The Blackmail Baby

The Blackmail Baby
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.When eighteen-year-old Imogen married Dracco Barrington, she did so with an open heart. He was her deceased father's business partner, and she had loved him all her life.But shortly after the wedding ceremony, Imogen uncovered a truth about Dracco that sent her fleeing…all the way to Rio de Janeiro!Four years later Imogen needed money. Badly. But when she returned to Dracco's London home, she received an offer that was nothing less than shocking. Dracco would pay her one million pounds to stay and be his wife…and another million if she agreed to have his baby!On the surface, Imogen seemed to be getting what she wanted–the money she urgently needed, a family she longed for and the man she desperately loved. But at what cost?

“We are still married,” Dracco reminded her.

“Our marriage was never annulled.”

Imogen’s face cleared. “You want an annulment?” She ignored the stab of pain biting into her heart and concentrated instead on clinging to the relief she wanted to feel. “Well, of course, I will agree and—”

“No, I don’t want an annulment.” Dracco cut across her hurried assent. “Far from it. What I want is a child.”

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.

The Blackmail Baby

Penny Jordan

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

PROLOGUE

‘SO YOU’RE going to go through with it? You’re going to go ahead and marry Dracco, even though he doesn’t love you?’

Imogen flinched as the full venom of her stepmother Lisa’s words hit her. They were in Imogen’s bedroom, or at least the bedroom that had been Imogen’s until after her father’s death. Since then Lisa had declared her intention to sell the pretty country house where Imogen had grown up and to buy herself a modern apartment in the small market town where they lived.

‘Dracco has asked me to be on hand to help him entertain the clients,’ Lisa had said at the time of her shock announcement about the house. ‘He says he can see how much more business the company has been attracting since I became your father’s hostess. Unfortunately your mother never seemed to realise just how vitally important being a good hostess was.’

She had given the openly dismissive, almost contemptuous shrug with which Imogen had become teeth-grittingly familiar whenever Lisa spoke about her late mother. Instinctively Imogen had wanted to leap to her mother’s defence, but she had sufficient experience of Lisa to know better than to do so. Even so, she had not been able to stop herself from pointing out quietly, ‘Mummy was ill. Otherwise, I know she would have wanted to entertain Daddy’s clients for him.’

‘Oh, yes, we all know that you think your precious mother was a saint.’ Imogen had seen the furious look of hostility in Lisa’s hard blue eyes. ‘And Dracco agrees with me that you made life very difficult for your father all these years by constantly harping on about your mother, trying to make him feel guilty because he fell in love with me.’

Lisa had preened herself openly, making Imogen’s stomach churn with sickening misery and anguish. Then her stepmother had continued triumphantly, ’Dracco considers that your father was very fortunate to be married to me. In fact…’ She had stopped, giving Imogen a small, secret little smile that had made her heart thump heavily against her ribs. It hurt, unbearably, to hear Lisa speaking about Dracco as though a special closeness existed between them, especially when Imogen was so desperately in love with him herself!

Imogen had never truly been able to understand how her beloved father had fallen in love with a woman as cold and manipulative as Lisa. Granted, she was stunningly attractive: tall, blonde-haired, with a perfect and lushly curved body, totally unlike Imogen’s own. Imogen took after her mother, who had been petite and fine-boned with the same thick dark mop of untameable blackberry curls and amazingly coloured dark violet eyes. And, where Imogen remembered her mother’s eyes shining with warmth and love, Lisa’s pale blue eyes were always cold.

Imogen had loved her father far too much, though, to say anything to him. Her mother had died when she was seven, and when he’d decided to remarry when she was fourteen Imogen had made up her mind to accept her new stepmother for his sake. She had adored her father and been fiercely protective of him, in her little-girl way, after her mother’s death, but she had been ready to welcome into their lives anyone who could make him happy.

Lisa, though, had quickly made it plain that she was not prepared to be equally generous. She had been thirty-two when she married Imogen’s father, with no particular fondness for children and even less for other members of her own sex. Right from the start of their relationship she had treated the young girl as an adversary, a rival for Imogen’s father’s affections and loyalty.

Lisa had been in their lives less than three months when she had told Imogen coolly that she considered it would be far better for her to go to boarding school than live at home and attend the local private school her mother had chosen before succumbing to the degenerative illness which had ultimately killed her. It had been Dracco who had stepped in then, reminding Imogen’s father that his first wife had hand-picked her daughter’s secondary school even when she knew she would not be alive to see Imogen attend it. It had been Dracco too who had come to that same school to break the news of her father’s fatal accident to Imogen, tears sheening the normally composed and unreadable jade depths of his eyes.

That had been nearly twelve months ago. Imogen had been seventeen then, now she was eighteen, and in less than an hour’s time she would be Dracco’s wife.

The car that was to take her to the same small church where her parents had been married and her mother was buried was waiting outside. Inside it was her father’s elderly solicitor, who was to give her away. It was to be a quiet wedding. She had pleaded fervently with Dracco for that.

So you’re going to go through with it? You’re going to go ahead and marry Dracco, even though he doesn’t love you? Imogen’s mind returned to her stepmother’s deliberately painful question.

‘Dracco says it’s…it’s for my own good…and that it’s what my father would have wanted,’ she answered.

“’Dracco says,’” Lisa Atkins mimicked cruelly. ‘You are such a fool, Imogen. There is only one reason Dracco is marrying you and that’s because of who you are. Because he wants to gain full control of the business.’

‘No, that isn’t true!’ Imogen protested frantically. ’Dracco already runs the business,’ she reminded her stepmother. ‘He knows I would never try to change that.’

‘You might not,’ Lisa agreed coolly. ‘But what about the man you may one day marry if Dracco doesn’t step in? He may have other plans. Your father’s will leaves your share in trust for you until you are thirty unless you marry before then. Oh, come on, Imogen. Surely you don’t actually think that Dracco wants you?’ One elegant eyebrow arched mockingly before Lisa went on, ’Dracco is a man! To him you are just a child, less than that, in fact… Dracco wants what you can give him. He has told me himself that if it wasn’t for the business there is no way he’d be marrying you.’

Although she tried to stop herself, Imogen could not quite prevent the sharp gasp of pain escaping. She could see Lisa’s triumphant smile, and hated herself for letting the older woman break through her defences.

In an effort to recover the ground she had lost, she began unsteadily, ’Dracco wouldn’t—’

But she wasn’t allowed to go any further; Lisa stopped her, saying softly, ’Dracco wouldn’t what, Imogen? Dracco wouldn’t confide in me? Oh, my dear, I’m afraid you are way behind the times. Dracco and I…’ She paused and examined her perfectly manicured fingernails. ‘Well, it should be for Dracco to tell you this and not me, but let us just say that Dracco and I have a relationship which is very special—to both of us.’

Imogen could hardly take in what she was being told. She felt sick with a numbing disbelief that this could be happening on her wedding day; the day that should have been one of the happiest of her life, but which now, thanks to Lisa’s shocking revelations, was fast turning into one of the worst.

So far she had not given very much thought to the complexities of her father’s will. She had been too grief-stricken by his loss to consider how his death would affect her financially. She knew, though, of course, that he had been an extremely successful and wealthy man. As an acclaimed financial adviser, John Atkins had been held in high esteem by both his clients and those he did business with. Imogen could still remember how enthusiastic and pleased he had been when he had first taken Dracco under his wing as a raw university graduate.

They had met when her father went to debate an issue at Dracco’s university. Dracco had been on the opposing side and her father had been impressed not just by his debating skills but by his grasp of the whole subject, and what he had described as Dracco’s raw energy and hunger to succeed.

Dracco had had a stormy childhood, abandoned by his own father and brought up by a succession of relatives after his mother had remarried and her second husband had refused to take him on. He had worked to pay his own way through university, and when he had first come to work for Imogen’s father he had for a time lived with them.

It had been Dracco who had chauffeured her to school when her father was away on business; Dracco who had taught her to ride her new bike; Dracco the Dragon, as she had nicknamed him teasingly. And when her father had made him a junior partner in his business it had been Imogen Dracco had taken out to celebrate his promotion—to an ice-cream parlour in the local town.

Quite when her acceptance of him as Dracco, her father’s partner and her own friend had changed, and she had begun to see him as Dracco, the man, Imogen wasn’t sure.

She could remember coming out of school one day to find him waiting for her in the little scarlet sports car he had bought for himself. It had been a hot, sunny afternoon, the hood had been down, the sunlight glinting on the thick night-darkness of his hair. He had turned his head to look at her, as though sensing her presence even before she had reached him, and studied her with the intense dark greenness of his gaze.

Suddenly it had been as though she was seeing him for the first time. As though she had been struck by a thunderbolt. Her heart had started to race and then thud heavily.

She had felt sick, excited, filled with a dangerous, heady exuberance and a shocked self-consciousness. Without knowing why, she had found that she wanted to look at his mouth. Somewhere deep inside her body an unfamiliar sensation had begun to uncurl itself; a sensation that had made her face blush bright red and her legs turn to jelly. She had felt as though she couldn’t bear to be near him in case he guessed how she felt, but at the same time she couldn’t bear him not to be there.

‘Only a child as naïve and inexperienced as you could possibly think that Dracco wants you. A woman, a real woman, would know immediately that there was already someone else in his life. He hasn’t even tried to take you to bed, has he?’ Lisa challenged, before adding cruelly, ‘And don’t bother trying to pretend that you haven’t wanted him to. That crush you have on him is painfully obvious.’

The sharp interruption of Lisa’s goading voice broke into Imogen’s thoughts. Instinctively she turned away from her stepmother to guard her expression, catching sight of her own reflection in the mirror as she did so. It had been Dracco who had insisted that she should wear a traditional wedding dress.