Jennifer Greene: Blame It on Chocolate

Not AGAIN. Yet the nausea came on like a battleship, heavy and ugly and overwhelming. Her skin turned damp and hot so fast she barely had time to pull over to the shoulder and brake. Hands shaking, flushed and hot, she leaned over the passenger side, argued with the door, thank God got it open, arched her head out…and then nothing.

The bagel stayed in. The bite of freezing wind on her cheeks seemed to help. Eventually she sank back against the headrest, feeling weak and yucky, cars speeding past her. The practical voice in her head ordered her to quit messing around and call the doctor, enough was enough with this nausea thing.

But her emotional side kept trying to figure out what she’d done to deserve this. Yeah, she was trying to be more wicked, but basically the sins on her conscience wouldn’t fill a list. She’d skipped school once in kindergarten. She’d thought evil, evil thoughts about Aunt Miranda—but then, so did everyone else in the family. She’d gone to a party one time without underpants. She’d let Eugene hang on too long. She’d borrowed her sister Ginger’s blue cashmere sweater in high school and got a spot on it and never ’fessed up. And yeah, there was that one other occasion.

She’d come to call that one other occasion the Night of the Chocolate.

But as quickly as that memory surfaced, she shuffled it, fast, into the part of her brain labeled Denial. God—if there was a God, and she thought there was—just couldn’t be paying her back for that one. She’d already suffered enough.

When it came down to it, she’d lived like a saint 99.99 percent of her life. She dusted under the refrigerator, never took a penny that wasn’t hers, always flossed. Her family relentlessly teased her for becoming a fussy old lady before she was thirty—which really hurt her feelings.

The point, though, was that this stomach upset thing wasn’t a sign that her life was about to spin completely out of control. It was just an ulcer or something like that. A something that a visit to the doctor—however inconvenient and annoying—would resolve once and for all.

And just like that, she felt better. Her hands stopped trembling and the weak feeling almost completely disappeared. Cautiously she restarted the car and pulled out on the road. She didn’t turn the radio up and sing like her usual maniac self the rest of the way—why tempt fate? Sometimes it paid to be superstitious.

Twenty minutes later, she was still okay. In fact, not just okay, but feeling totally fine when she spotted the thousand-acre fenced-in estate. She turned at the tasteful, elegant sign for BERNARD’S.

The sign didn’t bother spelling out Bernard Chocolates. It didn’t have to. Anyone on four continents—at least anyone who appreciated fine chocolate—would easily recognize the name.

Even though it was Lucy’s second home, getting through the property every morning was more complicated than joining the CIA. Still, she was used to it. At the front gate, she simply popped in ID to make the electricity security fence open.

The driveway immediately forked in three directions. The road to the right led to the plant. The middle road meandered up to the Bernard mansion. Humming now, Lucy took the familiar third road that curled and swirled a half mile, bordered by lush pines and landscaped gardens.

A moment later she reached another electric fence—this one fifteen feet tall, with a gate that was both locked and manned 24/7. Instead of waving her through, Gordon hiked outside when he spotted her crusty Honda. “Hell, Miss Fitzhenry, I was about to call the cops. You’re seven minutes late. I was afraid you must be in an accident.”

Sheesh. Was she that predictable? “I’m fine, honest. Did you have a nice weekend?”

“Oh, yes. Me and the missus saw a good movie, had the grandkids over. In the meantime—both Mr. Bernards are up at the house. Asked me to tell you to stop by around ten this morning if you could.”

“Thanks. And you have a great morning,” Lucy said as she rolled up her window, but her pulse suddenly bucked like a nervous colt’s. Her pulse, not her stomach, thank heavens. The nausea seemed to be totally gone—but she still couldn’t stop the sudden bolt of nerves.

The nerves were foolish, really. Any day now, she’d known the Bernards would summon her for a serious meeting. Her last experiments had been beyond successful—so successful that they affected the entire future of the company. That was great news, not bad.

It was just that she normally met with Orson Bernard, not his grandson. On paper she reported to the senior Bernard, and God knew, she adored the older man, loved being with him and working with him both. Still, Orson was well over seventy and long retired. Everyone knew who really signed the paychecks these days.

It wasn’t as if Lucy didn’t like Raul Nicholas Bernard. She did. Orson’s grandson was too darned adorable and charming and sexy not to like. Everyone liked Nick.

She just always got rattled around him. He knew it. She knew it. Probably the birds in the trees knew it—which made her reaction to him all the more embarrassing. Realizing she was chewing on a thumbnail—a habit she’d broken at least ten years ago—Lucy firmly blocked that tangled thought train.

Behind her, the fence clanged shut. She caught Gordon’s wave from her rearview mirror and had to smile. Physically Gordon resembled a sublet Santa, but his background included intensive years as an army ranger.

It regularly tickled her funny bone that she could conceivably work in a place that required such expensive and extensive security. Funnier yet was that she actually had power over the security staff. Her. Lucy Fitzhenry. A woman who couldn’t control her own flyaway hair, couldn’t drink champagne without a fit of the giggles, and required a daily milk-shake to maintain 110 pounds.

Her mood turned serious as she took the last curve. A huge structure loomed in sight—her building. Her baby. From the front, the architecture resembled any other high-tech contemporary office structure. Sleek, lots of windows, clean lines. Past the office was the giant lab that everyone shared, then the spiderweb of individual labs, and far back—not in sight from any road—came the network of greenhouses.

She parked in the front row and hustled inside. This early in the morning, the core staff were holed up in their offices, trying to shovel through paperwork chores before they could move into the real meat of the day. Reiko, who must have had her hair scalped on Saturday, yelled out, “Hi, what happened to you?”

Lucy had to ask about Reiko’s squirt-aged son—who she’d love to marry, if he wasn’t a mere four—then sprinted on. Or tried to. Fritz and Fred had offices next. They’d both graduated from MSU last spring, although Lucy secretly thought that they weren’t men but druids. They were never tucked or brushed. Ever. Not even once, by accident. Their brains were sharper than lobster traps, but their humor was primordial and they were so dorky that she’d be amazed if they’d ever had a date. She was even more amazed how much she loved them. Still, like drone twins, they both showed up in their doorways at the same time to yell out, “Hey, Lucy, were you sick? Did someone die? Will the world survive your being late?”

“Would you cut it out, you guys? You act like I’ve never been late, for Pete’s sake.”

Actually, she hadn’t, but she was still offended that everybody labeled her so anal. You’d think she always colored inside the lines.

Which she did. Almost always. Except for that one serious time—but cripes, why did that have to keep popping into her mind today?

The instant she reached her office, she hung her jacket on the rack and switched on the computer. Her office was the size of a minute, but the walls were painted a pale peach and had a wily mile of ivy winding this way and that around the window and file cabinet. A stuffed Garfield supervised a corner of her desk. The only bare wall had floor-to-ceiling old posters of ads—Fry’s Cocoa, Bensdorp’s Cacao, Xocolata Amatller, Caley and Berne. No French labels.