Loving

Loving
PENNY JORDAN

Penny Jordan needs no introduction as arguably the most recognisable name writing for Mills & Boon. We have celebrated her wonderful writing with a special collection, many of which for the first time in eBook format and all available right now.He offered her marriage – but only in name Inheriting a small cottage near London had allowed Claire Richards to achieve independence for herself and her young daughter, Lucy. So when Jay Fraser accused her of encouraging Lucy's friendship with his own motherless daughter just to trap him into marriage, she was outraged.But then her cottage was damaged during a storm and Claire had to accept Jay's offer of shelter. She was surprised to find him a considerate, perceptive man, gentle and affectionate with the children. And when he proposed a loveless marriage of convenience, she agreed for her daughter's sake.Too late Claire discovered that she wanted' Jay to be more than just a father for Lucy…

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.

Loving

Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

‘MUMMY, CAN HEATHER come home and play with me and then stay for tea?’

Looking down into the pleading blue eyes of her six-year-old daughter, Claire once again blessed the totally unexpected inheritance from her unknown great-aunt that had made possible her move away from the centre of London to the small village of Chadbury St John.

Lucy had blossomed out unbelievably in the short month they had been here. Already she seemed plumper, healthier, and now she had made her first ‘best friend’. The huge block of council flats they had lived in before had not led to any friendships for either mother or daughter. They had been living an existence that had virtually been hand to mouth, and with no way out of the dull misery of such poverty.

And then, miraculously, almost overnight everything had changed. How on earth her great-aunt’s solicitors had been able to track her down was a miracle in itself, but to learn that she had inherited her cottage, and with it a small but very, very precious private income, had been such a miraculous event that even now Claire sometimes thought she was dreaming.

‘Not today, Lucy,’ she told her daughter indulgently. ‘Heather’s mummy won’t know where she is if she comes home with us now, will she?’ she reminded her crestfallen child gently.

‘Heather hasn’t got a mummy,’ Lucy informed her quickly, speaking for the brown-eyed little girl clinging to her side. ‘She only has a daddy, and he goes away a lot.’

Another quick look at the little girl standing close to her own daughter made Claire aware of several things she hadn’t noticed before. Unlike Lucy’s clothes, although expensive, Heather’s were old-fashioned, and too large. Her fine brown hair was scraped back into plaits, and the brown eyes held a defensive, worried look.

Another victim of the growing divorce rate? Claire wondered wryly. Even here in this quiet, almost idyllic village twenty miles from Bath, they were not immune to the pressures of civilisation.

Everyone in the village seemed to accept her own status as that of a young widow. Her great-aunt had apparently not been born locally but had retired to the village after her many years as a schoolteacher, and had, according to what gossip Claire had picked up in the local post office, been the sort of person who believed in keeping herself very much to herself.

Would she have approved of her? Claire’s soft mouth twisted in a tight grimace. Probably not. She had learned over the years that people drew their own conclusions about young girls alone with a baby to support, and that they were not always the right ones. It had been hard work bringing Lucy up alone, but once she had been born there was nothing that could have induced her to part with her. The love she felt for her child was the last thing she had expected … especially …

‘Mummy, please let Heather come back with us.’ Lucy tugged on her jeans, demanding her attention.

‘Not today,’ she responded firmly, smiling at Heather to show the little girl that her refusal held nothing personal. ‘I’m sure that there’s someone at home waiting for Heather who would be very worried if she didn’t arrive, isn’t there, Heather?’

‘Only Mrs Roberts,’ the little girl responded miserably. ‘And she won’t let me have soldiers with my boiled egg. She says it’s babyish.’

Compassion mingled with amusement as Claire surveyed the childish pout. Boiled eggs and soldiers were one of Lucy’s favourite treats.

‘Mrs Roberts is Heather’s daddy’s housekeeper,’ Lucy told her mother importantly. ‘He has to go away a lot on—on business—and Mrs Roberts looks after Heather.’

‘She doesn’t like me.’

The flat statement was somehow more pathetic than an emotional outburst would have been. And the little girl did look unloved. Oh, not in any obvious way—her clothes were expensive and clean, and she was obviously healthy—but she was equally obviously unhappy. But surely the blame for that rested with the child’s father, and not with the housekeeper? Perhaps he was too involved in his business—whatever it was—to notice that his child was miserable.

It was the look of stoic acceptance on the child’s face as she took Lucy’s hand and started to walk away that decided her.

‘Perhaps, if Heather doesn’t live too far away, we could walk home with her and ask Mrs Roberts if she could come to tea,’ she suggested.

Two small faces turned up towards her, both wearing beaming smiles.

What manner of father was it who would allow his five-year-old daughter to walk home unescorted? Chadbury St John was only a small village, but it was also a remote one. Children disappeared in Britain every day … were attacked in the most bestial and horrible of ways … She … Claire shivered suddenly, things she didn’t want to remember obliterating the warm autumn sun. She had been eighteen when Lucy was conceived. An adult legally, but a child still in so many ways, the adored and protected daughter of older parents who had never taught her that the world could be a cruel and hard place.

They had been killed in a road accident shortly after her eighteenth birthday. She had lost everything then—parents, security—everything.

It had been their intention that she would go on to university after school, but her father’s pension had died with him, and the small house they lived in had had to be sold to pay off their small debts. There hadn’t been much left. Certainly not enough for her to go to university, even if that had still been possible, but an eighteen-year-old girl struggling with the knowledge that she was an orphan and pregnant doesn’t have much time or energy to expend on studying.

Of course she could have had an abortion. That was the first thing the doctor had told her after he had got the truth from her. She had wanted to agree—had intended to—but somehow, when it came to it, she couldn’t.

And she had never once regretted her decision to bear and then keep Lucy. Of course, pressure had been put on her to give her up, but she had withstood it. In those early days she had still had some money left from the sale of the house, but that hadn’t lasted longer than the first twelve months of Lucy’s life.

The council flat they had been given, its walls running with damp, its reputation for violence and vandalism so frightening that some days Claire had barely dared to go out—these were all in the past now. She felt as though she had stepped out from darkness into light, and perhaps it was her own awareness of what suffering could be that made her so sensitive to the misery of the little girl standing at her side.

The three of them walked to the end of the village, Heather hesitating noticeably once they had left the main road behind.

‘Heather lives in that big house with the white gates,’ Lucy informed her mother importantly.

Claire knew which one Lucy meant. They had walked past it on Sunday afternoons when they explored their new environment. It was a lovely house, Tudor in part with tiny mullioned windows and an air of peace and sanctuary. One glance into Heather’s shuttered, tight face told her that the little girl obviously didn’t find those qualities there.

They walked up the drive together, but once they were standing outside the rose-gold front of the house, Heather tugged on Claire’s sleeve and whispered uncertainly, ‘We have to go round the back. Mrs Roberts doesn’t let me use the front door.’

There could be any number of reasons for that, but even so, Claire frowned slightly. It was, after all, the child’s home.

They had to skirt well-tended, traditional flower borders and walk along a pretty flagged path to reach the back door.

There was a bell which Claire rang. They waited several minutes before it was answered by a frowning, grey-haired woman, her lips pursed into a grimace of disapproval as she opened the door.

‘Mrs Roberts?’ Claire began before the other woman could speak. ‘I’m Claire Richards. I’ve come to ask if it would be all right for Heather to come home with us and stay for tea.’

The frown relaxed slightly. ‘I suppose it will be all right,’ she agreed grudgingly, summing up Claire’s appearance. Her faded jeans and well-worn tee-shirt didn’t make her look very motherly, Claire thought wryly. She had been working in their small garden this morning, and she suspected that some of the dirt still clung to her jeans. ‘Mind you, her father’s expected back this evening, so she mustn’t be late.’