buck was frowning at her.
She snatched up a piece of paper from the desk, flipped it over to the clean side, and then grabbed a pen away from the man sitting beside her. She drew a square on the paper, and in each of the bottom corners she drew a small circle. Across the square she wrote television—instead of TV—so they couldn't possibly confuse it with anything else. Then she put her artwork in the center of the table, along with the radio and the newspaper, and stood there feeling mighty pleased with herself.
They all read the word out loud, putting their own little question mark behind it. There was no flash of realization, no flicker of inspiration in theexpressions she saw. There was some obvious concern for her thought processes, however.
"Oh, for crying out loud! What is this?" she shouted, pointing to the newspaper and addressing herself to Buck, who was the only person in the room she knew well enough to take out her frustrations on.
"A newspaper," he said kindly, humoring her dementia.
"And this? What is this?"
"A radio."
"Now this. What is it?"
"A television."
"That's right. Now think about it." She stood with her arms akimbo, staring at him, daring him to be brilliant enough to figure out her riddle.
A light flashed, then faded, then reappeared with some degree of certainty in his eyes. His mouth fell open, then curved upward at the corners as it all became clear to him.
"The press," he murmured, as if it were a highly classified secret weapon. "Harriman wouldn't want this in the news. He wouldn't look like a very nice person if he destroyed a whole town by refusin' to let us buy the mill, now would he?"
Anne was pleased to see how one little spark of smarts could spread like wildfire. She was elated on a nonnarcotic high to see hope and enthusiasm back in their eyes. She freely admitted to being addicted to this look on people's faces. And it was for that reason, not their gratitude, that she sometimes did the things she did for them.
Judiciously she began to back away from the jubilation at the table, to go back across the line of demarcation that separated them. But before she could get there, one of the women stopped her.
"Ms. Hunnicut, ma'am. I—we'd like to—"
"Joyce, isn't it?" Anne asked, hoping her smile would make up for her rudeness in cutting the woman off. She walked back to the woman and extended a hand to her. When Joyce nodded and took her hand, she said, "I have to tell you, I have to tell all of you," she added, turning to the group as a whole, "that I have been very impressed with your work this past week. I confess that I thought this was a hairbrained idea at first, but you've made it very clear to me that no one knows the textile industry better than textile workers.
"I probably shouldn't have eavesdropped on your meetings as much as I did," she continued, unabashed. "But I'm glad I did. My work here is finished, and I’ll"—she purposefully looked back at Joyce to avoid Buck's reaction—"be leaving tomorrow. So I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you all that I think you're going to do just fine as an employee-owned company and to wish you the very best of luck."
She waved and nodded through the varied and generally incoherent remarks from the workers as she went back to her desk. She had avoided an out-and-out thank-you and told Buck she was leaving at the same time. She knew she should be feeling very clever, but she wasn't. Setting a departure date made her feel heavy and sick inside.
Clearing off her desk didn't take long. It was mid-afternoon by the time she delivered the last of the files she'd been using back into Lily's capable hands.
"Thank you for your help, Lily," she told the kind-faced secretary. "I'm glad we met."
"You're pure wool and a yard wide, Anne Hunnicut," she said. "I'm mighty proud to know ya."
Anne sensed that being compared to fine cloth was as good as being thanked and felt highly complimented. She blushed and murmured a thank-you, then backed out of the office.
"Hey, sugar."
She let out a startled squeal and spun around to face Buck in the hallway. "You startled me," she uttered, gasping.
"And here I thought you'd be tickled pink to see me."
"I'm always tickled pink to see you. Can't you tell?"
He went to an extreme to check her out thoroughly, in a way that sent her heart soaring and brought a heated flush back into her cheeks. "Well, I guess you do look a little rosy and excited, at that," he said, pleased. He bent and placed a slow, warm kiss on her lips. His hands curled around her upper arms and pressed gently before he pulled away.
For a long moment he said nothing, expressing his thoughts only in the way he was looking at her and in the tender manner in which his hands caressed her arms. He wasn't happy that she was leaving.
She wasn't happy about it either. Tell me you're as crazy as I am, her heart pleaded with him. Tell me that in one short week you've fallen hopelessly in love with me, and then ask me to stay. Please.
"I'm on a break. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?" he asked, giving her a slow sweet smile.
"Something cold, maybe? I'm a little rosy and excited right now."
He grinned at her then, and said, “You'll have to drink it out of a can. The machine doesn't provide Dixie cups, you know."
"That's okay. I already have one."
Ten
Anne was very proud of the way she was handling the situation. She'd left work early, had a good cry, and looked fairly normal by the time Buck got home a few hours later. She was determined that nothing was going to spoil their last night together.
She made sure that there was no way of telling how shattered she felt, as she played and laughed with Buck while they cooked dinner. She was careful to keep her head turned away from him when her eyes became blurred with tears as they took one last walk through the woods to the pond. But there was no pretense in the ardor she displayed when they kissed or in the contentment she felt in his arms.
They sat out on the little jetty until the sun was almost gone. Buck's back rested against the piling, and she sat between his legs, savoring the warmth and strength of his body next to hers.
>
"How did your second call to Harriman go this afternoon?" Anne asked, after a long peaceful silence. She couldn't help but wonder, although she was a bit surprised that she hadn't wondered until now.
"I thought we weren't going to talk shop after business hours," he said, his lips tickling her ear.
"I'm done. The deal is over. And besides, I'm curious."
"We didn't make the second call."
"But why not?" she asked, turning in his arms to look at him.
"We decided we could just as easily wait until Wednesday or Thursday to blackmail them with the media."
Anne sighed and knew a warm, swelling sensation in her chest. Her heart felt full to the brim with gladness and gratification as she snuggled back into Buck's embrace. She had put her trust in the workers, and they were repaying her by waiting until she was far from Webster before using the information she'd given them. It had been a good decision on her part, all the way around.
"Why didn't you tell me you were plannin' to leave tomorrow?" he asked, his voice barely disturbing the quiet of the night. Lord how she did love to listen to him talk. When his voice was soft, each word was like a sensual massage, relaxing and invigorating at once.
"I didn't know for sure until today," she said, closing her eyes, soaking up the sounds of the night and the resonance of Buck's voice.
"I don't suppose there's any way you could put it off for a few more days?"
She smiled gently and pressed his arms tighter around her. She knew what he was feeling. She felt it far more intensely, of course, but she wouldn't insult him, or herself, by thinking that he didn't care and wasn't hurting. He did care about her. He simply didn't care to the extent or with the intensity that she did.
"That wouldn't make it any easier, Buck. I have to leave eventually. And besides, I had Lily fax the last of my work to the office this afternoon, along with my arrival time."
"I was hoping for more time," he said sadly. She felt his chest rise and fall with a deep sigh. "What about vacation time? You could—"
Lovin' a Good Ol' Boy Page 13