Free The Mistress Purchase by Penny Jordan Page B

want to discuss his business affairs with Sadie. In fact he didn’treally want to talk about anything with her at all. At the moment the kind of communication he wanted to share with Sadie involved using their lips for something much more intimate than phrasing words!
    Although Leon had spoken naturally enough in answer to her question, Sadie had felt as though he was measuring his words, as if somehow he was having to guard what he said, she reflected. But she was guiltily aware that, although she had been listening to his words, a wickedly wanton streak in herself she had not realised she possessed had been focusing on Leon’s mouth in an altogether far too intimate way!
    â€˜We made a deal that we weren’t going to talk about business,’ Leon reminded her.
    Sadie’s heart banged so loudly against her ribs that she was too worried that he might have heard it to think about anything else.
    â€˜This steak is the best I’ve tasted in a long time,’ Leon told Sadie enthusiastically.
    He had been caught slightly on the hop by Sadie’s unexpected question about his reasons for acquiring Francine. Wanting her was one thing. Discussing his grandmother with her was another! He knew that it was his own pride that made him feel so immediately protective of his grandmother, so unwilling to discuss the real reason why he so much wanted to acquire Francine and Myrrh.
    The truth was that he had never forgotten how he had felt as a youngster, when his grandmother had told him the story of how when she had been a ladies’ maid she had yearned to be able to wear the exotic and expensive perfume worn by her mistress.
    â€˜It was called Myrrh,’ his grandmother had told him with a sigh, ‘and it was the most beautiful perfume ever.’
    â€˜Couldn’t you have bought some?’ his younger self had asked her naïvely.
    She had smiled sadly and shaken her head, ruffling his hair with a hand gnarled and deformed by years of hard domestic work.
    â€˜Leon, just one small bottle would have cost more than I would have earned in five years,’ she had told him. ‘Perfume like that wasn’t created for women like me!’
    As he had seen the look in her eyes Leon had sworn there and then that one day his grandmother would own a bottle of the best and the most expensive perfume in the world, and that he would buy it for her. Only she had died before he had been able to make good that promise. But he had never forgotten that he had made it, and never ceased regretting that he hadn’t been able to keep it. And he had certainly never forgotten why he had made it, which was why he’d felt so antagonistic towards Sadie’s original refusal to create a new perfume that would be inexpensive enough for every woman to wear and enjoy.
    But fortunately Sadie had seen sense, and at last the Myrrh scent was going to belong to him! It was too late for his grandmother to enjoy, but at least he would have the satisfaction of knowing that the grandson of the woman who hadn’t been able to afford to buy the smallest bottle of the scent now owned the whole company! And if it was the last thing he did he intended to make sure that every woman who wanted to would be able to afford to wear a Francine perfume!
    And so he had deliberately not told his board the reasons for his determination to acquire Francine. There was no way he was going to make himself vulnerable to anyone by admitting that he had been motivated to buy Francine out of sentiment. He would never hand out that kind of information and give others the opportunity tocrucify him! As they undoubtedly would. The business world he operated in traded in financial gains, not emotional ones. And it only respected the men who made those financial gains.
    Leon had grown up in a tough world, watching his parents struggling to establish the business—and then, just when the business had been on the verge of becoming very profitable,