by Camy Tang
“Detective Carter called me to tell me about the man at the spa today.”
Rachel sighed. But really, why shouldn’t the detective call the spa owner to tell him about it?
“It makes me wonder why one of my own daughters or my sister-in-law Becca didn’t tell me about it.”
She winced. “I’m sorry, Dad.”
But as silence fell between them and she waited for him to speak, she stared hard at a full-blown red rose, still bright and full. For something like that, why did he need to only speak to her? Why not Naomi, the acting manager at the spa? That seemed unreasonable. “That’s not why you wanted to speak to me, Dad. What is it?”
His eyebrows rose slightly at her firm tone, making her almost apologize for her words…but not quite.
He gestured to his lap, at a file folder there. “I asked Naomi to give me Steve Schmidt’s employee records.”
A frisson of fire passed through her body. Suddenly she didn’t want to be the same compliant daughter she always was, because this really wasn’t her fault. That slim file folder—that concrete example of how little he trusted or respected her—seemed to embody all that was wrong in how he perceived her. That file folder was the last straw. “Dad, you can’t blame me for this. His credentials were excellent.”
“They were too good.” He frowned at her, then opened the folder and frowned down at it. “You should have seen that.”
“Too good?” The breeze didn’t seem so cold anymore. “So you’d rather I’d have hired someone less competent?”
“You should have been suspicious.”
“And you’re being silly.”
The words were like a bomb, because Rachel couldn’t hear anything for a moment after she said them—not the wind, not the birds, not even the faint voices of Naomi, Aunt Becca and Edward coming from the open kitchen window.
Last night she’d meekly internalized his criticism. But today—her father seeming to blame her for the man trying to break into the lab, asking Naomi for Steve Schmidt’s file as if he could do more than she had done—she’d been through too much. She’d been through too much this whole week. He’d been upset at her too much this week for her to continue to care.
Her father’s eyes had widened and his jaw tensed. Normally that would have sent her frantically apologizing, but now it only fueled her temper. “You can’t have it both ways, Dad. You’re trying to lay all this on me, but I’m not responsible. I acted in good judgment.”
“How can you know human nature when you’re fussing around in that lab all day?” he roared.
Fussing? “What do you think I do all day, sit around and play with Bunsen burners?” Didn’t he realize how hard she worked? How she pushed herself to shave hours off experiments so she could process the data faster? That her efforts had enabled her to develop this scar-cream formulation within months rather than years?
His mouth worked, unable to answer her. Rendering her father speechless somehow made her feel more powerful than she ever had before. “You can see Naomi taking clients, scheduling staff, organizing the spa. You can understand Monica’s long work hours at the hospital. Do you really think I’m just wasting time in that lab? Don’t you understand the nature of research work?”
“I understand the bottom line, and you’ve had two failed products—”
“I have one successful product in production and a bad coincidence with Avignon spa,” she snapped. “The diamond-dust cleanser was just like any other product I’ve tried and discarded over the years. Research is like that.”
“Well, business isn’t—”
“If you wanted a businessman, you should have hired one to be the dermatologist researcher at the spa.” She paused, her breath coming in shallow gasps. “Except a businessman wouldn’t come up with anything creative or unique because he’s a businessman. I’m a researcher.”
They glared at each other. He looked at her as if he didn’t recognize her, and maybe he didn’t—she was the quiet one, not firm like Naomi or fiery like Monica. Well, she might be different from her sisters, but that didn’t mean he could be like this to her. He might be a strong personality himself, but she wasn’t going to take it anymore. She wasn’t going to let him treat her this way.
She had long ago stopped wondering why he did.
He broke their tense eye contact first. He scowled at the file folder. “I should have hired the research assistant myself.”
If he had said that last night, she probably would have bowed her head and taken it. But Rachel was a different woman today. “You don’t know what qualities make a good research assistant, Dad.”
“Now, see here—”
“No, you see. You might be a good judge of character, but you wouldn’t know the first thing about what kind of person makes a good research assistant. And I’d be the one stuck working with him. No, Dad.” She sliced her hand through the air. “I hired a competent worker, who obviously had angled to be hired specifically in order to steal my research. And unless you gave him a lie-detector test, too, even you wouldn’t have known that.”
“You have no call for that kind of sass, young lady,” he raged. “I’m only trying to help you do something.”
“You’re trying to push me as if I’m not doing anything. I’m doing everything I can, Dad.”
He looked away.
Rachel turned away, too, staring at the forlorn rosebushes, most of the blooms losing their faded petals. She shivered. “I’m going inside, Dad. Don’t stay out in the cold too long.”
She strode away from him, shoulders back, but quaking inside. A hand brushed a rosebush, scratching her lightly, and tired pink petals rained down on the walkway.
She’d never feel solace in the garden again.
Edward hadn’t meant to overhear, but Evita had left the kitchen window open to air out a faint grease smell, and he couldn’t miss the raised voices.
He had never heard Rachel shout like that. Ever.
But recalling what she’d said yesterday about her father, he wondered if it had been inevitable. With all that had happened, and all she was feeling, she’d been a ticking bomb. And after she’d given him a hint as to her relationship with her father, Edward suspected that Augustus Grant would be the one most likely to set her off.
They’d all heard Rachel’s parting shot. Becca looked faintly uncomfortable, but Naomi had a sparkle in her eye, although her face was neutral.
“I’m sorry, Edward,” Becca said.
“I’m not,” Naomi retorted.
“Naomi!” Becca was shocked.
She shrugged it off. “Edward works with her. He ought to know the kind of pressure she’s been under outside work.”
“I’ll go talk to her.” Becca slid off her chair.
“I think you ought to go talk to Dad,” Naomi said. “And let Rachel cool off.”
Her aunt hesitated, but then gave a slight nod and left the kitchen.
Before the silence became too awkward, Edward said, “I’ll head home.”
“I’m sorry that our family drama has made you uncomfortable.” Naomi gave him a bright look he couldn’t quite interpret. “But you did get yourself in the middle of things when you offered to drive Rachel to work.”
He grunted, but softened it with a small smile as he rose from the kitchen table. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He headed out the front door to his truck, parked on the side of the Grants’ long driveway, but a thought whispered at his mind as he looked at the serene landscaping in the wide front lawn.
He knew where Rachel would be.
There was a small artificial copse to one side of the property. He’d never been there himself, but Rachel had mentioned once in passing that she’d been there one morning as the sun rose. There was a good chance she went there often.
A stifled sob floated on the wind toward him just as his foot crunched a dead branch hidden in the carpet of fallen leaves. He winced, but it was probably for the best that he didn’t surprise her.
He sat next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders. She sank into him, her tears running down her cheeks.
He let her cry as long as she needed to. He wasn’t sure what else to do or say, but he was spurred by the warrior in him that had wanted to storm out to that garden to shield her from her father’s accusing words.
Except she’d fought back, something he wouldn’t have expected of her. And it had made him proud of her.
But now he held her, trying to be her strength when she needed it.
As she quieted and the wind made the tears on his shirt chill his skin, her voice drifted up to him. “He doesn’t love me.”
The despair, the pain of abandonment in her voice, pulled his arms tight around her. “He does love you, Rach. You can’t believe that he doesn’t.”
“No matter how hard I try, he’s never pleased with me. I can never do anything right.”
Edward had to admit that Augustus seemed overly demanding of his eldest daughter, and he didn’t quite understand why. But he also remembered the concern in her father’s eyes when Rachel’s room had been ransacked and he came upstairs, wheeling down the hall, to see Edward holding her. Augustus’s hand had lifted a few inches, as if to touch her, to embrace her, but then fell back.
“I know your dad loves you,” Edward said. “But he might not know how to show it to you. To any of his daughters, for that matter.”
“He thinks I’m incompetent.”
“You said it yourself. He doesn’t understand what you do compared to what he can see in Naomi’s and Monica’s work. You can’t think he doesn’t love you.”
She shook her head, still muffled by his shoulder. “Today wasn’t unusual. I’ve seen his disappointment time and again.”
She wanted her father’s approval so much, but Edward wanted to show her how much God the Father loved her. “Your father doesn’t understand you, but God does.”
It made her cry harder. “God doesn’t care about me, either.”
He couldn’t refute how she was feeling. There was someone after her research, maybe after her life, and then her father’s harsh words. God, why are these things happening to Rachel? Why do You seem so far away from her?
“I should leave the spa.” Her voice sounded harder and more brittle than he’d ever heard her before.
“Why?”
“I can’t live up to my father’s expectations. And maybe he just doesn’t love me as much as he loves Naomi and Monica.”
“Stop thinking that,” Edward replied.
“It must be true. Why else does he treat me this way? He’s never this demanding with Naomi. Although he argues with Monica, he doesn’t put her down this way or blame her for things that aren’t her fault.”
She sat up, turning her face away from him. “I should just go away. I could find a job elsewhere easily—I have great qualifications, and I could do product development for any major corporation in the skin-care industry.” Her jaw was set, and the coldness of her words seemed to have frozen her body, too, as she sat stiffly on the bench.
These circumstances and her tense relationship with her father were changing her into someone he didn’t know. She was moving further and further away from the warm, quirky Rachel he had come to know in the past year.
He missed her. And he didn’t know how to get her back.
“I’ll finish this product launch,” she said, her mouth almost mulish. “Maybe it’ll go so well that he’ll finally be happy.”
“Why is it so important that he be happy? What about you? You work your fingers to the bone. Don’t you deserve to be happy?”
She paused, and flickered a glance at him. It looked almost guilty. But then she pressed her lips together. “I need to work to get this scar-reduction cream out. It’s important to me.”
There was something deeper there, something she wasn’t telling him. It drove her almost as strongly as her father’s approval.
She’d moved away from him, and he wanted to draw her back. But her tight shoulders and straight spine deterred him.
And really, what right did he have to comfort her? They’d been getting closer, but because he had been afraid that she would fail him and hurt him the way his father had, he had withdrawn. In a sense he had abandoned her.
He wrapped her cold hand in his. “Rach, I’m here for you. I want to help you.”
Her fingers lay unresisting for a long moment. A moment where his heart pounded slow and loud in his ears.
Then she turned her palm into his, laced her fingers with his.
He squeezed tightly. He would try to understand her relationship with her father. He’d protect her and support her through this.
“Tomorrow,” she murmured. “I need your help to morrow.”
“What did you need to do?”
She looked him in the eye, her gaze burning with determination. “I need to confront Gloria Reynolds.”
“Ms. Reynolds? The spa client?”
She nodded. “I think she’s behind all this, but I don’t have any proof aside from something she mentioned to Naomi over a year ago. So I’m going to beard the lion in her den.”
SEVEN
Rachel rang the doorbell, and suddenly knew exactly how Naomi must have felt when she visited Gloria Reynolds last year.
The pretentious columns flanking the front door, the clean, white lines of the windows and steps, the sparkling glass in the light above the front door—they all screamed, My money defines who I am.
Naomi would have reveled in the chance to barge in, upset that balance of money, power, pretense. And now Rachel did, too, a little.
A Hispanic maid opened the door.
“We’ve come to speak to Ms. Reynolds,” Rachel said. “We’re from the Joy Luck Life spa.”
The maid let them into the echoing foyer. “Please wait here.” She bustled away toward the back of the house.
There were dark shadows cast by the rich furniture, and the sunlight filtering through diamond-paned windows seemed weak and sickly. And Rachel told herself that despite Gloria Reynolds’s pompous love for display, she also shouldn’t forget that the woman might have tried to have her killed.
Footsteps clacked over the marble floors. Rachel turned to see Gloria approach, looking casually elegant in a pantsuit and mule sandals—and also looking as if she expected them.
She smiled, but it was like a glittering baring of teeth. “Hello, Dr. Grant. What a pleasant surprise.” She shook Rachel’s hand, and her nails scraped softly at her skin.
Gloria turned to Edward. “You were at the spa yesterday.”
“Edward Villa.” He gave her a polite nod and took the limp fingers, but he released them as if they were covered with slime.
“Edward is helping me with my next product launch.” Rachel blurted it out, not sure what else to say. Naomi would have known exactly how to be smooth and gracious, or Monica would have known how to put Gloria at ease.
She was the absentminded researcher who had entered this pretentious house and had no idea what to say, or how to ask her questions.
“We hope you’re feeling better after what happened yesterday.” Edward’s deep voice rumbled smoothly off the silk-lined walls, imparting just the right amount of concern.
Of course. He had dealt with every type of client imaginable, including several wealthy businesswomen. He probably read Gloria’s personality and knew exactly how to speak to her.
“I’m feeling tolerably better,” she drawled. “Won’t you sit down?” She waved them toward a doorway into a stiff, formal drawing room.
Rachel perched on the edge of a brocade chair, but Edward seemed to relax in his seat without seeming too arrogant.
“The spa has certainly had a great deal of excitement lately.” Gloria sank gracefully into a divan across from them. “In fact, was
n’t it only a year ago that those unfortunate murders happened?”
Her blue eyes opened wide with shock and innocence, but there was a glint there that seemed to be laughing maliciously at Rachel. It made Rachel stiffen her spine and give a wide, hard smile. “The police did such a wonderful job catching the murderer so efficiently. I’m sure you were relieved the spa didn’t have to close its doors.”
Gloria’s cheek twitched, but she said, “Oh, of course.” Her smile seemed to grow feral. “I love all your products, Dr. Grant.”
Her tone didn’t make it sound like a compliment. “Speaking of products, Naomi mentioned to me that you’d asked her about my diamond-dust cleanser.”
The words chased the color from Gloria’s cheeks even under her mineral makeup. The pulse beat rapidly at her throat, and her hand reached up to smooth it with slightly shaking fingers. “Why…Naomi has a remarkable memory. I only mentioned it in passing. And that was…I think a year ago.”
“I’m curious, Ms. Reynolds, because I never released it as a product. It failed in clinical testing.” Rachel pinned her with a hard gaze. “So how did you know about it?”
She was so sure she had her. She wasn’t sure if she expected her to break down in a heap of tears and confess all, or perhaps faint in despair at being found out.
She didn’t expect Gloria to roll her eyes and laugh softly, as if at herself. “I apologize, Dr. Grant. I’m guilty.”
“What?”
“I know you keep your research secret, but I happened to be speaking to the CEO of Palm Diamond Direct sometime last summer.”
Rachel’s cheeks started to burn.
Gloria met her eyes with cold amusement, as if aware of her embarrassment—and reveling in it. “They mentioned they had just supplied you with some ultrafine diamond dust, apparently for some cleanser you were developing. Well, since my husband is a local diamond distributor, I naturally wanted to speak to you to perhaps wheedle you into buying from us next time.” Gloria gave her a look that was meant to be impish, but to Rachel, it had an evil cast to it.
“Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say. All her suspicions now seemed melodramatic.
