A Rekindled Passion

A Rekindled Passion
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.The wedding brought them together again. For Kate it was a shock to meet the man she'd loved and believed had betrayed and abandoned her. What was he doing at her daughter's wedding? Joss Bennett was an unexpected guest. And Kate's world shattered when he looked at the bride and said, "Sophy is my child. "But was he only interested in the daughter whose childhood he'd missed, or had he other motives? Was it possible to go on loving when so much time had passed? Certainly Joss was still a disturbingly attractive man – and Kate knew she was as susceptible as ever to his charms…

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 Rekindled Passion

Penny Jordan

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

CHAPTER ONE

‘ALL READY FOR the wedding tomorrow, are you? What time is she getting married?’

Kate shook her head wryly in answer to the first part of the postman’s question and offered, ‘Half-past three,’ to the second.

As she collected the unusually thick pile of envelopes from him with the warm smile that transformed the serious repose of her small, heart-shaped face, she wondered how long it would take her daughter to drive up from London. Sophy had promised to set off early so that they would have at least a couple of hours to catch up on one another’s news before they started going through all the arrangements for tomorrow.

It hadn’t been easy: organising the wedding for her daughter and her son-in-law-to-be, with both of them so busy in their careers that she hadn’t even seen Sophy since the announcement of her engagement at Christmas, apart from one brief occasion just after Easter when she had gone to spend a few days with Sophy at John’s family home in the south of England, at their invitation.

She had been dreading the visit, even though Sophy had assured her that John’s parents were looking forward to meeting her, and had confirmed that she had told them everything.

That had been a hard decision for her to make, but she had felt that she owed it to Sophy to permit her to tell her in-laws-to-be the truth.

After the visit she was glad she had done so. John’s parents had turned out to be a very pleasant and understanding couple in their late fifties. John was the youngest of their brood of four children, and Mary Broderick had had the same kind of briskly maternal warmth that Kate remembered from her own mother…and still missed.

How her mother would have enjoyed tomorrow. She had adored her only granddaughter…both her parents had, and she still missed them dreadfully, even though it was now nearly eight years since the plane crash that had taken their lives.

They had been marvellous parents, so understanding, so loving and protective of both her and Sophy. As she stood in her comfortable if rather shabby kitchen, she felt the hot burn of tears stinging the back of her eyes and grimaced to herself. She was thirty-seven years old, for heaven’s sake…far too old to indulge in a silly bout of weeping, even if tomorrow she was going to have to close the door on a very precious period of her life.

Sophy, married…She grinned a little to herself, her mood changing. At nineteen Sophy had been a dedicated career woman, swearing that marriage for her was something she would not even contemplate until she was close to thirty, and yet here she was at twenty, going on twenty-one, fathoms deep in love; insisting that she was married traditionally from her childhood home in the small village church, surrounded by the people she had grown up among in an environment totally different from the fast pace of her London life.

Sophy was a thoroughly modern young woman, highly qualified and skilled, independent, ambitious and very mature. Kate loved her dearly, but from the day that Sophy left home to go to university she had fought desperately to give her her freedom…not to cling or be possessive about her, even though at first she had missed her desperately.

They had always been so close, and had stayed close despite the fact that Sophy now lived and worked in London, but from now on their relationship would be different…must be different. From now on, Sophy’s first loyalty must be to the man she was marrying tomorrow.

Kate liked John, and would have liked him as a person even if he had not been deeply in love with her precious daughter.

She liked his family, too…liked their warmth and closeness, liked the way they were making Sophy welcome into that family…and she was grateful to them for their compassion in so calmly accepting the history of Sophy’s conception and birth.

It must have come as quite a shock to them to learn that their son was marrying Sophy, a girl whose mother had conceived her when she was barely sixteen and unmarried; she knew, had their positions been reversed and she been the one to discover that her child was marrying someone whose mother had been sixteen and unmarried when she conceived, that she would have had serious doubts as to both the emotional and moral stability of the parenting that child had received.

Perhaps because of her own bitterly painful experience, she was very much aware that it took more to lay the foundations for a marriage that would hopefully be both loving and lasting than the exciting but sometimes short-lived intensity of physical and emotional desire. Things like mutual trust and respect…backgrounds and beliefs that meshed and sat easily within one another…a shared sense of humour and purpose.

Sophy was a very sensible young woman, everything any mother could want in a daughter, and Kate considered herself to have been unfairly blessed in the gift of a daughter who had brought her so much joy-as though fate had relented of its earlier cruelty.

From the kitchen window she could see the men hard at work in the garden erecting the marquee which was to hold tomorrow’s wedding guests, and she reminded herself that now was not the time to stand around daydreaming.

She flicked through the post…most of it was cards for Sophy and John. She put these to one side, on the old pine dresser which her parents had inherited from her grandmother and she from them.

Its wood gleamed softly with the polish of generations, the thick willow-patterned pottery setting off both the dark wood and the sunny yellow décor of her kitchen.

She had lived in this house all her life, had grown up here in this small Dales village where the people, despite the outward apparent dourness, had, as she had good reason to know, a warmth of heart and spirit that they gave generously to those they called their own.

There were Setons scattered all over this part of the world, the name originally belonging to a border family who had gradually spread southwards into the Dales.

Her grandfather had been a hill farmer, farming a land which had been in their family for generations. After his death, her father had sold the farm. It was small and unproductive and, as a lecturer at York University, he had not been in a position to concentrate on his career and to run the farm.

Kate hadn’t gone to university. She had intended to do so…had had her career all mapped out: university, a degree and then a job teaching. Only it hadn’t worked out like that. At sixteen, having just completed her O levels, she had gone south to Cornwall to spend a month’s holiday with an aunt of her mother’s who had just retired from nursing on the south coast, and it had been while she was there…

A battered Range Rover pulled up in front of the kitchen window, scattering gravel. Its driver, a tall, lithe redhead, got out as quickly and impulsively as she did everything else and came hurrying towards the back door.

‘Hi…how’s it going?’ she demanded breathlessly, as she came in. ‘What time does Sophy arrive?’

‘I’m not sure. She said she’d try and make an early start. Coffee?’ Kate invited, smiling at her best friend and business partner.

Lucy Grainger and her accountant husband had moved to the village ten years ago. Kate had met Lucy initially when both she and Lucy had literally bumped into one another outside the Post Office.

On first seeing Kate and Sophy together, Lucy had made the mistake that strangers inevitably made of thinking that she and Sophy were sisters and not mother and daughter. With only sixteen years between them, and with Kate being petite and so very youthful for her thirty-seven years that people thought she was in her late twenties and not her mid-thirties, it was a natural enough mistake, but one that still made Kate wince a little.

When Sophy had innocently called her Mummy she had braced herself for the familiar speculative look, but instead Lucy had simply said ruefully, ‘Oh, dear, trust me…I’ve put my foot in it again.’ And with the self-critical comment had come a look not of pity but of compassion and such understanding that Kate had found herself uncurling from her protective shell and responding to the warm friendship that Lucy offered her.

It had been just over seven years ago, soon after her parents’ death, that Lucy had suggested that they combine their culinary talents and set up a small business catering for everything from weddings to dinner parties.

Egged on by Sophy, Kate had reluctantly agreed. The business had been a greater success than she had ever imagined, giving her not just more financial independence than she had ever expected to have, but also a new and thriving interest in life.

All through her pregnancy and Sophy’s growing years she had deliberately kept to the quiet backwater of life, deliberately seeking its protective camouflage, and now, with Sophy’s and Lucy’s combined exhortations, she was finding that more exhilarating waters were nothing like so threatening as she had imagined.

Sophy, who knew her well, had challenged her initially when she had flatly refused to countenance Lucy’s suggestion, saying firmly, ‘Oh come on, Mama. Don’t think I don’t know what’s behind this. You’re out of date,’ she told her ruthlessly. ‘Or rather in the height of fashion,’ she had added mischievously, watching with a compassion she had learned to conceal as her mother winced. Kate had known quite well what she meant.

‘No one cares any more that I was illegitimate. I certainly don’t,’ Sophy had told her, leaning forward and hugging her warmly. ‘You’re the best mother anyone could ever want. You and Gran and Gramps gave me a far more secure world than most kids get, you know. I don’t care that I don’t have a father…that you weren’t married.’