Taming the French Tycoon

by Rebecca Winters

  When she’d left this room earlier in the day, she’d been Jasmine Martin with an agenda that had consumed her from the moment she’d turned twenty-six and had been made the head of the company. But standing here now, she realized she wasn’t that same person anymore. Suddenly she felt like she was teetering on the edge of that cliff in Cyprus, terrified and in pain all at the same time.

  How could meeting one man have done this to her so fast? It was insane!

  In her world as a chemist, there was an explanation for this phenomenon called flash point. It was the lowest temperature at which a flammable liquid like essential jasmine oil will give off enough vapor to ignite when exposed to flame. Flash point was also the critical stage in some process, event or situation at which action, change or violence occurred.

  That’s what had happened to her. She’d been at her lowest point when she’d entered the Banque Internationale du Midi. But when she’d discovered Luc there, she’d ignited as if she’d been torched by flame. In that instant, a change had occurred, altering her state. She now stood at this railing a transformed woman, filled with those age-old longings called desire.

  Jasmine couldn’t believe it had finally happened to her. She’d thought herself impervious. When she’d discussed it with her mother, Blanchette had laughed gently and warned her that the day would come when Jasmine would be overcome by her attraction to a man. Just pray he would be the right kind of male, worthy of her.

  Why did it have to be the man she’d clashed with on the island? Why was he the man she needed in her corner? One who had the power to put Remy on the throne at Ferriers. But he had chosen not to, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

  Jasmine had put all her eggs in one basket by appealing to him first. It had made sense to turn to the banking institution Ferriers had relied on for close to a century. But Luc wasn’t his grandfather. He was a savvy modern businessman with modern ideas, a man of today. She should have known deep down he would never let sentiment overrule his good sense and practical thinking.

  She’d argued her case on sentiment and lost. Jasmine needed to prepare a list of other bankers to contact. It was time to move on to her next target and forget she had ever known Luc Charriere.

  After changing into jeans and a top, she went downstairs to the den to begin her search. Before she could get busy, her cell phone rang. It could be anyone. Much as she didn’t want to talk to a soul right now, she didn’t dare ignore it. Maybe it was her family. She had to be sure everything was all right with them.

  When she saw Luc’s name on the caller ID, she almost dropped the phone. She’d thought she would never hear from him again. Be as businesslike as possible, Jasmine. Don’t let your voice shake. She clicked on. “Hello?”

  “Good evening, Jasmine. Am I calling at a bad time?”

  “No. I just got home from work. What can I do for you?”

  “Since you left my office yesterday, I’ve taken another look at your file.”

  Her pulse thudded off the charts. “Why?”

  “I’ve done a little homework and am curious about this land you mentioned.”

  What?

  “There’s no price or description on it. You’ve indicated nothing about it but its existence. If I were to consider your proposition further, I’d need to know what we’re talking about here.”

  She couldn’t believe he’d called her back. She couldn’t believe he was still thinking about it. Naturally he wanted to know how much money she needed to borrow, but she had been so convinced there was no hope, this phone call shocked her.

  “You did mention you’re in a hurry,” he said quietly.

  She cleared her throat. “Yes.”

  “Under the circumstances, are you free in the morning to show it to me with the Realtor?”

  Jasmine was so thrilled he was willing to go this far, she did a little jump. “Absolutely, but I haven’t contacted a Realtor yet. Let’s just say I’ve had inside information and know it’s been put on the market.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” The comment made her smile. “Then if it’s all right with you I’ll drive to Grasse and you can show me. Where shall we meet?”

  Not at the house. She never knew when one of her aunts or uncles might drop by. It was the family home to all of them. Though Jasmine lived there, her grandparents had always said everyone was welcome to come and stay as long as they wanted. Their deaths hadn’t changed anything in that regard.

  “Do you know the old abandoned abbey on the upper road?”

  “Bien sûr. Shall we meet there at say nine a.m.?”

  “I’ll be there. Thank you for at least being curious enough to listen to me.”

  “I owe it to Ferriers. They’ve been one of our best clients for decades. A toute à l’heure.”

  Jasmine heard the click before she was ready to hang up. He’d been cordial just now, but still all business. She no longer felt like jumping.

  When she thought about it, he was probably humoring her by being willing to look at the land she had her eye on. As he’d said, this was what a banker did who’d been a friend to the company for so many years, even if he still planned to turn her down.

  Tomorrow she’d be all business too and kept telling herself that throughout the night.

  When Jasmine awakened the next morning, her bedding was all over the place. She’d had a restless night.

  After showering, she dressed in her generic uniform, which consisted of a short-sleeved, light blue blouse and matching cotton skirt. At work, her clothes took a beating even with a lab coat. Once she’d shown Luc the property, she would head directly to the lab.

  Relieved to hear from her folks that all was well at home, she fastened her hair at the nape with a matching blue elastic and went down the old black staircase to eat breakfast. On the way, she passed hundreds of small framed photos lining the walls. Remy’s mother had arranged them years earlier. The history of the Ferriers was written here, and Remy was prominent in many of them.

  Jasmine paused in front of the one she loved best. Remy—ever devoted—was standing in the garden of white Parma violets behind his mom, who was in her wheelchair. She held a bunch of them he’d grown and picked just for her. Jasmine knew the story behind every picture.

  Remy and his mother both had dark red hair. In this picture, he was developing into the handsome man he would become.

  “Whether Luc helps us or not, you’re going to be in charge soon, Remy. Just wait and see.”

  She removed it from the wall and put it in her large straw bag. Then she rushed the rest of the way to the kitchen to drink a half cup of tea and grab a plum. It earned a frown from Sylvie before she hurried outside to her car parked on the gravel drive.

  The same warm-growing-hot morning greeted her, but this day was different from all the others. Her body knew it, otherwise her heart wouldn’t be racing. She wished it were only because she needed her plan to work, but that would be a lie.

  Jasmine couldn’t wait to see Luc Charriere again. All the reasons she shouldn’t be interested in a Frenchman she needed to do business with didn’t matter. Chemistry had taken over. As a scientist, she knew she couldn’t fight it.

  The solution would be to avoid him. If, by some miracle, the loan was granted, then Remy would be the one working with him in the future. But if Luc turned her down again, as she suspected he would, then that would put an end to everything and they’d go their separate ways.

  To
dwell on him was idiotic. She knew nothing about him. Being a Frenchman, he had a lover of course, but he’d be discreet. You couldn’t be a French male without one. She knew what the field workers talked about all the time. Women. Jasmine often plopped on a straw hat and helped with the harvest. It was a revelation.

  She learned about the ones they’d already been with, the ones they were planning to be with, the ones they were getting tired of. The ones their friends were seeing, the ones they’d stopped seeing, the ones who were stepping out on their husbands, the ones who wanted to step out with them.

  Aside from her papa, Jasmine had always preferred American men. They loved women too, but they weren’t as open about it. She liked the strong silent cowboy types like Hank Branson, the guy she’d had her first big crush on.

  As soon as Remy was installed, she planned to go home and get married. It probably wouldn’t be to a cowboy like her father. But that didn’t matter. She wanted to get back to the ranch on the other side of the Teton mountain range and prove her love to her family. Jasmine had promised them she’d come back to live. She loved ranching too and longed to start her own family where she could be around her married siblings.

  Jasmine was retiring from the world of perfume. Hopefully a grandchild of Remy’s would inherit the gift to make up a recipe that would keep Ferriers on top. But that was no longer her concern.

  Neither was Luc Charriere, who could never be part of her American dream.

  But her body groaned when she drove up to the ruin of the old abbey and found him lounging against a dark green Jaguar convertible with his arms folded. His masculine body filled out his white linen shirt with contrasting buttons to perfection. Her eyes dropped down to his powerful legs covered in beige twill pants. Italian leather sandals completed the picture.

  She sighed audibly at the sight of him with that five o’clock shadow. For a minute she was imagining him in a western shirt and a Stetson.

  Which was true? The clothes made the man, or the man made the clothes? What a ridiculous question when the evidence stood before her. The man made the clothes! At least this man did. With the riddle solved, she got out of her car.

  But she bet he’d never ridden a horse. That alone was a huge strike against him.

  * * *

  The new head of Ferriers didn’t dress fit to kill. Spoiled women who came from a background of wealth—and Luc had seen and worked with a lot of them—couldn’t spend money fast enough to adorn themselves in the latest designer fashions.

  That wasn’t the case with this woman. With a face and body like hers, Jasmine Martin didn’t need to. She had other tantalizing assets, including a mind and thoughts that were so far removed from the superficiality of this world, he marveled. She moved with the kind of femininity a man enjoyed and was compelled to watch.

  “Bonjour, Luc. I can’t thank you enough for being willing to meet me here. I’ll admit I was surprised to hear from you at all.”

  “Bonjour, Jasmine.” Since losing sleep over her last night had nothing to do with business, her comment had touched on dangerous ground. “I decided to give more thought to what I read in your file, but—”

  “I understand the buts,” she interrupted him. “This is not a commitment from you. If you’ll follow me, we’ll be there in approximately one minute.”

  With her suggestion, there was no risk of them being thrown together in the same car where they would be in touching distance. Danger avoided, for the moment.

  He gave her a nod and they were off. She drove fast across the dips and crests of the hillside. After winding around a bend, she slowed to a stop beside a field lying fallow. Luc pulled behind her and got out. She hurried toward him.

  “Ten days ago, one of my inside sources informed me this land is available again. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for, but I’d need to move fast.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “The monks farmed this land for years. When the old abbey burned, the property was put on the market. It sat for a long time. The only company with enough money to do something with it wanted to turn the whole place into a subdivision for middle-income housing. For the last year, the owner and would-be buyer have gone the rounds in negotiations, but they fell apart because of public pressure to keep the land free of buildings.”

  “I’m violently against these hillsides being exploited,” he asserted.

  Emotion seemed to turn her eyes a darker blue. “You’re one of the good guys in the banking business.”

  “I’m a native Niçois. This land is my home too.”

  “You sound like Papa. With our perfect climate and soil, both he and Remy lamented seeing these fields sold off to hungry developers. It’s a tragedy that the cost of labor and the growth of synthetic perfume components have made flower farming less rewarding. Nowadays many of the perfume houses go to their source of oils in North Africa and India. Papa fought to keep Ferriers from going the same route.”

  He flashed her a smile. “Now you’ve taken up the flag.”

  “I’m going to try with everything in me.” A pulse throbbed at the base of her creamy throat. His own pulse picked up her beat.

  “How big is this property?”

  “We’ll have to get the figures from the Realtor, but at one time I understand they had as many as fifty thousand individual plantings of vegetables like carrots, onions, fennel and leeks. If I were to approach him and tell him the company wants to plant violets and nothing else, I know that will satisfy the public. We’ll need to erect a couple of sheds and of course a rock wall with a locked gate to make certain the integrity of the plants remains constant.”

  She reached in her bag and pulled out an eight-by-ten framed picture that she handed to him. “This is Remy and his mother Rosaline when he was seventeen. Those white violets were his pride and joy in the past. Today he’s developed a new strain that no one else in the world has, and no one will. He calls it the Reine Fleury after his mother.

  “It grows in sun and light shade. As we say in the perfume world, it’s a good doer. The blooms are prolific. In May, you can pick a bunch for the house every week until September. One of these flowers alone will fill a room with its fragrance. When the perfume comes out, it will be Ferrier’s new weapon.”

  She’d already used it on Luc. He swallowed hard. No matter the defenses he was trying to put up, this woman was getting to him, breaking them down so fast he was growing alarmed. Luc would have to stand on his head to get the board to back this loan. Even employing his son’s technology, Remy Ferrier himself was a question mark with baggage a mile long.

  “Who’s the Realtor?”

  “Charles Boileau at the Agence Alpes-Maritime. Does his name mean anything to you?”

  He handed her back the picture. “My grandfather had several dealings with him. By now he would be getting on in years.”

  Her eyes searched his. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “As I recall, he mentioned the word crusty, but then so was my grandfather.”

  An unexpected laugh escaped her lips, delighting him. “What do you think would be the best way to approach him?”

  Luc could feel the urgency in her. Between her passion for the project and Remy himself, plus the fact that she had created a new scent that could put Ferriers at the top of perfume sales, he could feel himself weakening.

  “Tell you what. I’ll call the agency right now. As soon as he’s available, we’ll go see him together, today if
possible. You have a singular effect on everyone you meet so I want you with me. If he and the owner are agreeable to a sale and give you a price I can work with, then I’ll consider taking it to my board of directors.”

  “Wait—” she cautioned as he reached for the cell phone in his pocket. “There are two things you need to know first.”

  What now? More revelations she’d been holding back? Maxim Ferrier’s granddaughter was so full of them, she had him spinning. “Go ahead.”

  She bit the underside of her lip. He’d love a bite of her himself and despised his weakness. “I’m not the official CEO yet.”

  A grimace marred his features. “Then what was that announcement about on Friday?”

  “Papa left instructions that I was to be given a month before I was installed to take over the reins. He realized I’d need that long to put everything into play. But he wanted the announcement to the public made immediately to make it more difficult for the family to counteract his move.”

  Ciel! “If you’re not the legal head yet, I can’t go to the board with this. Why didn’t you tell me the truth when you first came to see me?”

  She stood fast. “After our precarious beginning, I didn’t think I’d be able to get anywhere with you if you knew.”

  Luc decided he was all kinds of a fool to be taken in by her.

  “I have no doubt you’ll soon be hearing from some of the family on the Ferrier board, as well as Giles, claiming a show of no faith in me. If I know them, they’re already getting ready to vote me down at the next meeting a week from Friday. By preventing my installation, they’ll promote the ascendancy of one of them.”

  No doubt. “What else haven’t you told me? Don’t hold anything back now,” his voice rasped.

  Her hesitation spoke volumes about what was coming. “Remy knows nothing about my plan yet.”