The Mistress Purchase

‘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.’

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.