The Mistress Purchase Read online

  ‘You seem remarkably unconcerned about your cousin, if I may say so,’ Leon commented dryly.

  Carelessly, and without any trace of embarrassment, Raoul told him, ‘Certainly I am not as concerned for her as I am for myself. Why should I be? We’ve only been in contact for the last few months. I need to sell Francine, Leon. If not to you then to someone else. And there is no way I am going to let Sadie or anyone else interfere with that.’

  ‘I think I’d prefer to speak with your cousin myself,’ Leon announced coolly, adding warningly, ‘It’s true that I want Sadie’s expertise, and that I want the Myrrh formula, but there’s no way I would agree to her being deceived about my future plans for the business. I’m afraid that in my book honesty can never be sacrificed for expediency!’

  Initially, when he had seen Sadie at the trade fair, Leon had assumed that she was made much in the same mould as her cousin. But now he wasn’t nearly so sure.

  But he could not afford the luxury of sympathy, Leon warned himself, and unless he had misjudged her Sadie would certainly not welcome receiving it from him.

  Raoul gave a careless shrug.

  ‘Fine—if that’s what you want to do. After all, you’re going to be the boss!’

  Going to be, but was not as yet, Raoul reminded himself angrily after Leon had gone.

  There was no way he was going to allow Sadie to mess up this deal for him, and no way he was going to risk leaving it to Leon to persuade his cousin to change her mind. Not when Raoul knew that he could do so much more easily and quickly.

  In the privacy of his elegant hotel suite, Leon completed the telephone conversation he had been having with his chief executive in Sydney and then went to stand in front of the large window that opened out onto his private balcony.

  Sadie’s ownership of the Myrrh formula was a complication he had not anticipated, as was Sadie herself. But he had no intention of using Raoul’s suggested underhand tactics to rectify it! Underhandedness and deceit were weapons of engagement that were never employed in the Stapinopolous business empire—even though once they had been used against it to devastating and almost totally destructive effect.

  Leon’s expression hardened. Those dark years when his family had almost lost the business were behind them now, but they had left their mark on him. However, right now it wasn’t the past he was thinking about so much as…

  A little grimly Leon acknowledged that he wasn’t sure which had distracted him the most—the tantalising length of Sadie’s slim legs encased in the jeans she had been wearing, or the intensity with which her eyes had reflected her every emotion.

  She was, he decided grimly, impossibly stubborn, fiercely passionate and hopelessly idealistic. She was a go-it-aloner, a renegade from the conventional business and profit-focused world of modern perfumes. She was, in short, trouble every which way there was. A zealot, a would-be prophet, intent on stirring up all kinds of disorder and destined to cause chaos!

  She would make his board of directors shake in their corporate shoes and question his financial judgement for even thinking about wanting to get involved in a business in which she played even the smallest part.

  Did she really believe that it was feasible to produce what amounted to a handmade scent in the quantities needed to satisfy a mass-market appetite at an affordable price, using old-fashioned methods and natural raw materials?

  He was already facing opposition from some members of his board over his plans to acquire Francine—but it was an opposition he fully intended to quash! An opposition he had to quash if he was not to find himself in danger of being voted off his own board!

  ‘Why Francine?’ one of his co-directors had demanded belligerently. ‘Hell, Leon, there are dozens of other perfume houses in far better financial condition, with more assets, and—’

  ‘It is precisely because Francine is Francine that I want it,’ Leon had countered coolly. ‘The name has a certain resonance. An allure. And because of its current run-down state we can acquire it at a reasonable cost and build up a completely new profile for it. The new Francine perfume, when it comes on the market, is going to be the perfume to wear.’

  ‘The new Francine perfume?’ one of the others had questioned. ‘Hell, Leon, if there’s to be a new perfume why buy the damned outfit at all? Why not just get some chemist to come up with a new perfume for us and get some actress or model to front it for us? That’s what everyone else is doing.’

  ‘Which is exactly why it is not going to be what we shall do,’ Leon had responded briskly.

  He was taking a very big gamble. He knew that. For every classic fragrance there were a hundred perfumes that had been forgotten, buried in obscurity. Leon wasn’t a fool. He knew that he had his detractors and his enemies in the shark-infested waters of the business world in which he lived; he knew too that there were also those who were simply plain jealous of his success. And all of them, whatever their motivation, would enjoy seeing him fail and fall.

  Launching a new perfume was always a risk, even for a well-established perfume house with a stable of existing popular products. All Francine had was a name and a couple of old-fashioned formulae.

  A couple, but not Myrrh, it now seemed.

  Broodingly, Leon turned his back on the view. On the bedside table amongst his personal possessions was a small framed photograph. Going over to it, he picked it up and studied the delicately pretty feminine features of its subject, a sombre expression darkening his eyes.

  The Sadies of this world didn’t really know what life was all about. Handed a silver spoon at birth, they could take what they wanted from life as a right.

  Was she really oblivious to the fact that only a small handful of women could afford the luxury of the kind of scents she blended? Or did she simply not care?

  Well, he cared. He cared one hell of a lot—as she was about to discover!

  As she drove past the flower fields belonging to Pierre, Sadie exhaled a deep breath of pleasure and satisfaction. Pleasure because both the sight and the scent of growing flowers always lifted her spirits, and satisfaction because she had the power to prevent the Greek Destroyer from wrecking the precious heritage her grandmother had passed on to her.

  Pierre and his brother grew both jasmine and roses. A swift, delicate-fingered person could pick half a kilo of the jasmine blossoms in an hour, and the picked blossoms sold at a hefty price—as Sadie had good cause to know. The delicacy of the jasmine flower meant that it required year-round care by humans rather than machines. And in the rose fields stood the precious, wonderful Rose de Mai, from which the rose absolute which Sadie used in her perfumes was made.

  Pierre and his wife Jeannette came hurrying out to the car to welcome Sadie, embracing her affectionately.

  ‘So Francine is to be sold and soon you will be creating a fine new perfume for the new owners? That is excellent news. A talent such as yours should be recognised and allowed to truly shine. I am already looking forward to saying that I know the creator of the next classic scent,’ Pierre announced teasingly, once Sadie was seated at the scrubbed kitchen table, drinking the coffee Jeannette had made for her.

  Sadie frowned as she listened to him. She had expected Pierre to share her own feelings towards the sale of the business, instead of which he was making it plain that he thought it was an excellent opportunity for her.

  ‘It is true that Leon…he…the would-be owner does wish me to create a new perfume—but, Pierre, he is only interested in mass-market perfumes made out of chemical ingredients,’ Sadie objected.

  Pierre shrugged. ‘He is a businessman, as we all must be these days, and perhaps not totally au fait with the complexities of our business. He does not have your knowledge perhaps, petite. Therefore it is up to you, in the name and memory of your grandmère, to help him,’ Pierre pronounced sagely.

  ‘Help him!’ Sadie’s voice was a squeak of female outrage. ‘I would rather—’ she began, and then stopped as Pierre overrode her.

  ‘But you mu
st do so,’ he said calmly. ‘For if people like yourself do not give their knowledge and their expertise to those who are coming new into the business then how are we to go on? This is a wonderful opportunity for you Sadie!’ Pierre repeated emphatically.

  ‘It is?’ Sadie stared at him whilst Pierre nodded his head in vigorous confirmation.

  ‘Indeed it is, and your grandmother would be the first to say so if she were here. Ah, I can remember hearing her tell her father that she longed for the House of Francine to produce a new perfume—a fragrance which would rival that of the most famous perfumery.’

  ‘You heard her say that?’ Sadie swallowed the emotional lump which was suddenly blocking her throat. She had loved her grandmother so much, and she knew how much Francine had meant to her.

  ‘You are indeed fortunate to have been given such an opportunity,’ Pierre was telling her.

  ‘I am?’ Sadie struggled to marshal all the objections she had had no difficulty in hurling at Leon’s head. ‘But I prefer to work on a one-to-one basis with my clients,’ she managed to point out.

  ‘Pff…’ Pierre gave a Gallic thrust of his shoulders. ‘Filmstars and the like—they come and go and are as changeable and fickle as a mistral wind! They would quite happily take your perfume and claim it as their own creation if it suited them, and just as easily turn to someone else.’

  A little reluctantly Sadie was forced to acknowledge that what he was saying had a grain of truth to it. Right now her own perfumes were very popular, but that could all change overnight. And if it did…

  She frowned. What was she trying to tell herself? Surely she wasn’t actually going to give in—to sell out—let Leon walk all over her?

  But what if Pierre was right? What if she could create a wonderful new perfume—so wonderful and so popular that the whole world would want to wear it?

  Sadie began to feel slightly dizzy, almost drugged with her own surging excitement, with the thought of fulfilling her grandmother’s unexpectedly revealed dream.

  But Sadie was no fool. She knew perfectly well that it was impossible to mass-produce a perfume created only out of natural ingredients, which meant…

  ‘I can’t do it, Pierre,’ she told him, shaking her head. ‘You know how I feel about synthetic scents.’

  Pierre nodded. ‘Indeed, we all feel the same, but these are modern times and it is impossible to mass-produce a scent from natural materials alone. There has to be a compromise…But think of what a triumph it would be were you to create one based on a perfect combination of old and new, natural and synthetic.’

  ‘No one has ever managed to do that,’ Sadie objected.

  ‘Until now,’ Pierre told her slyly.

  Giddily Sadie tried to clear her head.

  ‘Do you really think that I can do it?’ she asked Pierre shakily.

  ‘Of a certainty! If not you, then who else? You have the history and the knowledge, the experience, the tenderness, the understanding…You have a gift and, like a truly exceptional perfume, it is only waiting to be released in order to charm everyone who experiences it!’

  Sadie stared at him in bemusement. She felt as though she was riding a rollercoaster of emotions and thoughts. Could she do it? Could she create a perfume to rival that of the very greatest of houses?

  She could almost see it in her mind’s eye. She would call her perfume Francine…. It would have a similar base to Myrrh, but be a little lighter, delicate enough to make everyone who smelled it move closer to its wearer in order to breathe it again. It would be sensual and yet joyously teasing, flirtatious but still serious—a woman’s perfume, passionate, charming, enticing…It would be a scent her grandmother would have been proud for her to create!

  To her surprise, Sadie discovered that she was on her feet and halfway towards the kitchen door.

  ‘I must go, Pierre,’ she told him dizzily.

  She would need to make sure that Leon knew she was not to be messed with, of course. And she’d make it clear that she must be given carte blanche where the creation of her scent was concerned. There was no way that Leon was going to overrule her or dictate to her, and she fully intended to make that plain to him. The scent would be her creation and would bear the Francine name. It would, Sadie decided, her heart singing, restore to the house of Francine its old status and glory. It would be her abiding gift of love to her grandmother!

  CHAPTER THREE

  SADIE picked up the telephone message Raoul had left, asking her to come back to Grasse so that they could talk, as she got into her car.

  Still under the heady influence of listening to Pierre, she sent Raoul a text message informing him that she was on her way.

  This time Raoul himself opened the door to her, hugging her warmly and apologising to her for their earlier quarrel before she could so much as say a single word.

  ‘You promised me that we would be able to talk about selling the business before we met with Leon,’ Sadie reminded him warily.

  ‘I know, I know…’ Raoul was all but wringing his hands as he ushered her solicitously into the salon.

  It was such a shame that the house was so run-down and neglected, Sadie reflected for the second time that day. It had so much potential, and could in the right hands be turned into the most wonderful family home. Emotionally she looked out into the courtyard, trying to imagine her grandmother playing there as a little girl. But bemusingly, as the sunlight glittered on the droplets of water from the fountain, the child she suddenly visualised toddling across the ancient paved stones was not a miniature version of her grandmother but instead a sturdy, dark-haired green-eyed little boy, who looked shockingly like…

  Her whole body heating in the sudden surge of recognition that burned through her, Sadie dragged her trapped gaze away from the courtyard. Why on earth had she imagined Leon’s baby boy there? And, even more disturbing, why had she felt that unmistakable sharp maternal tug on her own heartstrings as she did so?

  She did not want Leon’s child. Why, the very thought was—

  ‘Sadie? Come back! You aren’t listening to me.’

  There was a note of distinct peevishness in Raoul’s voice. Guiltily Sadie turned round to look at him.

  ‘I’m sorry. What were you saying?’

  ‘I was just trying to tell you that after you left I had a long talk with Leon and explained to him that if he was serious about wanting to buy Francine and having you on board as well, then he was going to have to compromise on a few things.’

  Sadie blinked as she listened to him.

  ‘You did?’ she exclaimed, unable to hide her astonishment. She had been expecting to hear Raoul verbally persuading her, if not actually bullying her into changing her mind.

  ‘I did,’ Raoul confirmed. ‘I know you and I haven’t always seen eye to eye over Francine, Sadie, but I have to say that, listening to you today, I began to realise that you were making some very valid points. And I have said as much to Leon.’

  Her cousin’s unexpected support was leaving Sadie momentarily lost for words.

  ‘I…see…’ she managed to say. ‘And how did Leon react to that?’

  ‘Well, at first, of course, he was reluctant to agree with me—and I’ll be honest with you, Sadie, it took me a hell of a long time to bring him round to seeing my side of the argument. In the end I had to remind him that unless he wanted to alienate you completely he was just going to have to compromise…’

  ‘I’m sure he loved that,’ Sadie could not help murmuring dryly.

  ‘Well, he is a businessman, after all, and he is now prepared to concede that if you agree to the sale, and provided you work for Francine, then he is prepared to allow you to base any new perfume you create on natural products.’

  ‘Base?’ Sadie queried cautiously, whilst her heart felt as though it was bouncing around inside her chest in excitement and relief.

  Unbelievably, Raoul had taken her side, her part, and had managed to convince Leon that she was right!

  ‘Well, you
will have to negotiate with him to see how much of any new perfume can be natural products and how much chemically manufactured. And, of course, he will want access to the Myrrh formula.’

  ‘Access, maybe—but I am not prepared to hand over ownership,’ Sadie shot back immediately.

  Raoul made no response, his expression suddenly becoming almost theatrically anxious.

  ‘Sadie, I have not wanted to mention this. I do have my pride after all.’ He looked away from her and rubbed his hand over his eyes. ‘But I’m afraid that I haven’t been entirely…honest with you about…about certain things.’

  Sadie waited.

  ‘The fact is that…well, I have got myself in a bit of a financial mess. And if I can’t sell Francine to Leon then…’

  ‘Then?’Sadie prompted him, dry-mouthed. They might only have met one another relatively recently, but he was still her cousin, Sadie reminded herself loyally. She might not approve of the things he did, or the way he lived his life, but she couldn’t help but be emotionally affected by the way he had come to her support against Leon.

  ‘Francine is virtually bankrupt—and so am I. Worse than that, I have commitments….’

  ‘Commitments?’ Sadie repeated uneasily.

  ‘All right, if you will have it, debts,’ Raoul admitted, flinging out one arm in a gesture of open despair. ‘I have debts, Sadie. There! I have been forced to tell you what I had hoped not to have to do. I am in your hands now, Sadie, and if you don’t help me by agreeing not just to this sale but to giving your expertise to Francine then I shall be facing financial ruin.’

  Somewhere in the back of Sadie’s mind a tiny warning bell rang. It was a small, sharp and instinctive feeling that Raoul was not being either totally honest or totally genuine. But loyally she refused to listen to it. Even so, a little hesitantly, she began, ‘I…I…’ and then stopped.

  Raoul swung round and exclaimed joyously, ‘You’ll do it? Oh, Sadie, thank you. Thank you.’ He was holding her in his arms. Hugging her, kissing her on both cheeks and then again as his pleasure and relief overwhelmed him. ‘I cannot tell you what this means to me.’