His hold on her upper arm slackened the imprisoning bracelet of hard male flesh, his hand sliding smoothly down to her wrist and then holding it whilst the soft pad of his thumb pressed deliberately against her frantically jumping pulse. The shuttered lids lifted. Shockingly, the ice had melted and turned into a shimmering blinding heat that sent her heartbeat into overdrive.
‘What is it?’
What was it? Didn’t he know? Couldn’t he tell?
‘It’s obviously a very highly marketable scent, and…’
Scent; he was talking about her perfume! Her perfume, Sadie reminded herself savagely as she pulled herself free and stepped back from him.
‘Pity you didn’t choose to wear it at the trade fair. What you did wear—’
‘Was Raoul’s father’s creation and had nothing to do with me,’ Sadie snapped sharply, quickly defending her own professional status. ‘I didn’t even want to wear it!’
‘I should hope not,’ Leon agreed suavely. ‘Not with your reputation.’ He gave her a silkily intimidating look. ‘One of the reasons we are prepared to pay so generously for Francine is, as I am sure you must know, so that we can secure the combination of its old recipes and your perfumery skills. We want to bring to the market a new perfume under the Francine name which…’
The briskness of his manner snapped Sadie back to reality. This man was her enemy—bent on destroying everything she held dear professionally—and she had better keep that thought right to the forefront of her mind! Accusingly she looked at Raoul.
‘Raoul, I think—’ she began.
Raoul stopped her, smiling fawningly at the other man. ‘Leon, Sadie is as excited about your plans for Francine as I am myself—’
‘No, I am not,’ Sadie interrupted him sharply. ‘You know my views on this subject, Raoul,’ she reminded her cousin. ‘And you assured me that we would have time to talk in private today, before we met with…with anyone else!’
What was the matter with her? Why was she finding it so hard to so much as say his name without betraying the effect he was having on her?
‘Raoul may know your opinions,’ Leon cut in smoothly, ‘but since I do not, perhaps you would be good enough to run them past me.’
‘Sadie—’ Raoul began warningly, but Sadie had no intention of listening to him, and refused to be intimidated by the challenge she could see gleaming dangerously in Leon’s eyes.
Leon was no longer the man whose presence had swamped her female defences, the man who had somehow reached out to her and touched her senses and her emotions at their most primeval level. Instead he was the man who was threatening everything that mattered most to her. And there was no way that Sadie would break the mental promise she had made to her grandmother that she would cherish and protect the inheritance she had passed on to her in every way that she could.
Turning to confront Leon, Sadie began as calmly as she could. ‘I may only be a minority shareholder in the business, but I do own one-third of the shares.’
‘And I own two-thirds, ‘Raoul reminded her angrily. ‘If I want to sell the business to Leon, then as the majority shareholder—’
‘The business maybe, Raoul.’ Sadie stopped him, her face beginning to turn pink with the force of her emotions. ‘But—’
‘I am not really interested in which one of you has the majority shareholding in the business,’ Leon cut in grimly. ‘What I and my shareholders are interested in is the reintroduction of Francine’s most famous scent and the addition of an equally successful new creation! Using modern production methods—’
‘I will never create a perfume made in such a way!’ Sadie told him passionately. ‘To me, synthetic scents are an abhorrence. They are a mockery of everything a true scent should be. A great fragrance can only be made from natural ingredients. It does not just reflect its origins, it also reflects and highlights the…certain essential properties of its wearer…’
‘Certain properties?’ The dark eyebrows rose mockingly. ‘You mean it reflects and highlights a woman’s sensuality?’
To her disgust, Sadie realised that she was actually blushing!
‘Sadie, you are totally out of step with what’s happening today in the perfume business,’ Raoul objected angrily.
‘No, Raoul,’ Sadie argued back, glad to have an excuse to turn away from Leon and focus on her cousin instead. ‘You are the one who is out of step. The mass perfume market may still be governed by chemically produced products, but at the top end of the market there is an increasing demand for traditionally produced perfumes. If either of you two had done your homework you would both know this,’ Sadie told them fiercely. ‘And the fact that you do not know it, the fact that you have not done your homework, makes me have very serious doubts about the ultimate success of any new product you might launch.’
Whilst Raoul was beginning to bluster an angry protest, it was Leon’s reaction that interested her more, Sadie acknowledged. His mouth had tightened into a hard line and he was frowning at her.
‘Mass-market perfume is big business,’ he told her harshly. ‘The production of a perfume which can only be afforded by a few élite buyers does not interest me.’
‘Well, it should,’ Sadie countered. ‘Because it is the scent worn by the élite buyers that the mass-market buyers most want to wear themselves. And why shouldn’t they aspire to do so? Why should they be fobbed off with a synthetic substitute that is never going to come anywhere near equating to the real thing?’
‘Perhaps because the synthetic substitute is affordable and the real thing is not,’ Leon told her pungently.
‘You say that, but it could be!’ Sadie claimed immediately. ‘It is perfectly feasible for high-quality natural perfumes to be made at a reasonable cost. But of course the profit margin on them would be much smaller, and that is the real reason why big business like you refuse to produce them. Because profit is all that matters to you. You and men like you are as…as soulless as…as…synthetic perfume!’ Sadie told him passionately.
‘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 lo
ok 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.