The Mistress Purchase Read Free Page A

by my grandmother. In actual fact he made me feel a little bit guilty about it, Mary.’
    â€˜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.
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    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 hadbeen 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.
    â€˜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 hergrandmother; 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