Joseph set the car seat on the second row of seats in the Range Rover, then placed Merry in it and secured the harness while Crystal got in beside her. She was exhausted. Not physically but emotionally. She stared at the back of Joseph’s head when he got in behind the wheel and maneuvered out of the parking lot.
* * *
Joseph slipped on a pair of sunglasses as he followed the signs for the airport exit. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he noticed Crystal had closed her eyes. “What’s her name?”
“Meredith, but I call her Merry.”
“How old is she?”
“She turned one October tenth.”
He smiled. “An October baby like her mother.”
Although he wanted and needed answers, Joseph decided to wait. Crystal’s father’s health crisis was a lot more pressing than uncovering why she had decided to conceal the fact that he’d fathered a child. Fate had intervened, bringing them together, and he had no intention of letting Crystal walk out of his life again.
Destiny
Crystal Eaton took a quick glance at the navigation screen on the Ford Escape. She was thirty-three miles from Charleston, South Carolina, less than half an hour from her destination, and if she hadn’t had to drive down to Miami earlier that morning, she would’ve arrived much sooner. As she unclenched her teeth, the lines of tension bracketing her mouth vanished.
Her mother had called crying hysterically as soon as Crystal had maneuvered out of the parking garage at her Fort Lauderdale condo. She hadn’t been able to understand a word her mother was saying, and in a panic she’d driven south instead of north.
It wasn’t the first time in her life Crystal wished she hadn’t been an only child. If Jasmine Eaton hadn’t been able to reach her, then she would have been forced to contact her son and/or other daughter whenever she had an emotional meltdown.
If it had been a medical emergency, Crystal would have postponed her plan to meet with the owner of several luxury hotels, but she then discovered the cause of her mother’s latest hissy fit. Jasmine’s current boyfriend had refused to take her with him on a business trip to Las Vegas, leading Jasmine to accuse him of cheating on her.
Biting her tongue and instead of telling Jasmine she was too old for adolescent histrionics, Crystal smiled, issuing her usual mantra, “Mother, this, too, shall pass.”
This was followed by another crying jag until Crystal reminded her mother that her eyes were swollen and her cheeks blotchy.
It was as if someone had flipped a switch when Jasmine raced to her bathroom to examine her face, declaring no man was worth sacrificing her beauty.
Crystal knew her own reluctance to marry was because of her parents’ inability to form lasting relationships. Her fifty-four-year-old father had been married four times and her mother, only a year younger than her ex-husband, had had so many dates with a steady parade of men coming and going that Crystal stopped counting.
However, Jasmine was quick to inform anyone who labeled her a serial dater that she was very discriminating when it came to sleeping with a man. Jasmine’s gratification came from being seen on the arm of a handsome gentleman, not sleeping with him.
Crystal’s cell rang and she glanced at the number on the dashboard. Activating the Bluetooth feature, she said, “Hey, Xavier.”
“Where are you, Criss?”
“I’m about forty minutes outside the city.”
“Selena and I expected you hours ago.”
She’d promised her cousin she would stop and spend some time with him, his wife and their toddler daughter. “I would’ve been here sooner if I didn’t have to drive to Miami and check on my mother. She just broke up with her latest male friend, and that always sends her into drama mode. I believe she liked this one more than she’s willing to admit.”
“Isn’t she a bit too old to have tantrums?” Xavier asked, chuckling softly.
Crystal rolled her eyes, although her cousin couldn’t see her. “Please, Xavier, don’t get me started. My mother should’ve become an actress instead of an art dealer.”
Xavier laughed again. “Your mother is drama personified.”
Crystal frowned. “I don’t know why I mentioned her, because talking about my mother’s antics always gives me a headache. It’s too late to stop by tonight,” she said, deftly changing the topic of conversation, “so I’m going directly to the hotel. I have meetings tomorrow and Friday, but I’m free this weekend.”
“Why don’t you come spend at least Saturday or Sunday with us?”
“That sounds wonderful. I’ll call to let you know when I’ll be there. See you soon.”
“We’ll be here,” Xavier said.
Tapping a button on the steering wheel, Crystal ended the call. Crystal smiled for the first time in hours. She was about to embark on a project she’d dreamt about since decorating her first dollhouse. But this project wasn’t about dollhouses but two historic landmark buildings the owner planned to turn into an inn and a bed-and-breakfast.
The original owners of the three-story, early-nineteenth-century structures had used them as their secondary residences whenever they relocated their families from the cotton, rice and indigo plantations built along the creeks and marshes in order to escape the swamp fevers so prevalent at the time during the intense summer heat.
She knew she’d taken a big step when she left her position with a prestigious Fort Lauderdale architectural and design firm to set up her own company—Eaton Interior and Design. She’d come to the realization she’d been overworked, overlooked for promotions, underpaid for her expertise, all the while being subtly sexually harassed by one of the partners. Rather than initiate a lawsuit against him and the firm, she’d decided it was time to leave.
Despite Jasmine’s occasional histrionics, Crystal had to thank her mother for giving her the encouragement she needed to strike out on her own. Jasmine might have been impetuous when it came to her relationships, but she was the complete opposite when buying and selling art. Jasmine revealed that she, too, was thirty when she’d sold her first painting, so it would stand to reason that her daughter would start up her own company at thirty.
Two years later Jasmine opened a thriving and exclusive art gallery in an upscale Miami neighborhood with a growing clientele that included celebrities who wanted to decorate the walls of their sprawling mansions with works of art.
Crystal didn’t have a shop—not yet—but she did have recommendations from several of her father’s clients and one from her mother. Not once had she harbored any guilt about using her parents’ name to further her career. It was the least they could do for emotionally abandoning her as a child. She’d found herself competing with her father’s wives for his attention, while her mother had never recovered from losing her husband, the man she considered the love of her life.
Crystal
