A Matter Of Trust

A Matter Of Trust
PENNY JORDAN

Never Get Involved…Debra Latham followed her instructions closely when she was persuaded by her private detective sister to keep a watch on a suspicious client. But no instructions told her how to cope with an angry man who believed she was spying on him, or how to defend herself against his impassioned kisses. Marsh Graham turned out to be completely innocent and, embarrassingly for Debra, he was also her new boss. Not exactly the most auspicious of starts to a working relationship.But another form of a more personal relationship was what Marsh had made clear he wanted. They shared many common interests, after all, including a desire to help local children in need. But Debra had serious reasonsfor never wanting to get involved….

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.

A Matter of Trust

Penny Jordan

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

CHAPTER ONE

‘BUT Leigh, you’re the private detective, not me,’ Debra pointed out firmly to her stepsister. ‘I’m a tax accountant.’

‘A tax accountant who is just about to start a week’s holiday and who doesn’t have to attend a business meeting that’s vital to her business,’ Leigh interrupted quickly.

Although there were six years between them and Leigh was the elder, it had always been Debra who had been the calm, down-to-earth one, and Leigh the impulsive cause of family chaos.

‘Look, Debs, you know how important this business is to me,’ Leigh pleaded coaxingly now. ‘After Paul left me, after the divorce, I felt as though my whole life was over. Now, since Jen and I started up Secrets, I feel as though life actually has some proper purpose again. I wouldn’t ask you to help if there were anything difficult or dangerous involved. It’s simply a matter of spending a few days in an empty house, keeping a tape-recorded list of someone’s comings and goings, that’s all.

‘He won’t even know you’re there. We’ve persuaded his next-door neighbour to go and visit her sister so that we can use her house. I promise you, you won’t have to do a thing other than—’

‘Keep a twenty-four hour surveillance over someone’s cheating husband,’ Debra interrupted drily. ‘Look, Leigh, I disapprove of men who cheat on their wives and families just as much as you do, but—’

‘This one isn’t cheating on his wife,’ Leigh told her flatly, her normally animated face suddenly set hard. ‘He’s trying to seduce a seventeen-year-old into leaving home and going to live with him…He’s thirty-four, Debs, with a string of women in his past and a taste for innocent young girls.’ Her mouth tightened in distaste.

‘According to her mother, Ginny is completely besotted with him and won’t listen to a thing either of her parents has to say. They felt if they could present her with concrete evidence of the kind of man he really is, although it will hurt her now, it will save her much more pain in the long run.

‘She’s a clever girl, Debs, university material, with her whole life ahead of her, but this man has a reputation for picking up and discarding clever young girls like her.’

Debra sighed. She could feel herself weakening. And was it really so much that Leigh was asking? She knew what a struggle her stepsister had had since her marriage broke up. Deserted by her husband and with two small children to support, she had changed overnight from a bright, breezy, bubbly personality into a withdrawn, tormented woman whom Debra barely recognised.

But since she and a friend had set up this detective agency specialising in handling cases mainly for other women she had recovered all her lost self-esteem. The business, although moderately successful, was still quite precariously balanced and very much in its infancy. With her partner away on a much-needed short holiday and Leigh herself suddenly being offered the opportunity to expand into a wider market, Debra could quite understand why Leigh should feel it was so essential that she not miss out on this all-important meeting.

Equally she could also understand why, having organised events so that a twenty-four-hour watch could be kept on the man involved in this current case, Leigh was pleading with her to take her place in the next-door house and watch him for her.

‘You won’t have to keep watch on him for the full twenty-four hours,’ Leigh was telling her coaxingly now. ‘I’ve arranged for Jeff to watch the house from midnight to seven in the morning from a car outside.’

Jeff was Leigh’s boyfriend, a solid, placid man, a teacher, some fifteen years older than Leigh, whom Debra liked and thought an ideal partner for her more volatile stepsister.

‘Look, I wouldn’t ask you if I weren’t absolutely desperate,’ Leigh told her. ‘The parents are going to have the girls for me, but you’re the only person…’

‘Soft enough to be persuaded into helping you out,’ Debra finished drily for her. ‘All right,’ she agreed, adding under her breath, ‘I just hope I don’t end up regretting this.’

‘You won’t,’ Leigh promised her. ‘Look, I’ll have to take you round to introduce you to Mrs Johnson. You’re her god-daughter and you’re staying at the house to keep an eye for it while she’s away.

‘She’s a nice old thing, although I don’t think she quite approves of the idea of female private detectives.’ Leigh pulled a wry face. ‘She certainly isn’t on her own there. She’s only just moved into the house a month or so ago, so unfortunately she wasn’t able to tell us very much about her neighbour. Only that he comes and goes rather a lot.’

‘She’s seen Ginny going into the house with him?’

Leigh sighed. ‘Not as yet, thank God. I keep asking myself how I would feel if it was one of my two. What I’d do if, when they get to that age…’

‘You’ve a long way to go before they do,’ Debra pointed out to her. ‘Sally is only eight and Bryony ten.’

‘I know. Paul should have had them this weekend, but he cancelled at the last moment. I could have killed him, Debs…Not for my sake, but for theirs. Oh, Bryony put a brave face on it…said she expected that Daddy had a lot of work to do, and I went along with it. Work. Hah…more like some bimbo blonde occupying his time. Luckily Jeff came round, so we went into Chester, walked round the walls and then went on the river. He’s so good with them, Debs. You can see in his eyes how much he’d have liked kids of his own. That must be so hard for a man, knowing that he can’t be a father. That’s why Alex divorced him, you know. Apparently, when they found out that his sperm count was too low for her to conceive, she told him that she couldn’t stay married to him. That the reason she had married had been to have children.’

‘He’s a nice man,’ Debra told her.

‘A very nice man,’ Leigh agreed.

Both of them started to laugh as Leigh mimicked one of the voices from a popular current TV advertisement. Although they were physically completely different, a sense of humour was something they shared.

Leigh had been ten when her father had married Debra’s mother, and Debra had been four.

Leigh was like her father, tall, vigorous, with strong bones and thick curly brown hair.

Debra was like her mother, average height, slim, with delicate bones and the kind of honey-coloured hair that went strikingly fair in the summer.

Luckily, although it was very fine, it was also very thick. As an accountant, she often felt she would look more businesslike if she had it cut, but she had always worn it at shoulder-length, and she liked the versatility this gave her, plus the fact that her simple timeless style was easy to maintain.

Her mother and stepfather still lived in the same Cheshire village where she had been brought up. Leigh had bought a small house there after her divorce so that her daughters could be near to their grandparents.

Debra was now the proud owner of a very pretty little Georgian terraced house in Chester which was within walking distance of where she worked.

She was a happy, contented girl who enjoyed the friendships she shared with people of both sexes. At twenty-six, she was in no hurry to commit herself to a permanent relationship. A brief love-affair during the early years of her training when she had worked in London had taught her that the intensely passionate and deeply private part of her nature which she wanted to share with her lover was not always something that the male sex seemed to want. She had decided she wanted, needed a partner who would share her goals in life, who wanted security and calm; a family. Passion, she had decided, was not for her. One day she wanted to marry, but not yet. Leigh had once remarked that she was afraid of passion. She had, of course, denied it—too vehemently perhaps.

‘Come on, I’ll drive you over to Mrs Johnson’s now,’ Leigh told her.

She had arrived out of the blue at Debra’s front door just over an hour earlier. Debra had been outside in her small back garden, watering the plants in her pots, and wondering if the current spell of good weather really merited the purchase of that wooden seat she had been coveting at the garden centre.

‘Won’t she mind, so early on a Sunday?’ Debra protested, but Leigh shook her head, giving her a naughty smile as she told her,