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.

About the Author

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.

A Rekindled Passion
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘ALL READY FOR the wedding tomorrow, are you? What time is she getting married?’

Kate shook her head wryly in answer to the first part of the postman’s question and offered, ‘Half-past three,’ to the second.

As she collected the unusually thick pile of envelopes from him with the warm smile that transformed the serious repose of her small, heart-shaped face, she wondered how long it would take her daughter to drive up from London. Sophy had promised to set off early so that they would have at least a couple of hours to catch up on one another’s news before they started going through all the arrangements for tomorrow.

It hadn’t been easy: organising the wedding for her daughter and her son-in-law-to-be, with both of them so busy in their careers that she hadn’t even seen Sophy since the announcement of her engagement at Christmas, apart from one brief occasion just after Easter when she had gone to spend a few days with Sophy at John’s family home in the south of England, at their invitation.

She had been dreading the visit, even though Sophy had assured her that John’s parents were looking forward to meeting her, and had confirmed that she had told them everything.

That had been a hard decision for her to make, but she had felt that she owed it to Sophy to permit her to tell her in-laws-to-be the truth.

After the visit she was glad she had done so. John’s parents had turned out to be a very pleasant and understanding couple in their late fifties. John was the youngest of their brood of four children, and Mary Broderick had had the same kind of briskly maternal warmth that Kate remembered from her own mother…and still missed.

How her mother would have enjoyed tomorrow. She had adored her only granddaughter…both her parents had, and she still missed them dreadfully, even though it was now nearly eight years since the plane crash that had taken their lives.

They had been marvellous parents, so understanding, so loving and protective of both her and Sophy. As she stood in her comfortable if rather shabby kitchen, she felt the hot burn of tears stinging the back of her eyes and grimaced to herself. She was thirty-seven years old, for heaven’s sake…far too old to indulge in a silly bout of weeping, even if tomorrow she was going to have to close the door on a very precious period of her life.

Sophy, married…She grinned a little to herself, her mood changing. At nineteen Sophy had been a dedicated career woman, swearing that marriage for her was something she would not even contemplate until she was close to thirty, and yet here she was at twenty, going on twenty-one, fathoms deep in love; insisting that she was married traditionally from her childhood home in the small village church, surrounded by the people she had grown up among in an environment totally different from the fast pace of her London life.

Sophy was a thoroughly modern young woman, highly qualified and skilled, independent, ambitious and very mature. Kate loved her dearly, but from the day that Sophy left home to go to university she had fought desperately to give her her freedom…not to cling or be possessive about her, even though at first she had missed her desperately.

They had always been so close, and had stayed close despite the fact that Sophy now lived and worked in London, but from now on their relationship would be different…must be different. From now on, Sophy’s first loyalty must be to the man she was marrying tomorrow.

Kate liked John, and would have liked him as a person even if he had not been deeply in love with her precious daughter.

She liked his family, too…liked their warmth and closeness, liked the way they were making Sophy welcome into that family…and she was grateful to them for their compassion in so calmly accepting the history of Sophy’s conception and birth.

It must have come as quite a shock to them to learn that their son was marrying Sophy, a girl whose mother had conceived her when she was barely sixteen and unmarried; she knew, had their positions been reversed and she been the one to discover that her child was marrying someone whose mother had been sixteen and unmarried when she conceived, that she would have had serious doubts as to both the emotional and moral stability of the parenting that child had received.

Perhaps because of her own bitterly painful experience, she was very much aware that it took more to lay the foundations for a marriage that would hopefully be both loving and lasting than the exciting but sometimes short-lived intensity of physical and emotional desire. Things like mutual trust and respect…backgrounds and beliefs that meshed and sat easily within one another…a shared sense of humour and purpose.

Sophy was a very sensible young woman, everything any mother could want in a daughter, and Kate considered herself to have been unfairly blessed in the gift of a daughter who had brought her so much joy-as though fate had relented of its earlier cruelty.

From the kitchen window she could see the men hard at work in the garden erecting the marquee which was to hold tomorrow’s wedding guests, and she reminded herself that now was not the time to stand around daydreaming.

She flicked through the post…most of it was cards for Sophy and John. She put these to one side, on the old pine dresser which her parents had inherited from her grandmother and she from them.

Its wood gleamed softly with the polish of generations, the thick willow-patterned pottery setting off both the dark wood and the sunny yellow décor of her kitchen.

She had lived in this house all her life, had grown up here in this small Dales village where the people, despite the outward apparent dourness, had, as she had good reason to know, a warmth of heart and spirit that they gave generously to those they called their own.

There were Setons scattered all over this part of the world, the name originally belonging to a border family who had gradually spread southwards into the Dales.

Her grandfather had been a hill farmer, farming a land which had been in their family for generations. After his death, her father had sold the farm. It was small and unproductive and, as a lecturer at York University, he had not been in a position to concentrate on his career and to run the farm.

Kate hadn’t gone to university. She had intended to do so…had had her career all mapped out: university, a degree and then a job teaching. Only it hadn’t worked out like that. At sixteen, having just completed her O levels, she had gone south to Cornwall to spend a month’s holiday with an aunt of her mother’s who had just retired from nursing on the south coast, and it had been while she was there…

A battered Range Rover pulled up in front of the kitchen window, scattering gravel. Its driver, a tall, lithe redhead, got out as quickly and impulsively as she did everything else and came hurrying towards the back door.

‘Hi…how’s it going?’ she demanded breathlessly, as she came in. ‘What time does Sophy arrive?’

‘I’m not sure. She said she’d try and make an early start. Coffee?’ Kate invited, smiling at her best friend and business partner.

Lucy Grainger and her accountant husband had moved to the village ten years ago. Kate had met Lucy initially when both she and Lucy had literally bumped into one another outside the Post Office.

On first seeing Kate and Sophy together, Lucy had made the mistake that strangers inevitably made of thinking that she and Sophy were sisters and not mother and daughter. With only sixteen years between them, and with Kate being petite and so very youthful for her thirty-seven years that people thought she was in her late twenties and not her mid-thirties, it was a natural enough mistake, but one that still made Kate wince a little.

When Sophy had innocently called her Mummy she had braced herself for the familiar speculative look, but instead Lucy had simply said ruefully, ‘Oh, dear, trust me…I’ve put my foot in it again.’ And with the self-critical comment had come a look not of pity but of compassion and such understanding that Kate had found herself uncurling from her protective shell and responding to the warm friendship that Lucy offered her.

It had been just over seven years ago, soon after her parents’ death, that Lucy had suggested that they combine their culinary talents and set up a small business catering for everything from weddings to dinner parties.

Egged on by Sophy, Kate had reluctantly agreed. The business had been a greater success than she had ever imagined, giving her not just more financial independence than she had ever expected to have, but also a new and thriving interest in life.

All through her pregnancy and Sophy’s growing years she had deliberately kept to the quiet backwater of life, deliberately seeking its protective camouflage, and now, with Sophy’s and Lucy’s combined exhortations, she was finding that more exhilarating waters were nothing like so threatening as she had imagined.

Sophy, who knew her well, had challenged her initially when she had flatly refused to countenance Lucy’s suggestion, saying firmly, ‘Oh come on, Mama. Don’t think I don’t know what’s behind this. You’re out of date,’ she told her ruthlessly. ‘Or rather in the height of fashion,’ she had added mischievously, watching with a compassion she had learned to conceal as her mother winced. Kate had known quite well what she meant.

‘No one cares any more that I was illegitimate. I certainly don’t,’ Sophy had told her, leaning forward and hugging her warmly. ‘You’re the best mother anyone could ever want. You and Gran and Gramps gave me a far more secure world than most kids get, you know. I don’t care that I don’t have a father…that you weren’t married.’

Maybe not, but Kate did…she always had, and part of her always would, Kate reflected sadly as she poured her friend’s coffee now.

‘Everything’s well under control with the buffet,’ Lucy told her, suddenly practical. ‘I’ve got the girls organised, so they’ll be here first thing tomorrow morning, and I’ve also told them that you aren’t to so much as lift a finger,’ she added severely. ‘Tomorrow you are going to concentrate on being the most beautiful, stunning mother of the bride there ever was, and not on being a partner in “Removable Feasts”.’ The name of their catering company was a play on the common phrase ‘movable feast’ that had occurred to them in a flash of inspiration.

Mother of the bride…There was a huge lump in her throat, an aching tight pain in her chest…a loneliness that never really went away, as something deep inside her cried, but what about the father of the bride? What about the father Sophy had never had and should have had?

‘I’ve called at the Fleece and checked up on the rooms. Mrs Graves is looking forward to the influx, I suspect.’ Lucy looked appreciatively out of the window at the summer perfection of the lawns and flowerbeds which had been Kate’s parents’ pride and joy.

Kate’s parents’ unexpected death in the plane crash had left her bereft emotionally, but secure financially, just so long as she was careful.

With the money coming in from ‘Removable Feasts’ both Sophy and Lucy had urged her to give herself a few treats—to take a holiday, or splash out on new clothes—but Kate had ignored their advice. Jeans and T-shirts were her normal wear in summer, and jeans and sweaters in winter; she did not live the kind of life that called for expensive fashionable clothes, and as for a holiday…She was happiest here in her natural habitat, where she blended into its protective camouflage. She had no desire to seek out other surroundings, surroundings against which she might stand out as being different, drawing attention to herself.

Sophy often bemoaned the fact that she had not inherited her mother’s silver-fair hair and perfect oval features, but to Kate her daughter, who had inherited from her father his raven-black hair and distinctive bone-structure softened into femininity, had a vigour and appeal that was far more powerful than her own pale delicacy.

Sophy had even inherited her father’s height, at five feet nine standing inches above her tiny mother, who was barely five feet two; those who witnessed the daughter’s protective attitude towards the mother almost always reflected rather enviously on the rapport that existed between them, despite their physical dissimilarities.

Only Kate knew how very painful she had found it at first to look at her tiny daughter and see mirrored in her infant features the features of the man she had loved and who had deserted her.

It made no difference telling herself that she had asked for what happened…that she had been a complete fool and that she deserved what had happened to her. Sophy had not deserved it, and neither had her parents, who had stood by her so wonderfully and caringly, cherishing both her and Sophy, helping her, counselling her…supporting both emotionally and financially.

Right from the start she had been determined about two things. One was that she was going to have her child, and the second was that she was never, ever going to try and seek out its father…not after she had learned the truth about him.

‘Hey, come back, daydreamer,’ Lucy admonished, grinning at her.

‘Sorry, I missed that,’ Kate apologised, flushing a little. This was no time to be thinking about the past. In another couple of hours Sophy would be here, and she wanted to devote these last precious hours with her to Sophy alone.

She liked John very much and had no doubts at all that he would make Sophy a good husband, but their lives and careers lay in London where they both had high-powered and demanding jobs, and from now on those visits that Sophy did manage to make home would of necessity include John.

‘Well…soon it will all be over,’ Lucy told her cheerfully. ‘The culmination of six months’ hard work. I’ve still got this to go through,’ she added ruefully. ‘And with Louise only sixteen and Joe ten, it’s going to be a good few years before I have to start planning weddings. What time’s the florist arriving?’

‘Some time this afternoon,’ Kate told her. She glanced up at the kitchen clock. ‘Which reminds me, I’ve got to go and collect the strawberries. I’d better get a move on.’

‘I’ll be over later this afternoon with the salmon and the rest of the stuff,’ Lucy promised, finishing her coffee and giving a wry sigh. ‘How on earth do you manage to stay so calm and organised? If I were you, I’d be falling to pieces…’

Kate smiled at her, but said nothing. She could have told her friend that having gone through the crucible of fire into its heart, long, long ago, there were now very few situations which could test her self-control to its limits. She had learned long ago to conceal her feelings…to protect herself and others, and it had been a deeply painful lesson.

The morning flew by. Despite all her careful arrangements there were still small hitches…things to be done. She was running half an hour late by the time she collected the strawberries. On the way back, driving the hatchback estate car which she had had specially fitted with stable trays for carrying food, she slipped a favourite Bruce Springsteen tape into the machine, trying to relax as the familiar voice and music filled the inside of the car.

She was just turning into her own drive, when he started to sing ‘If you’re looking for love’, and her heart somersaulted with idiotic pain, her mouth compressing as she reminded herself that at thirty-seven she should be long past the stage of being affected by a pop song. And it wasn’t even as though she were looking for love. After Sophy’s birth, she had determinedly and resolutely turned her back on the idea of love and marriage.

When her mother had tried to talk to her gently about her attitude, she had said bitterly that she could never expect anyone else to take on both her and her baby, declaring flatly that she was second-hand and used. Her mother had protested vigorously at her claim, telling her gently that she had nothing to feel ashamed about, and that no man who loved her would ever blame her for what had happened…that men these days did not expect their wives to come to them without having had any previous sexual experience. But she had shaken her head and said it was not the lack of her virginity she had meant, but the loss and destruction of her self-worth and trust…the fact that she would never be able to give to anyone else all that she had given so trustingly and eagerly to Joss…and that it was because of that that she, and her emotions, would be second-hand.

She had stuck resolutely to her decision and, over the years, as her first initial terrible shock and grief had softened, she had wondered if perhaps her life was not after all more surrounded by love, more filled with contentment than many a woman’s who did have a husband and a father for her children. She thought of that woman who was so closely linked to her and yet who knew nothing of her existence, and wondered what her life had been. What must it be like to be married to a man who cheated…who lied and deceived. How very much more destructive that must be…a festering, poisonous wound as opposed to the clean, almost killing one she had received—and survived!

She stopped the car and got out, and as she did so the kitchen door opened and she saw Sophy standing there, grinning at her.

Her heart flooded with love and pleasure. She ran towards her and they hugged one another.

‘Hello, little mama,’ Sophy whispered tremulously, reverting to the silly pet name which had evolved when she was tiny and people had confused Kate’s role in her life. She had then started calling Kate ‘my little mama’ and the nickname had stuck, especially when Sophy had started shooting up above her mother.

Once she had released her, Kate stepped back to look at her daughter. This incredibly special and beautiful child who she still could not entirely believe was hers.

Every bit of her gleamed with vitality and happiness, right from the crown of her silky bobbed hair to the polished nails of her toes, peeping through the high-heeled sandals she was wearing.

Looking at them, Kate remarked absently, ‘It’s just as well John is so tall.’

‘Mm.’ The dark grey, black-lashed eyes that Sophy had inherited from her father gave Kate a laughing look, as the girl said irrepressively, ‘We fit very well together…’

She had never been able to resist teasing, and she laughed again as she saw the faint surge of colour sting her mother’s face. ‘Don’t worry, little mama,’ she added chidingly. ‘I’m not about to repeat your mistake. I am most definitely not pregnant. At least, not yet,’ she added thoughtfully.

There was a small silence, and then Kate said emotionally, ‘You, my love, are most definitely the best mistake I ever made.’

It was true. Nearly twenty-one years ago, terrified, pregnant…she had just made the discovery that the man she thought loved her was in fact married to someone else…had had a child with that someone else. She had thought then that her whole world had come to an end, and so it might have done if her parents hadn’t been so wonderful…

If…so many ifs, which had brought her to this day and this place, surely one of the proudest women alive.

She had achieved so much, this daughter of hers…done so much in her short life. A first-class degree from Oxford…holidays spent working abroad, so that she could be self-supporting, a wide circle of friends, leisure activities that ranged from skiing to abseiling…A job that promised to sustain her intellectually all through her life…and now marriage to a man who would genuinely be a true partner to her; moreover, a man whose family had opened its arms to welcome her.

With fervent gratitude she acknowledged that, whatever her own feelings about the circumstances of Sophy’s birth, her daughter had never betrayed a moment’s chagrin or resentment over them. She was a girl who was naturally likeable, who was open and friendly with others, who met life on its own terms. Sophy had grown so much into being the woman she herself had always wanted to be and never could be, and now here she was, adult, confident, in love, with the whole world spread out in front of her for the taking.

Kate felt her heart swell with maternal pride…a pride that was tinged with sadness. It was an intrinsic part of Kate’s personality that she took no credit herself for Sophy’s well-adjusted attitude to life.

Today marked the start of a new life for Sophy…and the end of an old life for her.

‘Well, come on,’ Sophy demanded. ‘Let me see what you’re planning to wear tomorrow…I can’t wait to see the guests’ faces when they realise that you are my mother.’

Tears stung Kate’s eyes. It was an added gift, this one—that Sophy should always have been so proud and supportive of her…almost as though from a young age she had known how vulnerable she was.

She touched her arm now and smiled through her tears.

‘You are the one everyone will be focusing on,’ she chided her maternally, and then a frown touched her forehead and she said quietly, ‘Sophy, I’m sorry that your father won’t be here to give you away. I…’

Sophy hugged her swiftly. ‘Don’t be,’ she told her promptly. ‘Any man who could do what he did to you is a rat and, quite honestly, I wouldn’t want him in my life. I mean it,’ she assured her firmly, and then added, ‘John’s mother was asking me the last time I saw her if I ever wondered about him, or was curious about him.’

‘What did you tell her?’ Kate asked her quietly. It had always hounded her, this fear that one day Sophy would naturally want to seek out the man who had fathered her. Her fear had not been for herself but for her child…that Sophy would be rejected as she had been rejected.

‘The truth. That you explained to me when I was old enough to understand what had happened…That you had fallen in love with someone who you thought was free to love you in return…and that you had then discovered that he was in fact already married with a child. That on the advice and counselling of Gran and Gramps you had decided not to get in touch with him and tell him about me because, as they had pointed out to you, he had already made it plain that he didn’t want anything to do with you, and that anyway, a man who had already betrayed his marriage vows and his child was only going to cause us both a great deal of unhappiness.

‘I’ve always agreed with what Gran and Gramps told you,’ she added calmly. ‘He couldn’t have been much of a man, to hurt you the way he did. You and Gran and Gramps have always given me so much love…been so honest and truthful with me.’ She looked steadily at her mother. ‘I admire you tremendously for not giving in to the temptation to confront him with your pregnancy, especially when you loved him so much. He has no place in my life or in my heart. How could he have? If I had one wish it would not be for my father, but that Gran and Gramps were still alive and that Gramps was here to walk down the aisle with me.’

They hugged one another silently for a moment, both of them acknowledging the huge emotional debt they owed to Kate’s parents, who had always been so wise and caring, never reproaching her for what she had done but instead gently helping her to understand that for her own sake and her child’s she must put the past behind her.

‘I think what you and I need right now is a bottle of champagne and a weepy movie,’ Sophy said shakily.

Kate laughed.

‘Maybe, but what we have is a potential strawberry mountain waiting to be hulled and washed.’ She saw Sophy’s grimace and reminded her, mock-severely, ‘You were the one who wanted the June wedding…the country setting…the fresh strawberries and cream…’

‘Don’t remind me,’ Sophy protested as they went together to the car to bring in the fruit.

CHAPTER TWO

‘THE MOST BEAUTIFUL girl…’

‘Such a lovely dress…’

‘What a fabulous day…’

The comments washed past Kate as she stood on the steps of the church with Sophy and John and John’s immediate family.

The June sunshine was dazzlingly bright and hot after the cool, cloistered peace of the church. The vicar had held a private memorial service for her parents in that same church after the plane crash…Her breath locked in her chest as she reminded herself that, today of all days, she must not allow anything to cloud Sophy’s happiness.

And Sophy was happy. It radiated out of her.

As she watched, the newly married pair touched hands, a small, private gesture of shared love and reassurance, and then Sophy commented curiously, ‘Heavens, John, who’s that gorgeous dark-haired man over there with the redhead?’

All of them turned to look in the direction Sophy was discreetly indicating.

A couple were standing apart from the rest of the guests, in the shadowy seclusion of the quiet graveyard.

Kate looked at them absently, and then focused abruptly on the man, her heart feeling as though it had suddenly been clamped in a giant vice. The whole world seemed to spin crazily around her as her throat went dry, and she fought off the panic engulfing her. It couldn’t be…Not here! Not now! Not today!

Somewhere in the distance John was pretending to be jealous, and his mother was saying in amusement, ‘That’s my cousin, Joss Bennett.’

‘Oh, is it? I’ve heard you mention him,’ Sophy was responding, enlightened. ‘Funny, I’d envisaged him being much older than that.’

‘You mean rather more around my age,’ John’s mother teased.

Kate heard their conversation. It lapped round her, a lulling, distant noise that couldn’t calm her jangled, discordant nerves. She was concentrating on the man standing within the shadows of the ancient yews, sunlight dappling his features, obscuring them slightly, but not so much that she had not recognised him immediately.

It had been almost twenty-two years…by rights her heart and mind should have forgotten everything about him…but they hadn’t.

She had a confused awareness of a desperate need to keep up appearances, to act as though nothing untoward had happened…as though she hadn’t looked across a sun-dappled churchyard and seen standing there the man who had deserted her all those years ago, leaving her to bear his child…this child who was now a young woman.

Somewhere in the distance, John’s mother was saying easily, ‘Well, of course, Joss is much younger than me, I suppose now he must be forty-two, going on fortythree.’

‘He doesn’t look it,’ Sophy was saying admiringly. ‘Heavens, I would have thought he was somewhere in his late thirties at the most.’

‘Hey,’ John cautioned her teasingly. ‘Watch it…I’m beginning to get worried. I shall definitely not introduce you to him.’

The sun’s heat, the laughter and warmth of the day…all of them might not have existed, Kate felt so cold and alone.

Was it mere coincidence that had brought him here today of all days, or…?

It was coincidence! It had to be. If by some remote chance he had discovered that Sophy was his child, surely he wouldn’t have waited until today, until she was getting married, to claim their relationship?

The vice loosened its grip a little. She drew a deep, shaky breath, trying to control the trembling she could feel threatening her composure. It was just a horrible coincidence. He was John’s mother’s cousin, a coincidence…

Someone touched her arm and she turned her head to look into Sophy’s concerned eyes.

‘Are you all right, Mum? You’ve gone quite pale, and you feel cold.’

Momentarily she was the focus of the small group’s attention. This was Sophy’s day, she reminded herself fiercely, and nothing was going to be allowed to spoil it. Nothing. She could see that John’s mother was already beginning to frown a little, as though picking up the vibrations of shock emanating from her…the kind of shock that had nothing to do with a beloved daughter getting married.

‘It was colder than I’d expected inside the church,’ she managed, forcing herself to smile.

The outfit she had chosen for the wedding consisted of a black and white silk spotted dress with short cap sleeves, in a vaguely twenties style, with a plain white silk jacket and a white silk hat trimmed in black, the colours being perfectly acceptable since Sophy had chosen to wear a dress of heavy cream silk rather than the traditional white she had claimed would look awful with her olive-tinted skin.

Skin she had inherited from her father, Kate acknowledged, unable to resist darting another tormented look at the couple in the churchyard.

They were standing facing one another, Joss bending towards the redhead while she removed something from the lapel of his jacket. She was tall, almost as tall as Sophy, and he didn’t have to angle his head far to look down at her. When he had been with her… Her heart jolted frantically in her chest as memories she didn’t want came surging past the barriers of her self-control. Memories of the first time they had met on the cliffs beyond the windy Cornish fishing village, devoid of tourists during that wet cold summer. She had run into him, having got caught out in the rain. She had been running back to her mother’s aunt’s cottage, her head down, not looking where she was going.

He had caught hold of her as she staggered, and she had lifted her head to apologise and had promptly fallen fathomlessly in love, as only a girl of just sixteen could.

He had seemed so distant and sophisticated: almost twenty-two to her sixteen, a huge distance in terms of life experience. He was already a man, she still a child, but he had offered to walk back to her aunt’s with her, offering her a few personal details about himself as he did so. It was over a mile from the clifftop path to the village where her great-aunt lived, and despite the buffeting wind and icy rain she had wished it might be twenty.

When he had told her how old he was, she had lied about her own age, claiming to be nineteen.

He had almost caught her out, asking her what she was doing, what kind of post-school training, but she had fibbed that she was having to resit A levels and so was having an extra year at school.

She hadn’t known then what had made her lie about her age, only that she desperately wanted to be seen as his equal and not as a silly adolescent schoolgirl.

She had been speechless with bliss when he’d asked her out. He’d been working in Cornwall for the summer, a job with the National Trust, helping to maintain the cliff-paths. He’d been lodging in the village at a house not far from her aunt’s…and so it had begun.

‘Mama…the photographer’s ready.’

Sophy’s calm, firm voice broke into her private world. She blinked, and the vision of the tall, dark-haired young man who had charmed and delighted her so much was gone, and in its place she saw the reality of a man in his forties who, as Sophy had so rightly said, could easily have been mistaken for someone in his late thirties—a man who wore his obvious wealth and sophistication as casually as the boy she had known had worn his jeans.

The arrival of the photographer gave her a much-needed excuse to slip into the background and be alone. The shock of seeing Joss so completely unexpectedly had made her feel sick and faint. Long, long ago she had accepted that he was gone from her life and that it was right that he should have done so, so that to see him here today of all days was appallingly painful. The redhead must be his wife…and she, like Joss, looked younger than her forty-odd years. She gave another quick, hunted look at the woman’s immaculate make-up and hair. Her clothes were expensive, designer label most likely, but there was a petulant set to her mouth and a frown marring her forehead. Where was their child? Odd that she had never known whether it was a boy or a girl…Sophy’s half-brother or -sister. Her heart gave a frantic twist as the pain splintered inside her. Still, after all this time, when it should have long ago died.

She was starting to shake. Another moment and her distress would be so obvious that it would cause comment. There were still the photographs to get through, and then the reception. The day seemed to stretch endlessly in front of her, like some kind of refined torture.

What would happen when they met? Would he recognise her…and, if he did, would he acknowledge her…or pretend that they had never met?

The latter, most probably. And what about Sophy, standing there with John, laughing up into her bridegroom’s face? She would go through the rest of her life never knowing that John’s mother’s cousin was in reality her own father.

Her heart seemed to bolt with fright. If only her parents were still alive…If only she had someone to turn to…to confide in.

She felt a light touch on her shoulder and jumped in panic, but it was only Sophy’s godfather, James Phillips, the local doctor.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked her frowningly. Today he had stood in for the father Sophy had never had and the grandfather she had lost…giving her away…Tears rose and stung her throat and the backs of her eyes.

‘Just being sentimental and stupid,’ she assured him.

‘Ma…the photographer wants you,’ Sophy called, and distractedly she hurried over to join John’s parents, while James followed at a more leisurely pace.

It was a nightmare. It couldn’t be real…but it was, and sooner or later she was going to have to come face to face with Joss. She shuddered sickly, and the photographer frowned. It was normally the bride who looked faint and sick, and not her mother…although this particular bride’s mother was rather unusual, slim as a gazelle, and young enough to pass for the bride’s sister. It seemed impossible to believe the reality of their relationship. She must have been a child herself when she had had her, he reflected consideringly.

She was a very beautiful woman, and would have been more so if she had not looked quite so strained.

When the photographer had finished, Mary Broderick, who had seen three daughters married herself, went over to Kate and said quietly, ‘It’s awful, isn’t it? You know you should be happy for them…and yet you feel so lost, and you hate yourself for feeling like that. It does get better,’ she informed Kate with a smile.

Privately, when John had announced that he was getting engaged and had explained the circumstances of his new fiancée’s birth, she had been worried about the situation, but she needn’t have been. Sophy was everything she could have wanted in a daughter-in-law, and as for Kate…

Something about the petite woman who was now her son’s mother-in-law made her want to mother her in much the same way she had mothered her own four children. It wasn’t that Kate wasn’t mature and capable. She was both. The way she had brought up Sophy was testimony to that. No, it was her vulnerability—that and the youthfulness of her face and figure. No one looking at her would ever have imagined she was a day over thirty.

‘We’d like you to come and spend a couple of days with us when you can spare the time. We feel we’ve hardly had an opportunity to get to know you yet.’

There was no doubting the sincerity and warmth of the invitation, but Kate could barely respond to it. The moment she was dreading was fast arriving, and it was too late now to bitterly regret that Sophy had ever opted for the formality of a receiving line.

There was no way of avoiding it. She and Joss were going to come face to face.

Face to face with the man who twenty-one years ago had given her her dearly beloved daughter, and who had then walked out on her without even knowing that she had conceived.

The garden was everything a country garden should be, the scent of roses, from the traditional walkway bisecting the lawn, heady with musk. All around her Kate could hear people commenting appreciatively as they congregated on the drive. A light breeze stirred the blue and white awnings of the marquee.

The staff she and Lucy had hired to serve the meal were moving deftly among the guests, gently encouraging them on to the lawns as they circulated offering pre-wedding breakfast drinks.

James took her arm and gently guided her towards the marquee where it had been decided they would line up to receive the guests. Slowly the guests filed past, all of them beaming their pleasure and enjoyment of the day. Old friends, whose faces were as familiar to her as her own…strangers, people who belonged to John’s side of the family, but who nevertheless were reaching out to her with warmth; all of them passed her in a blur, until the shocking moment she had been waiting for, and she heard John’s mother exclaiming warmly, ‘Joss! It’s lovely to see you. We weren’t sure you could make it…’

And then she heard the familiar timbre of a voice she had never, ever forgotten. A voice that had whispered such things to her that she had shivered in unbearable pleasure and arousal, now saying mundanely, ‘We only just made it, but it’s lovely to be here.’

Sophy was speaking to him, flirting lightly with him, and then it was John’s turn…John who was turning to introduce her to him.

‘You won’t believe it, but Kate is my new mother-in-law,’ he said gallantly, and the whole world stood still as they looked at one another, and she saw from his face that this meeting was as much a shock to him as it was to her.

‘Kate,’ he said hoarsely, and the hand touching hers gripped her so tightly that she actually winced with pain.

He had aged, but only slightly. He was no longer a young boy, but a man…tall, dark, powerful, his jaw lean and clean-cut, bearing no trace of too selfindul-gent living, his skin bronzed and his grey eyes as clear as those of his daughter.

His hair was just as thick and dark as she remembered, and his body as he had walked towards her had moved lithely and easily.

He was a man in his sexual prime, she recognised numbly, and it didn’t need the sidelong looks the other female guests were giving him to tell her so.

Shock absorbed her and held her, and then abruptly released her so that she started to shake and her eyes stung with tears. Totally unable to hold on to her composure, she tugged her hand from his and looked past him to the woman accompanying him. Her mouth had tightened into an unattractively thin, tight line. She glared pointedly at Kate as she stretched out her hand, and Kate said mindlessly, ‘Mrs Bennett.’

John waited until they had gone past to chuckle and say to her, ‘Not Mrs Bennett as yet, although I suspect she’s hoping to be. She’s Joss’s secretary.’

His secretary. A cold, sour sickness rose up inside her. So he hadn’t changed, she thought bitterly. He was still the same lying cheat who had deceived her. And yet outwardly he looked too uncompromisingly honest and steadfast…

His appearance was as deceitful as his nature. Where were his wife…and his child? Something inside her twisted painfully as she stopped concentrating on the line-up of guests waiting to smile and shake her hand, and remembered instead the shocking agony of that cold, blustery September day when, not having heard from Joss for almost twenty-four hours, she had gone round to his lodgings to find out why he had broken their date. She had discovered from his landlady that he had packed his bags and gone…‘Gone back to his wife and child,’ she had told her maliciously, leaving only the cursory message that their affair was over and that she was not to try to get in touch with him.

She could remember even now the pebble-hard acidness of the woman’s cold eyes…and how, despite her casual attitude, she had sounded as though she had enjoyed delivering Joss’s message.

She had only met the woman on a couple of previous occasions. Normally she and Joss met just outside the village on the cliff-path. She hadn’t liked his landlady then, and she had liked her even less at that moment.

Joss, married. She had hardly been able to take it in. He was still only a student, in his last year at Oxford and, although she had surmised from the odd comments he had made about them that his family had money, he had said nothing to her to indicate that his family consisted of anything more than parents, and various aunts, uncles and cousins. He had certainly never intimated that he was married…and not just married, but a father as well.

His landlady had watched her unkindly, callously smiling at the tears she had been unable to stop stinging her eyes.

‘What did you expect?’ she had scoffed. ‘He was just using you, that’s all. Did you really think he intended it to be anything more than a brief fling? He’s told me not to give you his address. So don’t bother asking for it,’ she had added brutally and triumphantly, starting to close the door.

Numb with pain and shock, somehow or other Kate had managed to drag herself back to the cliff-path which had been their trysting place. She still could not take it in. Only forty-eight hours ago he had held her, kissed her, whispered to her that he loved and wanted her…and she had thought that implicit in those words was a promise for the future. And now…

She started to tremble violently realising what she had done. She had given herself to him with joy and fervour…given herself to a man who was already committed elsewhere…a man who was married with a child.

Mercifully, then, she hadn’t known that it wasn’t only a broken heart he had left her with.

She had only discovered she was pregnant six weeks after she had returned home. Shocked and bewildered, she had made no attempt to hide the truth from her parents; they, having observed the stunned, silent state in which she had returned to them after her holiday, had already guessed that some emotional trauma was at the root of her distress.

It had not occurred to them that it might be more than a mere holiday romance that was making her so pale and listless until she started being so violently ill.

After that…she had told them haltingly and miserably what she had done, how she had betrayed the mores they had taught her, how defiled and unhappy she felt, not at making love with Joss—that she could not regret—but at having made love with him believing him to be free when he wasn’t…at having participated, however innocently, in the breaking of marriage vows she considered to be sacred.

Her parents had been marvellous…wonderfully supportive and caring.

She had never gone back to the village. There had been no point…her mother’s aunt, disgruntled with the appalling summer weather, had sold the cottage and moved back to London, announcing that country living was not for her, and Joss had been someone she had resolutely shut away in a dark corner of her mind, refusing to allow herself to think about.

Except when Sophy was born…except when her parents died…except this morning, dressing for the wedding and grieving for all that might have been.

Seeing him had shaken her out of those idiotic daydreams, reminding her of what reality was. Reality was a man who had cold-bloodedly seduced her knowing that he was committed elsewhere, and who, it seemed, still continued to break those same marriage vows he had broken with her.

No wonder he had been so shocked to see her. He was probably wondering how quickly he could make his excuses and leave.

As the thought formed, she looked across the flower-decked marquee and saw him standing with a group of people, but slightly to one side of them, as though apart from them. He was looking directly at her, the grey eyes focusing on her with such intensity that for a moment she actually took a step towards him.

‘Kate, the girls are getting twitchy about serving the buffet,’ Lucy came up to warn her.

Thankfully Kate turned aside and glanced at her watch.

‘Yes. We’d better get everyone sitting down.’

Sophy and John had opted for an informal arrangement of round tables in the marquee, apart from the top table for close members of the family, and as James tactfully organised the ushers into making sure that everyone found their tables and sat down Kate turned her back on Joss and escaped.

The meal was a blur of tension and misery. Conversation hummed around her, Sophy and John as euphoric as the bubbles in the champagne. Someone—one of John’s married sisters, she thought vaguely—complimented her warmly on the food. She smiled, feeling as though her whole face had become frozen.

Joss was sitting right in her line of vision; the redhead clawed possessively at his arm whenever his attention wavered from her, and Kate thought viciously that he deserved the other woman’s petulant possessiveness.

All through the toasts and speeches she was conscious of growing tension, of an anxiety that balled in her stomach and made it impossible to concentrate on anything bar the dark-haired man sitting just within her vision.

Afterwards, while Sophy and John circulated among their guests, she tried to escape, but she had barely reached the opening of the marquee when Joss stopped her.

Her heart lodged painfully in her throat, her pulses hammering frantic messages of fear.

‘Your daughter looks very beautiful,’ he told her gravely. ‘John is a very lucky man.’

Stock compliments and phrases, with no nuance in them to make her muscles tense and her eyes flicker with distraught dread…nothing in his eyes to warn her that he had guessed that Sophy was his child…just a fine hardening of his mouth that made him suddenly look older and very bitter as he added devastatingly, ‘And so is James.’

James…She looked round wildly, her heart hammering with frantic, desperate ferocity. James was standing several yards away, talking to John’s mother.

‘Joss, there you are. It’s time we left.’ The redhead drew level with them and glowered warningly at Kate. ‘You know you promised we wouldn’t be staying long.’

Kate winced at her lack of manners, wondering faintly if the woman realised that she was doing her a favour and that the last thing she wanted was for Joss to linger.

She gave them both a polite, controlled smile and said brightly, ‘It was good of you to come. Please do excuse me,’ and quickly sidestepped them both, heading for the house and security.

It was a good half-hour before she was able to accept that they had actually gone and that she was safe, but the shock of Joss’s unexpected appearance had taken its toll, and it was impossible for her to relax and enjoy what was left of the day.

By the time the last of the guests were leaving she had a pounding headache, and the last thing she wanted to do was to join John’s family for the celebratory meal they had organised at the Fleece.

Sophy and John had gone. They were flying to Antigua for a three-week honeymoon, and Sophy’s face had been blissfully rapt as she and John left for the airport.

‘Takes you back, doesn’t it?’ John’s mother had sighed…and had then bitten her lip in embarrassment and apologised.

‘Heavens, I’m sorry…that was tactless.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kate had assured her, and then, because of the pity she could see in her eyes, she had added firmly, ‘And besides, the relationship I had with Sophy’s father was as important to me as though we were married. It was only later when I discovered that he already had a wife and a child.’

Mary Broderick bit her bottom lip guiltily. She hadn’t meant to raise unhappy memories for Sophy’s mother, and, despite her initial shock at discovering that her son’s mother-in-law was a woman of thirty-seven who looked barely thirty, and who had conceived her daughter outside marriage when she was only sixteen during a relationship with an already married man, once she had met Kate she had quickly realised that, however deplorable the circumstances of Sophy’s conception, her mother was not to blame for them.

‘Do you never see him…hear from him?’ she asked awkwardly, wanting to fill the painful silence.

Kate shook her head quickly and lied, ‘And nor do I want to.’

Her head was pounding with sickening intensity. All she wanted to do was to go and lie down on her bed, but instead she had the evening to go through.

When it was all over, she would sleep for a week, she promised herself tiredly as she forced a smile to her lips and tried to appear as though she was enjoying herself.

CHAPTER THREE

OF COURSE, she didn’t. On Monday morning it was back to her normal routine of preparing the very special sandwiches that she and Lucy delivered to offices in York, along with their special executive lunches.

They were frantically busy, with two of their staff off on holiday and Kate having to drive into York in their van to make the deliveries and pick up fresh supplies.

After that she had an appointment with a woman who wanted them to cater for her husband’s fortieth birthday party, and then there was an evening reception in York, but thankfully Lucy was doing that.

The week whirled by and it was Friday before she knew it. Thankfully she had managed to give herself Friday afternoon off. The house was desperately untidy and needed cleaning from top to bottom, she acknowledged ruefully, and then there was the garden…The marquee people had been as careful as they could, but…

Acknowledging wryly that her afternoon off was likely to prove more arduous than working, she rushed back from York, dropped off the fresh supplies at Lucy’s home and then hurried home.

All afternoon she worked at top speed, refusing to acknowledge that part of her determination to keep busy was rooted in her desperate need to hold at bay the shock of seeing Joss again so unexpectedly and unwantedly.

By six o’clock she was exhausted, but she refused to allow herself to rest. There was still the garden to do, and it was silly not to take advantage of the long summer evening.

She hadn’t bothered to stop for lunch and she wasn’t hungry now. In fact, she hadn’t been hungry all week, and had lost a dramatic amount of weight. Lucy had noticed it and teased her about it, saying that it was the bride who traditionally wasted away, not her mother, and Kate had grimly let her believe that it was the build-up to Sophy’s wedding that had caused her to drop so many pounds, rather than admitting the truth.

At nine o’clock, her back aching and her muscles trembling with exhaustion, she acknowledged that it was time to give up.

Wincing as her strained muscles protested, she went inside and straight upstairs to her bedroom.

After her parents’ death, although she had cleared out their room, she had felt unable to move into it, and so she was still using the bedroom she had grown up in. She and Sophy had shared a bathroom, her parents having their own, and she acknowledged tiredly how empty the house felt now that she was living in it on her own.

Showered and dried, she grimaced slightly at her unmade-up face and wildly curling hair. All she wanted to do was to go to bed, but there were the books waiting downstairs for her attention…if she could just spend a couple of hours on them now…

Tiredly she went down to the comfortably shabby sitting-room at the back of the house. It overlooked the garden and had been her parents’ favourite room.

Both she and Sophy had grown up in this room with its faded chintz furniture, and its worn rugs and polished parquet floor.

She got the books out and sat down at the desk that had belonged to her mother.

She was so tired that it was virtually impossible to concentrate on what she was doing. The french windows were open, admitting the cool evening air and the musky scent of the bourbon roses.

Her back ached appallingly. If she could just lean back in the chair and close her eyes for a couple of minutes…

When the expensive Jaguar saloon car purred up over the gravel, she was too deeply asleep to hear it.

It stopped alongside her own car, the driver’s door opening and then closing again with a quiet click.

The man who emerged from the car straightened up and looked warily at the silent house.

It had been a long drive from London, and an even longer week, with this meeting on his mind throughout the length of it. He had been hard pressed to leave the office early, but eventually he had managed it. The ailing company he had taken over from his father twenty-odd years ago was now high-powered and very successful, but there were times when that success tasted like ashes in his mouth.

He walked to the back door and knocked briefly on it. There was no bell, and when no one answered his summons he turned to glance back at the car parked next to his own and his frown deepened.

Her car was here, but that didn’t necessarily mean that she was in. Then the faint movement of the open french windows on the other side of the back door caught his eye and he walked curiously towards them.

The light was just beginning to fade, the room illuminated by a lamp on the desk several feet away.

There were papers scattered on it; the breeze had lifted some of them on to the floor; a familiar blonde head lay on the desk, pillowed on two slender, tanned arms.

The breath locked in his throat as he stared at her ringless left hand. He took a step towards her and then another, stopping abruptly when he saw the silver photograph frame on the desk.

He focused hungrily on the photograph inside it. Her daughter. His daughter. Then with a bitter frown he overcame his qualms and reached out to shake her awake.

The sensation of a hand on her shoulder was at once both familiar and alien, bringing her instantly out of her exhausted doze and into alert tenseness.

As she opened her eyes she struggled to sit up, wincing as her stiff neck muscles protested.

Someone was leaning towards her, blocking out the light from the lamp so that his features were indistinct, and then he said her name and a wild shudder convulsed her.

‘Kate, wake up,’ he demanded peremptorily, and to her own astonishment she heard herself saying grumpily and mundanely, as though the sight of him here in her sitting-room was nothing unexpected at all.

‘I am awake. What do you want? What are you doing here, Joss?’

Her mind, fogged by exhaustion and shock, relaxed its normally vigilant hold on her defences. She lifted her head, rubbing her stiff neck muscles and glaring at him fiercely.

‘How did you get in?’

She saw the open french windows and grimaced wryly. It was her fault. She had left the french windows open.

A little to her surprise, she saw his mouth thin angrily as he too looked at the open doors.

‘Anyone could have walked in here,’ he told her tersely.

Her eyes widened a little as she caught the note of reproval in his voice.

‘Anyone could,’ she agreed drily. ‘But you did. Why? What are you doing here, Joss?’

Her brief surge of shock-born defiance left her as he responded derisively, ‘I think you already know the answer to that question. I’ve come to talk to you about your daughter…our daughter…’

He stressed the possessive pronoun, watching her with eyes that seemed to see right inside her soul. Hard, bitter eyes, that seemed to blame and accuse; but who was he to accuse her? Why should he feel bitter?

He had caught her off guard, and as she struggled to reassemble her defences she licked her over-dry lips, tension seeping into her muscles and paralysing them.

‘What do you mean?’ she challenged, knowing as she spoke that she had hesitated for far too long.

He gave her a derisive look.

‘You know exactly what I mean, Kate.’

She moved restlessly in her chair. It was hard and uncomfortable, making her feel even more physically vulnerable. She longed for the soft comfort of one of the easy chairs by the fire where she could at least relax her compressed muscles, but he was standing right in front of her, making it impossible for her to move without brushing past him.

‘That was some shock, seeing you so unexpectedly like that last week—and then to discover, almost by accident, that—’ He broke off abruptly. ‘My cousin, John’s mother, invited me to have dinner with them last Sunday. We had a most illuminating conversation.’

The grey eyes bored into her, making her heart pound with fear. She wanted to drag her gaze away, to break the hypnotic concentration of his eyes and the anger she could sense he was only just able to control.

‘Sophy is my child.’ He said it flatly, refusing to allow her the opportunity to deny it.

She moistened her dry lips again, wanting to tell him that he was wrong, but her throat muscles refused to respond to her need and she could only stare wildly and betrayingly at him, while the colour came and went under her skin.

Her exhausted brain couldn’t cope with the hostility emanating from him. Last weekend she had dreaded this very confrontation…dreaded the denouement which would have ruined Sophy’s wedding day, and when it had not come she had reassured herself that acknowledging Sophy as his child was the very last thing Joss was likely to do.

Safe and reassured, she had started to let go of her fear, and in doing so had rendered herself vulnerable.

Her whole body ached with shock and fear.

‘I can’t see the point in dragging up the past now,’ she challenged him bitterly.

He stared at her for a moment as though he had never seen her before, his eyes merciless, his mouth a hard line of contempt. She focused on it despairingly and then, whether because of her fear or her exhaustion, she did not know which, she suffered the shockingly hallucinatory sensation of suddenly slipping back in time, so that when she looked at his mouth she remembered how it had felt moving against her own…how she had felt…almost sick with excitement and desire, wanting him so much…loving him so much…

‘The point is that I have already missed out on the first twenty years of my daughter’s life,’ Joss told her gratingly, destroying the fragile spell of the past and jolting her into the present, ‘and I do not intend to miss out on the next twenty. You had no right to do what you did, Kate,’ he told her savagely. ‘All right, so you discovered that you no longer wanted me…that there was no place for me in your life, but…What’s wrong?’ he asked her roughly, seeing the way the colour drained from her face, leaving it pinched and white with shock, her eyes enormous in its delicacy, their soft depths betraying her disbelief and pain.

It was a look that no one could have manufactured, painful and haunting enough to make him stop in his tracks to focus on her and study her.

‘What’s wrong, Kate?’ he repeated less savagely.

She had started to tremble violently, her reaction so intense that he reacted instinctively to it, reaching out to clasp her wrists firmly in warm fingers as though in comfort, while he registered the frantic race of her pulse.

She made an inarticulate sound of pain in her throat and tried to stand up…to escape. What was he trying to do to her? Why was he trying to pretend, to lie, to hurt her more than she had already been hurt?

Her cramped muscles refused to respond to her need to get away from him, and as she tried to pull herself free and push past him her legs simply refused to support her. She fell heavily against him, with an impotent cry of frustrated panic.

The too familiar scent of him was all around her, and as she struggled to escape from it she felt his arms locking round her. The silk shirt he was wearing felt nothing like the T-shirts and rough woollen shirts he had worn before, but the body beneath it was the same, hard and warm, its scent and shape dangerously evocative of the past. The harder Kate tried to escape from the miasma of emotions pouring through her, the more impossible escape became. Confused, exhausted, unable to understand why he was accusing her

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