The Scent of Rain (15 page)

She glanced up at him, and he gave a curt nod.

“Apple.”

“I know it's an apple. What kind of apple?”

Jesse cleared his throat and pretended there was something in his eye and puckered his lips.

“Green,” she said. “Sour . . . Granny Smith.”

Dave appeared unimpressed.

Jesse was worried that the strips and their scents would get progressively harder. He had no clue what he'd do if Dave came up with bamboo or iris or something equally complicated. Daphne fidgeted in her seat as Dave waved the next scent in front of her. This one was a wood of some sort, but Jesse couldn't have placed the type if his life depended upon it. He slapped the table, startling the chemists on the other side.

“It's a wood,” Daphne said, understanding his odd game of charades. “There are a lot of competing scents right now. I'm having trouble placing it. It's better for a nose to keep the scent strips far away from each other so the scents don't mingle.”

“Dave, any of the chemists in here can do this,” Kensie said.

“I think what Kensie is trying to say is we've got chemists on the clock,” Jesse said, trying to regain control. “Time is money, and we've got a lot to cover today. Why don't we start with you, Willard? How's your current formulation?”

Willard, who was like a cross between the Quaker Oats man and Regis Philbin, stood up. He liked to make things official. “Marketing tells me that a sink cleaner is needed that's gritty enough to get grease off of stainless steel but wipes away clean. Apparently women”—he paused—“excuse me, brand users, are complaining that the grit leaves a film. They like the springy lemon scent, but the residue has to go. I'm working on that formula.”

“Excellent,” Jesse said, hoping to regain control of his own department meeting. “Any success yet?”

“So far it's not as effective without the gritty texture. I'm hoping to add more vinegar solution to thin it without lessening its impact.” Willard checked his watch. “Anne, can you get me the minutes for the rest of the meeting? Because Dave wants Daphne to perform circus tricks, and Kensie wants us to worship the marketing god, and I have real work to do.” Willard exited as if the walls of Jericho had come down around him.

The chatter rose in the room, and several conversations were going on at once. Normally, Jesse would rein it back in, but at the moment he just wanted Daphne to escape Dave's party tricks.

“All right,” Dave said. “I guess no one's in the mood for this week's staff meeting. Let's all get back to work.”

Jesse watched his staff close their notebooks and portfolios as the meeting exploded in a wave of disrespect. He tried to maintain a modicum of control. “Leave your current reports for me. If I have any questions, I'll contact you this afternoon.”

Jesse had inherited Team Catastrophe. Before that morning, he thought he'd made progress in bringing them together, overriding their individual loyalties to Jesse's various predecessors, but it was an uphill battle. Between Dave's constant meddling and overriding his authority and Kensie's stirring up dissension, gaining control always felt slightly out of reach.

The room had cleared except for Daphne, who sat there looking bewildered, and Dave, who paced like a rabid animal.

“Jesse, Daphne was supposed to help you bring this team together,” Dave said. “They look worse than ever. Willard is doing just as he always does: whatever he pleases. You're going to end up exactly where your three predecessors did unless you find a way to make that group work together as a team. When I hired you, you said that you had management skills, but I'm not seeing them.”

“You excused the meeting,” Jesse said in shock.

“Because nothing was getting done!” Dave exclaimed. “I didn't expect this from a vice president at Procter & Gamble.”

Jesse's jaw twitched. He was used to Dave's demeaning manner, but being reamed out in front of a new employee brought in a whole new need to stand up for himself. “I never had one failed quarter at Procter & Gamble,” he said quietly. “Not one.”

“I didn't get to corporate by making excuses. Anybody can make it at a company where they have money to throw at every problem. Figure it out, Jesse.”

Dave got to corporate by marrying the owner's daughter, but what good would it do Jesse to say that? He felt two feet tall, getting chastised in front of Daphne. His skin seemed too small for his body, and he took a swig from his coffee, which was cold. He turned back to face his boss and met Dave's hard glare. “I have a plan, and you'll see results or I'll quit the job myself and spare you the trouble of firing me.”

Dave left without another word, tapping the door frame twice as hard as usual on his way out.

A cold shadow of air brushed Jesse. Daphne stood and faced him. She swiped the scent strip from the table and sniffed it. Her eyes filled with liquid, and she tried to blink the would-be tears away.

“I'm sorry you had to see that,” he said, feeling like a sorry excuse for a man.

She breathed deeply in and out. “You did that for me.” Her soft voice barely registered. “Why?”

“I did it for both of us. We're going to win, Daphne. It's our turn.”

Daphne's bright eyes sparkled with hope, and he wondered what she must have been like before Mark. She possessed enough resilience that she'd learn from her experience. In contrast, he still wanted to rescue every person in need because he couldn't save his wife.

“I was so selfish this morning. You were trying to tell me about Hannah.”

He shrugged. “It doesn't matter. The past doesn't matter. Winning is what matters now.”

“The past matters to you, and so it matters to me.”

He nearly teared up at her words. It felt so good to have empathy.

He pulled the cologne bottle she'd given him out of his pocket. “Can I keep this?”

“I wouldn't wear it if you don't want to be married. It's pretty potent,” she said with the essence of a smile.

“I'll take that into consideration.”

“Ben's a lucky boy.”

The depth of Daphne's blue eyes stunned him. Each time he looked deep within them, it was like seeing them for the first time. He couldn't allow her innocence to capture him; it wasn't fair to her. But he loved the idea of their newfound alliance. For once in his long career at Gibraltar, he felt as if he could actually win.

Chapter 9

D
aphne piled her bags and her bow into the back of Jesse's small, electric-blue hatchback. He'd insisted on taking her to her new house, and she was grateful for the company. She'd clutched Mark's letter in her pocket throughout the day, but she still hadn't read it. He'd stolen her life right out from under her, and his only attempt at an apology was a letter to her new employer. She hoped it was an apology, at least.

“This works out well. I have to get home early for Ben today.”

“I'd like to meet him,” she said.

“You will.” He grinned all the way to his eyes.

They were silent as Jesse drove onto the freeway and they left the high-rises of downtown behind them.

“Your dad bought in a good area, near the university. It's one of the better neighborhoods, so I guess we won't have to worry about your being home alone.”

“My dad is good at real estate.” He wasn't great at being there, but he was good at business. “Jesse, did you do anything with packaging yet? Did you ask them about my scent?”

“You didn't read the letter yet?” Jesse looked at her. “From Mark?”

She shook her head and noticed how uncomfortable he seemed with her answer.

He pulled the car off the freeway and to the side of the road by the brown grass. He met her gaze with his steely blue-green eyes, and she realized that she trusted him. But then, she'd trusted Mark too. Maybe, as Sophie suggested, she wasn't the best judge of character. But she had no reason to
mistrust
Jesse, and he was only her boss.

“What's Mark's story?” he asked.

“Pardon?” she asked, wondering why he'd pulled the car over.

“What's Mark's background? How was he suddenly able to qualify for your job when he couldn't originally get a job in Paris—or at Gibraltar?”

“He's a brilliant chemist.” She turned in her seat to face Jesse, who looked skeptical. “He really is. But he grew up poor, and he had this deep need to follow the money. At first he thought the money was in big pharma, but he gave up that dream when he saw the prices on designer fragrances. He thought he could produce them more cheaply and start his own business.”

She didn't tell him why pharma had rejected Mark and killed that dream. She vowed that she'd be more careful with whom she shared things from here on out. She'd given Mark all the ammunition he'd needed to take her job and her fragrance. She wouldn't make that mistake again no matter how trustworthy someone appeared.

“Why did you pull over?” she asked.

Jesse looked at the road. “I wanted to give you a chance to read Mark's letter. I want you to reassure me you haven't given up the fight for the life he stole.”

“Why?” she asked. Jesse's personal interest in her seemed strange at best.

“Because I know what giving up a dream does to a person, and I need to know I'm not helping steal yours. It may not make sense to you, but you just have to trust me. I don't want you to stay for the six months if it's going to cost you the dream.”

In his eyes she saw truth, but also something more that she couldn't identify. “I haven't given up the dream. I won't give up the dream, but I'm a woman of my word and I'll stay until the stockholders meeting.”

“I appreciate that.”

“What about your dream? Is that what I am? A reminder of what you gave up?”

A shadow fell across his eyes. “My dream is for Ben. That's enough for me.”

“I hope so,” she said, but she thought his voice seemed awfully hollow. Grief hadn't left him for a moment, and she prayed that if her presence did anything, it would teach him to dream again.

“I don't want to make this about me. You were telling me Mark wanted to start his own business. Did he?”

She squirmed in her seat, anxious for him to get on the road and take the attention off of her. She was afraid she'd let it slip that she couldn't smell, afraid he already had an inkling of her issue.

“Mark needed capital to get started. He was doing sales for that reason, and he thought I could support the rest with my job here. That's why I was a little worried he'd steal the formula for Volatility!”

“Does he have the formula?”

“Most of it. I kept one ingredient out of it. It's my favorite scent. One I've never told a soul.”

“Why would you keep that from him if you were marrying him?”

She shrugged. “I must have had an instinct, which tells me that maybe I overlooked a few things about my fiancé. It's the top note. It would be the first thing he smelled, and if he ever really knew me, he'd have known it from the beginning. I never made a secret of why I loved this scent. My guess is that Mark has claimed Volatility! as his own. That's why my best friend, Sophie, sent the sample to my old boss. They won't produce it if there's even an inkling that another nose designed it.”

“What is the note?”

“If I told you that, I'd have to kill you.”

“You want to get back to Paris. I want to keep my job and feed my son. For now, we have to trust each other. I trust you to keep your scent to yourself.”

She swallowed past the lump in her throat. She didn't think she had a choice. Not at least until she patented the packaging for Volatility! Which Mark may have already done. He had stolen her last shred of dignity; what wasn't he capable of?

“Jesse?”

“Yes.”

“I—” She bit at a fingernail. How could she tell him she didn't have the skills he needed to save his job? “Is there an archery range in town?”

“A—what?” He started the car up again and merged back onto the freeway.

She felt oddly comforted by Jesse's triumph over tragedy. Life went on. His situation made hers feel relatively mundane, and she vowed to pray for his full healing and understanding that there was nothing he could have done to save his wife.

“I shoot when I'm nervous and need to think. I want to shoot until I figure my way out of this. I need to regain Arnaud's trust, and yet I feel so betrayed by my mentor. How could he give my job to Mark, of all people?”

“Don't you have to move in first?”

She realized she sounded crazy, but in her defense, he wasn't sounding like the sanest man on the planet either. The two of them had been thrust into each other's lives, and for now, they needed one another. “I guess.”

“I'm not going back to the office today. Do you have a ride in tomorrow morning?”