Page 23 of The Scent of Happiness

She threw her jacket on a chair. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing.” He took a second look. Things were out of place, but not dirty. The floor was clean and there wasn’t a spot of dust anywhere.

“I’d offer you a drink, but I’m out of drinks,” Brooke said. “How about a glass of water?”

“Yes, thank you.”

The kitchen cupboards had no doors, and some of the shelves were filled with bowls and measuring cups that he assumed were for soapmaking. The rest of the shelves held industrial-sized jugs of oil, and smaller containers the size of shampoo bottles with names of fragrances on them. It didn’t look like she did any actual cooking in here.

He’d expected her apartment to carry the same overwhelming clash of smells the garage did, and he’d braced himself for the assault on his nose, but he smelled nothing.

Wait. There was something. Brooke handed him the water. His fingers brushed hers as he took the glass. She smelled of line-dried sheets and a fresh breeze and softness. He wasn’t sure what softness smelled like, but that word popped into his head. Or maybe he was thinking about how soft her skin looked, and what her lips would feel like on his.

How could scent be both time travel and anchor someone right in the moment? Because right now he wasn’t having a memory. He wasn’t thinking anything except some thoughts that he didn’t dare have. Hey now, he reminded himself. This is your client.

He drained half the glass of water, trying to drown out thoughts of Brooke’s lips. “We need to discuss our working relationship.”

“Is the clock already ticking?” Brooke looked over her shoulder, as if something was sneaking up behind her. “Do I have to pay you for embarrassing me at the craft show?”

“Didn’t you know? Attorneys embarrass their clients for free.”

“Good, because I’m not paying for that.”

“Now that Dixie knows you’ve retained an attorney, she’ll be less interested in suing you. And I’ll make sure she stays uninterested. That’s the only way this makes sense for me. I’ll give it five hours of work, so you can retain me for a thousand dollars total.”

Brooke brushed a hand over her forehead. “A thousand. Actual dollars.”

Theo could see her doing the math in her head, possibly comparing it to her own salary, but he wouldn’t apologize for his life choices, especially since it was Walker Blue that got the two hundred an hour. He didn’t see all of that. And anything over five hours would mean he was working for free, on his own time.

He wouldn’t give this kind of deal to anyone else. He wouldn’t even be giving it to Brooke, except as a favor to his mom.

And also because Dixie was such a witch. There was no way he was going to let her win. “Cheaper than any settlement Dixie would agree to, and keep in mind, she has to pay her lawyers as well.”

Brooke slumped against the counter. “Not sure how that helps me.”

“In order to sue you, Dixie would have to draw up a complaint in the state’s court system. That will take a while, so nothing is going to happen in the short term. And if she does sue you, I’ll petition to get it thrown out as meritless. So, if you could show me your recipes?”

“Right.” Brooke opened one of the kitchen drawers and brought out an eight by ten composition book. She led him to the dining nook, moved all the loose papers to the top of the printer, and invited him to sit. “My journal makes sense to me. I doubt it will to you.”

Sorting through documents was the biggest part of Theo’s job. In a typical day, he’d read court filings typed in double-spaced courier font, law books written in tiny type on onionskin paper, online PDFs, and poorly scanned manuscripts. And he could decipher anyone’s handwriting.

But this was like reading shorthand in a foreign language. Brooke had recorded everything. Not just the amounts of every ingredient, the time it took to make, the size of her mold, and how many bars she got out of each recipe. But also, the temperature of her ingredients and the temperature of the room. The information flowed freely on the page, with things crossed out and rewritten multiple times. Arrows pointed to margin notes.

Theo paged through the journal, baffled by most of the vocabulary. Acceleration? Ricing? Glycerin rivers? The notes in the margins were more personal—customer feedback, how things sold, if this recipe was worth making again. But mostly it recorded how much Brooke herself liked what she’d made. She reacted to the colors, the fragrances, and how much fun she had—or didn’t have—making each batch. Her soaps were clearly a labor of love.

“I see this word ‘trace’ on every page,” Theo said. “What’s that?”

“When the sodium hydroxide mixes with the oils, they emulsify, then thicken. It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s basically it.”

“And sodium hydroxide is lye,” he remembered.

“For some reason, nobody likes to say that word. But it’s just an ingredient.”

“But lye is toxic.” He’d spent the afternoon doing research.

“When it’s raw, yeah,” Brooke said. “Once it’s mixed with oils and made into soap, no.”

She sat across from him and explained how she chose her oils, how she calculated the amount of sodium hydroxide, the different colorants and fragrances she used. She showed him the back of the notebook where she kept a list of suppliers.