Taming the French Tycoon

“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