Taming the French Tycoon. Rebecca Winters

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