“Regardless. My idea is that you start a perfume line for the home—but it’s something you do on the side, not during the work hours when you’re working with Willard. When cooler weather comes in the fall, you won’t want to get out on an archery field after a long day at work. And I’m not sure you remember how to knit all that well.”
She laughed. “I suppose not, but making a perfume I can’t smell sounds even more depressing than a hat that unravels.”
“You know the formulations, so all you have to do is find scents for the home. Things like lavender water for ironing and sheets. You find scents that would cover the fish smell in a kitchen, or freshen the sheets as if they were washed yesterday. You do this, and I think your sense of smell will return. You know, going about your business as if this never happened.”
“It might have merit. What made you think of this?”
“Because when I quit my VP job, everything started working again. I moved here. My sister moved in, and life got a whole lot simpler. A perfume line for a company like Gibraltar will enable you to go back into the industry without any trouble. You’ll have proven results.”
“Why would you do this for me?” She narrowed her eyes. “Do you want me off of your budget that badly?”
“I couldn’t help my wife, Daphne, but I can help you. I feel like that’s why God wouldn’t let the scent of gas die in my nostrils that night. He was giving me an opportunity to let go of what I couldn’t do for Hannah.”
She didn’t know how to respond . . . Maybe he was reading too much into their odd working relationship. But she recognized that the conclusion made her feel warm and enveloped—just as she’d felt when he kissed her in Paris in her dream.
Chapter 20
It took them less than an hour to get to the convention center, and Jesse enjoyed listening to Daphne’s ideas for the household perfume line. It was the most animated he’d ever seen her, and he took pleasure in the fact that his “epiphany” may truly have been worthwhile. It helped him avoid dwelling on his guilt over leaving Ben at the preschool. Lots of families had no choice, and he understood that, but it felt like another betrayal of Hannah, who had planned to stay at home with him and any future children who might have come.
“He’ll be fine,” Daphne said, as if she could read his mind.
He exited I-75 and proceeded along Fifth Street toward the convention center. When he saw the sign posted for the Winter Bridal and Floral Expo, he suddenly had another epiphany. He knew why Kensie hadn’t wanted to attend the event. It wasn’t about marketing trends or floral scents at all. It was about showing Daphne just who ruled at Gibraltar and how easily she got her way. He recalled that Kensie had arranged for him to do a baby expo when he’d arrived at Gibraltar so she could inform him of her power. The woman really was heartless, but Dave thought she could do no wrong, and therefore she was a force to be reckoned with.
He pulled into the parking garage. “You going to be all right in there?”
Daphne didn’t answer. She blinked rapidly as she took in the lacy, balloon-infested entrance to the convention center. “I have developed an aversion to all things tulle.”
“We won’t stay long.” He pulled into a parking slot, and the two of them exited the car. They each took their badges and slipped them over their necks.
They were met at the door by a woman wearing a bridal gown and passing out postcards. He unwittingly took one. Daphne took it from him and slid it into a canvas bag.
“Grab as much as you can,” she said. “All the stuff will remind us of things later.”
He nodded and swallowed hard. “This doesn’t bother you?”
She surveyed the room. “Actually, it gives me relief that I’m not here as a bride.”
A woman with pink feathers somehow woven into her updo grabbed Daphne’s arm and led her to a stylist’s chair. “You’re perfect,” she said. “Come sit down for a minute and let me give you a free styling.”
Daphne patted her hair. “Oh no, I’m here on business. I don’t need—”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll make you look gorgeous.”
Daphne looked wary, and judging by the woman’s hairstyle, she had just cause.
The woman pulled out Daphne’s severe ponytail and loosened her hair so it fell upon her shoulders. Jesse looked away; it felt invasive to watch. He checked out the booths behind them, making a mental note of all he wanted to see in regard to colors and florals for the upcoming winter wedding season. When he turned around, Daphne’s hair was piled high atop her head with baby’s breath pressed into the hairstyle.
She jumped down from the chair and said thank you, but she came toward him with ire. “Let’s go.”
“You look good. Do you like it?”
“I look like Marge Simpson.”
“Not true. Hers is blue.”
“Come on,” Daphne said, dragging him across the aisle.
A man in a black suit approached them. With his slicked-back hair, he looked more like an undertaker than a photographer, but he stood in front of a plethora of photographs.
“Are you the happy couple?”
“No,” Daphne said.
“Free photos today under the arch,” he said, waving toward a white, wooden arch riddled with fake flowers. “Come on, sir. Don’t you want to help her remember how she wants her hair on her special day?”
“Marge?” Jesse said, holding his palm up to help her up the red carpeted step.
“Not alone, Homer,” she said, pulling him behind her. “Can you get us together?”
“Naturally,” the photographer said.
She turned to face Jesse and smiled up at him coyly. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“Stand behind her and put your arms around her. Don’t you want everyone to know how you love her?” the photographer asked.
“Oh, everyone,” Jesse said. He felt an elbow in his stomach, but she pulled his arms around her waist. He hadn’t touched a woman since he’d lost Hannah, certainly not an employee, but their bond felt natural, the way they interacted, easy. Like they’d known each other forever.
“Perfect,” the photographer said. “You two are naturals.” He backed up. “All right, look at each another.”
They did, and promptly broke into laughter.
Daphne walked out of the arch. “All righty. We’ve got to get moving or all the cake samples will be gone.”
“Take my card. When’s your wedding?”
“I’m not sure,” Daphne said. “He didn’t show up the last time.” She winked and strode down the aisle.
Jesse just shrugged.
“Got an e-mail?” the photographer said. “I’ll send you the pictures.”
Jesse pulled out his business card. “Thanks, that would be great.” He rushed to catch up with Daphne, who stood in front of a floral display.
“Honeysuckle. It’s the color of 2012,” she said. “Smell.”
He leaned over and drew in the sweet scent.
“See this color on the flower? Not the yellow, the other color.”
He nodded.
“It’s the color of the year. Beautiful, right?”
“What is that, red? Pink?”
“It’s honeysuckle. A bright pink with a bit of mauve.”
“What color did you have?” he asked. “At your wedding?”
“Sapphire and gold.”
“Any regrets?” he asked, before he thought better of the question.
“None. Everything was perfect.” She shrugged. “Except the groom didn’t show up. But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the show?”
He laughed and followed her out of the floral section.
“What color did you have?” she asked, glancing back at him.
“I—I can’t remember. I wore black. She wore white.”
“Helpful.” She halted abruptly in front of him.
He turned and saw a display of wedding gowns to their right.
“That was my gown,” she said, pointing.
“You must have been beautiful in it.”
She exhaled. “Let’s go find some cake.” She started collecting pamphlets and shoving them roughly into her canvas bag. He took it from her shoulder.
“I’ll get this.”
“Did you notice the gowns are more traditional this year?”
“No.”
“That means we’ll want to go traditional with fragrance too. It will affect people’s moods.”
“Traditional scents?”
“It probably means the time isn’t right for home scents that offer something new, but you never know. Kensie might run us some marketing polls.”
At the sound of Kensie’s name, his gut twisted. Something about that woman drove him crazy. A conversation with her was like running through a minefield, riddled with unseen dangers.
“Let’s keep Kensie out of this idea for now.” He quickly changed the subject. “Do you think you’d wear the same gown again?”
“Oh, I won’t get married again.” She reached down for a piece of cake with pink icing and scooped up a forkful. “Want to try it?” She shoved it into his mouth, and before he could answer, he was chewing.
“Mmm.” He nodded. “Daphne, you can’t let a tool like that guy ruin marriage for you. Marriage is a beautiful thing.”
“So when’s your next wedding?” she prodded.
“I won’t get married again. I had my chance.”
“Is that really fair to Ben?” she asked.
She may as well have taken the cake knife off the table and stabbed him.
“Life hasn’t been fair to Ben, but I’m devoted to him. No sense bringing in a woman to take the time he deserves away from him.”
“So here we are: two avowed singles at a wedding extravaganza.”
“That cake’s good,” he said. “Do you get tired of people telling you that you’ll meet someone?”
“No one’s really saying that yet. They might think Mark got lucky.”
“Anyone who would think that doesn’t see straight.”
“My mom thinks that. She thinks if I could have kept my mouth quiet more when Mark was wrong about formulations, he might have stayed.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to let him blow himself up if he was wrong. Would you?”
He laughed. “No, probably not.”
“Mark was a terrible chemist. A brilliant mind and ever capable, but he was lazy and took shortcuts without thought to consequences. He wasn’t careful about ratios, not until he understood that ratios and chemistry could make him wealthy.” She grinned at the thought of Mark when he didn’t think measuring mattered. “One time he burned his eyebrows off in the lab.”
“Really?” He couldn’t help his smile.
“Took at least a month to grow back. Do you know how weird a person looks without eyebrows? It’s very disconcerting to strangers.”
They walked into the floral hall, and the scent of fresh blooms hit his senses. He watched Daphne carefully to see if any of the smells affected her. She bent into a bouquet of red roses and looked up. “Nope,” she said.
“You can’t smell anything? If a room smelled like a flower shop, would that be a warm smell?”
“Fresh. Moist, but not necessarily homey. More romantic or tropical, I would guess.”
“Do you like the ideas for the home perfumes?”
“There are lots of things on the market like that now.”
“Not in the household goods aisles. The benefit here is we take those grocery store buyers and grab their attention with an unmet need.”
She picked up a small bouquet. “It’s hand-wrapped, do you see?”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s simpler. People are scaling back.”
“Not on rings. Did you see the size of those things?”
“Colors. I noticed the colors. A lot of chocolate diamonds, and green ones, sapphires. That’s not traditional, but it’s definitely unique. And every bride wants to be unique.” Her blue eyes stared into the distance.
Mark was an idiot if he thought she’d be waiting around for him to return, Jesse thought. She’d last about a week at his church’s singles’ group.
“You’ll be back in Paris before you know it. Or maybe New York.”
“You’re that confident about this idea?”
“I’m that confident in your nose. That it will work when you’re where you belong.”
She paused. “Jesse, what if I am where I belong?”
He wouldn’t allow himself to believe it. She was destined for greater things, and he planned to make her dreams come true. As some sort of redemption for how he’d failed Hannah. “You’re not where you belong.”
“How can you know that?”
“Don’t you think you’d be able to do what you do best if you were where you belonged?”
“Not if God didn’t want me to do it for some reason I didn’t yet understand.”
“He allowed you to be trained as a perfumer.”
“He allowed Paul to be trained as the foremost scholar among Jews. Only to have him preach to the Gentiles.” She shrugged. “Just saying.”
He grinned. “So now you’re going biblical on me.”
“If I have to. I just think your conclusion may be premature. Yes, I’ll admit, I miss perfume. I miss it badly, but I haven’t had the chance to get my feet wet here. Maybe this is where I belong.”
“I was a star at a young age, and that was all thwarted by circumstances that I couldn’t control. I can control these, Daphne. I can get you back to Paris. Or at least as far as New York.”
“For someone who thinks I’m supposedly so good at what I do, you seem awfully anxious to get rid of me.”
“Do you want my help or not?”
“What does that mean? You’ll give me a reference if I create a selling line of household sprays?”
He didn’t want to promise anything. Already, the idea of Daphne leaving bothered him, but he couldn’t offer her anything she needed.
His cell phone vibrated, and he worried that Ben was still crying, but it was only Anne.
“Hey, Anne.”
“I need you and Daphne to come back to the office immediately.”
“We’re just getting started. Isn’t Dave there?”
“Jesse, I need you to come back now. I don’t want to tell you over the phone.”
“It’s not Ben, is it?” he said frantically.
“Ben? No, it’s not Ben. Nothing to do with your family. It’s an office emergency. I need you here.”
“Okay, we’ll head back now. See you in an hour.” He took the bouquet from Daphne’s hand and placed it back on the skirted table. “We’ve got to go. I pray it’s not an accident in the lab. Anne’s not usually frantic like that.”
Daphne closed her eyes and prayed. “Lord in heaven, we ask for peace as we make our way back to an unknown situation. Help our fears to be worse than anything that’s happened. Amen.”
“Amen.” He took her hand and they raced out the doors back through the bridal displays to the parking garage.
The bridal show had been the first time he’d let his guard down and really had fun in ages. He wouldn’t have believed it if someone told him he’d enjoy a wedding event, but Daphne brightened the world around her.
Because of that, she needed more. She needed to go. Their new product launch would allow her to fly away like a balloon.
Chapter 21
Daphne had fun with Jesse. Being with him felt easy, as it did with Sophie, and Daphne felt confident that while her mother thought marriage the only acceptable option for a young Greek woman, there were other possibilities. Friends made uneventful events fun. She’d had a good time at a wedding show, and if that didn’t prove that her heart was on the mend, surely the fact that she hadn’t checked her phone for possible texts from Mark in the past two hours would strengthen her case.
&nbs
p; She’d make more friends. She’d invest in Dayton until the time came to leave for Paris. A huge weight lifted as she realized if marriage wasn’t in her future, she hadn’t failed at life, even if her mother did think otherwise. Eventually she’d get her sense of smell back, and life would be fuller and richer without the roller coaster of love.
She looked out at the passing landscape. “I can’t get over how barren things feel here. There are so many buildings just left for dead along the road.”
“It’s cheaper to build from scratch, I guess.”
It wasn’t like back home, where real estate was so expensive and people were crammed up against one another. Ohio had space to spare, but even the Ohio River was subdued by its murky green tones. She missed the mountains and the ocean.
The anxiety of what might be facing them back at the office came back, marring the bright morning they’d shared.
“Anne didn’t give you any idea what this is about?”
“Not a clue,” he answered. “But they must not be able to reach Dave if they called me. I’m next on the ladder when we’re in trouble.”
The miles went by quickly, and they arrived at Gibraltar’s offices in record time. “I’m glad my sister’s getting Ben. Who knows what awaits me upstairs?”
“Jesse, if you ever need help with Ben, I want you to know it’s no trouble for me to help. An on-site scientifically trained babysitter might be just what the doctor orders someday.”
“Too true.”
Upstairs, a solemn skeleton crew milled about in the main office. Anne came toward them and pulled Jesse into Dave’s office. Daphne looked around for Kensie to find out what had happened, but she was nowhere in sight—which made sense, since she was supposed to be with Daphne at the wedding show.
She looked for someone else to ask, but everyone seemed to avoid her gaze and move away as she got closer to them. She decided to head to the lab.
In the stark bright white of the lab, Daphne felt at home. She donned a white coat with her name embroidered on it and headed to her station. Willard was nowhere in sight, but John, looking pale and unkempt, tinkered at his station. His eyes focused intently on his mixture.
“I assume you heard,” he said.
“I didn’t hear anything. What happened?” She stepped closer to his station, and he put down the mixture.
The Scent of Rain Page 21