Penny Jordan - Mediterranean Nights

Sadie would by virtue of her one-third holding in Francine receive one-third of that money. When he included in that sum the extra amount he had now offered, via Raoul, to pay in respect of Sadie giving up her own business to join the company, he was looking at a very large amount indeed—and Sadie’s share was well in excess of what he knew to be the value of the Grasse property.

It was on the tip of his tongue to challenge her statement, and a small frown wrinkled his forehead as he contemplated what might lie behind Sadie’s seemingly artless comment.

Could she actually be angling for him to offer to hand over the Grasse property to her? Somehow he hadn’t thought of her as a person who was either manipulative or grasping—unlike her cousin. But he was enough of a businessman to respect the fact that she was in a position where, if she chose to do so, she could set an extremely high value on her expertise.

Unusually for Raoul, he had been unexpectedly and unhelpfully vague about what he thought Sadie’s financial requirements might be for joining Francine, and so Leon had sought the advice of a local firm of headhunters, asking them what the going rate for a person of Sadie’s skills would be. Once they had told him he had decided that in view of the fact she was giving up her stance on natural raw materials, and agreeing to create a new perfume, he had added a large extra amount onto the sum he had informed his legal team he would be paying her as a salary.

If she was after the Grasse house as an additional ‘sweetener’, though, she was going to be disappointed!

Aware of his unexpected and certainly unwanted withdrawal from her, but totally unaware of what Leon was thinking, Sadie questioned lightly, ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No, nothing at all,’ Leon assured her smoothly. ‘If you’re ready, we ought to make a start. The mas is a good three hours’ drive away.’

Relieved to see the sombre look replaced by a much warmer one, Sadie nodded her head.

The tables on the open air terrace of the restaurant where they had eaten their breakfast were filling up with other guests now, and Sadie was glad that they’d eaten early enough to have virtually had the place to themselves.

This hotel would make a wonderful venue for honeymoons, she acknowledged as she stood up and Leon came to pull her chair back for her. What with its spa facilities and suites with their own private hot tubs. If she and Leon were sharing such a suite…

As he saw her eyes darken and her face flush, Leon wondered what it was that had brought that soft look to Sadie’s eyes and caused her sudden intake of breath.

Standing close to her now, breathing in the warm scent of her, he wondered if he was being entirely wise in choosing to spend a whole day with her—especially after last night! And it wasn’t the fiercely passionate kiss they had exchanged before going their separate ways he was thinking about, but the hours afterwards, when he had lain awake in bed, aching for her so much that he’d had to grit his teeth against the sheer intensity of it, and will the hard, angry throb of his erection to subside.

When Leon picked up the keys for the hire car he had ordered from the foyer, the receptionist announced, ‘The hire car firm has asked me to apologise to you because unfortunately they have not been able to supply you with the car you requested. They have instead delivered a smaller one. Apparently there was a mix-up at the main office, and with Cannes being so busy with a big trade fair…’

Sadie could see that Leon was frowning a little, and so she offered calmingly, ‘As there are only the two of us the size of the car doesn’t really matter, does it?’

Leon took the keys from the receptionist and turned to smile warmly at her.

‘Does having such a good nature come naturally to you, or do you have to work at it?’ he teased her gently as he took her arm and guided her out into the warm morning sunshine.

Sadie cast him a wry look.

‘You didn’t give me the impression that you thought I had a good nature when we first met,’ she reminded him dryly.

‘Ah.’ Leon gave her a droll look. ‘But that was before.’

‘Before what?’ Sadie couldn’t resist asking as he led her towards the small compact hire car parked just outside the main entrance.

Bending his head towards her, Leon replied wickedly, ‘Before I kissed you.’ He was playing with fire and he knew it, but suddenly he felt happier than he had felt in a long long time.

Speechlessly Sadie got into the passenger seat. Leon was quite definitely flirting with her, and somehow she didn’t think that he was the type of man to flirt with every woman he met. No, when Leon flirted, it was because…

Because what? Because he wanted to idle away a few spare days enjoying a brief sexual liaison? Sadie shivered, as though the words ‘brief’ and ‘liaison’ were lumps of ice someone had dropped down her back.

It really was a compact car, she acknowledged ruefully a few minutes later, as she saw the way that Leon was practically folded over the steering wheel.

‘In Australia we wouldn’t give something of this size to our kids in case we were convicted of child abuse,’ he told her in disgust as he inserted the key into the ignition.

Sadie laughed.

‘I thought it was only Texas where everything was bigger than anywhere else,’ she teased him, but her laughter turned into a small anxious frown as the car refused to start.

Cursing beneath his breath, Leon tried again—and this time, to Sadie’s relief, the engine fired.

The farmhouse Leon was planning to rent for the summer was in the Massif de l’Estérel region of Provence, a beautiful mountainous area made up of the volcanic rock porphyry. The sides of the mountains were cloaked in forests of pine and cork oaks. Sadie felt a thrill of excitement at the thought of visiting such a beautiful area, and an even sharper one at the thought of visiting it with Leon.

However, because of some roadworks in the centre of Mougins they had to take a circuitous route in order to get to the road that would take them up into the region. As they drove through the countryside surrounding Mougins Sadie couldn’t resist pointing out to Leon the fields full of flowers grown for the perfume industry.

‘How can anything made in a laboratory come anywhere near rivalling the scent of these?’ she asked him passionately, gesturing towards fields of roses and jasmine.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ Leon agreed with a glinting look towards her. ‘For one thing with a chemically based scent there’s no risk of the final product differing from batch to batch because the sun shone for three days less one year! And that means that when a woman buys a chemically created perfume she can be sure she is getting exactly the same scent that was in her previous bottle—and at an affordable price!’

Sadie’s forehead puckered into a frown. From listening to Leon it would be easy to imagine that he had not changed his stance at all on the creation of the new perfume. Or was he simply trying to bait her?

She opened her mouth to vigorously defend her own stance, but Leon shook his head and gave her a meaningful look.

‘Remember our pact?’ he warned her.

Sadie laughed, but inwardly she couldn’t help wishing that she could talk with him about her excitement and enthusiasm for her work on creating their new perfume. Their new perfume… She was also aching to get to work on the old-fashioned men’s cologne produced by Francine, to update it, to make out of it a scent that was intensely male… a fragrance that would for ever and always be for her the mark of the man she was so passionately drawn to. Leon’s scent…

Dreamily she let her imagination go to work! She would name it Leon—in her own secret thoughts if not in public—and it would be topaz-dark in hue, leonine, discreet, sensual, strong, earthy and rich, yet with a touch of coolness and hauteur, a fragrant suggestion of the pale green ice that was Leon’s eyes! Leon… Leon… The bottle would be tall and round, wide enough for a man’s hand to grip comfortably and feel at ease with…