Chapter 25
After another week and a half went by with no response to her email, Savvy couldn’t stand it any longer. She called Lawrence Van Horne, the master perfumer.
To her surprise, the man who answered the phone put her through. But her spirits fell again when Van Horne said everything he could to discourage her.
“I appreciate your interest, but I’m afraid what you’re asking is impossible—what did you say your name was?”
“Savvy.”
“Savvy. I don’t know of anyone who would be willing to train you over the Internet, without you coming to New York to learn in person.”
“Unfortunately I can’t come to New York. I’m a lawyer. I have to stay here and work.”
“A lawyer? My dear, you’d best simply stay in California and forget about the perfume world. You’ll make a lot more money as a lawyer than you ever will as a nose.”
There it was again. Money.
“Are you sure you can’t help me? I’m a hard worker. I’m willing to study on my own. Just point me in the right direction, tell me what to read.”
“There’s only so much you can learn from books. Even working closely under a master, it would take years of training to become a professional nose. You need discipline and patience.”
“I’m disciplined. I have patience.” She wanted this.
“To begin with, how do I know you’re worth training? Without a specific, innate ability, all the training in the world would be a waste of your time and mine.”
“I’ve always had a very acute sense of smell, ever since I was a child. I inherited it from my father. He’s a winemaker.”
Through the phone came a jaded sigh. “Many people make their own wine. The sense of smell is exceedingly subjective. The only way you could possibly know if you have a trainable nose is to be tested. We do that by having you smell the different scent groups—citrus, floral, wood, and so on—to see if you can distinguish one from another. If you pass that test, the next step is to have you rank scents by intensity, from the faintest to the most concentrated.”
“Could you give me the specific instructions for those tests so I can do them on my own, then report back to you?”
She practically heard him rolling his eyes while the seconds ticked by. Her palm was damp from clutching the phone so tightly, and she was aware of her chest rising and falling.
“Tell me what you are smelling, right now, as we speak.”
“The starch in my dress, fresh from the cleaner’s. Someone ate Chinese takeout in the lunchroom down the hall—yesterday. Three sprigs of lavender from the farm of a friend.”
“It doesn’t take a ‘nose’ to be able to smell lavender.”
“How many people can distinguish between Lavendula angustifolia, intermedia and dentate?”
At that, there was enough of a pause to give her a flicker of hope.
“It’s unprecedented. I’m not making any promises. Give me some time to think it over.”
He’ll say anything to get off the phone.
“What was your last name, again?”
“St. Pierre. Sauvignon St. Pierre.”
 
Twenty-five hundred miles away in his New York City brownstone, Lawrence Van Horne was trying to enjoy his cocktail hour—that is, if he could ever get the persistent woman off the phone. Frowning, he reached around his wineglass for the bottle of his favorite cabernet, turning it to read the label.
“As in, Domaine St. Pierre?”
“Yes. Xavier St. Pierre is my father.”
Lawrence inserted his nose into his balloon-shaped glass, closed his eyes, and took three short whiffs. He drank, swishing to allow the ruby liquid to wash over his tongue, soft palate, and epiglottis.
“Let’s see what we can do,” he replied.

***

A half hour later, Savvy was gazing out her office window at all the pretty spring colors, wondering how much essential oil could be distilled out of Rathmell Ranch’s entire lavender harvest, when her phone rang.
“Savvy? Don Smith. Everything looks fine on the Morales contract. You want me to fax it over?”
“What?” She spun her chair back around with a clatter, to face her desk.
“You want me to fax it, or do you want to stop by and pick it up?”
“The partners accepted the Moraleses’ counteroffer?”
“Yeah.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Already?”
“The sooner we can close, the better. We need to tear everything out of there, raze the buildings, and put in rootstock by next spring.”
Savvy was speechless.
“You there?”
She stood. “Uh, yeah. Fax it over.”
“Will do. Take care. We’ll talk soon about where to hold the closing and all.”
“Yippee!” Savvy’s squeal had one of the assistants popping her head around the doorframe with a disapproving yet curious look.
Who cared what she thought? “Great news! I just did my first real estate deal!”
 
Esteban was loading the market gear into the back of his truck to prepare for the coming weekend, when Savvy’s Mercedes pulled up the lane.
He was in high spirits. Sunday’s passing shower hadn’t affected the lavender at all. And now here came his two-legged mermaid. He hadn’t been expecting her today on her way home from work, but he’d take it.
Her mile-wide grin matched his, as she got out of her car and wobbled rapidly toward him on those heels that made her calf muscles clench so sexily.
“Esteban!” she called breathlessly. Then he saw the long paper in her hand. It looked like the contract Padre had signed yesterday. A little ice chip formed in his belly.
“They took it! They took your offer!” she called when she was still yards away.
No puede ser! The ice chip expanded into an iceberg, filling his whole being, freezing his feet to the earth.
“Can you believe it?” By the time she reached him, she was practically panting.
He still couldn’t move.
“Look.” She thrust the contract toward him.
He didn’t need to read it again. Against his will, he took it from her hand. One glance at the scrawled signature of NTI’s general partner was all he needed. He shoved it back at Savvy like a hot potato.
“That’s your copy,” she said. Gently she pushed his hand back.
He didn’t want a copy. He took her hand with one of his and pressed the papers into it with the other. Then he picked up the crate containing Madre’s market scales and produce bags and deposited it into the truck bed.
Savvy’s smile faded. She looked down at the papers, then up at him. “You’re upset.”
He stopped and stared at her. “Upset? Upset? Qué demonios! ¿Qué quieres que diga? Toda mi punto de cambiar la vida!”
With a grunt, he hefted the big white market canopy into the truck bed—a job that usually required two men—while she stood and watched. The hand holding the contract drifted down to her side.
“I know. You’re in shock. The Plan Familiar, and all that.”
“You say it like it’s nothing! My grandfather’s dream, my uncle’s and father’s work is just . . . pfffft—gone!” He threw his arms up. “What am I going to tell Padre?”
Savvy licked her lips and forced calm into her voice. “It was his offer. He set the price. He had to have known there was a chance NTI would take it.”
“What about Madre?” He gestured wildly toward their humble house, where a ruffled curtain fluttered out the window in the spring breeze. So what if it wasn’t a mansion? It was theirs. “She’s worked her whole life to make this . . . this cinder-block box a home! What’s going to happen to it now?”
Savvy studied her shoes. When she looked up again, a tear rolled beneath the rim of her glasses. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really sorry. I feel like I’m caught in the middle, here. I’m the one who started this whole thing. I never meant to hurt anybody. You’ve got to believe that, Esteban. I was only doing my job.”
She laid the papers on the edge of the truck bed, turned, and walked away.
He didn’t even notice Padre behind him until he spoke.
“You don’t have to translate to me what that was about.”
Esteban hung his head.
He felt his father’s hand squeeze his shoulder. “Don’t blame yourself. She’s right. I was the one who made the offer.”
Esteban looked up sharply.
“That’s right. I understood her,” his father said. “Your old padre’s smarter than you think. Come. Let’s figure this out together before we go in and break the news to your mother.”