Marriage Make-Up

Marriage Make-Up
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.Beneath the shadows of the past… Abbie Howard has never forgiven her husband for walking out on their marriage before their child was even born. But now, on the eve of her daughter’s wedding, she must find the courage to face Sam Howard once again.Sam knows that Abbie’s child can’t be his. But when a wedding invitation arrives curiosity drags him back to the wife he’s sworn he’ll never see again. And now, having met his ‘daughter’, doubts crack the icy-cold determination that has kept him away.When Abbie and Sam are face to face, the embers of their long-ago passion flare into life – but can Abbie ever overcome the hurts of the past to remake their marriage?

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.

Marriage Make-up

Penny Jordan

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

CHAPTER ONE

‘MUM…’

Abbie Howard frowned as her twenty-two-year-old daughter’s slightly hesitant voice interrupted her concentration on the accounts on which she was working. She had promised her accountants she would let them have them by the end of the week, but so much had happened since her daughter and her boyfriend had announced their engagement the previous weekend that she was now rather behind. Not that she minded Cathy interrupting her; the two of them had always had a very close relationship and everyone knew how much her daughter meant to her—too much, some people were occasionally inclined to say.

‘You’re not going to believe this,’ Cathy informed her, perching on the edge of her mother’s desk, swinging her long leg, which was still brown from her summer holidays.

People often remarked on how very dissimilar in looks mother and daughter were. Abbie was small, barely five feet two, and very fragile-looking, with delicate bones and an air of vulnerability about her that drew men to her like bees to honey—only for them to be both astonished and then huffily offended as she made it plain that playing the helpless little woman to their big strong man was the last thing she needed or wanted.

Her straight silky hair was naturally blonde, her eyes a deep and mesmerising blue-green, and at forty-three she could easily, had she wished to do so, have laid claim to being no older than a mere thirty-three and have been believed—not just by the male sex but by her own as well.

Not that she was likely to do any such thing. Abbie had no inhibitions about being open about her age, nor about the fact that she had a grown-up daughter.

Cathy, on the other hand, whilst she possessed her mother’s entrancing blue-green eyes, was tall, with long bones and a mane of wild, tumbling deep brunette curls. As a child she had been inclined to be clumsy, and had even gone through a stage of secretly wishing she were more like her mother, of almost hating her own taller, stronger body, until Abbie had guessed what was happening and very quickly put a stop to it, making sure that her daughter, instead of rejecting her body shape, came to appreciate it.

‘But I look just like Dad…you said so yourself when you showed me his photograph.’ She had said so, Abbie remembered, and she also remembered how upset she had been when Cathy had told her that she didn’t think she had ever had a daddy because she had never seen a picture of him. Abbie had shown her then the few photographs she had of Sam which she had not destroyed, hating having to look at them herself because of all the memories they brought back, all the pain.

Cathy had protested further. ‘And he was horrible and you hate him…’

‘But you aren’t horrible and I don’t hate you,’ Abbie had comforted her, hugging and kissing her. ‘I love you, and even though you have inherited your father’s bone structure and colouring you’re still your own person, Cathy, and I promise you that when you grow up you’re going to love being so tall and elegant.’

‘But at school they call me beanpole and beanie,’ Cathy had wept.

‘When I was at school they called me tiny,’ Abbie had told her. ‘But it doesn’t matter what other people say or think, my darling. What matters is what you think, and I promise you that when you grow up you are going to be very glad that you are you…’

And her mother had been right. Cathy was now the first person to acknowledge that. Just as she was always right…well, almost always. There were some things…

Hastily Cathy dismissed the disloyal thought she could feel forming. How was her mother going to take what she had to say to her? She had been marvellous when she and Stuart had told her about their engagement, insisting only that she be allowed to indulge herself as befitted the prospective mother of the bride.

Stuart had been more than willing to agree. He himself came from a large family and was comfortable with the idea of a large wedding.

And, despite the unhappiness and trauma of her own marriage, her mother had never tried to put her off getting married herself, Cathy acknowledged. Not that it would have done much good. She had fallen in love with Stuart virtually the moment she had seen him, and he with her, so he had told her later.

‘What’s wrong?’ Abbie asked her daughter, pushing away her papers and turning to look up at her.

‘I know you’re not going to believe this,’ Cathy responded nervously. ‘But…I think…I think…’ She looked down and started fidgeting with the laces on her boots. ‘I think I…’

‘Yes, go on…you think what?’ Abbie encouraged her wryly.

‘I think I saw Dad today…’

As she finished speaking she looked up warily to meet her mother’s eyes.

The shock was rather like believing you were crossing a completely empty road and then suddenly realising there was a ten-ton truck bearing down on you at high speed, Abbie recognised, and she felt her body’s adrenalin system surge to fight off the blow she had just been dealt.

‘You’re right,’ she agreed flatly, when she thought she had her voice under control. ‘I don’t believe you. Cathy, It’s impossible for your father to be here,’ she added more gently, when she saw her daughter turn her head away and bite her lip. ‘Your father is in Australia. He emigrated there just after…just after you were born, and there’s no reason—’ She stopped.

But Cathy picked up her unfinished sentence for her and supplied harshly, ‘There’s no reason for what? No reason for him to come back? No reason for him to want to see me…to know me…?’

Abbie could feel the lump forming in her throat. It hurt her unbearably that she who had learned to be so tough and protective of her child, who had thought she had done so well in making herself independent, in supporting them both, in giving her precious little girl all the love and security she could, had still somehow failed her.

She knew what it was, of course. Now that Cathy and Stuart were planning to get married, now that she had seen at first hand how Stuart’s happily married parents related to one another, now that she was no doubt thinking of the future, and the children she would have herself, her natural curiosity about her father had risen to the surface of her consciousness. It was making her more curious about him, making her want to know more about him and no doubt making her wish that he felt the same way about her.

When Cathy had still been a small baby, Abbie had made a vow that she would always be honest with her about her father, that she would never lie to her about him or what he had done, but that at the same time she would do her best to protect her from the hurt she was bound to suffer once she was old enough to understand the truth.

And she had stuck by that vow, even though at times it had been very hard, and of course the older Cathy had got, the more aware, the harder it had been to protect her from what Abbie knew her daughter’s own intelligence and emotions must tell her about her father.

How could she…how could anyone protect a child from the pain of knowing that its father didn’t want it? She had done her best to make it up to Cathy, and she had been so proud when people commented on how well adjusted, how happy her daughter always seemed, but now she was wondering if she had congratulated herself too soon.

Because of that, because of her fear that she might not have been enough, that Cathy might still yearn for the father she had never had, she was less understanding and gentle with her than she might otherwise have been, telling her almost harshly, ‘Forget about your father, Cathy. He doesn’t have any place in your life. He never has had. I understand how you feel, but—’

‘No, you don’t. How can you?’ Cathy interrupted her passionately. ‘How can you understand?’ she repeated, tears filling her eyes. ‘Gran and Gramps love you. Gramps never, ever turned round and told Gran that you weren’t his child, that he didn’t want you… You never went to school and listened to all the other children talking about their fathers. You didn’t have to walk down the aisle without—’ Cathy broke off and whispered apologetically, ‘I’m sorry, Mum…I didn’t mean…I know it’s not your fault…it’s just…’

Abbie slid off her chair. With Cathy perched on her desk and her standing on her feet they were almost the same height. She wrapped her arms around her daughter, holding her close, comforting her just as she had done when she was a little girl, and for what felt like the hundred-millionth time she silently cursed the man who had brought them so much unhappiness.

Sam come back…? He wouldn’t dare…Not after what he had done. She had made it more than plain to him the last time she’d seen him that henceforward she wanted nothing more to do with him, that he could keep his name, his money, his house and every other damn thing he had ever given her…except for his child. The child he had refused to accept could be his, the child she was claiming for herself and whom she would never, ever allow him to see again.

He had accused her of having sex with someone else, of conceiving her child with another man; had even had the gall to blame poor Lloyd. Lloyd, who would never…

He had started to say something else to her but she hadn’t let him finish, pushing past him and preparing to walk out of the house she had shared with him for such a brief period of time.