Page 1 of Snowed in with My Protector

CHAPTER 1

FALLON

Sitting in the darkness of my hotel room with only colors from the muted television lighting up the space, it feels like someone is watching me. Logically, I know how ridiculous that sounds, but it’s a feeling I can’t shake. I’ve been watching the news all day. It’s been like a train wreck I couldn’t look away from.

Maybe that’s because I’m the reason Luxe Notes is on the news and trending, but not for the reasons my bosses want us to be trending.

“Serves them right for lying to everyone,” I mumble under my breath. “I’m sure those who bought into their lies feel like fools right now.”

Hell, I know I do. I am a fool. I thought I was working for an ethical company, one that wasn’t swayed by money to the extent that everyone else has been. I thought it was about the love of bringing luxury to people in the right way because scent is an intrinsic part of the human experience. That’s at least the bullshit I bought when I was a consumer and then when I perused the company like a dog with a bone.

I pull the hair elastic from my hair and run my fingers through the tangled mess before pulling it all back up again. It’sa nervous habit, one I couldn’t stop right now even if I wanted to.

Fear churns in my gut as I watch the stock of Luxe Notes drop as the screen starts to show the evidence I leaked to a reporter two nights ago. Again. I’m not even sure how many times they’ve shown the proof of what the company I’ve been loyal to for years hides behind their nice, wholesome public persona.

It’s the same evidence that changed my entire life when I found it. It feels like I stumbled across what I was never supposed to see a year ago, but it hasn’t been that long. It’s only been a matter of days.

How can your entire life change in the matter of minutes?

I thought I learned that lesson when I was a young girl, and my mom died. Everything changed then, even as I was surrounded by the linger scent of mom’s perfume. I was young and Dad tried to shield me from the ripple her loss caused in the rest of my life, but I still felt it.

There was no one to shield me when my boss was sick, and I was asked to pull up some information on my boss’ computer that their boss needed. Mr. Carlisle, someone I hadn’t had much interaction with, had called me out of the blue just as I was about to pack up and leave the lab at Luxe Notes.

“Ms. Eades,” he barked when I answered, already sounding annoyed, “since Dr. Hamilton is out of the lab, I need you to pull some reports from his computer and send them to me.”

I swallowed hard, trying to keep the waver out of my voice, “Of course, Mr. Carlisle. I have a pen and paper right here. If you tell me what you need me to send, I can do that right now before leaving for the day.”

He huffed out a breath, like I was annoying him because I wasn’t a damn mind reader and didn’t already know what it was he needed. I swallowed down the snarky words that wanted to come out and tell him my crystal ball wasn’t working because I knew it would only get me in trouble. Mr. Carlisle was intimidating as hell, and my job was too important to me to put it at risk.

He rattled off some information at me and I jotted it down, hoping I could find all the reports without needing to contact Dr. Hamilton, who sounded a little like he was on the verge of death when he called me earlier. I had assured him everything in the lab was fine and he should focus on getting better.

“I want them within the hour,” Mr. Carlisle demanded before hanging up on me.

Even though I was wasting precious time, I stared at the phone for a moment, wondering why such a rich man was so mad at the world.

“Maybe he’s rich because his foul mood scares everyone and makes him seem like a strong businessman when really he’s a grumpy bastard,” I huffed out my displeasure before glancing around and letting out a relieved sigh because no one was around to hear me.

Being a workaholic seemed to be a good thing in that moment.

I went into Dr. Hamilton’s office, which was enclosed by glass walls allowing him to appear accessible to the lab while keeping everyone working under him in his sights. It felt strange to sit at my boss’s desk. Even though we had to log into individual programs, like the email, the computers weren’t password protected. Why would they be when we were expected to shareall files and research in our little department, and you had to pass through more than one security checkpoint to get to the lab in the first place?

I always found it a little odd, but at the same time our IT department and people far above my pay grade were in charge of things like that. I didn’t see it as something I needed to question. Since I used my work computer to note the blends I was making along with the extraction techniques I was experimenting with, I had nothing to hide.

As I started to pull up the reports Mr. Carlisle needed, which, for the most part, were easy to find, my eyes kept going to a folder on the desktop labeled ‘JANUS’. It was like I couldn’t ignore it, especially being familiar with the two-faced God. I should have ignored its existence, but I couldn’t.

In the attempt to preserve Dr. Hamilton’s privacy, I didn’t open the file right away. I did open up the file’s history and noted that it was normally hidden. I murmured, “Why would you hide this?”

Once I had sent off the reports Mr. Carlisle needed, I really was going to walk away from the computer and forget all about the strange file, and how eerie it was sitting in the chair my boss normally occupies. Really. I was.

But then I clicked on the file. Because I couldn’t keep well enough alone and my curiosity was going to haunt me. What I found in that file was a mix of reports and documents, all of which blew the public persona of Luxe Notes out of the water.

There were results from animal testing which made my stomach turn. I wanted to believe that they weren’t related to the company I had given so much time and effort to…right up until I noticed that they were still using a certain extractiontag, one of mine. Honeysuckle is a difficult flower to extract fragrance from and I had devoted a lot of time to coming up with a way that would be sustainable and ethical. I was mostly successful, and it was difficult as hell. I always labeled my samples as PITAHS and that didn’t change even when I had completed my work.

And right there staring at me were the testing notes and results for PITAHS-27. On bunnies.

I wish that was all I found, but I couldn’t stop there. I had to see it all. When I got to the reports about acquiring materials, I had to look away. Because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

The same orchids I could see on my workstation from Dr. Hamilton’s desk, the Sky-Blue Sun Orchid, the one I was promised was ethically sourced because of it’s critically endangered status, had been stolen from a horticulturist working to improve the population of the flower in Australia. Stolen. A flower.

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