Page 79 of The Scent of Happiness

It was not a great start to the day. But had yesterday ever really ended? She’d been up until almost three in the morning filling internet orders. In fact, the entire last two weeks had been exhausting.

The good kind of exhausting. The kind of exhausting she needed right now.

Emma had been a great help. She was the first person Brooke turned to after the breakup. Since Emma didn’t trust any man on the planet, she was the perfect person to provide a sympathetic ear and hearty agreement that all men sucked.

Once Brooke had stopped crying and thrown herself into working, Emma had put the finishing touches on the Mixed Suds website, handled all the SEO stuff, and even shown Brooke how to run online ads. They were outrageously expensive, and she was losing money on them, but Emma assured her that they’d pay off in the end. Orders had been steadily increasing, and Brooke was scrambling to keep up.

The paperwork was atrocious. Her spreadsheets were fine for local sales, but she needed a better system to keep track of taxes and shipping for online orders. She was constantly at the post office, and she was running short of her most popular soaps, leaving her with very low inventory for this weekend’s craft show.

The Creative Business Professional had warned her of this. There came a point in every crafter’s life when she lacked the income to go full time, but also lacked the time to scale up. She didn’t have enough hours to devote to her business, but she didn’t have enough money in the bank to quit her day job.

How ironic that she did have enough money to settle a lawsuit or to pay a lawyer, and she no longer needed to do either of those things.

She never even got the satisfaction of telling Dixie to go to hell. By the time Theo left that night, her parents had already worked out a deal with her and sent her on her way. Dixie dropped her lawsuit, Dad installed a new lock on the garage, and it was like the whole thing had never happened.

Dixie had messed up Brooke’s life in multiple ways and got to walk away. What did Brooke get? Wasted time, ruined soaps, a strained relationship with her mother, a whole lot of stress, and a broken heart.

And fun, and companionship, and really good orgasms.

Nope. She wasn’t going to think about that—about him. Theo was out of her life, and it was better that way. She needed to keep her head on straight, to get through this growth period for her side business, and somehow keep her library job, too.

Lauren was waiting by the back door to shoo Brooke into the building.

“Hurry,” she whisper-shouted, as if Brooke wasn’t hurrying already. She tugged at Brooke’s sleeve. “Give me your coat, give me your bag. I clocked you in, and if Otis knows you just now got here, he’ll—”

Too late. Otis stood at the intersection of the mystery and fantasy sections, where he could keep an eye on the door. He sucked his lower lip under his front teeth as his sharp little nose twisted upward. “Ah. You’re here,” he said. “Brooke, can I see you in my office?”

She followed him to his closet-like office on the far side of the library, trying not to meet the eyes of her co-workers along the way. The small office overflowed with books and papers. It smelled musty. Otis took a paper pile off the single guest chair for her before sitting behind the stack of books on his desk.

“You’ve worked here two years,” Otis said. “Almost three, and I’ve never had complaints about you before.”

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Brooke said. “I slept through my alarm and missed the bus.”

“You’re a valuable employee, Brooke,” Otis said. “And I’d hate to have to let you go.”

Brooke touched the ID lanyard around her neck. Otis’ words were the kind of thing bosses said when they wanted to scare you into changing your behavior, like they were on the verge of firing you but wanted to give you one last chance. We need to make some changes. There are company standards I need you to meet. I’d hate to have to let you go.

It was another variation of Brooke isn’t living up to her potential.

“…so what I’m saying is, you aren’t allowed to tell people that you can smell them.”

“What?” Brooke snapped back to the conversation. She thought they were talking about her tardiness. “I don’t tell people I can smell them.”

“We spoke about this on Monday, remember?”

“But I don’t say it like that. And I don’t say anything to patrons anymore.”

Until recently, she’d sometimes ask a patron about perfume if she was wearing a nice one, or compliment a good cologne. Otis told her to stop because it made people uncomfortable. She doubted it. Fragrance was meant to be noticed, and besides, who didn’t like a compliment? More likely, it made Otis uncomfortable. But she’d stopped. Completely. So what was his problem now?

“Right,” Otis said. “So now you’ve turned your attention to the staff. You understand that’s harassment, don’t you?”

Brooke gasped. “No, it’s not! Are you saying I can’t talk to my co-workers about what they’re wearing?”

“What they’re wearing? Sure. But—”

“Can I say ‘hey, nice outfit’ to a co-worker?”

“Of course. But that’s not—”