Page 47 of The Scent of Happiness

“Hmm. Let me think.”

“No!” Brooke jabbed a finger at his midsection. “Don’t think. Let your gut tell you. What do you really want to do?”

I want to kiss you again. I want to take off your goggles and glasses and unbind your hair. Then I want to take off your clothes and worship every inch of your body until you’re completely undone, out of control, sweating and panting and calling my name.

“We could play around,” he said. “With ingredients! We could play with ingredients. Color and scent. If you want to.”

“Do you want to play around?” A tiny smile fluttered at her lips.

“You’ll have to teach me how you like to play.”

Brooke turned her back to him, facing the cupboard. “Do you like it spicy or sweet?”

He stood behind her, pretending to check out the array of fragrances. He was captivated by the tiny curls falling out of her hasty updo and trailing along her neck, as if the strands of auburn hair were planting kisses there. “Is there a way to have both?”

“Of course,” Brooke said. “We can make anything you want. I also have floral scents if you were inspired by the botanical gardens.”

“I was,” Theo said. “But I’d like to see what inspires you.”

“Are you sure?” Brooke turned toward him, and seemed to be searching his eyes behind his goggles. “You already have an appreciation for fragrance. You might have a talent for mixing it too. How will you know unless you try?”

Theo held up his gloved hands. “Talk me through your process. How do you know which scents go together? Do you just try things, and hope they work?”

Brooke ran her hand along the shelf, touching the bottles of fragrance oils. “This is going to sound dumb.”

“No, go ahead.” He didn’t know anyone who understood fragrance the way Brooke did. Why would she think this was dumb?

She took down a few bottles. “When I combine things, it’s a conversation. Do the ingredients get along? Do they clash? What are they saying to one another? If two scents are similar, they’ll bore each other to death. But if they’re complete opposites, they’ll never stop fighting. I need to find that place where the edges of one bump against the edges of another, so they’ll never run out of things to talk about.” She ducked her head. “Sorry, I’m rambling.”

How could she stop now? This was fascinating. He nudged her with his elbow, then added his hip. “You said they need to bump into each other. Like this?”

“Exactly like that.” She jabbed an elbow back at him. “I’m willing to try combinations other soapers won’t. And do you know when I most often fail?”

“When?”

“When I hold back, or second guess myself. When I put in less than I want to, thinking that this blend won’t work because these two scents don’t have enough in common.”

Theo leaned on the counter edge, trying for a casual tone. “Did you ever pair things you didn’t think would go together, but ended up working out well?”

“I do it all the time. Sometimes a fragrance is well known, like lemon or mint. It’s bright. It stands out. And then I mix it with a quieter note like green tea or sea salt, and together they’re better than you could ever imagine.”

“You know I can’t take you at your word,” he said. “You’re going to have to show me.”

The dimple returned as Brooke sorted through her bottles. “We’ll start with this. It’s a near duplicate of Champagne Kisses.” She opened the bottle and held it out to him.

It was cheerful and lively, almost like the lotion she’d had at the gardens, and once again, he was lost in memories. He was eighteen again, a freshman at OSU, bursting with the freedom of being away from home for the first time. He had all the energy of a teenager with the chance to reinvent himself as an adult for the first time. And he was walking up the stairs of Watts Hall, following his nose, trying to capture one more bit of the sexiest scent he’d ever experienced.

But something was missing. The fragrance in the bottle was not like fragrance on a person. He held the bottle under his nose, searching for what wasn’t there. Warmth. Life. This scent was too flat. It seemed to stand still rather than dance.

“I can fix this,” Brooke said. “I can do better.”

“I hope so.”

She got out a measuring cup and started pulling down more fragrances, mumbling to herself. He leaned in closer to hear what she was saying. “Green, fresh, sparkle…” She added some bottles, took some away, then lined them up on the countertop. “This will work.”

“How do you know?”

She grabbed a pen from a drawer and thrust her journal at him. “Can you write this down? Faux Champagne, half an ounce. Quarter ounce Floral Fantasy for a big pop of gardenia and quarter ounce Green Tea for earthiness.”