The Mistress Purchase (3 page)

‘But that is the whole point, Raoul,' Sadie had told him dryly. ‘The essence of the scents I want to create cannot be manufactured.'

Raoul had shrugged dismissively. ‘Who can tell the difference?'

‘I can!' Sadie had answered calmly.

And now apparently Raoul wanted to sell Francine to someone who was as ignorant and uncaring of what real scent was all about as he was. Well, not if she had anything to do with it, he wasn't, Sadie decided stubbornly.

As she went to the parking area to collect her hire car Sadie noticed a frenzy of anxious activity surrounding the presence of a huge Mercedes limousine, with its windows blacked out. But she had too much on her mind to do any more than give both the vehicle and its entourage of anxious attendants a wryly amused glance as she skirted past them.

 

Spring was quite definitely on the way, Sadie acknowledged as she sniffed the air appreciatively. The scent of mimosa was heavenly!

She knew the way to Grasse almost as well as she knew the history of Francine and although modern motorways and roads had altered things since her grandmother's time, Sadie suspected that just from listening
over and over again to her description of the place she could almost have found her away around the town blindfold.

Her grandmother's childhood had been in her own words an idyllic and financially cocooned one; her father had adored and spoiled her, but then war had broken out and everything had changed. Sadie's great-grandfather had died and her grandmother had fled to England with the young English major she had fallen in love with.

The quarrel between her grandmother and her great-uncle had led to a rift which had never been healed, and stubbornly her grandmother had refused to return to Grasse. Maybe she never physically went back, but in her memories, her emotions and her heart she had returned over and over again, Sadie acknowledged as she eased her hire car down the narrow maze of streets crowded with historic buildings. Here and there she could see the now disused chimneys of what had once been the town's thriving perfume distilleries.

Other perfume houses had turned their work into a thriving tourist industry, but Francine remained as it had always done. The tall, narrow house guarding the privacy of a cobbled courtyard which lay behind its now slightly shabby façade, the paint flaking off its old-fashioned shutters and off the ancient solid wooden gates, beyond which lay the courtyard and a collection of outbuildings, linked together with covered galleries and walkways, in which Francine perfumes had traditionally been made.

Had
always
been made! Sadie frowned as she swerved expertly across the path of a battered old Citroen, ignoring the infuriated gestures and horn of its irate driver, swinging her hire car neatly into the single available parking space on the piece of empty land across the road from the house.

If Raoul had his way, and Francine was sold to the Greek Destroyer, then the manufacture of its perfumes would be transferred to a modern venue and produced with synthetic materials, its remaining few permanent elderly employees summarily retired and their skills lost.

Hélène, Raoul's ancient and unfriendly housekeeper, opened the door to Sadie's knock, her face set in its normal expression of dour misanthropy.

The few brave beams of sunlight which had managed to force their way through the grimy narrow windows highlighted golden squares of dust on the old-fashioned furniture in the stone-floored entrance hall. It made Sadie's artistic soul ache not just to see the neglect, but also the wasted opportunity to create something beautiful in this old and unloved historic house.

The rear door that opened out into the courtyard was half open, and through it Sadie could see the cobbled yard and hear the tinkle of water falling from a small fountain into the shallow stone basin beneath it. A lavender-flowered wisteria clothed the back wall of the courtyard, and a thin tabby cat lay washing its paws beneath it in a patch of warm sunshine.

Instinctively Sadie hesitated, drawn to the courtyard and its history, the memories it held of her ancestors and their creations. Its air—unlike that of the house, which smelled of dust and neglect—held a heady fusion of everything that Sadie loved best.

Hélène was growing impatient and glowering at her.

Reluctantly Sadie turned away from the courtyard and headed for the stairs that led up to the house's living quarters and Raoul's ‘office'.

Hélène, who protected her employer as devotedly as any guard dog, preceded Sadie up the stairs, giving her a final suspicious look before pushing open the door.

Ready for the battle she knew was about to commence, Sadie took a deep breath and stepped firmly into the room, beginning calmly, ‘Raoul, I am not—'

Abruptly she stopped in mid-sentence, her eyes widening, betraying her, as shock coursed through her, scattering her carefully assembled thoughts like a small whirlwind.

There, right in front of her, standing framed in the window of Raoul's office, was…was…

S
ADIE
gulped and struggled to regain her equilibrium and self-control, but those perma frost eyes were trapping her in an invisible web of subtle power.

His gaze made her feel dizzy, disorientated, helplessly enmeshed in sensations and emotions that terrified her into fierce, self-protective and angry hostility. And yet at the same time beneath all those feelings lay another, stronger, and darker one too. A rush of instinctive awareness of her vulnerability towards him as a man who, at the deepest most intense level of herself, she was responsive to.

She could feel her body quickening like mercury just because he was there, her every single sense reacting not just to the sight of him but to everything else as well, including his scent, male, potent and dangerous, prickling her sensitive nose, making her want to both breathe in the essence of him and yet at the same time close herself off from it and from him. Instinctively Sadie tensed against what she was experiencing, her eyes liquid gold with the intensity of her feelings.

She gave a small inward shudder.

‘I warned you, didn't I, Leon, that my cousin doesn't exactly present a businesslike image?' Sadie could hear Raoul saying.

Leon? Leoneadis Stapinopolous? The Greek Destroyer? Silver spears of hostility and wariness glinted in the gold of Sadie's gaze as she stared at him.

‘Miss Roberts.' A brief inclination of his head, an
Olympian acknowledgement of her presence which matched the unimpressed Australian scorch of his voice.

‘Okay, Sadie, now that you're here let's get down to business. Leon doesn't have much time,' Raoul breezed on.

So he had no time and too much money. It was a dangerously volatile combination—much like the man himself, Sadie reflected inwardly. He hadn't, she noticed, made any attempt to shake hands with her, for which she was mightily thankful, as the last thing she wanted or needed right now was any kind of physical contact with him.

He had made no indication of having recognised her from the trade fair. Perhaps he had not done so. Maybe, unlike her, he had not suffered that feral surge of instant recognition. Maybe? There was no maybe about it! He was a man who was armoured against any kind of emotional vulnerability!

As Raoul started to talk expansively about the benefits which would accrue to them all on Leon's acquisition of Francine Sadie had to force herself to focus on what he was saying. Deliberately she started to turn away from Leon to face her cousin, hoping that by doing so she could lessen the almost mesmerising effect Leon's presence was having on her.

She spun round on her heel and a flurry of dust motes danced around her. Out of the corner of her eye she just caught the swift movement Leon made as he stepped towards her, his fingers curling round her upper arm, shackling her. She could feel the pulse throbbing at the base of her throat, driven by the acute intensity of the sensations bombarding her—the cool, steely grip of his hand on her arm, the sleek suppleness of his fingers, hard and strong, the dry, controlled warmth of his flesh, the stead
iness of the surge of his blood in his veins as her own pounding heartbeat went wild.

Instinctively Sadie's head snapped round. Her eyes were on a level with his throat. A drenching surge of hot female awareness roared over her, swamping her. She wasn't used to feeling like this, reacting like this, wanting like this, she acknowledged shakily.

Wanting…How could she want him? He was a stranger, her enemy, representative of everything she disliked and despised.

He was leaning towards her, his cold gaze releasing her as his eyelids came down, shuttering his eyes away from her as his head slanted towards her throat.

It was impossible for her to stop the fierce tremor that raced through her as she felt the warmth of his breath against her skin

‘Well, at least the scent you are wearing today is a great improvement on whatever it was you were touting at the trade fair.'

His hold on her upper arm slackened the imprisoning bracelet of hard male flesh, his hand sliding smoothly down to her wrist and then holding it whilst the soft pad of his thumb pressed deliberately against her frantically jumping pulse. The shuttered lids lifted. Shockingly, the ice had melted and turned into a shimmering blinding heat that sent her heartbeat into overdrive.

‘What is it?'

What was it? Didn't he know? Couldn't he tell?

‘It's obviously a very highly marketable scent, and…'

Scent; he was talking about her perfume!
Her
perfume, Sadie reminded herself savagely as she pulled herself free and stepped back from him.

‘Pity you didn't choose to wear it at the trade fair. What you did wear—'

‘Was Raoul's father's creation and had nothing to do with me,' Sadie snapped sharply, quickly defending her own professional status. ‘I didn't even want to wear it!'

‘I should hope not,' Leon agreed suavely. ‘Not with your reputation.' He gave her a silkily intimidating look. ‘One of the reasons we are prepared to pay so generously for Francine is, as I am sure you must know, so that we can secure the combination of its old recipes and your perfumery skills. We want to bring to the market a new perfume under the Francine name which…'

The briskness of his manner snapped Sadie back to reality. This man was her enemy—bent on destroying everything she held dear professionally—and she had better keep that thought right to the forefront of her mind! Accusingly she looked at Raoul.

‘Raoul, I think—' she began.

Raoul stopped her, smiling fawningly at the other man. ‘Leon, Sadie is as excited about your plans for Francine as I am myself—'

‘No, I am not,' Sadie interrupted him sharply. ‘You know my views on this subject, Raoul,' she reminded her cousin. ‘And you assured me that we would have time to talk in private today, before we met with…with anyone else!'

What was the matter with her? Why was she finding it so hard to so much as say his name without betraying the effect he was having on her?

‘Raoul may know your opinions,' Leon cut in smoothly, ‘but since I do not, perhaps you would be good enough to run them past me.'

‘Sadie—' Raoul began warningly, but Sadie had no intention of listening to him, and refused to be intimidated by the challenge she could see gleaming dangerously in Leon's eyes.

Leon was no longer the man whose presence had swamped her female defences, the man who had somehow reached out to her and touched her senses and her emotions at their most primeval level. Instead he was the man who was threatening everything that mattered most to her. And there was no way that Sadie would break the mental promise she had made to her grandmother that she would cherish and protect the inheritance she had passed on to her in every way that she could.

Turning to confront Leon, Sadie began as calmly as she could. ‘I may only be a minority shareholder in the business, but I do own one-third of the shares.'

‘And I own two-thirds, ‘Raoul reminded her angrily. ‘If I want to sell the business to Leon, then as the majority shareholder—'

‘The business maybe, Raoul.' Sadie stopped him, her face beginning to turn pink with the force of her emotions. ‘But—'

‘I am not really interested in which one of you has the majority shareholding in the business,' Leon cut in grimly. ‘What I and my shareholders are interested in is the reintroduction of Francine's most famous scent and the addition of an equally successful new creation! Using modern production methods—'

‘I will never create a perfume made in such a way!' Sadie told him passionately. ‘To me, synthetic scents are an abhorrence. They are a mockery of everything a true scent should be. A great fragrance can only be made from natural ingredients. It does not just reflect its origins, it also reflects and highlights the…certain essential properties of its wearer…'

‘Certain properties?' The dark eyebrows rose mockingly. ‘You mean it reflects and highlights a woman's sensuality?'

To her disgust, Sadie realised that she was actually blushing!

‘Sadie, you are totally out of step with what's happening today in the perfume business,' Raoul objected angrily.

‘No, Raoul,' Sadie argued back, glad to have an excuse to turn away from Leon and focus on her cousin instead. ‘You are the one who is out of step. The mass perfume market may still be governed by chemically produced products, but at the top end of the market there is an increasing demand for traditionally produced perfumes. If either of you two had done your homework you would both know this,' Sadie told them fiercely. ‘And the fact that you do not know it, the fact that you have not done your homework, makes me have very serious doubts about the ultimate success of any new product you might launch.'

Whilst Raoul was beginning to bluster an angry protest, it was Leon's reaction that interested her more, Sadie acknowledged. His mouth had tightened into a hard line and he was frowning at her.

‘Mass-market perfume is big business,' he told her harshly. ‘The production of a perfume which can only be afforded by a few élite buyers does not interest me.'

‘Well, it should,' Sadie countered. ‘Because it is the scent worn by the élite buyers that the mass-market buyers most want to wear themselves. And why shouldn't they aspire to do so? Why should they be fobbed off with a synthetic substitute that is never going to come anywhere near equating to the real thing?'

‘Perhaps because the synthetic substitute is affordable and the real thing is not,' Leon told her pungently.

‘You say that, but it could be!' Sadie claimed immediately. ‘It is perfectly feasible for high-quality natural
perfumes to be made at a reasonable cost. But of course the profit margin on them would be much smaller, and that is the real reason why big business like you refuse to produce them. Because profit is all that matters to you. You and men like you are as…as soulless as…as…synthetic perfume!' Sadie told him passionately.

‘Is that a fact?'

The silky tone of Leon's voice made Sadie quiver inwardly with wariness, but she refused to heed her body's own protective warning, eyeing Leon defiantly.

‘Well, you, of course, would be in a perfect position to judge me, wouldn't you? Having met me how often? Twice?'

‘Three times,' Sadie corrected him, and then felt her body burn with self-conscious heat as he looked thoughtfully at her.

‘Three times?'

‘How many times I've seen you is an irrelevance.' Sadie overrode him.

‘The world's opinion of the status of the corporation you run and its aims and beliefs are written about publicly and frequently in the financial press, and—'

‘The financial press?' Leon stopped her. ‘They report company and corporation policy. They do not make it,' he told her acidly.

‘I don't care what you say,' Sadie protested emotionally. ‘Raoul already knows my views on his plans to sell Francine to you—against my wishes. In fact I came here hoping that I might be able to dissuade him, but I can see that there is no hope of that! I cannot stop him from selling to you, since he is the majority shareholder, but there is no way that I would ever—ever…prostitute my…my gift of a good “nose” for perfume by selling that to you!'

Abruptly Sadie realised how silent both men had become. Raoul was looking angry and embarrassed, whilst Leon…

The chill was back in his green eyes, but strangely now there was a glow beneath it, a glitter like the beginning of the Northern lights on ice, all white fire shimmer and danger, a warning of a strength and a power that secretly she already felt vulnerably in awe of.

Which was all the more reason why she should not give in to him, Sadie told herself militantly.

‘Stirring words. Pity they don't seem to have been matched by your actions!'

Leon's cool words were every bit as chillingly dangerous as the look he had given her. Outraged, Sadie turned to look to Raoul for support, but her cousin was out of earshot on the other side of the room, searching through some papers on his desk.

Leaning closer to her, Leon continued with steely venom, ‘When I saw you at the trade fair it was quite obvious that you were—'

‘That was Raoul's idea,' Sadie protested defensively.

‘Raoul's idea, Francine's perfume—and your body. As a matter of interest, what kind of response, other than the obvious, did that cheap sideshow you were putting on generate? I am, of course, asking about the amount of sales it generated, and not the number of offers you received for your body!'

Sadie glared at him.

‘How dare you say that? I had no idea that men would assume I was also available.' Her mouth compressed with anger whilst her face burned hotly with sharply remembered shame.

‘No idea?' The contempt in his eyes left her sensitivities burned raw. ‘Oh, come on. You can't expect me to
believe that! You paraded yourself openly and deliberately, wearing—'

Sadie had had enough.

‘I was perfectly respectably dressed, and if I'd had any idea that what I had assumed to be a collection of professional businessmen would behave like…like a pack of…of…animals, I would never, ever have allowed Raoul to persuade me into helping him.'