Chemical Attraction

By Holly Hudson

WRITERS DIGEST AWARD WINNER 2020

 

She's a glamorous perfumer living in Paris with a teeny little problem she's trying to keep a secret from the world – or else it will ruin her.

He's a back-to-the-land woodworker living in a treehouse on her late mother's Midwestern property.

 

Thrown together by the sudden death of her estranged mother, for Tess and Jude it is hate at first sight. Or is it?

 

Tess needs to sell the property and get back to Paris to save her career, but Jude has no intention of moving anywhere. Meanwhile, her teenage daughter takes to small town American life and has ideas of her own that challenge Tess in new ways, forcing her to reckon with her own unresolved relationship with her mother.

 

Sparks fly as Tess and Jude battle over the property--will Tess successfully evict the squatter, or will she allow him to take residence on her property...and in her heart?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Holly Hudson
• Release date: Oct 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393068327

Holly Hudson

Holly grew up in Ohio and a few other places around the world, which instilled in her a wanderlust she still hasn’t been able to outgrow. She’s called Senegal, Tunisia, the Philippines, Mexico, Italy, Germany, Spain, England, and New York home at various points in her life. She graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts with a degree in Film & Theater and received a Certificate in Screening from UCLA’s Professional Screenwriting Program. She lives in London, England with her teenage son. You can subscribe to her newsletter at http://www.hollyhudsonauthor.com.

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Acknowledgements

Ahuge thank you to my early readers who were so supportive along the way. A special thank you to Rebecca Morean and Peter Spencer. This novel was born out of a screenplay (I tend to think in pictures first!) and will hopefully be coming to a screen near you very soon.

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Asexy, sassy heist novella introducing Bea Skye, a not-so-ordinary single mom living a double life as a high-end jewel thief.

Chapter 1

Tess Bloom sat in front of the perfume organ her French grandmother had given her many years ago. It occupied the small, makeshift studio at the back of her Parisian apartment. She trailed her hand across several bottles until picking one: Vetiver, a green woody scent. She unscrewed the top and released several drops onto a smell stick and lifted it to her nose. She inhaled and waited. Nothing. She crumpled the paper and threw it against the rack of small bottles that held every essential oil and ingredient imaginable. They lined the organ stoically, quietly challenging her to make the most heavenly scent that her famous nose was able to conjure up. Except for the fact that she couldn’t smell poo burning in a paper bag at the moment.

The human nose can detect over 10,000 different smells. And that is a feat that requires over 6 million olfactory sensors. Still not impressive as a dog which has 300 million olfactory sensors making it 40 times greater than a human’s. But this isn’t a story about a dog. This is the story of Tess, who took for granted her gift of smell that had carried her to such heights, from the cornfields of the Midwest to the glitz and glamor of the French perfume world over the past 15 years. Only to have it all come crashing down around her.

Her nose was not a faint or slight nose. It was not a cute button nose or a slightly turned up piggy nose. It was not a pug nose nor a hooknose. To the casual observer, she would have appeared to be mixed race, depending upon the socio-economic background of the viewer no doubt. She was really the ultimate American melting pot — with a mix of black, white, French, Caribbean, with a dash of Gypsy thrown in from some distant branch of the family. This was spiced up with a Merchant Marine grandfather who took a detour on the way home from a tour of duty, ending up living in Paris for several years before shipping himself and his new French bride back to rural Ohio.

Tess liked to think her olfactory gift came from her French lineage though it was impossible to know for sure. Wherever it came from, it had been endowed to her in the form of a gracefully strong, long nose full of character. The kind of character that teenage girls growing up in Great Neck, Long Island paid to plastic surgeons of Manhattan to tame. But Tess’s nose was her livelihood and would never see the edge of any surgeon’s scalpel unless it turned out that her current woes could somehow be reversed under the knife. But so far, that didn’t seem to be an option.

She blamed the Manolo Blahnik heels she insisted on wearing that day she fell off the top of the stepladder in her lab. Since then she could barely smell the difference between a turnip and fresh lavender off the fields in Grasse, along the Cote D’Azur and the world’s capital of perfume. And this was her livelihood. She had worked hard for her status in this largely male-dominated industry. Plus, despite a French grandmother she was, by all accounts, American and mixed race — a double whammy outsider. The fact that she’d been able to crack the old boys’ club of the perfume world was almost unheard of.

Dammit! The crushing reality of her big day ahead hit her. There was a check-in appointment with her doctor to get to, then the big meeting with Ravel. She needed this commission more than she could put into words. It had been six months since the fall and waking up the next morning to discover she couldn’t smell.

One of the only perfume houses left in town who would still give her a chance was also run by the toughest bulldog in the industry: Antoine Ravel. A bulbous, pompous, misogynistic asshole who was notoriously difficult to work with. But Tess knew characters like him and how to finesse their narcissistic tendencies to her own advantage. She was nervous but also felt underlying confidence that she would be able to win him over.

She had managed to keep her current limitations strictly under wraps and had been using her assistant, Jean-Marc, as her stand-in's nose. He was doing the best he could, but things were not going great. Theoretically, she should have been able to rely on her formulas to deliver her results. But just as with playing a piece of music, or creating a performance, there was an ineffable quality of intuition and tweaking that went into each perfume she created that really no one but her could replicate.

Tess went into the bathroom to finish getting dressed. She talked to the mirror: I may be desperate, but if you think I’m going to kiss your fat French ass just to pay my bills, you are so dead wrong monsieur. She then splashed her face with cold water and tried changing her tact to gratitude in case she was angering some universal God of good meetings. Thank you for everything that I have. Thank you for my lovely home, thank you for my beautiful daughter, thank you for giving me talent, but...

She trailed off as looked at the image staring back at her. At thirty-five she felt like she was heading into the early dark-circles-under-the-eyes club. She knew she needed to stop stressing but it was hard these days. Everything felt like it was hanging by a thread—the thinnest spider’s spun web.

She dried her face, quickly applied a touch of mascara, and then went back into the bedroom where she decided on what to wear. She wanted something simple, yet elegant, something that would make a quiet statement of power. She picked out a gray, Calvin Klein sheath linen dress and slipped into it. She chose black patent leather pumps, not too high, she’d been afraid of the others since the fall. She hoped her outfit would suffice for the launch party she and Jean-Marc were meant to go to later. She wasn’t going to have time to come home and change after work.

Mama! Natacha yelled from down the hall. Where’s my red scarf?

Natacha was 16 and the hormones flew around the apartment like dancing fiery comets that Tess had to dodge, having no idea where they were going to land and explode. Walking on eggshells had developed new meaning lately. Natacha shared Tess’s own temper and she was as stubborn as a mule on strike when she wanted to get her way. They went head to head at times and Tess resigned herself to it. After all, she hadn’t been an easy kid on her own mother. She figured it was probably her karma to be getting it back. But she wanted to at least try to do a better job of it than Charlotte had done. It couldn’t be that much to ask, could it?

Natacha had also inherited her mother’s gift of scent recognition, which meant there was great promise there if she wanted to follow in her footsteps. As far as Tess was concerned, she would and that’s all there was to it. To be able to succeed as a nose, a person had to have a highly developed sense of smell, to begin with. Then the training begins — years of it. Before she could graduate from the Grasse Institute of Perfumery she would have to be able to identify over 10,000 different smells by name and without hesitation.

Tess entered Natacha’s usually neat bedroom to find clothes strewn everywhere as she flung things hither and yon looking for the apparently missing red scarf. Tess picked it off the back of the door handle.

This what you’re looking for?

Natacha barely grunted a thank you as she snatched it and threaded it around her neck.

Come on, let’s have a quick bite then I have to be out of here. Tess continued into the kitchen and put on a pot of espresso as she rummaged in the fridge for some fruit and yogurt, pulling croissants out of a bag on the counter. She bit into a croissant and regretted it an instant later. It felt dry in her mouth and she had trouble swallowing. She realized she was way too nervous about the big meeting to even eat. She reached for a glass of water to wash it down and looked through the edition of Courrier International that had just been dropped through the mail slot in the front door. As she sat down at the kitchen table her mobile rang. She looked at the caller ID and sighed. She really had no time for her mother at the moment. Why was her timing always so bad? Tess answered anyway.

Hello, mother....yes...you all right? Good..uh...huh.... She put the phone on speaker and set it down on the table as she leafed through the paper.

Elaine and I went to play Bridge at Clarissa’s house yesterday afternoon. Suzanne was sitting in as the fourth because Martha went down to Kentucky for the weekend to visit her grandkids, Charlotte said.

Oh, that’s nice, Tess responded absently as she read the morning headlines.

Except I had to leave early as I wasn’t feeling well. I came home and napped which is so unlike me. Then today I’ve been out of sorts all day.

Well, I’m so sorry to hear that Mom...listen, you get some rest...I’m going to pass you to Natacha now because I’m in a bit of a rush this morning. I have to finish getting ready — doctor’s appointment then big meeting, she handed the phone to Natacha who had just come into the room. Here’s Tasha.

Oh, lovely, well that’s who I really wanted to talk to anyway, her mother said.

Of course, Mom, here you go, Tess rolled her eyes and handed Natacha the phone.

Hi, Grandma...I’m good! Yeah, it went well...so remember when I told you about the architectural model I was building? Yeah, so it turned out tres, tres bonne...

As Natacha talked and wandered into the living room, Tess took the now burbling espresso pot from the stove, grabbed a bottle of milk from the fridge, poured a large cup of coffee from the pot, and added milk as she tried to keep reading the newspaper. She did not notice that the milk had coagulated to the consistency of cottage cheese, and tumbled into the coffee with great plops. She stirred the concoction and took a long gulp, upon which she nearly projectile spit it out into the sink.

Tess bent over the sink, running water and washing her mouth out. She then picked up the milk bottle and looked at the date on it. For the love of God, why is this still in the fridge? It was a week past its use-by date. She dumped it and the remainder of the coffee into the bin. She just couldn’t go on like this.

She told herself that it was simply because she was too busy reading the social pages in the paper about the latest shakeup in the perfume industry. Noses were always moving around, being traded like expensive pawns from house to house, and one had to keep up with these kinds of things. But she knew it was just a grim reminder that she was not firing on all cylinders and hadn’t been for months.

Again, Tess cursed herself for ruining her coffee. It wasn’t a good omen for the day ahead but she tried to shake it off.

Come on, Tasha, I’m going to be late if we don’t leave, and you too, Tess said. Natacha stopped her mother in the foyer by the front door and put her hands on her shoulders in what Tess felt was her daughter’s attempt at role reversal. Don’t worry, Mama, it’s all going to be OK.

Oh, thank you wise one, I hope you’re right, Tess said, and squeezed her in a quick hug Let’s go.

They grabbed their bags and left the apartment. It was an already steamy summer morning on the Left Bank of Paris and it wasn’t yet 9 o’clock. They walked through the bustling streets lined with flower shops, cafes, bookstores, patisseries, and Moroccan vendors selling everything from cell phone cases to jewelry and Manchester United jerseys. They came to the corner of Rue des Pyrenees and Boulevard Diderot. Natacha’s friends Sabine and Cleo were already waiting for her. Tess waved to the girls, kissed Natacha on both cheeks. There’s money in my desk drawer if you and Sabine want to order takeaway later. I’ll be back late.

OK, bye, love you! Natacha tossed over her shoulder as they headed down the street.

Text me when you get home! Tess called after her. She dipped into the nearest patisserie and ordered a coffee to take away as she called an Uber to take her to