‘I assured Raoul of no such thing!’ Sadie insisted. She felt almost incandescent with shock and rage, barely able to speak for the ferocity of her fury. She knew she’d been lied to and deceived—and not just by her cousin!
‘You must have known that I would never, ever give such an agreement,’ she threw at Leon passionately. ‘I can’t believe you can possibly have thought that I would ever agree to work exclusively with synthetics when you know how important it is to me…’
Leon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This was his worst nightmare scenario come to life! There he was, facing a stubborn, emotional woman who threatened the security of his business.
Just wait until Kevin Linton got to hear about this! He had been opposed to the Francine acquisition right from the start, stating that it simply did not have legs, and now, Leon realised bitterly, his adversary might be right.
‘You tricked me,’ she told him fiercely.
‘I tricked you!’ Leon snapped, adding, ‘It seems to me that it’s very convenient for you that Raoul is nowhere to be found!’
‘Convenient for me?’ Sadie felt as though she might explode with the ferocity of her rage and sense of ill-usage. ‘Raoul assured me that you were willing to compromise, to allow me to create a perfume that was a blend of both naturals and synthetics—a perfume that—’
‘What? You expected me to let you create a perfume for selfish women with too much money who don’t give a damn about anyone other than themselves? No way. Not now. Not ever!’ Leon told her, shaking his head to emphasise his feelings. ‘I thought I’d already made it plain to you, Sadie, that I want a perfume that all women can enjoy.’
‘All women?’ Sadie’s lip curled in furious contempt. ‘You don’t give a damn about my sex, Leon. All you care about is making money—well rest assured you aren’t going to make any from me, or from the Myrrh formula!’
Leon had had enough! Before he could stop himself he was reaching for Sadie and wrapping his arms around her, smothering her angry, heated words with the equally heated pressure of his mouth.
For one single heartbeat Sadie tried to resist him, but it was impossible. A hot tide of longing was already surging through her, obliterating her defences as it did so. Helplessly she clung to him, returning his kiss with equal intensity. Their mouths meshed, their bodies defying the pressure of their mutual anger.
‘Sadie, you’ve got to see reason,’ Leon growled against her mouth.
‘I’ve got to see reason?’ Immediately Sadie pulled back from him, her breasts rising and falling with the rapidity of her aroused breathing.
‘You verbally agreed to sign our contract, and morally—’
‘Morally, nothing,’ Sadie declared, incensed, still trying to come down from the emotional impact of his kiss.
Leon froze. Suddenly he was fourteen again, witnessing the argument between his father and Miranda. ‘Morally?’ She had laughed mockingly. ‘Legally, you have nothing! Now legally he had nothing. There was no witness to her verbal agreement, no contract, no Myrrh and no Sadie.
Anger, despair and the sharpest pain he had ever known roiled inside him.
‘My God, Brad was right to warn me. You are another Miranda Stanton,’ he burst out, white-faced.
His words barely registered in Sadie’s consciousness. Suddenly she was sick to her stomach as a horrible thought hit her. Had Leon taken her to bed in a cold-blooded attempt to soften her up? Had he ultimately intended to persuade her to create a wholly synthetic perfume?
Torn apart by her pain, she told him emptily, ‘I will never, ever create a synthetic perfume, Leon. Never!’
Without waiting for his reply she turned and walked unsteadily out of the room.
Leon stared after Sadie’s departing back and tried to fight down his own emotions. Suddenly he had the most intense longing to go after her and stop her—tell her…Tell her what? That he was afraid he might love her? Tell her about Miranda Stanton and that he dreaded that she might be just like her? That he was afraid she might somehow tempt him into putting his love for her before his responsibility towards the business? That he was terrified that if he touched her now he would tell her she could create her damned perfume out of the stars in the sky and he would drag them down out of it for her if only she would tell him she loved him back?
Oh, Kevin would love that!
He needed a straitjacket!
He needed…
Leon gave a groan as his memory provided him with a very detailed and illuminating image of just exactly what he did need. That was Sadie, soft, warm, naked, willing and loving in his arms—whispering to him, kissing him, holding him, telling him things that would send him plain crazy and then putting those words into actions, sweet, hot, sexy promises of intimate pleasure that…
Leon ground his teeth in savage frustration. Without Sadie and the Myrrh formula Francine was doomed to failure. And if it failed it would cost his group of companies millions of pounds and a public loss of face from which there could be no recovery.
His own position and his own fortune were unassailable, but Leon was all too aware of the vulnerability of those who had invested in his companies and in him. He had a moral obligation to his shareholders that he had to put ahead of his own feelings.
CHAPTER TEN
GRIMLY Leon put down his mobile. He had been trying to get in touch with Raoul for the last four days—ever since he had returned to Sydney, in fact—but there was just no answer either to his calls or his e-mails.
From the modern offices of Stapinopolous Inc. Leon could look down onto the harbour, but the fabulous view before him could not hold his attention today.
‘Could I have a word, Leon?’
Blanking his thoughts, Leon shot Kevin Linton an assessing look.
‘Not if you want to regurgitate everything we’ve already discussed, Kev,’ he answered calmly.
‘Hell, Leon. You’re talking to me as though we’re on opposite sides of the fence! No one has the interest of this corporation at heart more than me; you know that!’
‘I also know, Kev, that so far you’ve tried to block just about every expansion programme we’ve adopted, and—’
‘Leon, we’re an Aussie business and, yeah, I think we should stay that way. All this tomfoolery about buying into stuff in Europe. I just don’t get it.’
‘We live in a shrinking world, Kev. From a TV programme beamed out across it, viewers can see and want a thousand products—that’s a fact I don’t need to prove. We’re already well-established in the
market, but if we are to expand…’
‘Leon, I know what you’re saying—but to buy a run-down perfume business…’ Kevin shook his head. ‘It seems to me that you’ve made a real error or judgement—especially when we take into account the fact that the deal hasn’t gone through yet, and all on account of this woman!’
‘The deal will go through,’ Leon told him tersely. ‘And “this woman” as you call her is—’ Leon stopped, his heart doing a slow, painful somersault. This woman was his woman. And she had got so far inside his head and his heart that he could barely function without her.
‘Well, it’s your reputation that’s lying on the line, Leon, not mine. But I have to tell you there’s no way I will agree to being held to ransom and having to pay out good money for something we could damn well hire a chemist to make for us for peanuts.’
Somehow Leon managed to hold on to his temper. He had made it perfectly clear to Kevin why they were buying Francine and right now he was in no mood for Kevin’s favourite kind of power-game-playing.
‘And this woman—the one who’s causing us all this trouble. Honestly, Leon, she sounds like a real bitch from hell.’
‘Sadie is no such thing!’
Leon had spoken before he could stop himself, leaping immediately and instinctively to Sadie’s defence in a way that shocked him just as much as it had obviously surprised his co-director.
Why was he so bent on defending a woman who had caused him so much trouble? Because he was a fool, that was why! Or because deep down inside himself he knew—just knew—that Sadie was not another Miranda? Not matter how much the facts might suggest that she was.
After Kevin had gone Leon wondered broodingly what he was doing, spending so much time thinking about Sadie over there in Europe, when there was so much that was surely more important that needed his attention right here in Sydney.