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Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author
PENNY JORDAN
Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!
Penny Jordan's novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.
This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan's fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.
Penny Jordan is one of Mills & Boon's most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan's characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.
Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.
Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women's fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
www.millsandboon.co.uk
CHAPTER ONE
‘MMM.’ Jodi could not resist sneaking a second appreciative look at the man crossing the hotel lobby.
Tall, well over six feet, somewhere in his mid-thirties, dark-suited and even darker-haired, he had an unmistakable air about him of male sexuality. Jodi had been aware of it the minute she saw him walking towards the hotel exit. His effect on her was strong enough to make her pulse race and her body react to him in a most unusual and un-Jodi-like manner, and just for a second she allowed her thoughts to wander dreamily in a dangerous and sensual direction.
He turned his head and for a shocking breath of time it was almost as though he was looking straight at her; as though some kind of highly intense, personal communication was taking place!
What was happening to her?
Jodi’s heart, and with it her whole world, rocked precariously on its oh-so-sturdy axis; an axis constructed of things such as common sense and practicality and doing things by the book, which had suddenly flung her into an alien world. A world where traitorous words such as ‘love at first sight’ had taken on a meaning.
Love at first sight? Her? Never. Stalwartly, Jodi dragged her world and her emotions back to where they belonged.
It must be the stress she was under that was causing her to somehow emotionally hallucinate!
‘Haven’t you got enough to worry about?’ Jodi scolded herself, far more firmly than she would ever have scolded one of her small pupils. Not that she was given to scolding them very much. No, Jodi loved her job as the headmistress and senior teacher of the area’s small junior school with a passion that some of her friends felt ought more properly to be given to her own love life—or rather the lack of it.
And it was because of the school and her small pupils that she was here this evening, waiting anxiously in the foyer of the area’s most luxurious hotel for the arrival of her cousin and co-conspirator.
‘Jodi.’
She gave a small sigh of relief as she finally saw her cousin Nigel hurrying towards her. Nigel worked several miles away in the local county-council offices and it had been through him that she had first learned of the threat to her precious school.
When he had told her that the largest employer in the area, a factory producing electronic components, had been taken over by one of its competitors and could be closed down her initial reaction had been one of disbelief.
The village where Jodi taught had worked desperately hard to attract new business, and to prevent itself from becoming yet another small, dying community. When the factory had opened some years earlier it had brought not just new wealth to the area, but also an influx of younger people. It was the children of these people who now filled Jodi’s classrooms. Without them, the small village school would have to close. Jodi felt passionately about the benefits her kind of school could give young children. But the local authority had to take a wider view; if the school’s pupils fell below a certain number then the school would be closed.
Having already had to work hard to persuade parents to support the school, Jodi was simply not prepared to sit back whilst some arrogant, uncaring asset-stripper of a manufacturing megalomaniac closed the factory in the name of profit and ripped the heart out of their community!
Which was why she was here with Nigel.
‘What have you found out?’ she asked her cousin anxiously, shaking her head as he asked her if she wanted anything to drink. Jodi was not a drinker; in fact she was, as her friends were very fond of telling her, a little bit old-fashioned for someone who had gone through several years at university and teacher-training college. She had even worked abroad, before deciding that the place she really wanted to be was the quiet rural heart of her own country.
‘Well, I know that he’s booked into the hotel. The best suite, no less, although apparently he isn’t in it at the moment.’
When Jodi exhaled in relief Nigel gave her a wry look. ‘You were the one who wanted to see him,’ he reminded her. ‘If you’ve changed your mind…?’
‘No,’ Jodi denied. ‘I have to do something. It’s all over the village that he intends to close down the factory. I’ve already had parents coming to see me to say that they’re probably going to have to move away, and asking me to recommend good local schools for them when they do. I’m already only just over the acceptable pupil number as it is, Nigel. If I were to lose even five per cent of my pupils…’ She gave a small groan. ‘And the worst of it is that if we can only hang on for a couple more years I’ve got a new influx due that will take us well into a good safety margin, providing, that is, the factory is still operational. That’s why I’ve got to see this…this…’
‘Leo Jefferson,’ Nigel supplied for her. ‘I’ve managed to talk the receptionist into letting me have a key to his suite.’ He grinned when he saw Jodi’s expression. ‘It’s OK, I know her, and I’ve explained that you’ve got an appointment with him but that you’ve arrived early. So I reckon the best thing is for you to get up there and lie in wait to pounce on him when he gets back.’
‘I shall be doing no such thing,’ Jodi told him indignantly. ‘What I want to do is make sure he understands just how much damage he will be doing to this village if he goes ahead and closes the factory. And try to persuade him to change his mind.’
Nigel watched her ruefully as she spoke. Her high-minded ideals were all very well, but totally out of step with the mindset of a man with Leo Jefferson’s reputation. Nigel was tempted to suggest to Jodi that a warm smile and a generous helping of feminine flirtation might do more good than the kind of discussion she was obviously bent on having, but he knew just how that kind of suggestion would be received by her. It would be totally against her principles.
Which was rather a shame in Nigel’s opinion, because Jodi certainly had the assets to bemuse and beguile any red-blooded man. She was stunningly attractive, with the kind of lushly curved body that made men ache just to look at her, even if she did tend to cover its sexy female shape with dull, practical clothes.
Her hair was thick and glossily curly, her eyes a deep, deliciously dark-fringed, vibrant blue above her delicately high cheekbones. If she hadn’t been his cousin and if they hadn’t known one another since they had been in their prams he would have found her very fanciable himself. Except that Nigel liked his girlfriends to treat flirtation and sex as an enjoyable game. And Jodi was far too serious for that.
At twenty-seven, she hadn’t, so far as Nigel knew, ever had a serious relationship, preferring to dedicate herself to her work. Nigel knew that there were more than a handful of men who considered that dedication to be a total waste.
As she took the key card her cousin was handing her Jodi hoped that she was doing the right thing.
Her throat suddenly felt nervously dry, and when she admitted as much to Nigel he told her that he’d arrange to have something sent up to the suite for her to drink.
‘Can’t have you driven so mad by thirst that you raid the mini-bar, can we?’ he teased her, chuckling at his own joke.
‘That’s not funny,’ Jodi immediately reproved him.
She still felt guilty about the underhanded means by which she was gaining access to Leo Jefferson’s presence, but according to Nigel this was the only way to get the opportunity to speak personally with him.
She had originally hoped to be able to make an appointment, but Nigel had quickly disabused her of this idea, telling her wryly that a corporate mogul such as Leo Jefferson would never deign to meet a humble village schoolteacher.
And that was why this unpleasant subterfuge was necessary.
Ten minutes later, as she let herself into his hotel suite, Jodi hoped that it wouldn’t be too long before Leo Jefferson returned. She had been up at six that morning, working on a project for her older pupils, who would be moving on to ‘big’ school at the end of their current year.
It was almost seven o’clock, past Jodi’s normal evening-meal time, and she felt both tired and hungry. She stiffened nervously as she heard the suite door opening, but it was only a waiter bringing her the drink Nigel had promised her. She eyed the large jug of brightly coloured fruit juice he had put down on the coffee-table in front of her a little ruefully as the door closed behind the departing waiter. Good old plain water would have been fine. Her mouth felt dry with nervous tension and she poured herself a glass, drinking it quickly. It had an unfamiliar but not unpleasant taste, which for some odd reason seemed to make her feel that she wanted some more. Her hand wobbled slightly as she poured herself a second glass.
She read the newspaper she had found on the coffee-table, and rehearsed her speech several times. Where was Leo Jefferson? Tiredly she started to yawn, gasping with shock as she stood up and swayed dizzily.
Heavens, but she felt so light-headed! Suspiciously she focused on the jug of fruit juice. That unfamiliar taste couldn’t possibly have been alcohol, could it? Nigel knew that she wasn’t a drinker.
Muzzily she looked round the suite for the bathroom. Leo Jefferson was bound to arrive soon, and she wanted to be looking neat and tidy and strictly businesslike when he did. First impressions, especially in a situation like this, were very important!
The bathroom was obviously off the bedroom. Which she could see through the half-open door that connected it to the suite’s sitting room.
A little unsteadily she made her way towards it. What on earth had been in that drink?
In the suite’s huge all-white bathroom, Jodi washed her hands, dabbing cold water on her pulse points as she gazed uncertainly at her flushed face in the mirror above the basin before turning to leave.
In the bedroom she stopped to stare longingly at the huge, comfortable-looking bed. She just felt so tired. How much longer was this wretched man going to be?
Another yawn started to overwhelm her. Her eyelids felt heavy. She just had to lie down. Just for a little while. Just until she felt less light-headed.
But first…
With the careful concentration of the inebriated, Jodi removed her clothes with meticulous movements and folded them neatly before sliding into the heavenly bliss of the waiting bed.
As Leo Jefferson unlocked the door to his hotel suite he looked grimly at his watch. It was half-past ten in the evening and he had just returned to the hotel, having been to inspect one of the two factories he had just acquired. Prior to that, earlier in the day, he had spent most of the afternoon locked in a furious argument with the now ex-owner of his latest acquisition, or rather the ex-owner’s unbelievably idiotic son-in-law, who had done everything he could at first to bully and then bribe Leo into releasing them from their contract.
‘Look, my father-in-law made a mistake. We all make them,’ he had told Leo with fake affability. ‘We’ve changed our minds and we no longer want to sell the business.’
‘It’s a bit late for that,’ Leo had replied crisply. ‘The deal has already gone through; the contract’s been signed.’
But Jeremy Driscoll continued to try to browbeat Leo into changing his mind.
‘I’m sure we can find some way to persuade you,’ he told Leo, giving him a knowing leer as he added, ‘One of those new lap-dancing clubs has opened up in town, and I’ve heard they cater really well for the needs of lonely businessmen. How about we pay it a visit? My treat, we can talk later, when we’re both feeling more relaxed.’
‘No way,’ was Leo’s grim rejection.
The gossip he had heard on the business grapevine about Jeremy Driscoll had suggested that he was a seedy character—apparently it wasn’t unknown for him to try to get his own way by underhanded means. At first Leo had been prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt—until he met him and recognised that Jeremy Driscoll’s detractors had erred on the side of generosity.
A more thoroughly unpleasant person Leo had yet to meet, and his obvious air of false bonhomie offended Leo almost as much as his totally unwarranted and unwanted offer of bought sex.
The kind of place, any kind of place, where human beings had to sell themselves for other people’s pleasure had no appeal for Leo, and he made little attempt to conceal his contempt for the other man’s suggestion.
Jeremy Driscoll, though, it seemed, had a skin of impenetrable thickness. Refusing to take a hint, he continued jovially, ‘No? You prefer to have your fun in private on a one-to-one basis, perhaps? Well, I’m sure that something can be arranged—’
Leo’s cold, ‘Forget it,’ brought an ugly look of dislike to Jeremy’s too pale blue eyes.
‘There’s a lot of antagonism around here about the fact that you’re planning to close down one or other of the factories. A man with your reputation…’
‘Oh, I think my reputation can stand the heat,’ Leo replied grittily.
He could see that his confidence had increased Jeremy’s dislike of him, just as he had seen the envy in the other man’s eyes when he had driven up in his top-of-the-range Mercedes.
Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of the newspaper that Jeremy had rudely continued to read after Leo’s arrival. There was an article on the page that was open detailing the downfall of a politician who had tried unsuccessfully to sue those who had exposed certain tawdry aspects of his private life, including his visits to a massage parlour. The fact that the politician had claimed that he had been set up had not convinced the jury who had found against him.
‘I wouldn’t be so sure about your reputation if I were you,’ Jeremy warned Leo nastily, glancing towards the paper as he spoke.
Giving him a dismissive look, Leo left.
Leo frowned as he walked into his suite. There was no way in a thousand years he was going to change his plans. He had worked too hard and for too long, building up his business from nothing…less than nothing, slowly, painstakingly clawing his way up from his own one-man band, first overtaking and then taking over his competition as he grew more and more successful.
The Driscoll family company was in direct competition to Leo’s. Since their business duplicated his own, it was only natural that he should have to close down some of their four factories. As yet Leo had not decided which out of the four. But as for Jeremy Driscoll’s attempt to get him to back out of the deal…!
Tired, Leo strode into the suite without bothering to switch on the lights. At this time on a June evening there was still enough light in the sky for him not to need to do so, even without the additional glow of the almost full moon.
The bedroom wasn’t quite as well-lit; someone—the maid, he imagined—had closed the curtains, but the bathroom light was on and the door open. Frowning over such sloppiness, he headed towards the bathroom, closing the door behind him once he was inside.
Giving his own reflection a brief glance in the mirror, he paused to rub a lean hand over his stubble-darkened jaw before reaching for his razor.
Jeremy Driscoll’s bombastic arrogance had irritated him to an extent that warned him that those amongst his family and friends who cautioned that he was driving himself too hard might have something of a point.
Narrowing the silver-grey eyes that were an inheritance from his father’s side, and for whose piercingly analytical and defence-stripping qualities they were rightly feared by anyone who sought to deceive him, he grimaced slightly. He badly needed a haircut; his dark hair curled over the collar of his shirt. Taking time out for anything in his life that wasn’t work right now simply wasn’t an option.
His parents professed not to understand just where he got his single-minded determination to succeed from. They had been happy with their small newsagent’s business.
His parents were retired now, and living in his mother’s family’s native Italy. He had bought them a villa outside Florence as a ruby-wedding present.
Leo had visited them, very briefly, early in May for his mother’s birthday.
He put down his razor, remembering the look he had seen them exchange when his mother had asked wistfully if there was yet ‘anyone special’ in his life.
He had told her with dry humour that not only did his negative response to her maternal question relate to his present, but that it could also be applied indefinitely to his future.
With unusual asperity she had returned that if that was the case then it was perhaps time she paid a visit to the village’s local wise woman and herbalist, who, according to rumour, had an absolutely foolproof recipe for a love potion!
Leo had laughed outright at that. After all, it was not that he couldn’t have a partner, a lover, if he so wished. Any number of stunningly attractive young women had made it plain to him both discreetly and rather more obviously that they would like to share his life and his bed, and, of course, his bank account…But Leo could still remember how at the upmarket public school he had won a scholarship to the female pupils had been scornfully dismissive of the boy whose school uniform was so obviously bought secondhand and whose only source of money came from helping out in his parents’ small business.
That experience had taught Leo a lesson he was determined never to forget. Yes, there had been women in his life, but no doubt rather idiotically by some people’s standards, he had discovered that he possessed an unexpected aversion to the idea of casual sex. Which meant…
Unwantedly Leo remembered his body’s sharply explicit reaction to the woman he had seen in the hotel foyer as he had crossed it on his way to his meeting earlier.
Small and curvy, or so he had suspected, beneath the abominable clothes she had been wearing.
Leo’s mother did not have Italian blood for nothing, and, like all her countrywomen, she possessed a strong sense of personal style, which made it impossible for Leo not to recognise when a woman was dressing to maximum effect. This woman had most certainly not been doing that at all. She had not even really been his type. If he was prepared to admit to a preference it was for cool, elegant blondes. Most definitely not for delectably sexy, tousled and touchable types of women, who turned his loins to hotly savage lust and even distracted his mind to the extent that he had almost found himself deviating from his set course and thinking about walking towards her.
Leo never deviated from any course he set himself—ever—especially not on account of a woman.
With an indrawn breath of self-disgust, Leo stripped off his clothes and stepped into the shower.
As a teenager he had played sports for his school, which, ironically, had done wonders to increase his ‘pulling power’ with his female schoolmates, and he still had the powerful muscle structure of a natural athlete. Impatiently he lathered his body and then rinsed off the foam before reaching for a towel.
Once dry, he opened the bathroom door and headed for the bed. It was darker now, but still light enough, thanks to the moonlight glinting through the curtains, for him not to need to switch on the light.
Flipping back the bedclothes, Leo got into the bed, reaching automatically for the duvet, and then froze as he realised that the bed—his bed—was already occupied.
Switching on the bedside lamp, he stared in angry disbelief at the tousled head of curly hair on the pillow next to his own—a decidedly female head, he recognised, just like the slender naked arm and softly rounded shoulder he could now see in the lamplight.
The nostrils of the proudly aquiline nose he had inherited from his mother’s Italian forebears flared fastidiously as they picked up the smell of alcohol on the softly exhaled breath of the oblivious sleeping form.
Another scent—a mixture of warm fresh air, lavender and a certain shockingly earthy sensuality that was Jodi’s alone—his senses reacted to in a very different way.
It was the girl from the foyer. Leo would have recognised her anywhere, or, rather, his body would.
Automatically his brain passed him another piece of information. Jeremy Driscoll’s oily-voiced suggestiveness as he had tried to persuade Leo to go back on their contract. Was this…this girl the inducement he’d had in mind? She had to be. Leo could not think of any other reason for her presence here in his bed!
Well, if Jeremy Driscoll dared to think that he, Leo, was the kind of man who…
Angrily he reached out to grasp Jodi’s bare arm in strong fingers as he leaned across her to shake her into wakefulness.
Jodi was fathoms-deep asleep, sleeping the sleep of the pure of heart—and the alcohol-assisted—and she was having the most delicious dream in which she was, by some means her sleeping state wasn’t inclined to question, wrapped in the embrace of the most gorgeous, sexy man. He was tall, dark-haired and silver-eyed, with features reassuringly familiar to Jodi, but his body, his touch, were wonderfully and excitingly new.
They were lying together, body to body, on a huge bed in a room with a panoramic view of a private tropical beach, and as he leaned towards her and stroked strong fingers along her forearm he whispered to her, ‘What the hell are you doing in my bed?’