Beyond Compare

Beyond Compare
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.It was a mistake. It just had to be. Surely Howard would come to his senses and realize Holly was the one for him. When he did, she'd be waiting.Meanwhile, though, Holly Witchell was determined to make Howard Neston appreciate what he had lost in jilting her for her glamorous schoolmate, Rosamund. And who better than Drew Hammond to help her – after all, Rosamund had jilted Drew to become engaged to Howard.It seemed logical for Holly and Drew to pretend to be lovers while they waited for their real loves to change their minds…

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.

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.

Beyond Compare

Penny Jordan

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

Table of Contents

Cover (#u8a50f72f-feca-5dd7-8f4c-8d3bfa44b303)

Concept Page (#u8dd8e934-dc64-5ac9-b2d0-ec33891c5f0c)

About the Author (#uab24d346-86ca-5a8f-9b60-7ff13204a673)

Title Page (#uf4e32504-b2cf-562a-ade2-84d1f7b4a9ab)

Chapter One (#ulink_560a04a7-e607-563a-a47a-78992ec75ac7)

Chapter Two (#ulink_5cd97156-fffe-51fd-a77b-dbbbb93ebc09)

Chapter Three (#ulink_9cbb26cd-cc0a-52e7-9026-2b623ff9b1db)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

End Page (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_c38d6730-4c81-5cd1-8965-6718f23e5cdb)

‘AND HE’S ACTUALLY had the gall to invite you to his engagement party?’

‘Yes,’ Holly agreed glumly, her normally gamine features doleful. ‘And I can’t get out of it because he already knows I’ve got the weekend off. When he asked me to keep it free, I thought it was because he was going to propose to me, and all the time… Besides, I can’t not go. All our old crowd will be there, and if I don’t…’

‘Yes, I know what you mean,’ her employer agreed thoughtfully. ‘What you could do with is a new man to show off in front of him.’

‘To make him jealous, you mean?’ Holly exclaimed, immediately brightening. ‘You’re right.’ And then her face fell again. ‘But where on earth would I find one? Eligible, available men aren’t exactly beating a path to my flat door at the moment.’

‘No… not to make him jealous,’ Jan Holme said with exasperation. ‘He’s getting engaged to someone else, Holly. No, what I meant was that if you had someone else to go with you to the engagement party, it would boost your ego and make you feel better.’

‘Nothing could make me feel better,’ Holly announced mournfully, clinging on to her mood of self-pity. ‘I love him, Jan.’

Privately, Janet Holme doubted it. And, as she looked down at her youngest and favourite employee, she suspected that, as yet, for all her pretence to sophistication, Holly had hardly any idea what love was.

Certainly she had imagined herself in love with the charming and very shallow young man she was presently mourning, but at twenty-two Holly Witchell was still touchingly naïve in many ways, and what she had been in love with had been the idea of love.

When she had first come to London a year ago she had had a vulnerable quality about her that had made Jan take her firmly under her wing, and she still hadn’t quite lost it.

‘I take it this engagement party’s not being held in London?’

‘No… at home,’ Holly told her briefly. ‘Rosamund, the girl he’s getting engaged to, wants to have it at her parents’ house.’ She made a face. ‘They’re the richest people in the village and very much aware of it. Pots of money… You know the kind of thing.’

‘Indeed I do,’ Jan agreed wryly. As a well-known London interior designer, she had a good cross-section of clients, but her least favourite was the type of couple just described by Holly.

‘All our old crowd will be there. Rosamund and I were in the same class. I didn’t like her then,’ she added inconsequentially, and then said woefully, ‘What I can’t understand is why he didn’t say something before. He must have known that I was expecting him to propose to me.’

‘Men can be cowards about things like that,’ Jan told her gently, repressing a faint sigh. For a very attractive and intelligent young woman, Holly seemed to have a blind spot where the facts concerning the average male of the species was concerned. Jan had already elicited during the twelve months that Holly had worked for her that her newest protégé had very little experience of the male sex.

A sheltered childhood had been the reason: elderly parents, now retired to New Zealand to live with their son and his family. Jan knew that Holly’s parents still owned a house in the village where Holly had been brought up. She went home to check on it periodically, and at the moment it was let on lease.

‘But he could have said something,’ she stressed again.

‘He should have said something,’ Jan agreed, ‘but I suspect he lacked the courage. How long has he been involved with this Rosamund?’

‘He didn’t say. It can’t have been long. She never comes to London and he…’ She paused, frowning, remembering how often in recent months he had not been available for their normal dates. ‘It must have started when we went home at Christmas. You remember, I told you. We stayed with his parents.’ She made a face. ‘I’ve never really got on with his mother. I don’t think she thought I was good enough for him. Heaven knows what Drew must be feeling,’ she added inconsequentially.

‘Drew?’ Jan questioned, used to Holly’s seemingly illogical thought processes.