Mediterranean Nights: The Mistress Purchase / The Demetrios Virgin / Marco's Convenient Wife

‘Yes,’ he agreed gruffly. ‘She didn’t have the easiest of lives—’ His mouth twisted a little bitterly. ‘And that is an understatement. She had an extremely hard life. Her parents emigrated to Australia to escape from poverty at home. Her mother died before they reached Sydney and her father was so grief stricken that he began to drink. My grandmother brought up her brothers and sisters virtually single-handed, and looked after her father as well, when she was little more than a child herself! She was just twelve when they arrived in Australia, and twenty-four when she married my grandfather. She was working as a ladies’ maid when he met her, and in those days anyone in service was not allowed to get married. She wouldn’t leave her job because she still had her father to support.’

‘She must have been a wonderful person,’ Sadie told him softly.

‘She was,’ he agreed.

There was a look in his eyes she couldn’t analyse, Sadie acknowledged. A look which held bitterness and anger. A look which for some reason right now he seemed to be directing right at her!

‘You’re wearing your perfume,’ he said abruptly changing the subject

Sadie nodded her head, trying not to betray the fact she was pleased he had noticed.

‘Is it very different from the original Myrrh?’

‘A little,’ she told him, the realisation that his interest had been of a business rather than a personal nature turning her pleasure to disappointment. Rather briskly, she added, ‘The original perfume, like most perfumes of its time, was much stronger than women want to wear today—and, of course, very expensive.’

‘Expensive and exclusive,’ Leon agreed curtly. ‘In fact, a luxury that most ordinary women could never hope to enjoy!’

To Sadie’s bewilderment his expression as well as his voice once again suddenly changed, becoming closed and forbidding.

‘Have you decided want you want to eat yet?’ he asked grimly.

Sadie looked at him, tempted to ask what it was she had said that had caused him to withdraw so sharply from her, but instead she simply told him very coolly and distantly that, yes, she was ready to order.

‘How old were you when you first knew that you had a “nose”?’

Their first course had just arrived, and Sadie looked across at Leon a little warily. But whatever it was that had caused that momentary harsh bleakness to harden his expression had gone, and he was once more smiling warmly at her.

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I just sort of grew up knowing that I wanted to create perfume. My grandmother encouraged me, of course. She was born at the wrong time, I think, looking back now. She would have loved to have taken over the business, but as a girl with a brother that was just not an option.’

‘I have gathered that there was some discord between them,’ Leon acknowledged, and he looked encouragingly at her, obviously wanting to learn more.

‘My great-uncle was a gambler, and he ran down the business to finance his gambling habit. My grandmother hated what he did, and I think she ended up hating him too,’ Sadie admitted. ‘A rift developed between them which was exacerbated by the fact that my grandmother had married an Englishman and lived so far away from him. Still, she felt so passionately about the business…’

‘A passion which she obviously passed on to you,’ Leon interrupted her.

Sadie smiled.

‘My grandmother was a very passionate person.’

‘And so, I imagine, are you. Very passionate!’

Across the table their glances met and locked. Sadie discovered she was only able to breathe shallowly, her heart bouncing frantically around her chest, making her feel as though she wanted to press her hands to her body to keep it still.

The silence between them, the intimacy of their locked gazes, was the most exciting sensation she had ever experienced, she acknowledged dizzily. Her food was completely forgotten—Leon was her food, her need, her every sustenance both physical and emotional. If he were to reach out now, take hold of her hand and lead her from the table, she knew beyond any doubt that she would go with him.

‘You can’t possibly know that. I…’ Her voice was a papery dry whisper, a muted husk of sound, her eyes huge, her pupils dilated.

‘I do know it.’ Leon stopped her. His own voice was tense, low and raw with an open hunger that made Sadie shudder violently.

‘I know exactly how you will feel in my arms, Sadie, how you will taste, how passionately you will respond to me in my bed.’

What the hell was he doing? Leon wondered savagely as he heard what he was saying almost as though he was standing outside himself and listening. From the moment he had taken over the family business on his twenty-first birthday, Leon had dedicated himself totally to its success. Nothing and no one had ever threatened to come between him and that dedication—until now!

For the first time in his life Leon could feel himself being pulled in different directions emotionally. Had he gone completely mad? Totally lost the plot? Okay, so Sadie was one delectably desirable woman. But that didn’t mean…

The way she was looking at him made his body clench, and a surge of desire as fierce as the kick of a mule powered through his belly.

This wasn’t something he had written down in his mental checklist of life goals. Not now and quite definitely not ever with this particular woman!

So why wasn’t he doing something about it? Why wasn’t he getting a grip and forcing his unwanted desire for her to shrivel into nothing? Because he didn’t want to or because he couldn’t do so? Because he was already in way way over his head and not even thinking about trying to save himself?

A small shudder ripped through Sadie, openly visible to him, and his own body reacted. Responded! Hell, but no woman had affected him like this in public since he had left his teenage days behind him. It was a damn good job that the table covered the visible evidence of his arousal.

He moved a little uncomfortably in his seat, cursing softly to himself.

Sadie held her breath as she saw the way Leon’s eyes burned with sexual awareness as he monitored her reaction.

She could hardly breathe normally, never mind think of eating! Frantically she tried to come up with something banal to say, to extinguish the almost palpable aura of sexual heat surrounding them. But her brain was simply refusing to co-operate. If she didn’t manage to break the sensual intensity of the gaze they were sharing Sadie didn’t know what might happen! Or, rather, she knew perfectly well what her body was hoping would happen!

And that knowledge was making her feel both more excited than she had ever felt in her whole life and more apprehensive as well!

Someone at a nearby table pushed back their chair, and the scraping noise caused Leon to look in that direction. Dizzily Sadie dragged great gulps of air into her lungs and picked up her fork.

CHAPTER FOUR

SINCE Leon had already determined to put things between them back on a sensible, businesslike footing at the very first chance he got, why, when Sadie had taken the opportunity to do exactly that, was he reacting as though she was somehow challenging him? And why was he actively looking for ways to break through the social barriers she had thrown up and return things to a much more personal level? Leon asked himself derisively.

He had never thought of himself as the kind of man so needy, and lacking in self-esteem as to have to verbally force a woman to be aware of him sexually, but right now…

He looked at Sadie’s mouth. It was soft and full, and if she was wearing any lipstick it was so natural as to be virtually indiscernible. He hated kissing women who caked their mouths in red grease! Kissing Sadie’s mouth, in fact kissing any bit of Sadie, would be a pleasure he would give his eye teeth for right now!

Desperate to bring her rioting emotions and desires under control, Sadie waited until their main course had been served before clearing her throat and asking politely, ‘What made you decide to buy Francine?’

For a moment she thought that he wasn’t going to reply, but then he looked at her and her heart did a foolish somersault.

‘It just seemed a natural progression. We are a luxury goods group, after all.’ Right now he didn’t want to discuss his business affairs with Sadie. In fact he didn’t really want to talk about anything with her at all. At the moment the kind of communication he wanted to share with Sadie involved using their lips for something much more intimate than phrasing words!

Although Leon had spoken naturally enough in answer to her question, Sadie had felt as though he was measuring his words, as if somehow he was having to guard what he said, she reflected. But she was guiltily aware that, although she had been listening to his words, a wickedly wanton streak in herself she had not realised she possessed had been focusing on Leon’s mouth in an altogether far too intimate way!

‘We made a deal that we weren’t going to talk about business,’ Leon reminded her.

Sadie’s heart banged so loudly against her ribs that she was too worried that he might have heard it to think about anything else.

‘This steak is the best I’ve tasted in a long time,’ Leon told Sadie enthusiastically.

He had been caught slightly on the hop by Sadie’s unexpected question about his reasons for acquiring Francine. Wanting her was one thing. Discussing his grandmother with her was another! He knew that it was his own pride that made him feel so immediately protective of his grandmother, so unwilling to discuss the real reason why he so much wanted to acquire Francine and Myrrh.

The truth was that he had never forgotten how he had felt as a youngster, when his grandmother had told him the story of how when she had been a ladies’ maid she had yearned to be able to wear the exotic and expensive perfume worn by her mistress.