Page 21 of The Scent of Happiness

Brooke took a gulp from her cup. Coffee. Think about coffee. Don’t think about Theo. How could a man smell that good using unscented soap?

He clasped his hands in front of him, completely unbothered. “So, can you talk me through the process of making soap?”

“Now?” Brooke peered into the church basement. The lull was over and Emma was selling again. “I have to get back to the show. Come by my place later and you can look at my soapmaking journal. Do you remember where my parents live? On Spruce Street? You came over that one time.”

“I think I can find it again.”

“My apartment is in back. I’m going to be here until five, so… come at six?”

“Sounds good.”

She gave Theo her address, they exchanged numbers, and he left by the back door.

Brooke returned to the table and sat behind it. Emma regarded her silently over the rim of her paper cup, looking like she was dying to say something she shouldn’t.

Now that Dixie was gone, more customers approached the table, exclaiming over the soaps, smelling them, asking questions, and for several minutes, Brooke was too busy to talk to Emma. By the time she got back to her coffee, it was cold. She drank some anyway. Emma was still looking at her with that strange expression.

“What?” Brooke asked.

“Theo is exactly as you described him,” Emma said.

“Right? He’s infuriating, but at least he’s—”

“Hot?”

“Smart. At least he’s smart. I wasn’t going to say anything else.”

“You didn’t have to,” Emma said. “You were thinking it so loud they could hear it in Michigan.”

“Does your offer to help with my website still stand?”

“Of course.”

“Good,” Brooke said. “Because if I’m going to afford a lawyer, I’m going to need to sell a lot more soap.”

Chapter Eight

Theo didn’t remember the Nesbitt’s two-story colonial having an apartment behind it, but he’d only been to their house once. When he was in middle school, his church had tried to form a youth group and Brooke’s parents hosted the first meeting. Brooke and another girl were the only other kids who showed up, and Theo had spent an agonizing hour eating an entire plate of sugar cookies and trying to figure out how to talk to them.

Had there been a second meeting? If so, he didn’t go. When his parents divorced, his dad stopped going to church and so did he. Theo wasn’t too keen on the whole religion concept anyway. Too many unknowns.

The sun was going down as he parked in the Nesbitt’s driveway and walked along the side of the house, past the detached garage, to the small apartment that jutted off the back of the house. He stood on the tiny stoop and knocked on the door.

“I’m over here,” Brooke called from the garage. “I’m putting away the inventory that I didn’t sell today. I’ll be right with you.”

Theo approached the small side door. “You store your soap in the garage?”

“You can come in if you want, but be careful.”

“I won’t touch anything.”

“Not that kind of careful.” Brooke stood in the doorway. “People get weird when they come in here.”

“Weird how?”

“I’m warning you, you’ll leave here a different person.”

“I doubt that,” Theo said. It was soap. It wasn’t magic.