Chapter 19
C ARRAH YAWNED, SHRUGGING into a lab apron. Last night… last night . She couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was the reason she’d left the second dawn broke. Being alone with Chris induced insomnia while challenging everything she ever thought she knew about him. Behind that stern demeanor was a man with a sense of humor who believed in his work and loved his family. The efforts he’d taken to preserve his mother’s legacy, be present for his father, and help her navigate a place in the publishing world revealed a side of Chris she never should have known.
Because now she wished for things she didn’t know she wanted. Sitting on a couch next to him before they both fell asleep watching Dirty Dancing stirred desires she wasn’t allowed to have. Their last names drew lines in the sand that neither would dare cross despite the fact that she’d shared her deepest secret with him.
“Come in,” Carrah called, answering the knocks that hit against the door as she turned the dial on the lab mixer.
The latch of the door clicked. She turned as she heard it open and saw both Aubrey and Beau. They entered her space as if all power were vested with them and it was simply because they were older. Add in the fact that they only understood the business of Noir whereas she knew the business and science, a chip seemed to remain on their shoulders.
“Late night.” Beau folded his arms and took a wide stance. “When’d you get home?”
Like hell. Carrah snorted loudly then turned back to the contents swirling around in the beaker in front of her. Not this morning or this summer would her brother come into her lab as if they were back at headquarters questioning her like she was a child. “I guess that’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“Must you always be so defiant? It really is unbecoming.”
“Must you always be an ass so early in the morning?”
Beau came to stand in front of her, puffing as though he were about to blow like he always did in meetings when she didn’t bend to his beck and call. She let him stew. He needed her; she didn’t need him. One day he’d accept that. Until then she positioned the microscope and prepped the slide to view the mixture that would be done in a few seconds.
“Carrah.” She glanced up as Aubrey maneuvered her way around. Aubrey then signaled their brother to calm down and took his place, which was closer to Carrah. “We only came down here to check on you. You’ve hardly answered our questions. Can you please make sense of a few things? The shareholders are down our necks.”
“Oh shoot!” Carrah quickly pressed the button to stop the mixer. The ingredients were failing to coagulate.
Both her siblings drew closer. “What is it?”
“I think the VC is unstable,” Carrah replied, quickly sliding on a new pair of gloves before taking the beaker from the mixing deck. “I must’ve used too much,” she mumbled under her breath.
“VC?” her brother asked.
“Vitamin C, Beau,” Aubrey answered, backhanding him in the chest.
Carrah nodded. “Yes, Vitamin C. For a long time it was taboo to mix with niacinamide due to the pure ascorbic acid concentrated in C. However, they are two powerful ingredients that if I can stabilize will be a game changer for correcting hyperpigmentation while reducing fine lines. This has to work.”
Carrah scooped contents from the beaker onto a glass slide and then placed it under the lens. She bent over to view and saw that the formula’s suspended particles were swimming on top. Worse was when she glanced to the beaker she saw that an emulsion was beginning to separate.
“So what does this mean?” Beau asked as he fidgeted with his hands in his pockets. He then came over her shoulder as though he fully comprehended what she was observing. “We need this product. We promised it to the board.”
“Before or after you conspired a forced marriage?” Carrah shrugged away from Beau and moved to clean the slide. “It’s not ready and it wasn’t supposed to be until next year. I need more time.”
“That’s not something we have. Why is it taking you so long to figure this out?” He visibly seethed. “You presented this idea last year, and you wait till now to test it and find out that it will be delayed.”
Carrah slammed the slide down, shattering it against the granite countertop. “You’re right, I presented this a while ago. Yet your pride and fear of me having more influence than you stalled production.”
“Right now we have a few weeks, maybe a month, to get a product in the pipeline that we can produce and launch early next year or we risk Butler Savings forcing an acquisition… and we will not be the ones acquiring. Unless you accept Trent’s proposal, which buys us time for you to tinker with all of this.”
Carrah froze. She looked from Beau to Aubrey. Her sister’s chagrin confirmed her brother’s words without her opening her mouth. They still expected her to make the sacrifice, again. The lack of awareness exercised within her brother’s words demonstrated his refusal to accept Carrah’s sentiments on a marriage to Trent.
It was also conveniently obvious Beau forgot that while he and their father ran the company, and Aubrey played house with her family while Dominic was away at college, Carrah had been the only one left to care for their mother. The physical and mental toll of being the main caregiver while working and then trying to remain sane had impacted her productivity.
She would not confide that she wrote for therapy and to escape the hopelessness she felt many days while caring for their mother. A confession of such would only garner more criticism not in her favor. Unlike last night at the cottage.
For the first time in a long while, Carrah had found a space safe enough to share her true feelings without the judgment. She was doing the best she could for the family. She always did, despite the overwhelming burden that rode her back to be Noir’s savior. And if her time with Chris taught her anything, it was that there was a path etched into the road, waiting for her journey. She simply had to be willing and ready to own the highs and lows.
Her potential for self-discovery fueled her with the courage to speak up.
“Did you really ask me what is taking so long? Was our mother not sick, battling for her life last year? Who was her primary caregiver? And I won’t tell you again that I am not marrying Trent.”
“How dare you act as though you were the only one who cared about Mother,” Beau retorted, disdain dripping from his words.
Aubrey stepped between Beau and Carrah. Her head turned to Beau. “You need to cool down. This animosity between the two of you will not help us out.” She then faced Carrah. “I understand the role you played in helping care for Mom impacted your ability to work. I also support your decision to refuse the marriage proposal. With that said, we have still got to figure something out and fast or we risk losing the company.”
Carrah looked her sister dead in the eyes. Even though Aubrey appeared to be telling the truth, Carrah still hadn’t accepted that their family company that had operated for the last hundred-plus years was facing an uncertain future. “I don’t want to believe you,” she whispered.
Beau’s face fell into his palms. When he moved them away, Carrah noticed dark circles under his eyes. “You think I’ve been riding you hard for my health or that I take pleasure in being the hard-nosed big brother?” He shook his head. “We are actually in trouble. You not wanting to believe me is irrelevant.”
Carrah tightened her face, suppressing her tears, and then she spun on her heel and proceeded to leave her little lab. She had questions. The one person that should’ve been more distraught than any of them was their mother, and she had not mumbled a word.