The Scent of Rain (8 page)

Kensie looked at her. “You're easily impressed, I'd say. Are you planning to live downtown?”

“Um, I'm not exactly sure. It seems my fian—father purchased a house here, but I haven't seen it yet. I plan to stay in a hotel first and get situated.”

“Your dad . . . your dad bought you a house?”

“As an investment. He does real estate development for a living.” She longed to change the subject. “So tell me about the lab.”

“It's a lab.” Kensie shrugged her delicate shoulders. “I don't see how it's any different from any other lab. It's got scientists who are all brains and no street smarts, certainly no chivalry or dating sense. That's what I'm here at Gibraltar for—to bring common sense into your world so you can focus and I can get your products to the market.”

Daphne couldn't find her voice, as two of the scientists were within listening distance. Luckily, the roar of the hoods probably drowned out Kensie's running commentary.

“Here's a lab coat. Put it on.” Kensie tossed her a coat and slipped out of her heels and into hard-toed shoes. “Nylons aren't acceptable as leg attire when you're working. You'll need to bring pants. Oh, and no jeans.”

“I think I've got the lab rules down.” Chemistry was chemistry, and the rules didn't vary that much from lab to lab.

One scientist stood over a centrifuge in his safety glasses and gloves, but without her nose, Daphne couldn't tell what he was mixing. There was a pang in her stomach from all she missed. The roar of the fume hoods filled the lab. There were only two scientists in the room, and neither looked up or took notice of their arrival. She didn't want to draw their attention anyway, since without her sense of smell she had no way of knowing the volatility of the chemicals they were using. And she didn't need any questions.

It dawned on her that her job might be more dangerous without her nose. It wasn't just the matter of measuring proper values in a pipette. Now she'd be working with more cleaning agents. But she hoped with the loss of one sense, her others would only get stronger until scent came back to her. As she took in her surroundings, Kensie patted her on the shoulder and yelled over the noise.

“This is the formulation lab. Fragrance is down at the other end, but both Willard”—Kensie motioned toward a man who wasn't old enough for the name Willard; he was maybe fifty and stood with a volumetric pipette measuring solution— “and John”—she pointed to the younger man at the centrifuge machine—“count on fragrance to work well with their formulations. If they don't, trust me, you'll hear about it in the staff meeting. They can't confront, so they have to tattle like second graders. Around these parts, the scent doesn't come first. Marketing is first, product second. Scent is discussed in marketing. Beauty works out of its own lab and has four scientists on staff. They don't usually mix. I suppose you'll be in the fragrance lab by yourself.”

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?”