For One Night

For One Night
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.They were strangers, but each had a need. The loss of her dearest friend left Diana with a profound need to be close to someone. One night of passion in a stranger's arms, unplanned and unexpected, answered that need and more - she became pregnant! Yet Diana felt no regret about her baby's conception. She would put the man and the night behind her and start a new life elsewhere.But fate followed.The very town Diana chose to settle in was home to Marcus Simons, her hitherto nameless lover. And, clearly, once was not enough for Marcus.

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.

For One Night

Penny Jordan

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

CHAPTER ONE

NUMB WITH SHOCK, Diana moved to one side as the first spadeful of earth hit the coffin.

A long, deep shudder racked through her body as she stared down into the darkness of the open grave. In that box was the body of her best friend; for eighteen long months they had fought together against the enemy destroying Leslie’s body, and less than a week ago they had lost their fight.

Even now, she could hardly believe it. She and Leslie had been at university together; they had got their degrees at the same time, and their first jobs. Then they had lost touch for several years, meeting again only when Leslie’s first book had been published, and she herself had been working as a researcher for the host of the television chat show on which Leslie had been asked to appear.

To their mutual delight they had discovered that they still shared the same outlook on life, and the same zany sense of humor. Now that she could support herself as a writer, Leslie had decided to move to London, and it seemed a natural follow-on from this decision that they should buy a flat together.

Both of them had their own personal lives; Leslie was still getting over a two-year relationship that had turned sour when her lover became jealous of her writing success. And as for her own love life … Diana sighed.

In the days when she had first joined the television company and had still been starry-eyed with wonder and excitement, she had fallen hard for one of the producers, only to learn quite by accident from one of his previous victims that he made a second career out of bemusing and seducing all the young and naive newcomers to the company, callously notching up his tally of successes with a celebratory booze-up with his menfriends, when he regaled them with the intimate details of his amatory skills.

She had been one of the lucky ones, she had found out about him before it was too late, but it had left her with a deep mistrust of all media men. She froze them off the moment they attempted to get close to her.

Between themselves, she and Leslie had agreed that they were better off concentrating on their careers, and treating men with the same casual disregard that the male sex adopted toward women. What neither of them had realized was that there was going to be precious little time in their lives for socializing. Leslie had developed the first symptoms of the disease that was to kill her within weeks of them moving in together.

At first she had said nothing; but Leslie was wasting away visibly, and in the end she had been forced to tackle her friend about her loss of weight, Diana remembered.

She turned her head away from the awfulness of the gaping hole in the earth, a cruelly bitter spring wind teasing silky strands of red-gold hair and blowing them against her pale face.

She had thought that perhaps Leslie was suffering from some eating disorder; but the truth had been far worse than her imaginings.

She had been woken up one night by Leslie’s heartbroken sobs, and had gone into her room. At first, Leslie had tried to deny that anything was wrong, but, finally, she had told Diana everything.

She had felt unwell for a while, tired and listless, and at first she had put it down to the strain of her broken relationship, plus the heavy workload she had taken on. She had gone to see her doctor, hoping he could recommend a tonic, only he had sent her to hospital for tests, and the results were indisputable. She had leukemia.

They had talked long into the night; Leslie had been completely open with her about her prognosis. She had no family; the aunt and uncle who had brought her up had been killed in a plane crash while they were at university. She had decided that she would find herself a privately run hospice where she could be properly looked after, but Diana had firmly refused to countenance this.

They were friends, and they would stay friends. She would look after Leslie.

It had proved harder than either of them anticipated. On several occasions the doctors had wanted to keep Leslie in hospital but, knowing how great her fear and distress would be, Diana had refused to allow them to do so. She had taken Leslie home and nursed her herself. In the last dreadfully painful weeks, Diana had applied for compassionate leave from her job.

Fresh tears blurred her vision, the first she had been able to weep for her friend. Her pain and anger went beyond mere tears; it seemed incomprehensible, an enormity of unfairness and illogical wrong that Leslie should be dead. She had been so young, had had so much to give to life.

Diana shivered in the cold wind. It was April; the earth was beginning to awake to spring after a long, cold winter. It seemed bitterly ironic that Leslie should have died now, just before nature’s resurgence of life. She remembered how, when she was well enough, Leslie had loved to watch the slow progress of the bulbs forcing their way through the cold earth. It had been a winter of record frosts and snowfalls, and she had had to wait a long time to see the first snowdrops and crocuses bloom.

Someone touched her on her arm and she swung round. The vicar was watching her compassionately.

In those last few months he had called regularly to see Leslie. Neither of them had any deep-founded religious beliefs, but she had been able to see how cheered Leslie was by his visits.

Now she was gone forever, buried deep in the earth of this North London cemetery.

“It’s too cold to stand here. Would you like to come back to the vicarage and have a cup of tea—”

There were no other mourners; Leslie had wanted it that way. She had no family, and the other people who could have been present would have been her friends and colleagues from the publishing world.

Diana started to refuse and then nodded. She didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t think she could face going back to their empty flat.

All the legal details had been seen to already. She had contacted Leslie’s solicitor as her friend had asked her to do. She swallowed the painful lump in her throat. She already knew that her friend had made her her sole legatee. They had argued about it. Diana had suggested that Leslie should donate any money she had to medical research, but Leslie had shaken her head.

“No, I want you to have it,” she had insisted, and because any form of argument, no matter how slight, had wasted her fragile strength deplorably, Diana had given in.

She had an appointment to see the solicitor, Mr. Soames, later in the afternoon, but right now she didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to think about anything … anything …

She turned and followed the vicar, pausing to look over her shoulder one last time, and say a painful final goodbye to her friend.

LESLIE’S SOLICITOR, now her solicitor, Diana reminded herself, was a partner in a very old, established city firm who had been recommended to Leslie when her first manuscript was sold.

“Rather old-fashioned, with county connections,” was how Leslie had once described him to Diana. “I get the impression that most of his clients are of the ‘gentleman farmer’ fraternity—good solid yeoman stock. Frightfully British, and very, very honest—that’s Mr. Soames.”

“Miss Johnson, please sit down ….”

Diana suspected that everything Leslie had told her about him was perfectly true, as she studied the plump, middle-aged lawyer, sitting opposite her. He was sensitive enough not to offer any formal condolences, for which she was very grateful.

His office was furnished just as an old-fashioned solicitor’s office ought to be, with a traditional partners’ desk, and a wall full of glass-fronted bookshelves holding fat and no doubt dusty tomes. Even the telephone was the old-fashioned, plain black traditional variety. Diana refused his offer of a cup of tea, and waited as he unfolded the document on his desk, discarding the pink tape which had tied it.

“I know you are already familiar with the contents of Miss Smith’s will. You are the sole legatee.” He mentioned a sum of money that made Diana gasp in shock. “And then there is the flat you shared with her. You each owned half of it, but now, of course, you are the sole owner.”

He put down his papers and studied her over the top of his glasses. “If you will take my advice, Miss Johnson, you will make use of this bequest to make a fresh start in life. This isn’t the advice I normally give newly bereaved clients; the comfort of familiar things, familiar places, is something they need to cling to, but in your case …”