The Ultimate Surrender

The Ultimate Surrender
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.Polly yearned for Marcus Fraser, but knowing how much he resented her for marrying his younger cousin, she was forced to keep her attraction a secret.When her husband died, and Marcus offered her a home, a job, and himself as surrogate father to her baby daughter, Polly's desire only strengthened.Then she heard some shocking news: Marcus was already engaged – and his bride-to-be was expecting…

“You’ve always claimed that no man could replace Richard in your life.”

“No man could,” Polly agreed.

“Not in your life, then, but perhaps it’s a different matter when it comes to your bed.”

Polly stared at him.

He continued. “If I’d known, I might have done this much sooner….” His mouth came down on her own with a determination that made her whole body start to tremble.

“Kiss me properly,” Marcus demanded rawly against her lips.

“Marcus,” she started to protest, but the moment her lips parted his were covering them, devouring them…devouring her.

And the resistance drained out of 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 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 Ultimate Surrender

Penny Jordan

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

CHAPTER ONE

‘HI, MA, guess what? I think I’ve found the perfect woman for Uncle Marcus. Her name’s Suzi Howell. We met her when Chris and I were having dinner with his parents. Suzi’s mother is Chris’s godmother, and she’s gorgeous; tall, blonde—you know, that stylish, elegant type that Marcus always goes for. And she’s the right age—late twenties—and she knows all about the hotel trade because she works for some super-exclusive American outfit in the Caribbean, and—’

‘Briony…’ Polly Fraser’s muffled voice interrupted her daughter’s eulogy as Polly emerged from the deep recess of the kitchen cupboard she had been cleaning out.

Why was it one’s offspring always chose the most inauspicious of moments to make such announcements? Polly wondered as she gingerly extricated herself from the cupboard and put its contents on the worktop which she was kneeling with one leg whilst standing on her step-ladder with the other.

‘You’re going to love her; she’s just so perfect for Uncle Marcus,’ Briony continued to enthuse, adding warningly, ‘Watch out, Mum,’ as she deftly caught the jar of home-made plum jam which Polly had dislodged as she hurriedly stepped down from the worktop.

‘Mmm,’ Briony remarked, ‘my favourite. May I take this back to college with me? Bought stuff just doesn’t taste the same.’

‘No, it doesn’t, does it?’ Polly agreed, smartly repossessing the jar and ignoring her daughter’s injured expression. ‘You know the rules,’ she reminded her firmly. ‘The customers come first. Which reminds me, if you want to earn a little bit of extra money whilst you’re at home that blackberry and apple jelly I made last year from that new recipe has gone down very well…’

‘Mum…’ Briony protested. ‘Can you just stop thinking about the hotel and the guests for five minutes and listen to what I’m trying to tell you?’

Penitently Polly got down properly from her perch and allowed her daughter to lead her towards the kitchen table.

She had been just eighteen herself—Briony’s age—when she had met and fallen in love with Richard Fraser. At twenty-two, four years her senior, he had swept her off her feet.

They had met when he had called at the solicitor’s offices where she’d worked, following the death of his grandfather, General Leo Fraser, who had left jointly to both his grandsons the large Georgian house which had been in the family for several generations but which neither of his sons, both army men themselves, nor their wives, had wanted to take on.

It had been left to Richard to deal with most of the more mundane aspects of the formalities connected with the will since Marcus had at the time been working abroad for a large multinational oil company, and although Polly had heard a good deal about his slightly older cousin from Richard it had not been until after their own wedding, a breathtaking three months after they had met, that she had actually seen Marcus in person for the first time. Even now, all these years later, she could recall the shock that coming face to face with him had given her. Richard, her own husband, had been good-looking and sweetly charming, with the old-fashioned kind of courtesy that came from a traditional services boarding-school upbringing, but Marcus…To call Marcus merely good-looking was rather like comparing the sweet pleasantness of ordinary milk chocolate to the sophisticated, broodingly rich, dark, addictive flavour of plain.

In other words Marcus was in a class of his own, a man who even now, in his early forties, was just so compellingly male that Polly’s mouth still went a little bit dry and her pulse-rate still rose every time he walked into the room. If Richard would have made a classically good-natured and physically attractive hero in the mould of Jane Austen’s Mr Bingley, then Marcus could quite definitely have been Mr Darcy—and then some. There was something of a sense of shut-down, controlled male power about Marcus that immediately made one think of a smouldering volcano—a fierce sexual energy which, for Polly, at nineteen and a very, very new and shy bride, had been rather too much for her to contend with.

And it hadn’t helped either that in those early days of her marriage Marcus had been so plainly disapproving of her youth and the fact that she and Richard had married so quickly. But, although she had been sensitively aware of Marcus’s disapproval of their marriage, Polly had refused to let either him or Richard see it or guess how much it hurt her—for Richard’s sake.

Right from the start, when they had met, Polly had sensed how much his older cousin’s approval meant to Richard. Both boys had gone to the same school and had grown up more as brothers than cousins—and since Richard was the younger of the two of them, if only by some eighteen months, it was perhaps natural that he should have put Marcus on something of a pedestal.

Because of her own upbringing—she had been orphaned at four and brought up by her father’s sister and her husband—Polly had been acutely conscious of not wanting to do anything that might cause a rift between the two cousins. If Marcus’s approval was important to her darling, beloved, wonderful Richard, then she was certainly not going to do anything to prejudice it, even if that meant keeping her own unhappiness about the way Marcus was reacting to their marriage to herself.

‘For God’s sake, Rick, she’s nothing but a baby,’ she heard Marcus expostulating to her husband when neither of them was aware that she could hear them.

‘She’s adorable and I love her to bits,’ she heard Richard responding happily to his cousin.

Marcus sighed, and she was just able to imagine the tight, reined-in look of irritation that must be on his darkly handsome face. It was hard to believe that someone like Marcus could ever understand how it felt to be as deeply in love as she and Richard were with one another.

After their marriage she moved into the small flat that Richard was renting—a tiny place, but with an attic with that all-important north-facing light that artists valued so much. Because Richard was a presently struggling and as yet unknown young artist, who she just knew was one day going to be so famous…and rich…

Right then they were just about managing on the small allowance Richard got from his parents plus the little bits of money he earned from commissions—mostly from his parents’ friends. And then, of course, there was the money she earned as a secretary. It wasn’t a lot but it was enough…just…and when Richard and Marcus sold Fraser House…

And then it happened…an accident…a trick of fate. During the late wedding gift Marcus had given them—a weekend stay in a very, very luxurious country house hotel—either because the shellfish had not been quite as fresh as they should have been or she had imbibed too much champagne, or both, there was a night when Polly was violently ill. Richard was so generously sweet and loving in the way he looked after her—and soon after she was feeling well again…

But a short time later she totally disgraced herself by dashing into the tiny bathroom of their flat, right past Marcus, who had called to see Richard about the problems they were having in finding a buyer for Fraser House, and it was Marcus who first pinpointed the potential cause of her malaise by announcing to Richard in sharp tones of condemnation, ‘My God, Rick, if she’s pregnant…’

‘Pregnant…’

As the tears of nausea and shock filled her eyes Polly started to shake with anxiety.

What would they do if Marcus was right? She and Richard couldn’t afford a baby. They could barely afford to support themselves.

She was scarcely able to touch a mouthful of the special meal she had prepared for Marcus—trying out ambitious new recipes was her hobby. Her aunt was a good cook, and with neither of her own daughters remotely interested in learning her culinary skills she had concentrated on passing them on to her eagerly interested niece.

Naively, perhaps, Polly had never considered the possibility of becoming pregnant—at least not so soon.