A Time To Dream

A Time To Dream
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."Wanted: Prince Charming for damsel in distress.Melaine was in distress all right! But the last thing she wanted was prince - or any man for that matter - to come riding to her rescue. She'd had it with the opposite sex she wanted only to disappear, to retreat to a peaceful haven to mend her broken heart. Until she met Luke Chalmers, whose sensual intrusion in her life was anything but peaceful.His stolen kisses left her flustered, and his rakish grin sent her heart racing. But a disastrous engagement to a man who had deceived her left Melaine unwilling to trust another man, any man, so quickly. Especially one who left so many questions about himself unanswered.

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 Time To Dream

Penny Jordan

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

CHAPTER ONE

WHEN the telephone started to ring, Melanie was poised precariously on the narrow platform of a pair of heavy wooden stepladders. The tip of her tongue was curled determinedly between her lips as she concentrated on trying to successfully hang the all important, first piece of wallpaper on walls which fell woefully short of being anything remotely like flat and straight.

Firmly ignoring the insistent clamour of the phone, she carefully pressed the pasted paper to the wall, but already her concentration was wavering.

The trouble was that—much as she had looked forward to the isolation of these next few months, telling herself that a spring and summer spent in the peaceful depths of the country, gently and leisurely bringing into reasonable decorative order the cottage she had been so unexpectedly left; much as she knew she needed this period of valuable recuperation to recover not just from a very nasty bout of flu, but also from the anguish of discovering that Paul had not loved her after all, and had simply been amusing himself with her while all the time intending to marry Sarah Jefferies and thus amalgamate the two businesses owned and run by their respective fathers—she was still beginning to feel rather alone.

She had been warned about Paul, of course. The older, wiser eyes of Louise Jenkins, her boss and the head of Carmichael’s PR department, had seen what was happening and had gently warned her not to place too much reliance on Paul and the attention he was paying her.

Fortunately her pride had probably been more hurt than her heart, especially when she had discovered that the very weekend she had firmly refused to go away with Paul he had then spent with Sarah.

When Louise had gently and sorrowfully broken this news to her, warning her of the impending engagement, she had hidden the pain she felt and had tossed her head defiantly, stating that she did not care, and that Paul Carmichael meant nothing to her.

She was very wise, Louise had remarked calmly, because she suspected that Paul was too shallow, too vain and self-obsessed to make any woman truly happy, and that, once she was married to him and her father’s business empire was secured for Carmichael’s, Sarah would find that Paul’s present pseudo-adoration of her would very quickly turn to indifference.

Melanie had listened and mechanically agreed with Louise’s pronouncement, but inside the shock of what she had learned was making her feel sick and desperately unhappy.

Now Melanie was only glad that the flu which had then struck her down had not manifested itself until after the engagement party, which all the staff had been commanded to attend, and that, even though she had felt as though she were being wrenched apart inside, she had managed to put in an appearance at the table reserved for her colleagues, a bright false smile pinned to her face as she joined in the celebrations.

It didn’t matter how much she told herself that she had had a lucky escape; that it was plain that Paul had never intended her to be anything other than a brief diversion in his life: the pain of discovering how poor her judgement had been, how foolish her heart, was not easy to dismiss.

And then had come the extraordinary letter from a hitherto unknown firm of solicitors, informing her that she was the sole beneficiary under the will of a certain John William Burrows, who had left her not only the entire contents of his bank account, which amounted to some fifty thousand pounds, but also a comfortably sized but very dilapidated cottage, together with its large overgrown garden and several acres of land on the outskirts of a tiny Cheshire village.

She should, the solicitors informed her when she presented herself at their offices, have no difficulty in selling the property; a course which they had recommended since Mr Burrows had been rather eccentric in the latter years of his life and the property had become extremely run-down.

‘Were there no blood relatives, no family to whom Mr Burrows could have left his estate?’ Melanie had asked anxiously, totally unable to understand why her unknown benefactor had chosen to leave everything to her.

‘Only one,’ she had been informed. ‘A second cousin with whom Mr Burrows had not apparently seen eye to eye.’

When she had asked with further anxiety if the estate ought not more properly have gone to this man, the solicitor had patiently advised her that Mr Burrows had been free to dispose of his assets to whomever he chose and that he had chosen her. His cousin, moreover, was a successful and wealthy businessman to whom, or so the solicitor seemed to imply, the inheritance of such a paltry sum as fifty thousand pounds and a very run-down property, would be more of a nuisance than an advantage.

If it had not been for the fact that she had been feeling so run down herself, so depressed with life in general and her own circumstances in particular, if the bright spring sunshine had not so deplorably highlighted the deficiencies of her small Manchester bedsit…if she had not been overwhelmed by a sharp surge of curiosity about not merely the cottage but John Burrows himself, she suspected that she would have accepted the solicitor’s advice and instructed them to sell the house and land immediately.

It had been Louise who had persuaded her that the cottage was almost heaven sent and that six months or so spent living in the country was just what she needed right now.

‘But I don’t know anything about living in the country,’ she had protested, and Louise had laughed at her, pointing out that Cheshire was hardly the deepest South American jungle.

‘If you like, Simon and I will drive you out there this weekend and you can take a look at the place.’

Since Simon, Louise’s husband, was a qualified surveyor and would be able to tell her just how dilapidated the property actually was, Melanie had gratefully accepted this suggestion.

Which was how she now came to be perched so precariously on top of this ladder, trying desperately to follow Louise’s and Simon’s advice that, since the cottage was basically sound, it would pay her to spend some time and money on redecorating it before putting it up for sale.

‘Although if you do decide to sell you must hold on to the land,’ Simon had warned her. ‘There’s some talk of a new motorway extension in the area, which could send the price of any local land soaring.’

The phone had thankfully now stopped ringing, and very gingerly she climbed back down the ladder to survey the results of her handiwork.

When she had explained to the man in the wallpaper shop the condition of the cottage walls, explaining that she wanted to do something to brighten up the dull dinginess, she had been thrilled when he had suggested this pretty floral paper with its soft pinks and blues on a gentle cream background. Since there was no formal pattern to the paper it would not matter so much that the walls were not completely straight, he had explained to her; and the fact that the paper was ready-pasted and needed only to be moistened in the specially provided water-tray would greatly assist her in this her first venture as a wallpaper-hanger.

And then if all else failed he did just happen to have the name and address of an excellent local decorator, he had added with a kind smile, correctly interpreting her uncertain look at what seemed to be a vast amount of rolls of paper.

The trouble was that she had lived so long in rented accommodation in the confines of one tiny cluttered room that she was completely inexperienced in this sort of thing.

Before that her home had been the shabby institutionalised atmosphere of the children’s home where she had grown up.

When Melanie was orphaned when just three years old, there had been no one to take her into their charge. As she had grown up and realised how alone in the world she was, she had learned to cover the loneliness and aching sense of loss this brought her with a bright smile and an insouciant air of cheerfulness, while inwardly giving in to the compulsion to daydream on what her life might have been if her parents had not been killed in that car crash.

Perhaps it had been that inner loneliness, that need she had always tried to keep so firmly under control which had made her so susceptible to Paul’s false declaration of love.

Louise had been right about one thing. Living here in this cottage was giving her a new perspective on life.

Always fiercely independent, fiercely determined not to rely on anyone for anything, she was beginning to discover that needing the companionship, the friendship of others was not perhaps a weakness after all, but simply an acceptable fact of being human.

She had been surprised to discover how curious people were about her, and how ready they were to express that curiosity. The cottage was situated almost two miles outside the village, but already Melanie had had several callers, no doubt curious to see the young woman to whom old Mr Burrows had left his property.

Melanie still had no idea why on earth John Burrows had left his estate to her, and the solicitors had been as baffled as she was herself.

She frowned, worried as she studied her wallpaper, wondering if it was straight enough.

She wasn’t a very tall girl, barely five feet three with fine delicate bones that made her look far more fragile than she actually was. Her debilitating attack of flu had left her looking more finely drawn than ever, leaving shadows beneath her dark blue eyes and a listlessness to her normally energetic way of moving.