by Penny Jordan
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 lo
ok 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.’
How could her cousin even think of selling Francine to this man? To this…this monster?
With a change of tack so swift and unexpected that it caught her totally off guard, Leon demanded, ‘That scent you’re wearing today—what is it?’
Immediately Sadie tilted her chin and eyed him defiantly.
‘It’s a perfume of my own.’
‘I like it,’ Leon told her crisply. ‘Indeed, I should have thought that it would be a highly marketable addition to the Francine name. In fact, I am surprised that you are not already marketing it!’
Anger flashed in Sadie’s eyes, turning them as brilliant a gold as the sun streaming in through the dusty windows.
‘This scent was created by me for my own personal use.’
‘It’s an original formula of your own devising?’
Sadie frowned. Why was he asking her so many questions? He was beginning to seriously annoy her!
‘Not exactly,’ she admitted haughtily. ‘It’s actually based on a one-time famous Francine perfume called Myrrh.’
Sadie stopped speaking as the dark eyebrows snapped together and she was treated to a frowning look.
‘Myrrh…I see!’
In the warning-packed silence that followed Sadie could feel her nerve-ends tightening.
‘Aren’t I right in thinking that that was Francine’s most exclusive and successful scent?’ Leon asked smoothly.
Now it was Sadie’s turn to frown.
‘Yes, it was,’ she acknowledged. ‘You have done your research well,’ she admitted, unable to resist adding a little acidly, ‘Or rather someone has.’
No doubt a man like him paid other people to provide him with whatever information he needed! He could certainly afford to do so, after all!
‘You say that the scent you are wearing is based on Francine’s Myrrh? I am surprised that you allowed Sadie to tamper with something so valuable and irreplaceable, Raoul,’ he announced to Raoul, looking over Sadie’s head towards her cousin.
Infuriated as much by his manner as his words, it gave Sadie a great deal of satisfaction to tell him coldly, ‘Actually, Raoul has no power to “allow” anyone to do a thing with the original Myrrh formula, since her father left it to my grandmother and she left it to me! A fact which I’m sure Raoul intended to share with you in the near future.’
Sadie saw immediately that Leon had not been told that she owned the Myrrh formula. He looked at her, his mouth thinning, before turning and demanding, ‘So you own one-third of Francine and the Myrrh formula?’
‘Yes,’ Sadie confirmed emphatically, with a great deal of satisfaction.
‘This is a matter I shall need to discuss with my lawyers. The Myrrh name, in my opinion, belongs to Francine, and—’
‘And the Myrrh scent belongs to me,’ Sadie informed him angrily. ‘If you think that you are going to browbeat and bully me with threats of lawyers, then let me tell you that you cannot. I’m going, Raoul,’ she told her cousin shortly. ‘I’ve wasted enough time here!’
‘Sadie—’ Raoul began to protest, but Sadie ignored him, crossing the room and pulling open the heavy door.
Her visit, Sadie acknowledged bitterly as she got back to her car, had been a complete waste—not just of her time, but more importantly of her hope and her desire to somehow persuade Raoul not to sell the business.
She attempted to soothe her spirits and her senses by walking through the old town, along the narrow streets that wound between wonderful old seventeenth- and eighteenth-century buildings, pausing to glance in shop windows before stepping out of the sunlight into the shadows until she had finally made her leisurely way to the principal square at the top of the old town.
The Place aux Aires housed a daily market of fresh flowers and regional foods. However, it was so late in the day that the flowers and food had all been sold by now, and the stallholders were packing up for the day. She decided to find a café in the arcade that lined one long side of the square and drink a cup of coffee whilst she admired the pretty three-tiered fountain which graced the square.
Down below where she had parked she could see the empty shell of one of the town’s old distilleries, neglected and unused now, in these modern times—thanks to men like Leon! Before getting into her car something made her stop and look up towards the window to Raoul’s office.
Her whole body stiffened as she saw Leon standing there, looking down at her.
Angrily she held his gaze, determined not to be the first one to look away, her concentration only broken when another driver, anxious for her to vacate her parking spot, beeped his horn to attract her attention.
In the dusty silence of the room the two men looked at one another.
‘Look, Leon,’ Raoul began breezily, ‘I know what you must be thinking, but I promise you that everything will be fine. I’ll talk to her. She’ll come round. You’ll see. Of course it would help if you were a bit more, well…friendly towards her! The woman hasn’t been born who doesn’t respond to a bit of coaxing and flattery,’ Raoul told him.
Silently Leon studied him before saying gently, ‘Friendly? Well, I assume that you know your cousin far better than I do, Raoul. Although I wouldn’t have thought…’
‘Oh, Sadie is okay.’ Raoul gave a small shrug. ‘Of course, she’s had her own way all her life—been spoiled and indulged. Her grandmother saw to that! She married into a wealthy English family.’
He gave another dismissive shrug, neglecting to add that that wealth had been lost long before Sadie’s birth!
‘There’s nothing to worry about, Leon,’ Raoul continued confidently. ‘Sadie’s a bit naïve. She gets all fired up and on her high horse, all moralistic at times, that’s all. I put it down to the fact that she was virtually brought up by her grandmother! Sadie’s a bit old-fashioned, if you know what I mean, but I can soon talk her round! She’s just not had much to do with men, of course—thanks to her grandmother.’
‘Oh, yes, that would explain it,’ Leon murmured suavely, but Raoul was oblivious to his sarcasm.
‘Leave everything to me, Leon!’ he continued arrogantly.
Leon frowned. It was becoming increasingly obvious to him that Sadie was in a very vulnerable position where Raoul and the business were concerned. Had she been a member of his family…But of course she was not, and there was no way he could afford to let his Greek ancestry urge him into the self-elected role of protective paterfamilias towards her! Indeed, there was no reason why he should concern himself about her in any way—not after the open hostility she had shown him!
His frown deepened. Hostility wasn’t something Leon was used to women exhibiting towards him. Quite the opposite. There had never been a wo
man he had needed to pursue, and he certainly wasn’t going to start chasing one who had made it plain that she didn’t want him! Of course he wasn’t! No, all he felt was pique and chagrin; these were emotions so unimportant that he wasn’t even going to bother acknowledging them, never mind responding to them!
What was important—almost vital—was securing the acquisition of Francine. Leon had understood from Raoul when they had first discussed the matter that in acquiring Francine he would also be acquiring its existing scent formulae, including that for Myrrh, and the perfume-creating skills of Sadie herself. Now it seemed that Raoul had not been entirely honest with him.
‘Everything will be fine, Leon. I promise you,’ Raoul repeated insistently. ‘All we need to do is convince Sadie that you’ll let her use her precious natural ingredients and she’ll be eating out of your hand and begging you to let her concoct a new perfume for you.’
‘I’m afraid that isn’t an option, Raoul. The cost alone of simply acquiring natural raw products would give my board a collective heart attack! It just isn’t commercially viable to produce a mass-market scent by traditional methods.’
‘Well, maybe not. But you don’t have to tell her that, do you?’ Raoul challenged him.
‘Are you suggesting that I should deliberately lie to her?’
‘You want the Myrrh formula and you want her to work for you, don’t you?’ Raoul asked him shrewdly.
Leon looked away from him briefly before demanding curtly, ‘Raoul, why wasn’t I informed about your cousin’s views—and, more specifically, that she owned the formula for Myrrh?’
Raoul gave a dismissive shrug
‘I didn’t think it was that important. You only asked me for a list of the perfumes my father had sold off. Anyway, like you, I am sure you could prove that legally the formula really belongs to the business. After all, a man with your resources can afford the very best of lawyers—lawyers who can prove anything. Sadie hasn’t the money to take you on in court, but of course it will save you a lot of fuss if she gives in and hands it over to you—and I promise you that if you play it my way she will!’