Taming the French Tycoon

“I can only wonder what to expect next.” His deep voice cast the final net to capture her total attention.

This was going from bad to worse. “Do you think we could start over again?”

His hands had gone to his hips in an utterly male stance. “I’m not sure. If I were to say it’s a pleasure to meet you, would you assume that one of my secret sedentary activities is to trap hapless females who have the misfortune of entering this old man’s lair?”

He wanted an apology. So did she, but since Jasmine had come to him on a desperate mission, it was up to her to cauterize the wound before it bled out of control.

“I’m sorry for the way I reacted on the island. You were right about the danger. One of the guys cut his leg open and he had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance after we reached the boating concession.”

The dangerous glitter in his eyes started to dissipate. “Fortunately for Ferriers, its new CEO survived to live another day.”

This man wanted a full apology.

“I didn’t honestly believe you were a predator, but your assumptions, especially the one that I gave no thought to the family that loved me, provoked me to say things that shocked even me.” Which was the truth.

His black eyes studied her as if he were trying to weigh her sincerity. “I concede that in my concern for your safety, I was a little harsh in my assessment.”

A little?

When he extended his hand, she had no choice but to shake it. Of course she was thankful for this overture on his part. You need him on your side, Jasmine. But the second she felt skin against skin, warm waves of sensation traveled through her body, throwing her emotions off balance.

“Please, Mademoiselle Martin, come in and be seated.”

“Thank you, but before I do, I have a favor to ask.”

“I’ll leave the door open,” he murmured dryly.

She fought another retort. “I thought you accepted my apology.”

A faint smile hovered around his lips, without the ice this time. “So I did. What’s the favor?”

“I don’t want anyone at Ferriers to know I’m here. Could you tell your assistant and the security guard at the main entrance to keep absolutely quiet about this visit?”

After a moment of reflection he nodded. “Bien sûr. I’ll take care of it now.”

While he was gone, she walked across the oriental rug and sat down on one of two blue striped silk love seats facing each other around a coffee table. The couch was upholstered in a blue and white toile she found part of the charm of the elegant room.

Jasmine heard the doors close behind her, sealing them inside.

He rejoined her, cocking his dark head. “Now you don’t have to worry. Would you care for tea or coffee? Perhaps a soft drink?”

“Nothing, thank you.”

They were circling each other, metaphorically speaking, trying to size each other up. He took a hand out of his pocket and sat in the chair opposite her. Both hands were ringless.

“Congratulations on your new position as head of the Ferrier Corporation. I dare say you’re the most famous CEO in modern French history at the moment.” The wryness of his tone wasn’t lost on her.

One thing she already knew about him. He was a man who spoke his mind. She didn’t know if that boded well or not for the shock he was about to receive.

“Thank you, except that I won’t be the head for much longer.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” he came back with urbane sophistication. “Please don’t misunderstand me, but after the introduction on television about your lack of experience and work record, I gather the board is having difficulty following your grandfather’s wishes, no matter that you were his personal choice of successor.”

Jasmine hadn’t seen that assessment coming so fast. It was her jaw that went slack, not his. But she couldn’t take offense. He was discussing hard business facts and understood how things worked at the top. A shudder went through her to realize he wasn’t the president of the bank for nothing. Her uphill battle had already begun.

“Yes,” she admitted. “Giles LeClos has called another board meeting in two weeks for a vote. It doesn’t leave me much time to accomplish what has to be done. That’s why it was urgent that I see you today if I could. I appreciate your being willing to meet with me without any advance notice.”

Her words brought his well-honed body forward. “Surely you must realize that your company’s association with our bank over the years means you have instant access, if necessary. I’m glad you came in this morning. This afternoon I’ll be out of the city on business, so it’s providential that I was still available for this emergency meeting.”

“That’s what it is, and I’m very grateful.” She bit her lip. “First of all, this has to be between the two of us and no one else. I realize you’ve been meeting with Giles LeClos, who’s been in charge since Papa’s death. But he mustn’t know I’ve been here or he’ll misunderstand and believe I’ve gone behind his back. In time, he’ll be told, but not yet. Will you give me your promise on that?”

He sat back, examining her face with an intensity that made her feel he could see inside her soul. “Go on.”

She had to take that as a yes. “Look—there’s no point beating around the bush. My grandfather’s company has been mismanaged since his death and now it’s in huge trouble. No one is more aware of it than you. I intend to save it, but I’m going to need your help.”

“You mean in two weeks you plan to pull it out of the red?” Granted his tone was incredulous, not mocking. “Isn’t that a little ambitious, even if you have Maxim Ferrier’s nose?” She winced. “I realize that sounds cruel, but you’ve never run a corporation and the bank has continued to extend your loan until it’s at the limit.”

“I’m very aware of that.”

“Then you have to know there’s nothing more we can do for you.” He shook his head. “Perhaps another bank might be willing to underwrite a second loan for you, but it wouldn’t be a wise business decision. Aside from the fact that your revenues are diminishing with little hope of recouping, there’s no one at the head who instills enough confidence for the banking board to take a financial risk. Please don’t take that as a personal attack against you.”

“I won’t. I didn’t! If I were sitting on the board, I’d have little faith in me too. An empty-headed cliff-jumper who doesn’t have a clue about business and is so spoiled by millions of dollars she wouldn’t recognize a paycheck if she saw one doesn’t exactly fill the bill. Right?”

“Again, those are your words, not mine.”

Nothing appeared to faze him. “I believe you. But before you show me the door, I was hoping for the sake of the partnership that has lasted ninety years between your bank and Ferriers, you could find some time to let me make a proposition to you.”

His eyes did flare at that remark, letting her know she actually had surprised him.

“Not the kind you’re thinking, if you were thinking it,” she added. “There’s a matter of great urgency I need to discuss with you, but it will take some time. We can’t do it now when you’re already pressed to leave your office on other business. Could you possibly come tomorrow or Friday to my grandfather’s laboratory in Grasse? This is vital, or I wouldn’t ask.”

Jasmine held her breath and prayed while she waited for his answer. She could hear his mind working.

“It would have to be late Friday afternoon. Four-thirty, maybe five. I could give you a half hour, then I have other plans.”

Relief flooded her system. “Thank you for being willing to meet me halfway. It’s more than I deserve.” Jasmine got to her feet. “The lab is the little building on the south side of the perfumery. Just ring me when you’re there and I’ll let you in.” She handed him a piece of paper with her phone number on it. “À bientôt.”

* * *

At four on Friday, Luc left his office and headed for Grasse in his car. Half a dozen times in the last two days he’d reached for his phone to call her and cancel. Each time, he’d get so close, but then he couldn’t follow through. The telltale throb in her voice when she’d said it was a matter of great urgency kept nagging at him until he couldn’t sleep.

He was a fool to meet with her. It gave her hope when there wasn’t any. But as she’d said, for the sake of the business both companies had done together over the years, he’d be churlish not to accommodate this one request. His grandfather had revered Maxim Ferrier and would probably have gone the extra mile before he had to turn his granddaughter down. Luc could at least do the same.

Keep on believing that lie, Charriere. You know damn well why you’re breaking the speed limit to get there.

In a few minutes, he took the turnoff for the perfumery and wound around to the south side, where he saw the lab and a red Audi parked in front of it. He’d programmed her number into his phone so he wouldn’t lose it. When he called her, she answered on the third ring.

“Bon après-midi, monsieur. I can’t tell you what you coming here means to me.” Her comment sounded heartfelt. He honestly didn’t know what to make of her. “Every time my phone has rung, I’ve been afraid it was you calling to cancel because you’d thought the better of it.” If only she knew. He got out of the car and walked over to the entrance. “I’m opening the door now.”

He heard the sound of the electronic lock and there she was clad in a long-sleeved white lab coat that couldn’t camouflage her gorgeous figure. The stains on it looked fresh. “Come in.”

There were a few windows open at the very top of the room, but it was semi-dark. This was Maxim Ferrier’s inner sanctum. It smelled and felt like Luc had just stepped into an old-school chemistry lab with all its paraphernalia from the nineteen-fifties. There was a worktable in the center of the room. Three walls of stacked shelves with fascinating bottles surrounded them, just as they’d appeared on TV.

She indicated an upholstered swivel chair, the only concession to modern-day décor. It was placed in front of an old oak desk pushed against the wall, piled high with notebooks.

Above it were two framed diplomas, both issued from the Department of Chemistry at the Sorbonne in Paris. The older, yellowing one had the name Maxim Tricornot Valmy Ferrier printed on it. The more recent white diploma displayed the name Jasmine Ferrier Martin. There was a ribbon attached beneath the glass that read, With honors.

He swallowed hard when he realized what it meant. No one with an empty head received credentials like that.

“I had two reasons for bringing you here. First, I wanted you to see where I work while I disabuse you of a few false notions about me. I have been working for years, but always alongside my papa behind the scenes when I wasn’t at university. He paid my salary by putting money into a fund on a regular basis so I could draw from it. Please—sit down, Monsieur Charriere.”

“Luc,” came his quiet response.

“Luc,” she amended. “I dislike formality too. Call me Jasmine. I’d prefer it.”

He eyed her soberly. “This is where I eat crow, I presume.”

“You’re wrong. This is not payback time. I’m in deadly earnest when I say I need your help. If I can create a setting where you will really listen and not rush to judgment, that’s all I ask. When you’ve heard me out, if you still can’t see a way, then I won’t ask again.”

“Fair enough,” he muttered.

“Thank you.” She took a deep breath. “When you and I collided on Yeronisos island, I’d caught a ride in one of the dinghies with those teenagers so I wouldn’t have to drive out there alone. My reason for being there was to take some pictures of the excavations.

“I’ve never been cliff jumping or anything dangerous like that in my life and never will. I too thought those guys were foolish and worried that something could happen, which it did.”

Luc was eating a lot of crow by now.

“My grandmother’s book was coming out again the day after my twenty-sixth birthday. She was an amateur archaeologist and had written a section about their travels. She’d lost the pictures she and Papa took together on Yeronisos island, so naturally they hadn’t been included in the first edition.

“That’s why I went out there and took some in order for them to be included in the second edition. She and Papa had gone there looking for Cleopatra’s tomb. The location of that tomb somewhere near Alexandria still remains unknown.”

“I know,” he ground out. “I’ve tried looking for it myself.”

“That’s why you were there that day! I wondered.”

It was all making sense. “I have an interest in Egyptian archaeology. After doing business in Nicosia, I went out there for the morning before I had to get back to Nice. I thought maybe she and Mark Antony had been buried on Yeronisos beneath the remains of the temple of Apollo, but I saw no signs of their crypt when I was there.”

“I’m afraid it’s still a mystery.”

Luc darted her a glance. “Little did I know it was the new head of Ferriers who climbed to the top of that cliff like one of those amazing warrior women of the Amazon depicted in the myths of the Greeks. All that was missing were your sandals and the lasso of truth.”

“If I’d known that two months later it was you of all people I would need to come begging to, I—”

He eyed her frankly. “You would have reacted the same way.”

A smile hovered around her beautiful mouth. “My dad and brothers taught me early how to defend myself.”

“Tell them they succeeded admirably. It hurts to admit I was impressed how well you protected yourself. You halfway got me believing I was a lech.”

She was more of a mystery to him than ever. He’d seen the expert way she’d handled the anchorman—disarming him completely instead of the other way around. Michel Didier hadn’t seen it coming either when she’d shot him down for asking a question about her love life.

Jasmine Martin wasn’t Maxim Ferrier’s granddaughter for nothing. Luc had a feeling she’d inherited her grandfather’s shrewd business sense after all, or he would never have chosen her to be at its head.

He watched her pace the floor for a minute before she looked at him. “It’s true I don’t have years of experience behind me, but I have something else that didn’t come out during the TV segment. My grandfather’s full confidence.”

Luc was listening. “You made that clear during the interview.”

“Except that what you heard has little to do with why he named me to head the company. It wasn’t because I inherited his nose. Incidentally, mine is nothing like his. There’s only one Mozart born in this world. The truth is, Papa needed me to do something he couldn’t do while he was alive.”

At this point she had Luc so baffled and intrigued at the same time he grew restless and got to his feet. “Go on.”

“Forgive me if I’m taking a long time to get to the point, but it’s necessary so you’ll understand. My grandparents had two homes. A ranch in Idaho in the U.S., where my grandmother was born. The other was the Ferrier family home in Grasse. They raised four children, two boys, two girls, all of whom are on the board except my mother, who was the youngest.

“She grew up loving the ranch and had little interest in being a part of the family perfuming business. She ended up marrying my dad, an Idaho cowboy who had his own ranch close by. My elder brother lives in the original ranch house. My other brother built a home on the same property. We’re all just one happy family.”

“Am I to assume that explains your strange comment about the ‘Frenchman’?” Luc surmised.

“Let’s put it this way. American men are very different than Frenchmen, and I’ve known two Frenchmen who haven’t ingratiated themselves to me, thus the comment I made to you. But getting back to the point, I was my parents’ third and last child, born on the ranch. My older brothers and I loved our life there, but every time our family traveled to Grasse to visit our grandparents, I found myself snooping around this laboratory and all Papa’s stuff.

“If ever my parents or grandmother couldn’t find me, I was with him, smelling all the slips he prepared. I loved doing what he did. No dollhouses and tea sets for me. This lab became my own tree house, so to speak.

“I loved it when he’d take me walking with him in the early evenings. He said it was a perfect time to smell the fragrance in the air. During those times he’d tell me he was creating a new perfume. I’d try to create one too and he gave me ideas. I was entranced.

“We used to play a game. He’d test me to find out if I knew what essential oil or chemical he was using. I’d stay up half the night in my bedroom at his house with all his used slips. I would study everything so I’d be ready for his questions the next day.”

Luc was entranced by all this too.

“By the time I was twelve, I begged my parents to let me stay with my grandparents for the next nine months and go to school here. My mom adored them and understood how much I loved to be with them. To my joy, she and dad allowed it, but they said I could only do it that one time because they’d miss me too much otherwise. At the time I didn’t understand the great sacrifice they made to let me live with my grandparents.

“Before I had to go back home the next June, Papa picked me up and put me on this table I’m leaning against.” She patted it. By now she’d mesmerized Luc. “That’s when he told me I had the nose.

“But he said I had to keep it a secret. When I turned twenty-six, he would put me in charge of the company. But if he died before that birthday, he would leave instructions that the board install me as the official head after I came of age. In the meantime, he encouraged me to stick by him whenever I could.

“I thought he was kidding at making me the head of the company. I didn’t believe he really meant those words. I hardly understood them, but he made me feel special and I adored him. I ended up staying with my grandparents in the summers and during holidays. He let me hover at his side and taught me how to cook up a perfume recipe.

“I met the people he worked with, the farmers, the workers at the distilleries, the workers at the warehouses. He took me on trips with him and grandma to Morocco and India and Nicosia. He taught me the difference between the soils in those climates, and the soil in Grasse, where the sweetest flowers are grown. We also spent time looking at ancient artifacts wherever we went. I couldn’t get enough.

“After college in Paris, he asked me to come back to Grasse and work with him in here. Just the two of us. No one else was ever allowed inside. It was during that time he started confiding in me about certain issues in his life that had plagued him since childhood. I learned devastating things that broke my heart.

“Before his death, he asked a great favor of me. He’d devised a plan to remedy his pain, but it needed my help to execute and couldn’t be carried out until he died.” Her eyes filled with tears. She stopped talking for a minute and stared at him. “This is where you come in, Luc.”

Was she playing him?

Unbelievably his cell rang just then. He checked the caller ID. His mother was phoning. They’d just returned from the Orient and his sister had planned a big family party. “Excuse me for a moment, Jasmine. I have to take this.”

“Of course.”

He walked over to a corner and picked up. “Maman?”

“The party started an hour ago. Where are you? Everyone’s waiting!”

“I’ll be there in a half hour.”

“That long?”

“I had business. It couldn’t be helped. See you soon.” He clicked off and turned to Jasmine, haunted by more questions that needed answers.

“You gave me an hour,” she said, reading his mind. “I understand you have to go, but I haven’t come to the most important part yet. Could I meet you at your office next week when it’s convenient so we can finish this conversation? You need to hear about the great injustice that has been done. I must have help to solve it. Hopefully your

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