“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