‘You never said that before.’
‘Didn’t I?’ The corners of his eyes crinkled with amusement. He really was heart-stoppingly sexy, Sadie acknowledged giddily. ‘Ah, well, I’m saying it now!’
‘But if we don’t talk about business, then what—?’ Sadie stopped and blushed as she saw the way he was looking at her.
‘Oh, I think we’ll find that we have plenty of things to say to one another,’ Leon told her softly.
Sadie didn’t make any reply. She was far too conscious of the fact that she was dangerously close to wanting much more from him than a simple business relationship!
He was looking away from her and in the direction of the maître d’ who was hurrying over. Turning towards him, Leon said something quietly and the other man ushered them both to Leon’s table.
Sadie could see the subtle feminine interested looks Leon was attracting from the women diners at the other tables as they were led to their own. Predictably, he had been given a table in a prime position, and as the waiter pulled out a chair for her Sadie couldn’t help feeling glad that she had chosen to wear her silk dress. It might not be as dramatic as some of the outfits several of the other women were wearing, but thanks to her grandmother she knew how to choose clothes that suited her.
Sadie had barely opened her menu when another waiter arrived, carrying a bottle of champagne and two glasses.
Wide-eyed, she looked at Leon.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he told her softly. ‘Only it seemed appropriate. To celebrate.’
Sadie couldn’t drag her gaze away from his. Why on earth had she ever thought his eyes cold? They were anything but. And as for his smile…A funny aching sensation had begun to spread from the direction of her heart all the way down through her body right into her toes, making her curl them protectively inside her sandals!
‘Well, yes…’ she agreed, trying to sound nonchalant and sophisticated. ‘Only Raoul did say it could be a few days before the contracts were ready for us all to sign, and since he isn’t here…’
The smile curling Leon’s mouth deepened and his eyes started to crinkle at the corners.
‘It wasn’t the prospect of us signing the contracts I wanted to celebrate,’ he told her in a voice that sounded like dark melting chocolate.
‘It…it wasn’t…?’ Agitatedly, Sadie picked up her glass of champagne.
‘No, it wasn’t,’ Leon agreed, watching her with a gaze so sensual and exciting that Sadie just knew her whole body was about to start quivering with delight in response to it.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me what I am celebrating?’ he prompted huskily.
‘I…er…’ Sadie took a deep gulp of her champagne and then gasped as the bubbles hit the back of her throat and exploded. She coughed and put her glass down.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised, her face burning at her own lack of sophistication.
‘What’s wrong? Don’t you like champagne?’ Leon teased her.
‘Well, I do,’ Sadie told him. ‘Only I’m not much of a drinker, really. I suppose it comes of having been brought up by my grandmother…She was a bit old-fashioned about such things by modern standards.’
‘Why did your grandmother bring you up?’
He was frowning now, but not in a disapproving or condemnatory way, Sadie noticed. No, he was looking at her as though he was genuinely interested in discovering more about her! A sweetly sharp thrill of excitement spun through her.
‘My mother died shortly after I was born, and Dad—well, he had to work. So Grandmère brought me up, and then Dad remarried.’ She paused awkwardly, not wanting him to think she was trying to make him feel sympathetic towards her. ‘Well, Melanie—my stepmother—she was younger than Dad, and I don’t think she was too keen on the idea of taking on a soon-to-be teenage stepdaughter. Anyway, I was happy to stay with Grandmère.’
‘I see…’
He was looking at her in the most direct and yet somehow very tender way, Sadie recognised. A way that made her feel as though she could almost tell him just how hurt she had felt, knowing that her stepmother didn’t want her and that her father did not love her enough to insist that she was allowed to be a part of their lives.
‘I too had a very close relationship with my grandmother,’ Leon told her quietly.
For a moment they looked at one another in silence. They were, Sadie recognised, two people suddenly discovering that they had more in common than they had realised.
‘Your grandmother was Greek, wasn’t she?’ Sadie asked hesitantly, not wanting to pry and yet suddenly desperate to learn as much about him as she could, for him to be the one to tell her!
‘Yes. Like you, with your grandmother, I was very close to her. My parents both worked in the business my father was building, and my grandmother lived with us and looked after me. She died when I was fourteen.’ His frown deepened. ‘It was a very bad time for the family.’
‘You still miss her?’ Sadie guessed.
‘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.