Rochelle Alers - Always an Eaton

“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.”