Read Online Command Performance by Nora Roberts - Free Book Online Page B

you’ll be performing American plays, right?”
    “Right. Still—”
    “No stills, no buts.” A trio of rings glinted on Chris’s hand as she waved Eve’s words away. “You
are
representing American theater. And you’re going to be fantastic.”
    “See.” Eve leaned over the suitcase to kiss Chris’s cheek. “That’s why I need you.”
    “I’ll do my best to work my schedule so I can be there for the first performance. Even though I know you’ll be too busy to do more than blink at me.”
    “I promise to do more than that. Hopefully after the first performance, I’ll settle down.” She folded a pair of slacks by the pleats, then smoothed them carefully into the case. “It’s the preparation and paperwork that has me edgy.”
    “You’ve Daddy’s knack for handling details, a fact that constantly amazes me.” Still, Chris had to restrain herself from asking Eve if she had her passport. “I don’t doubt you’re going to pull this thing off without a hitch.”
    Had she packed the red suit? Eve started to check one more time, then forced herself to stop. She’d packed it. She’d packed everything. “I wish you were going with me so you could tell me that at regular intervals.”
    “The Bissets trust you. This wouldn’t be happening otherwise. I might not be there for the next few weeks, but you’ll have Brie behind you, and Alex and Bennett.”
    Eve zipped her case closed in one long move. “I don’t think I like the idea of having Alexander behind me.”
    “Still rub you the wrong way?”
    “At least. I never get the urge to curtsy and stick out my tongue with Brie or Ben. With him—”
    “With him I wouldn’t advise it,” Chris said with a laugh. “He takes his position too seriously. He has to.”
    “I suppose.”
    “Eve, you can’t understand what it’s like to be the first-born. I can sympathize in a way. The Hamiltonsdon’t have a country, but as far as Daddy’s concerned, we have an empire.” She sighed a bit, knowing her own choices had never quite satisfied him. “Since there was no son to pass the business on to, the pressure fell to me to learn it. When the message finally got across that that wasn’t going to work, the pressure changed to my marrying someone who could take over the business. Maybe that’s why I’ve never done either.”
    “I guess I’ve never really understood.”
    “Why should you? It was different for you.”
    “I know. No pressure here.” With a sigh, Eve leaned back against her dresser, taking a last look at the room she wouldn’t see for months. “Of course I had to go to school and perform well, and it was expected that I’d restrain myself from doing anything to disgrace the family, but if I’d wanted to sit by the pool for the rest of my life and read magazines, it would have been fine.”
    “Well, you hid the fact that you had a brain very well.”
    “I did, didn’t I?” She could smile at it now. “From myself, too. In any case, by the time it was discovered, the Hamilton Company of Players was too well established for Daddy to expect me to come into the business. So you’re right. I don’t really know what it is to be the heir and have little say in my own destiny. Even knowing that, it’s difficult for me to feel sorry for Alexander.”
    “Oh, I don’t know if you should. He’s meant to rule as much by personality as by circumstances of birth. I just wish the two of you got along better.” She took a small white daisy out of a vase on Eve’s dresser, broke the stem short, then slipped it into her sister’s buttonhole. “You’re going to be working closely with him and it isn’t going to help if one of you is always making the other snarl.”
    Eve took the rest of the flowers out of the vase, wrapped the dripping stems in a tissue and handed them to Chris. “I don’t think we’ll be working that closely.”
    “Isn’t Alex president of the center?”
    “Presidents delegate,” she said, and opened her purse