Blame It on Chocolate. Jennifer Greene
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mortgage, but it was still hers-all-hers. Possibly she was the latest bloomer of all late bloomers at twenty-eight, but what the hey. She’d had to fight harder than most for true independence, and for darn sure, she was grabbing life with both fists now.
At the front door, she yanked on the jacket her parents had given her for Christmas—a white Patagonia number that was crazily impractical considering her work, but unbeatably warm. And on the first of March in Minnesota, there was still a solid, crusty foot of snow on the ground, the temperature cold enough to make her eyes sting. She locked the door, still pulling on her white cap with the yellow yarn daisies. She’d have hat hair all day, but who cared? She’d look like a train wreck after the first hour of work anyway.
With the hot bagel crunched between her teeth, she slid into the driver’s seat of her old red Civic, turned the key and begged it to start—which it did. The baby just liked to be coaxed on cold mornings. Praying for the Civic had become a second religion. The Civ had more than 200,000 miles on her. Lucy’s newest theory was that if she gave the car enough wash-and-waxes and changed its oil long before it asked and vacuumed it twice a week, it’d be too happy to die. At least until she got the living room carpet and couch paid for.
In Rochester, where she’d grown up, people knew what rush hour was. Not here. Eagle Lake probably put up traffic lights out of pride, although some cars did show up to keep her company once she reached the highway. Originally she’d chosen Eagle because it was a nice, long drive from her parents—and also because there was already a solid nest of singles and other young couples in the area—but it was a good half-hour commute to her job. She finished the bagel, tuned the radio up for a kick-ass beat and was singing hell-bent for leather when her stomach suddenly produced an unladylike belch.
Not AGAIN. Yet the nausea came on like a battleship, heavy and ugly and overwhelming. Her skin turned damp and hot so fast she barely had time to pull over to the shoulder and brake. Hands shaking, flushed and hot, she leaned over the passenger side, argued with the door, thank God got it open, arched her head out…and then nothing.
The bagel stayed in. The bite of freezing wind on her cheeks seemed to help. Eventually she sank back against the headrest, feeling weak and yucky, cars speeding past her. The practical voice in her head ordered her to quit messing around and call the doctor, enough was enough with this nausea thing.
But her emotional side kept trying to figure out what she’d done to deserve this. Yeah, she was trying to be more wicked, but basically the sins on her conscience wouldn’t fill a list. She’d skipped school once in kindergarten. She’d thought evil, evil thoughts about Aunt Miranda—but then, so did everyone else in the family. She’d gone to a party one time without underpants. She’d let Eugene hang on too long. She’d borrowed her sister Ginger’s blue cashmere sweater in high school and got a spot on it and never ’fessed up. And yeah, there was that one other occasion.
She’d come to call that one other occasion the Night of the Chocolate.
But as quickly as that memory surfaced, she shuffled it, fast, into the part of her brain labeled Denial. God—if there was a God, and she thought there was—just couldn’t be paying her back for that one. She’d already suffered enough.
When it came down to it, she’d lived like a saint 99.99 percent of her life. She dusted under the refrigerator, never took a penny that wasn’t hers, always flossed. Her family relentlessly teased her for becoming a fussy old lady before she was thirty—which really hurt her feelings.
The point, though, was that this stomach upset thing wasn’t a sign that her life was about to spin completely out of control. It was just an ulcer or something like that. A something that a visit to the doctor—however inconvenient and annoying—would resolve once and for all.
And just like that, she felt better. Her hands stopped trembling and the weak feeling almost completely disappeared. Cautiously she restarted the car and pulled out on the road. She didn’t turn the radio up and sing like her usual maniac self the rest of the way—why tempt fate? Sometimes it paid to be superstitious.
Twenty minutes later, she was still okay. In fact, not just okay, but feeling totally fine when she spotted the thousand-acre fenced-in estate. She turned at the tasteful, elegant sign for BERNARD’S.
The sign didn’t bother spelling out Bernard Chocolates. It didn’t have to. Anyone on four continents—at least anyone who appreciated fine chocolate—would easily recognize the name.
Even though it was Lucy’s second home, getting through the property every morning was more complicated than joining the CIA. Still, she was used to it. At the front gate, she simply popped in ID to make the electricity security fence open.
The driveway immediately forked in three directions. The road to the right led to the plant. The middle road meandered up to the Bernard mansion. Humming now, Lucy took the familiar third road that curled and swirled a half mile, bordered by lush pines and landscaped gardens.
A moment later she reached another electric fence—this one fifteen feet tall, with a gate that was both locked and manned 24/7. Instead of waving her through, Gordon hiked outside when he spotted her crusty Honda. “Hell, Miss Fitzhenry, I was about to call the cops. You’re seven minutes late. I was afraid you must be in an accident.”
Sheesh. Was she that predictable? “I’m fine, honest. Did you have a nice weekend?”
“Oh, yes. Me and the missus saw a good movie, had the grandkids over. In the meantime—both Mr. Bernards are up at the house. Asked me to tell you to stop by around ten this morning if you could.”
“Thanks. And you have a great morning,” Lucy said as she rolled up her window, but her pulse suddenly bucked like a nervous colt’s. Her pulse, not her stomach, thank heavens. The nausea seemed to be totally gone—but she still couldn’t stop the sudden bolt of nerves.
The nerves were foolish, really. Any day now, she’d known the Bernards would summon her for a serious meeting. Her last experiments had been beyond successful—so successful that they affected the entire future of the company. That was great news, not bad.
It was just that she normally met with Orson Bernard, not his grandson. On paper she reported to the senior Bernard, and God knew, she adored the older man, loved being with him and working with him both. Still, Orson was well over seventy and long retired. Everyone knew who really signed the paychecks these days.
It wasn’t as if Lucy didn’t like Raul Nicholas Bernard. She did. Orson’s grandson was too darned adorable and charming and sexy not to like. Everyone liked Nick.
She just always got rattled around him. He knew it. She knew it. Probably the birds in the trees knew it—which made her reaction to him all the more embarrassing. Realizing she was chewing on a thumbnail—a habit she’d broken at least ten years ago—Lucy firmly blocked that tangled thought train.
Behind her, the fence clanged shut. She caught Gordon’s wave from her rearview mirror and had to smile. Physically Gordon resembled a sublet Santa, but his background included intensive years as an army ranger.
It regularly tickled her funny bone that she could conceivably work in a place that required such expensive and extensive security. Funnier yet was that she actually had power over the security staff. Her. Lucy Fitzhenry. A woman who couldn’t control her own flyaway hair, couldn’t drink champagne without a fit of the giggles, and required a daily milk-shake to maintain 110 pounds.
Her mood turned serious as she took the last curve. A huge structure loomed in sight—her building. Her baby. From the front, the architecture resembled any other high-tech contemporary office structure. Sleek, lots of windows, clean lines. Past the office was the giant lab that everyone shared, then the spiderweb of individual labs, and far back—not in sight from any road—came the network of greenhouses.
She parked in the front row and hustled inside. This early in the morning, the core staff were holed up in their offices, trying to shovel through paperwork chores before they could move into the real meat of the day. Reiko, who must have had her hair scalped on Saturday, yelled out, “Hi, what happened to you?”