Celeste gestured toward a door. “Now, what do you need for your presentation? If we sat on the sofa, will the coffee table work?”
“That would be perfect.” Savannah discreetly wiped her sweaty palms on her slacks as she took a seat on an overstuffed sofa and reached into her tote. “With your purpose in mind, I’ve developed four unique scents, each with two subsets designed to appeal to males and females. For today’s presentation, I have incorporated the scents into shampoo, conditioner, soap, and lotion. Remember that I have a full spa line, so we can incorporate your chosen fragrance into those products, too.”
Celeste sat beside Savannah on the sofa and laced her fingers. “This is so exciting!”
“The scents are color-coded. For today’s purposes, let’s call the blue caps the Sky fragrance, whites the Cloud fragrance, yellows Wildflower, and greens Forest.” Savannah pasted on a salesperson’s smile and began placing her products in eight rows of four on the coffee table, soap lying on pieces of parchment paper, and clear two-ounce bottles with caps of blue, white, yellow, and light green. Each soap and cap had an M or F drawn upon the top. “Once you choose a fragrance, we can develop colors and packaging that suit each scent and purpose.”
“Excellent. Where do we start?”
With her products arranged on the coffee table, Savannah said, “I suggest we begin with the lightest, airiest scent. This is Cloud.” She picked up the small bars of white soap and handed them to her customer. “One idea I had is to mold the soap cakes into the shape of an angel’s wing.
“Cloud?” Celeste asked, bringing the female sample to her nose for a sniff. “Oh, how lovely.” She tested the male version. “Oh, my. This is perfect. It’s Michael.”
Savannah started to ask her what she meant by Michael, but Celeste had already moved on to the next samples, her concentration focused on the scents. Without looking up, she said, “See the gold notebook beside the lamp? Please use it and take notes for me, Savannah.”
No sooner had Savannah picked up a pen than Celeste began to dictate. “Cloud is a winter fragrance. Names are Michael and Zuriel. The color is pearl—and I do love the angel wing idea. Forest will be our autumn scents—Raphael and Tabbris. I’ll want them aspen-leaf yellow. Wildflower is spring and a new life, green. Hmm … names must symbolize rebirth. Perhaps Gazardiel and—”
“Can you spell that, please?”
Celeste did so, then continued. “Sky is summer blue, Mihael, M-I-H-A-E-L, and Gabriel. Blue, like Zach Turner’s eyes, like my eyes.”
She turned to Savannah. “These are all lovely. Just what I had hoped for. You’ve produced exactly what I wanted, dear.”
“I’m so glad.” Savannah allowed her smile to blossom. “Although I have to admit that I missed exactly which fragrance you preferred.”
“Why, all of them, of course.”
Savannah blinked. “All of them?”
“I admit it’s more than I had planned, but you’ve done an extraordinary job, Savannah. I couldn’t be more pleased. Where did you learn your craft?”
“My grandmother.” Savannah’s heart was singing. Her soaps and lotions in Angel’s Rest! It was all she could do not to dance a jig, but in that moment she’d never missed Grams so keenly.
“Tell me about her, dear.”
Savannah swallowed the sudden lump of emotion that had formed in her throat. Then she shared a little about the woman she’d so loved with this woman who so resembled her grandmother’s once-upon-a-time best friend. “Her name was Rebecca Rose Aldrich. She was my maternal grandmother, and I called her Grams. My parents lived in Atlanta when I was born, and we’d go visit her every summer. She lived up in the Great Smoky Mountains in northern Georgia. On her mountain, actually. My mother was her only child, but when Mamma married my dad and moved to Tennessee, Grams couldn’t bear to leave her home.”
“Children grow up and leave. It’s the way of life, but that doesn’t make it easy.”
Savannah paused then, her thoughts spinning, her grief as raw as the moment she’d been told the news that Rebecca Rose Aldrich had passed. “My mother died when I was eight, and my father and brothers and I … well … we just fell apart. When I was sixteen, I got into trouble. Dad sent me to live with her. Grams turned my life around.”
“I’m sure you were a blessing to her, too.”
“I tried to be.” Her lips gave a quick, sad smile. “I was a sponge, a city girl who knew