Mediterranean Nights: The Mistress Purchase / The Demetrios Virgin / Marco's Convenient Wife. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      ‘My great-uncle was a gambler, and he ran down the business to finance his gambling habit. My grandmother hated what he did, and I think she ended up hating him too,’ Sadie admitted. ‘A rift developed between them which was exacerbated by the fact that my grandmother had married an Englishman and lived so far away from him. Still, she felt so passionately about the business…’

      ‘A passion which she obviously passed on to you,’ Leon interrupted her.

      Sadie smiled.

      ‘My grandmother was a very passionate person.’

      ‘And so, I imagine, are you. Very passionate!’

      Across the table their glances met and locked. Sadie discovered she was only able to breathe shallowly, her heart bouncing frantically around her chest, making her feel as though she wanted to press her hands to her body to keep it still.

      The silence between them, the intimacy of their locked gazes, was the most exciting sensation she had ever experienced, she acknowledged dizzily. Her food was completely forgotten—Leon was her food, her need, her every sustenance both physical and emotional. If he were to reach out now, take hold of her hand and lead her from the table, she knew beyond any doubt that she would go with him.

      ‘You can’t possibly know that. I…’ Her voice was a papery dry whisper, a muted husk of sound, her eyes huge, her pupils dilated.

      ‘I do know it.’ Leon stopped her. His own voice was tense, low and raw with an open hunger СКАЧАТЬ