Kensie had been shouting to be heard, and as Willard flicked off his fume hood, the room got eerily quiet.
“Is that so?” Daphne crossed her arms. She’d never heard of a company that placed marketing over product, but it might be the reason Gibraltar was still so small. If the company followed Kensie’s sashaying hips, it was bound to lose focus. Her father had always told her to be careful with upper management who hired model-like assistants; he claimed their love of beauty clouded their ability to run a company and do the hard tasks. She wondered what dear old Dad would say about a marketing manager with those same qualifications. “Did you go to school for product marketing?”
Kensie whipped around and stared at her. “Do you mean, like, college?”
“Well, yeah. I suppose so.”
“While others were letting Daddy’s trust fund pay for their tuition and buy houses, I was off in the school of hard knocks learning to be the best marketing manager there is. You don’t need a degree to be good at something.” Kensie swung her hair with force. “I’m adamant about that, you’ll find out. I don’t care what the degrees on your wall say; I only care that you can do the job.”
“Of course,” Daphne said. “I had a stellar sense of smell before I became a nose. School just honed my skills. It helped me to understand how the business of fragrance works. It was like getting my MBA in smelling.” She smiled.
Kensie didn’t seem impressed. “Some of us have to find ways other than graduate school to hone our skill set.” She held her arm out and walked toward the older man as if she were solving the puzzle on Wheel of Fortune. “So this is Willard. Say hello, Willard.”
Willard noticed their presence at that point and gave a short nod. Maybe Daphne had expected too much of Gibraltar after Anne’s warm welcome. It wouldn’t be the first time her high expectations let her down. Willard seemed like a stuffy man in his short white dress shirt and Buddy Holly glasses. A typical science nerd. At least fragrance chemists held conversations in the lab. Or the ones she knew did anyway. They spoke so quickly in French that she caught about every sixth word, but the activity around her made her feel a part of something. In Paris, the space was so confined; it felt like she was among friends even if she was sitting alone in a corner café. At the very least, the waiters would flirt with her.
“Is he always so quiet?” she whispered to Kensie.
“He nodded. That’s a full conversation to Willard. Over there is John.”
John walked away from his machine and came toward them. Everything about him seemed intense: with his shock of dark curls and mascara-length eyelashes that aimed the intense green of his eyes like a laser pointer, he looked more like a character actor than a scientist. Daphne would have cast him in the role of a CSI suspect because he simply looked too good to be true. Like Mark, he had that coiffed appearance that suggested he spent a fair amount of time in front of the mirror. His very look made her uncomfortable, and she shifted her hips. He was probably in his early thirties, though his receding hairline made him look slightly older, but she was immediately on edge. His smooth exterior seemed more salesman than scientist.
He reached out a tanned, buff arm toward her as if he was flexing to make the movement. “You must be the infamous Daphne.”
She giggled, then immediately regretted her reaction as Kensie stared her down. It wasn’t as if she’d planned it. John made her nervous. The way a seventh-grade girl feels on her first slow dance. Not because he was handsome, but because he was so much like Mark in his self-assuredness. On some deeper, insane level, she subconsciously felt as though he had answers for her. As if a perfect stranger could tell her why Mark had left her at the altar . . .
“I’m Daphne.” She shook his hand, still thinking, Do you know why Mark left me?
When had she become so dependent and pathetic? She was in Dayton to heal. On her own. She’d been perfectly healthy in Paris, with a bevy of friends. She hadn’t needed Mark then, and she didn’t need him now. Though knowing that logically and believing it emotionally were two different things.
John looked at her with his piercing eyes as if he could see inside of her. She waited for him to speak.
“Willard doesn’t like change. Don’t be offended.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Come on over and smell what I’m working on. It will be good to get a trained professional’s opinion.”
“You’re a trained professional,” she answered. “I simply have a few more years of developing scent based on the emotion it creates.” The pit of her stomach felt hard at this first query to use her skill set. A skill set she was without.
“Humor me,” John said as he walked back to the metal fluted hood at his station.
“How do you design your scents now?”
“Most of them are standard. We generally don’t create new scents for products. Do we, Willard?”
“No one cares what their floor wax smells like,” Willard grunted.
Daphne wanted to retreat to Jesse’s office. She may not have a friend, exactly, in her new boss, but they’d struck a deal.
“Let Daphne be the judge of that. Come here.” John led her by her wrist to his station and stuck a pipette in a beaker. He held it up to her nose.
“Don’t you think your expectations might be high?” Kensie said. “She’s a nose, not a miracle worker.” She stuck her own nose in between them. “It doesn’t take a nose to tell you that smells awful. Like dirty feet. Do you even have an olfactory system?”
Daphne wanted to come to John’s rescue, to tell him the formulation smelled wonderful, but she couldn’t say either way without lying. She’d like to think he knew enough that it didn’t smell like dirty socks, but then again, she couldn’t decide what motivation lurked behind Kensie’s fashionable front.
“Maybe she is a miracle worker,” John said. “Beauty didn’t get her, and that’s a miracle in itself.”
“Beauty already has four scientists,” Willard said. “We only have two. Do the math.”
“You’re that small?” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but she’d hope to create a new family of friends in Dayton, and statistically things weren’t looking good.
“We are small, but we’re growing,” John said. “As long as we don’t eat it this quarter. We’re growing with our organic lines. People are all over that stuff now. Maybe you’ll have something to offer in that area, coming from perfume. We’re anxious to learn.” He turned toward the older gentleman. “Aren’t we, Willard?”
Willard grunted.
“That’s thrilled for Willard,” John explained.
“If you cared about the girl, you’d tell her the truth—that this division is one bad quarter away from being brought down,” Willard said.
Daphne flinched. “That wasn’t the impression I got from Jesse. He’s planning for new equipment.” She was the means to his end, she supposed, as he was for her—she wanted to get back to Paris and fragrance.
“He’s also planning for the Easter Bunny to visit this year, but it’s not going to happen.”
Daphne’s stomach tightened. “It’s that bad?”
“Don’t listen to Willard,” John said. “He’s a sky-is-falling type. Jesse will get the equipment, and with your creativity, I imagine that equipment will be put to good use.”
“I just don’t want to see another good man go down. If your expertise can’t save Jesse with new products, you should quit now, young lady. He’s got mouths to feed at home. Not just a new pair of shoes for you women to stumble about in.”
“Willard, that is a sexist comment,” Kensie said. “Daphne’s not responsible for Jesse making his numbers. That’s his problem.”
“Kensie,” John said, “you may not care if Jesse loses his job, knowing yours is safe, but we’ve been here long enough to know that nothing good comes from starting over with new leadership. Not in this place. It’s time the board of directors looked at the real problem.”
“Aw, leave her be, John,�
�� Willard said. “Kensie knows which side her bread is buttered on. She’s not going to see the truth even if you draw her a picture.”
“That’s fine, but she can keep her wagging tongue out of my lab. If I need marketing to know something, I’ll be sure and get out the memo.”
“It’s not just your lab. I was asked to come up here, if you must know. I don’t like being here any more than you like having me.” Kensie slipped out of her lab coat, tossed it at John, and stormed out of the lab, grabbing her shoes on the way.
Daphne didn’t know if she should follow or not, but her feet stayed planted because the lab was where she felt most at home. The tension with Kensie present was positively explosive by lab standards, and she wanted to get a feel for the room without the other woman’s presence. She also wanted to flee to Europe and beg Arnaud to take her back. How could she possibly be responsible for Jesse’s success or failure when she couldn’t smell a thing?
“That’s an angry young woman,” Willard said, but the comment seemed out of his character. “What right does she have to be bitter in her short years?”
John turned toward him. “Willard, I never thought you noticed Kensie.”
“How could I not notice, the way she slithers in here with Dave and her foul marketing reports that stink of nothing good. Young people think they know everything, and they’re too proud to learn what they don’t know. That girl doesn’t know a lot, but boy, can she stir up trouble. And I’ll go a step further: I think this division’s downturn is the result of her flawed reports.”
Daphne had never seen office politics so violently displayed. And while she hadn’t known anyone long enough to make an assessment, it seemed to her that no one had much faith in Jesse Lightner. And she’d just made a promise to the man. For someone who noticed every detail around her, she didn’t have the slightest ability to discern people. She trusted everyone until they burned her . . . a few hundred times. It was time for her to leave that kind of innocence behind. Until she learned more, she wasn’t going to take sides.
The door was yanked open, and Kensie stuck her head back into the lab. “You coming or not?”
“Yeah, I’ll be right there.”
Willard put down a pipette and ambled toward her. When he reached her, he stopped and pulled off his safety glasses. Misty gray, middle-aged eyes narrowed to focus on her, and she swallowed hard under his scrutiny.
“Go back to Paris, young lady. Or wherever it is you came from.”
John shifted his weight. “Willard, don’t say that. She’ll think we don’t want her here.”
John gazed right at her with his intense eyes, and she wondered how a man with that much charisma had settled into a life of science. “We do want you here,” he said. “Dave was very excited about a real nose on staff.”
“It’s for her own good,” Willard said and turned his attention back to Daphne. “Go back to Paris.”
With his gloved hand, John grabbed her and pulled her toward his station. “Come here, I want you to smell something.”
Her heart pounded and she tugged her hand, but he didn’t relinquish his grasp. “Kensie’s waiting for me.” She pointed toward the window to the hallway.
“I want to show you something first. Right now Gibraltar is living off royalties from our home dry-cleaning agents, but I think I may have something here.” He let go of her hand and lifted a beaker to her nose. “Here, smell.”
She sniffed but had no idea what her reaction should be. Should she be sickened or enthralled? “I, uh—wow.”
“Wow, good?” he asked.
“What’s it for?”
His enthusiasm diminished. “Can’t you tell?”
Her stomach swirled. “I—I’m getting used to all the new sights and sounds of Ohio. I think my sniffer’s off. Nerves, you know?”
He set the beaker down. “I understand. I want you to come back and let me know, though, because the formulation is proved, tried and true, but I don’t feel we ever had the scent right. New and improved packaging could remind consumers what it is they love about the product.”
Daphne had no idea what John was talking about, but she admired his enthusiasm and his implicit trust in her. She felt like Humpty Dumpty, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put her back together again. Part of her was left in Paris, another portion in Switzerland, and her heart? That she’d truly left in San Francisco, and with a man who’d never wanted it in the first place. The way John embraced her opinions as if they mattered so deeply created a sense of unworthiness in her. She felt like such a fraud. The great nose who couldn’t smell a thing.
Closure and healing.
Closure and healing.
That would be her mantra until her sense of smell returned. Until Paris called. She’d find a new ministry at a new church and that would take her mind off her problems. No one ever got better by focusing on life’s traumas. And she really had nowhere to run. Her parents didn’t want her home. Sophie was getting married. And Paris was only a distant memory until she could prove to Arnaud that she was worthy of his loyalty and she wouldn’t leave again. If only she’d placed that loyalty with her mentor rather than the young and charismatic Mark Goodsmith, she wouldn’t be in this mess out in the wilderness of Ohio.
“If you don’t like it, you can tell me,” John said.
“It’s not that, John. It really is as I said. Nerves. Maybe I’m getting the rumblings of a cold from traveling. I’m going to see a doctor tonight. I promise, the minute I can distinguish one note from another at my usual skill level, I’ll give you an honest opinion.”
If Daphne had hoped to find refuge in the quality of her work, she realized that probably wasn’t going to happen. From what she could glean, Gibraltar was on the brink of bankruptcy, and it was hard to cover up the stench of failure with a signature scent.
Chapter 5
Jesse exhaled as Daphne left for the lab, and he cradled his head in his hands. Her presence was a diversion that his department didn’t have time for. He had to find a place, a project, and a salary for her—all for the dog-and-pony show that was the shareholders’ meeting. It wasn’t enough to make and sell good products; he had to show constant growth and movement within his department. Under Dave’s direction, most of that movement seemed to be backward. But maybe that was only sour grapes talking. Leaving his vice president position at Procter & Gamble hadn’t been easy; answering to Dave only made things worse.
He tapped a letter on his desk, with its professional stationery and Mark Goodman’s name emblazoned across the top. He wouldn’t have remembered that Mark was Daphne’s former fiancé until the letter arrived, and clarity with it. There was a knock at his door, and he shuffled the letter under another paper and looked up. “Anne, how’s everything going?”
“Since I saw you ten minutes ago? Fine, why?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“No reason. Always want to make sure my pastor is taking care of his wife, that’s all. I’m concerned like that.”
“You are,” she said, but her arms remained crossed in front of her, as if she wasn’t quite buying it. “I wanted to let you know I made a reservation at the Spaghetti Warehouse. You sure know how to impress a girl.”
“I do my best.”
“Why wouldn’t you take her to the lab yourself? You’ve taken every other new employee. Is it because you didn’t want to hire a nose? Or because she’s so pretty?”
He sighed, exasperated. “Look at my desk. You can’t even see the wood. It’s because I’m busy and didn’t expect a new employee today. Nothing more to it than that.”
Anne looked past him out the window. “Is she very much like Hannah?”
“She’s nothing like Hannah,” he said through a clenched jaw. “Nothing at all.”
“She’s obviously artistic. Wasn’t Hannah an artist?”
He loved Anne, but sometimes she overstepped her boundaries. Saying that Hannah and Daphne were alike simply because they both harbored a
rtistry in their blood was like saying Winston Churchill and Hitler were alike because they were both leaders.
“Anne, I’d rather not talk about it. Daphne is no wilting flower who needs your support, I can promise you that much. If you’ll excuse me . . .” He looked back down at his desk.
Anne gave him that consoling look he’d come to hate. “Fine, she’s nothing like Hannah—only be nice to the girl. I wanted to keep this from becoming a sermon, but Dave is just looking for an excuse. He’s been threatened by you since you came; don’t give him the reason he needs to let you go. Just show Daphne the same respect you’d show any other formulator.” Anne walked out of his office, and he stared at the place where she’d stood.
Jesse had never heard her talk like that. To anyone. It served as a reminder that Daphne was probably brought in for the specific reason of becoming the cause for Jesse’s firing. He’d get no credit for any of the financial troubles he’d solved, but he’d take all of the blame for what Dave deemed as his failures.
The new nose had waltzed into his office in her peacock-blue tweed suit as if she owned the place. The fact that she’d smelled baby powder upon sight of him made him feel about as masculine as a drag queen. And the way she plucked his family photo off his desk and offered her opinion. Daphne had no need of him, or anyone else for that matter. Life wouldn’t overwhelm a woman like Daphne.
In that brief instant when she’d helped herself to his family photo, he’d connected to her—because he wanted a part of that confidence again. She’d reminded him of how proud he’d been of his accomplishments and his family. The way her soulful eyes lit up as she discussed powerful memories—as if she could swim deeply in their joy by pulling them up at will. He coveted that ability. Memories brought no joy for him, and that made him feel guilty. He had a lot to be grateful for.
The space Anne had vacated was now complemented by Daphne in his doorway. He drank in her appearance with fresh eyes. She possessed an exotic, alluring beauty with her long, silky dark hair and deep blue eyes . . . In spite of all she’d recently endured, her eyes sparkled with an inner light that reminded him joy did not come from circumstances.
The Scent of Rain Page 6