Second-Best Husband

Second-Best Husband
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.Secretary Sara Browning has just discovered that relationships with the boss don't always work – especially when he's decided to marry someone else! Desperately needing to hide from her humiliation, Sara decides to leave London and stay at her parents' home in Shropshire while she works things out. But Shropshire offers a distraction Sara never expected…Tree specialist Stuart Delaney is everything her former boss and ex-love isn't. He's reliable, kind, sympathetic… and from the sound of it, has a few romantic scars of his own. In fact, he's exactly what Sara wants in a husband – and Stuart is crazy about her. Suddenly Sara finds herself engaged to be married to the perfect guy – but she doesn't love him.Still, if everything looks good on paper, shouldn't there be a happily ever after… eventually?

“I don’t in any way see a marriage between us as being second-best—far from it.

“In fact, in my view…” Stuart stopped and then said more calmly, “I’ve already said that I don’t want to pressure you. At least we can be sure of one thing,” he added, turning away from her slightly. “There can be no doubt that sexually we’re going to be extremely compatible.”

How on earth did he know that? How on earth could he know that? Sara opened her mouth to ask him and then closed it again, conscious of a naiveté and self-consciousness that tied her tongue and kept her silent, while her pulse raced and a sensation like a tiny jolt of electricity burned through her body….

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 sixtyfive. 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-bepublished authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Second-Best Husband

Penny Jordan

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

CHAPTER ONE

‘SO YOU’VE actually done it, then? You’ve handed in your notice and left?’

‘Yes,’ Sara agreed in a low voice, flinching a little as though hearing the words physically pained her.

Her friend and neighbour grimaced sympathetically. She was ten years older than Sara and had known her ever since Sara had bought the house next to their own four years before, and personally she felt like giving a very, very loud cheer. Ian Saunders, Sara’s boss, might be six feet odd of blond good-looking manhood, all outward charm and attractiveness, but inwardly he was as cold and callous as it was possible for a man to be. That was her considered opinion, but in the past, no matter how many times she had voiced it, Sara had refused to listen to her, to hear a word against the man she worked for and loved.

‘Well, you know what I think,’ she told Sara now. ‘For what it’s worth, I consider that leaving is the best thing you could have done.’

Sara’s mouth twisted sadly. She was a tall, slender woman of twenty-nine, with a quiet, calm manner that masked a keenly efficient brain. Her looks mirrored her personality. Her face was delicately oval in shape, her features elegant and well-proportioned, only her mouth, with its unexpected fullness, hinting that her outward control might mask deep and fiery passions.

‘It wasn’t exactly a calm and reasoned decision made of my own free will.’

The pain in her voice made Margaret, her neighbour, turn her head away from her in angry sympathy.

How could Ian Saunders have treated Sara so badly after all she had done for him, working for him like a slave, helping him to build up his business into the success it was today, and all the time loving him, hoping…? Although Sara had always been openly honest in her own knowledge that Ian didn’t return her love, privately Margaret suspected he must have surely guessed how she felt, and, having guessed, out of compassion and concern ought to have suggested years ago that it might be wiser for Sara to find a job elsewhere. Instead of which he had allowed an intimacy to develop between them, a closeness, even if that relationship had been completely non-sexual, which had held out just enough unspoken promise, just enough allure, to make poor Sara go on hoping that maybe one day a miracle would occur and that he would turn to her…want her…need her…not as his faithful PA but as a woman, his woman.

Instead of which he had calmly walked into his office a week ago and announced that he was getting engaged and that he would soon be married.

Sara had been devastated, but when she, Margaret, had urged her then to hand in her notice and make a new life for herself she had selflessly refused, shaking her head, pointing out that if she left it would damage the business which Ian had worked so hard to build up.

‘You were right,’ Sara was saying unhappily now. ‘I should have had the sense to hand in my notice when Ian told me that he and Anna were getting married. But, like the blind fool that I was, I had no idea that Anna wanted my job as well as…’ She broke off, swallowing painfully.

It wasn’t like her to unburden herself like this, but what had happened yesterday had upset and distressed her so much…

She had gone to work as usual. Ian had been away seeing one of their clients, and although she had felt wary and uncomfortable at first when Anna walked into the office, she had had no idea of the real purpose of the other woman’s visit until Anna had launched into the speech which had ultimately led to Sara’s acknowledging that for her own sake she had to make the break from Ian and forge a completely new life for herself well away from him.

‘What exactly did she say to you?’ Margaret pressed gently, sensing Sara’s need to unburden herself.

They were sitting in Sara’s neat, spotless kitchen. Margaret had called round to see her, alerted to the fact that something must be wrong by the fact that Sara had arrived home from work halfway through the afternoon and, after parking her car haphazardly in front of the house, had practically run inside.

Margaret had followed her, anxious to discover what was wrong and if there was anything she could do to help.

Sara shrugged, bending her head over the mug of coffee she was nursing. Her hair was straight and silky, a soft, pretty fair colour which she had expertly highlighted and styled into an elegant shoulder-length bob, which added to her air of competence and efficiency.

Margaret, who had seen her when she was at home, doing her housework, her hair tied up in a pony-tail, her face free of make-up, had been surprised to discover how very young and vulnerable it had made her look, how very much more approachable.

‘More sexy,’ Ben, her husband, had corrected her with a grin. Margaret had frowned him down, even while she acknowledged that it was true. Sara might know how to present herself to make herself look efficient, but when it came to presenting herself in a way that made men…

She gave a small sigh; as a modern woman it went against the grain to suggest to another member of her sex that she ought deliberately to focus on those facets of her looks and personality which made her look more vulnerable and less efficient, and yet she knew how much Sara, for all her efficiency, longed for children, a family… When she spoke of her elder sister, and her two children and another on the way, her face softened and her eyes turned from blue to violet…

As Sara stared into the brown depths of her coffee, she gave a tiny shudder.

What had Anna said? Margaret had asked her. Even now she could hardly endure to recall exactly what Anna Thomas had said to her when she had walked into Ian’s office, red lips pouting, her white-blonde hair a mass of untidy tousled curls, her skirt surely too short and tight… And yet obviously Ian found her attractive. Far more so than… Sara swallowed, forcing herself to block out her emotions and to concentrate instead on answering Margaret’s question.

‘Well, basically, she simply pointed out to me that both she and Ian were aware of my…my feelings for him, that in fact they’d both derived quite a lot of amusement from the fact that I obviously thought I’d managed to keep them hidden. As she pointed out, there’s nothing quite as pathetic as a secretary in love with her boss, especially when there’s absolutely no chance of his returning her feelings.’

She paused as Margaret made a small sound of shocked anger, and shook her head.

‘Well, it’s true enough, even though I had rather flattered myself that Ian and I were more partners than boss and secretary.’

‘Partners!’ Margaret interrupted explosively, unable to control herself any longer. ‘Why, you virtually ran that business for him! Without you…’

Sara smiled sadly at her.

‘I wish it was true, but in all honesty it was Ian’s salesmanship, his flair that made the business a success. I merely worked in the background. Anyway, to continue, as Anna pointed out to me, it would hardly be in my best interests to stay on with Ian now that they were getting married; she could easily replace me in the office, and she and Ian had decided that it would be better all round if I looked for another job. She did say that I could stay until the end of the month if I wished.’

Sara paused, the wry self-contempt in her voice making Margaret wince for her.

‘What could I do? Naturally I told her I’d be leaving immediately. That was yesterday. I only went in today to clear my desk, to tidy up a few odds and ends…’

She bit her lip. She was trying hard not to break down. It had been such an extraordinary interview, so unexpected, so hurtful, when she had believed that she had already suffered all the hurt she could possibly endure.

She had known that Ian was seeing Anna, of course, just as she had known about all the other women he had dated in the ten years during which she had worked for him. She had been devastated when he’d told her that he was marrying Anna, but she’d thought she had managed to conceal her feelings from him, just as she had believed that he had never once, in all the years she had worked for him, guessed about the hopes she cherished, the love she felt for him.