Always an Eaton

Chapter 7

Chandra maneuvered her car to the curb of the high-rise, tapping lightly on the horn to garner Preston’s attention. He was dressed in a lightweight, navy blue suit, white shirt and black slip-ons. Her eyebrows lifted slightly when she spied the two small colorful shopping bags he held in his left hand.

He rounded the car to the driver’s side and dipped his head to peer through the open window. “I’ll drive. I do know how to get to Paoli,” Preston added when Chandra gave him a quizzical look. Reaching in, he unlocked the door, opened it and helped her out. Three inches of heels put the top of her head at eye level. His penetrating gaze took in everything about her in a single glance: lightly made-up face, luxurious dark brown hair secured in a ponytail, black stretch tank top, matching stretch cropped pants and high-heeled mules. He brushed a kiss over her cheek. “You look very cute.”

Heat feathered across her face with his unexpected compliment. She’d changed her outfits twice. When she’d gotten up earlier that morning, the mercury was already sixty-eight, and meteorologists were predicting temperatures to peak in the mid-eighties. Chandra much preferred the Indian summer weather to the near-freezing temperatures because she knew it would take her a while to adjust to the climate change.

Her eyes met Preston’s as the skin around his penetrating gaze lingered briefly on her face before slipping lower to her breasts. “Thank you.”

Preston’s lips parted in a smile as he reached over with his free hand and tugged gently on her ponytail. “You’re quite welcome.” He led her around the Volvo, seated her and then retraced his steps once she’d fastened her seat belt.

He took off his suit jacket, placing it and the shopping bags on the rear seat. Sitting behind the wheel, he adjusted the seat to accommodate his longer legs, noting that Chandra had already programmed her trip into the GPS.

“What’s in the shopping bags?” Chandra asked when Preston maneuvered into the flow of traffic.

“It’s just a little something for your nieces.”

She frowned. “You didn’t have to bring anything.”

Preston’s frown matched hers. “I couldn’t show up empty-handed.”

“Yes, you could, Preston. You’re my guest.”

“That may be true, but I feel better bringing something. After all, it’s not every day someone turns thirteen. Your nieces are no longer tweens, but bona fide teenagers. And I’m willing to bet they’ll be quick to remind everyone of that fact.”

Chandra’s frown disappeared. “You’re right. When I spoke to my sister earlier this morning, she told me that was the first thing they said.”

“Do you remember being thirteen?” Preston asked.

She shook her head. “No. Every year was a blur until I turned eighteen.”

“What happened that year?”

“I left home for college.”

“Where did you go?”

“Columbia University.”

“Was Columbia your first choice?”

Chandra stared through the windshield. “No. I was seriously considering going to the University of Pennsylvania, then decided an out-of-state school was a better choice if I wanted to stretch my wings.”

Preston gave Chandra a sidelong glance before returning his gaze to the road. “Mom and Dad didn’t want their baby to leave the nest? Yes or no?” he asked when she glared at him.

“No,” she said after a prolonged pause. “I decided to go away because my brother and sisters went to in-state colleges. I wanted to be the one to break the tradition.”

“Where did—” The chiming of the cell phone attached to his belt preempted what he intended to say. Preston removed the phone, taking a furtive look at the display. “Excuse me, Chandra, but I need to take this call.”

She nodded, smiling. “It’s okay.”

He pressed a button, activating the speaker feature. “Hey, Ray. Thanks for getting back to me.”

“What’s up, P.J.?” asked a raspy voice.

“How’s your schedule?” Preston asked.

A sensual chuckle filled the car. “What do you need, P.J.?”

“I need a score for a new play with an early nineteenth-century New Orleans setting.” He shared a smile with Chandra when she winked at him. “It’s a dramatic musical.”

A pregnant silence filled the interior of the vehicle. “Did you say musical?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Hold up, prince of darkness,” Ray teased, laughing. “Don’t tell me you’re going soft.”

“It’s nothing like that, Ray.”

“What happened?”

“I’m collaborating with someone who convinced me to leave the dark side for my next project.”

“Good for her.”

“How do you know it’s a she?” Preston asked.

“I know you too well, P.J. If she was a he, and if it’s a musical, then it wouldn’t have been about nineteenth, but twenty-first-century New Orleans.” His New Orleans sounded like Nawlins.

Preston wanted to tell Ray that he didn’t know him that well. It had been the same with Clifford Jessup. Cliff had felt so comfortable managing his business affairs that he’d found himself with one less client.

“Can you spare some time where we can get together to talk about what I want?” he asked instead.

“I’m free tomorrow. I’d rather get together at your house. Beth isn’t due for another two weeks, but she’s been complaining about contractions. I don’t want to be too far away if and when she does go into labor.”

The reason Preston had moved into the city was not to conduct business out of his home, but with Ray’s wife’s condition he would make an exception. “That’s not a problem. Better yet, bring Beth with you. If the warm weather holds, we can cook and eat outdoors.”

The lyricist met his artist wife when they were involved in a summer stock production written by a Bucks County playwright. Ray had written the songs, while Beth designed the set decorations. It was love at first sight, and they married two months later. They’d recently celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary, and now were expecting their first child.

“It would do Beth good to get out of the house,” Ray remarked.

“How does one o’clock sound to you?” Preston asked.

“One is good. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

Preston smiled. “One it is.” He ended the call, placing the phone on the console between the seats. Following the images on the GPS, he made a left turn on the road leading to Paoli. “Will you join me tomorrow?”

Preston’s query was so unexpected that Chandra replayed it in her head. She stared at his distinctive profile for a full minute. “You want me to join you where?”

“I have a house in Kennett Square, and I’d like you to be present when I meet with Ray Hardy.”

She sat up straighter, all of her senses on full alert. “Are you talking about the Raymond Hardy?”

“Yes. Since you suggested a musical, then I’ll leave the music portion of the play up to you.”

Chandra felt her pulse quicken. Raymond Hardy had been compared to British lyricist Sir Tim Rice, whose collaboration with composer Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber had earned them countless awards and honors in the States and across the pond.

She gave Preston a skeptical look. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

“No. My task will be to write the dialogue, while the music will be at your discretion.”

“But...but I can’t write music or lyrics,” she sputtered.

“That will be Ray’s responsibility. What I want you to do is tell him what you want. Ray is amazing. Give him an idea of what you want, and within a couple of hours he will have a song written in its entirety.”

Chandra chewed her lower lip. She was being thrust into a situation where there was no doubt she would be in over her head. And it had all begun with her leaving her journal in a taxi where Preston Tucker had found it. If she’d retrieved her journal and not remarked about Preston’s work, then she wouldn’t be faced with the quandary of whether she wanted to become inexorably entwined in the lives of an award-winning dramatist and lyricist.

“You’re going to have to let me know a little more about the plot,” she said, stalling for time.

“We’ll either discuss it tonight or tomorrow morning.”

“When are we going to have time tonight, Preston? We probably won’t leave my sister’s house until at least eight or nine. And, remember it’s at least an hour’s drive between Philly and Paoli.”

Reaching over, Preston rested his right arm over the back of Chandra’s seat. “Don’t stress yourself, baby. You can spend the night with me, which means we can stay up late.”

Chandra looked at him as if he’d taken leave of his senses. “I can’t spend the night with you.”

A soft chuckle began in Preston’s chest before it filled the interior of the Volvo. “Don’t tell me you’re worried about your virtue, Miss Independent. Didn’t I tell you that you’re safe with me, Chandra?”

His teasing her made Chandra feel like a hapless ingenue instead of a thirty-year-old woman who’d left home at eighteen to attend college in New York. When she returned it wasn’t to put down roots in her home state, but in Virginia. Then she’d left the States to teach in a Central American country for a couple of years. She was currently living with her parents but that, too, was temporary; she was estimating she would move into her cousin’s co-op before the end of the month.

She rolled her eyes at Preston. “Nothing’s going to happen that I don’t want to happen.”

“There you go,” he drawled. “After we leave Paoli I’ll drive back to my place to pick up my car, then I’ll follow you back home, so you can get what you need for a couple of days.”

“A couple of days, Preston! When did overnight become a couple of days?”

“There’s no need to throw a hissy fit, Chandra.” His voice was low, calm, much calmer than he actually felt. “I need as much of your input as possible before you go back to work.”

He didn’t want to tell her that he wanted to begin working on the play before the onset of winter—his least productive season when there were days when his creative juices literally dried up.

“Okay,” Chandra agreed after a comfortable silence. She was committed to helping Preston with the play, and she planned to hold up her end of the agreement. “But I’m going to have to use your computer to check my e-mail.”

“That’s not going to present a problem. I have both a laptop and desktop at the house. Do you have to ask your parents if you can stay out overnight?”

Chandra rolled her eyes, then stuck out her tongue at Preston. “Very funny,” she drawled sarcastically.

He smothered a grin. “You better watch what you do with that tongue.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have the perfect remedy for girls who offer me their tongues.”

She rolled her eyes again. “I ain’t scared of you, P. J. Tucker.”

“I don’t want you to be, C.E., because I intend for us to have a lot fun working together.”

“I hope we can.”

Preston gave her a quick sidelong glance. “Why do you sound so skeptical?”

“You’re controlling, Preston.”

“And you’re not?” he countered.

“A little,” Chandra admitted.

“Only a little, C.E.? You’re in denial, beautiful. You are very, very controlling. If it can’t be your way, then it’s no way.”

Resting a hand on her hip, Chandra shifted, as far as her seat belt would permit her, to face Preston. Her eyes narrowed. “Do you really think you know me that well?”

Preston longed to tell Chandra that he knew more about her than she realized, that he knew she was a passionate woman with a very healthy libido.

“I only know what you’ve shown me,” he stated solemnly. “There’s nothing wrong with being independent or in control as long as you let a man be a man.”

“In other words, you expect me to grovel because you’re the celebrated Preston Tucker.”

Preston shook his head. “No.”

“Then, what is it you want?”

“I want us to get along, Chandra. We may not agree on everything, but what I expect is compromise. I grew up hearing my parents argue every day, and I vowed that I would never deal with a woman I had to fight with. It’s too emotionally draining. I began writing to escape from what I had to go through whenever my father came home.

“He would start with complaining about his boss and coworkers, and then it escalated to his nervous stomach and why he didn’t want to eat what my mother had cooked for dinner. Most times she didn’t say anything. She’d take his plate and empty it in the garbage before walking out of the kitchen. My sister and I would stare at our plates and finish our dinner. Then we would clear the table, clean up the kitchen and go to our respective bedrooms for the night. I always finished my homework before dinner, so that left time for me to write.”

“Did your father have a high-stress job?”

“He was an accountant, who’d had his own practice but couldn’t keep any employees.”

Chandra couldn’t remember her parents arguing, and if they did then it was never in front of their children. Between his office hours, house visits and working at the local municipal hospital, Dwight Eaton coveted the time he spent with his family.

“Did he verbally abuse his employees?”

A beat passed. “Craig Tucker was what psychologists call passive-aggressive. Most people said he was sarcastic. I thought of him as cynical and mocking.”

Now Chandra understood why Preston sought to avoid acerbic verbal exchanges. “Are your parents still together?”

Another beat passed as a muscle twitched in Preston’s lean jaw. “No. My dad died twenty-two years ago. He’d just celebrated his fortieth birthday when he passed away from lung cancer. He’d had a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit. My mother may have given in to my father’s demands in order to keep the peace, but put her foot down when she wouldn’t let him smoke in the house or car. He would sit on a bench behind the house smoking whether it was ninety-five degrees or twenty-five degrees. I found it odd that my mother didn’t cry at his funeral, but it was years later that I came to realize Craig Tucker was probably suffering from depression.”

Preston’s grim expression vanished like pinpoints of sun piercing an overcast sky. “He did in death what he wouldn’t do in life. He gave my mother a weekly allowance to buy food, while he paid all the bills. If she ran out of money, then she had to wait for Friday night when he placed an envelope with the money on the kitchen table. He was such a penny-pincher that my sister called him Scrooge behind his back. Well, Scrooge had invested heavily and wisely, leaving my mother very well off financially. He’d also set aside monies for me and my sister’s college fund. Yolanda went to Brown, while I went to Princeton.

“After I graduated, my mother sold the house and moved back to her hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, enrolled in the College of Charleston and earned a degree in Historic Preservation and Community Planning. Then, she applied to and was accepted into a joint MS degree in Historic Preservation with Clemson. With her education behind her, she opened a small shop selling antiques and reproductions of Gullah artifacts. Her basket-weaving courses have a six-month waiting list.”

Chandra’s mouth curved into an unconscious smile. Preston’s mother had to wait to become a widow to come into her own. Her adage was always Better Late Than Never.

“I remember my parents driving down to Florida one year, and when we went through South Carolina I saw old women sitting on the side of the road weaving straw baskets. I’m sorry we didn’t stop to buy at least one.”

“That’s too bad,” Preston remarked, “because the art of weaving baskets has been threatened with the advance of coastal development. Those living in gated subdivisions wouldn’t let the weavers come through to pluck the sweetgrass they coil with pine needles, bulrushes and palmetto fronds used to make the baskets. Thankfully the true center of sweetgrass basket weaving is flourishing in Mount Pleasant, a sea island near the Cooper River.”

“It sounds as if your mother has found her niche,” Chandra said in a soft voice, filled with a mysterious longing.

“If not her niche, then her passion. Last year she met a man who teaches historical architecture and sits on the Charleston Historic Preservation and Community Planning board. I’ve never known my mother to laugh so much as when she’s with him. She moved in with him at the beginning of the year.”

“Good for her.”

A wide grin creased Preston’s face. “If you’re talking about a romance novel, then Rose Tucker is truly a heroine.”

“Is she going to marry her hero?”

“I don’t know. I think she’s still a little skittish about marriage, because she hasn’t sold her condo. They divide their time living at his house during the week, and come into the city to stay at her condo on the weekend. It doesn’t bother me or Yolanda if they never marry, as long as they’re happy.”

“Where does your sister live?” Chandra knew she was asking Preston a lot of questions, but she’d come to appreciate the sound of his sonorous baritone voice.

Settling back against the leather seat, she closed her eyes when he talked about his older sister, his brother-in-law and two sets of identical twin nephews. Again, she wondered why he hadn’t married and fathered children when he told of the outings with his nephews. She opened her eyes when he patted her knee.

“Tell me about your family so I know what to expect.”

Chandra recognized landmarks that indicated they were only blocks from her sister’s house. “Too late. We’re almost there.”

Preston groaned aloud when the voice coming from the GPS directed him to turn right at the next street. He’d wanted Chandra to brief him as to her relatives. “Did you tell your folks you were bringing a guest?”

“Nope.”

Decelerating, he maneuvered into a parking space across the street from a three-story Colonial. “Did they expect you to bring a guest?”

Chandra unbuckled her seat belt. “If you’re asking whether I normally attend family functions with a man, then the answer is no. It’s been more than three years since I’ve had a serious boyfriend.”

Smiling, Preston rested his right arm over the back of her seat. “So, I’m your boyfriend?”

She flashed an attractive moue. “No, P.J., you’re a friend.”

He leaned closer. “Do you think I’ll ever be your boyfriend?”

Chandra leaned closer until she was inhaling the moist warmth of Preston’s breath. “You can if...”

“If what?” he whispered.

“You can if I can trust you.”

Preston froze. “What’s with you and the trust thing?”

“It’s very important to me, Preston. Without trust there can be no boyfriend, girlfriend, no relationship.”

He smiled. “Are you amenable to something that goes beyond platonic?”

Chandra blinked. “I am, but only—”

“If you can trust me,” he said, completing her sentence.

“Yes.”

Preston angled his head, pressing his mouth to Chandra’s, reveling in the velvety warmth of her parted lips. It had been years since he’d sat in a car kissing a woman but there was something about Chandra Eaton that made him feel like an adolescent boy. First it was the unexpected erection after reading her erotic dreams and now it was having her close.

“You have my solemn vow that I will never give you cause to mistrust me.”