difficult and of not realising what a wonderful opportunity this sale is. But an opportunity for what, Mary? Granted, it will give us both a considerable sum of money—especially Raoul, since he is the majority shareholder. But it will destroy the true essence of Francine and I just cannot agree to that. Never mind create a new scent. Raoul is putting so much pressure on me, though…’
She gave Mary a wry smile. ‘If I do what Raoul wants me to do I shall be selling my birthright and my creative soul! Raoul reminded me last night that I was very fortunate to have been left the formula for Francine’s most famous perfume by my grandmother. In actual fact he made me feel a little bit guilty about it, Mary.’
‘Guilty? You? What on earth have you to feel guilty about?’ Mary demanded robustly. ‘Sadie, I know strictly speaking it is none of my business, but we have been friends for a long time and I just think that you should perhaps be a little bit cautious where your cousin is concerned,’ she added forthrightly.
Sadie smiled in pleasure as she stepped into the foyer of her hotel. She had booked it on the recommendation of a client, who had raved about it to her, and now she could see why!
Although its location in Mougins meant that it was some distance away from Grasse, which was where the tall narrow house which was home to both the business headquarters and her cousin Raoul were situated, Sadie did not mind.
The hotel-cum-spa was the kind of place she loved—it was a positive haven of tranquillity and charm, unlike the glitzy Cannes hotels favoured by Raoul, who had been openly angry and bitter when he had told Sadie how much he resented the fact that the Paris premises the family had once owned were no longer in their possession.
‘Why the hell did our great-grandfather choose to sell the Paris house and retain the one in Grasse? When I think what that Paris place would have been worth now!’
Sadie had said nothing. Her own grandmother had told her that the elegant family apartment and shop the family had originally owned in the capital had had to be sold in order to pay off her brother’s gambling debts, and Sadie had no desire to reopen old family wounds!
She had booked into her hotel for the whole week, having decided to combine her business meeting with Raoul with visits to the flower-growers in the area from whom she sourced some of her supplies of natural ingredients for the perfumes she made.
As she checked in and signed the visitors’ book Sadie hid a small smile as she saw the elegant French woman behind the reception desk sniff discreetly in her direction. The perfume Sadie was wearing was unique, and one she had steadfastly refused to supply to anyone else, no matter how much they pleaded with her to do so.
It was based on the original secret recipe her grandmother had left her, but with a subtle addition that was Sadie’s own, which lightened its original heaviness just enough to make sure that it wasn’t in any way oppressive and at the same time enhanced and echoed the scent of Sadie’s own skin. It was Sadie’s own favourite creation, her very personal signature scent, and she knew without false vanity that it was a perfume that—if she had wished to—she could have sold over and over again.
In its bottle the perfume always reminded her of her grandmother; on her own body it was entirely and uniquely her.
The instructions she was given by the hotel receptionist took her to a low complex of rooms separate from the main building, set close to the adjoining spa block.
Her room itself was everything she had hoped it would be—luxuriously comfortable, elegantly simple and totally peaceful and private.
She had just enough time to unpack and change before she had to make her way to Grasse to meet Raoul, so that they could talk through her objections to his plans to sell the business to Leoneadis Stapinopolous—or the Greek Destroyer. Her mouth curled a little disdainfully as she reflected on the billionaire’s motives for wanting to acquire Francine.
He would no doubt have seen that several of his competitors in the high-stratosphere business world they all occupied had already recognised the financial advantages that came with marketing a successful perfume—especially in today’s climate, when so many women wanted to follow the example of actresses and models who had expressed their preference not for a modern perfume but instead for one of the rare and exclusive signature perfumes of the traditional perfume houses.
Her disdain changed to a frown, and she paused in the act of pulling on a comfortable pair of jeans. Formal business clothes were not really her thing, and after all this was not a formal business meeting, simply a discussion with her cousin and co-shareholder.
Francine had once produced some of the most coveted scents of its time, but Sadie knew that her grandmother’s brother—Raoul’s grandfather—had sold off the rights to virtually all of those scents, using the money to finance a series of disastrous business ventures and settle his gambling debts.
Today the only scents of any note Francine still produced were an old-fashioned lavender water and a ‘gentleman’s’ pomade—neither of which, in her opinion, did the name of Francine any favours. For Sadie, the fascination and inspiration of working with old scent was in sourcing the necessary raw materials—some of which were no longer available to modern-day perfume makers, for reasons of ecology and for reasons of economy, in that many of those who grew the flowers needed for their work had switched from traditional to modern methods of doing so.
Sadie considered herself very fortunate in having found a family close to Grasse who not only still grew roses and jasmine for the perfume industry in the old-fashioned labour-intensive way, but who also operated their own traditional distillery. The Lafount family produced rose absolute and jasmine absolute of the highest quality, and Sadie knew she was very privileged to be able to buy her raw materials from them.
Both in their seventies now, Pierre Lafount and his brother Henri actually remembered her own grandmother, and delighted Sadie with their stories of how they could remember seeing her when she had visited the growing fields and the distillery with her own father. The Lafount family’s rose and jasmine absolutes were highly sought after, and Sadie knew that it was primarily because of their affection for her grandmother that they allowed her to buy from them in such small quantities.
‘Virtually all that we produce is pre-sold under contract to certain long-standing customers,’ they had told Sadie—from which she had understood that those customers would be the most famous and respected of the established perfume houses. ‘But there is a little to spare and we shall make that available to you,’ they had added magnanimously
Raoul, typically, had laughed at Sadie for what he called her sentimentality.
‘You’re crazy,’ he had said to her, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Paying heaven alone knows what for their stuff, when it can be manufactured in a lab at a fraction of the cost.’
‘But that is the whole point, Raoul,’ Sadie had told him dryly. ‘The essence of the scents I want to create cannot be manufactured.’
Raoul had shrugged dismissively. ‘Who can tell the difference?’
‘I can!’ Sadie had answered calmly.
And now apparently Raoul wanted to sell Francine to someone who was as ignorant and uncaring of what real scent was all about as he was. Well, not if she had anything to do with it, he wasn’t, Sadie decided stubbornly.
As she went to the parking area to collect her hire car Sadie noticed a frenzy of anxious activity surrounding the presence of a huge Mercedes limousine, with its windows blacked out. But she had too much on her
