The Christmas Bride

The Christmas Bride
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.When Jason McCready and Cary Adams were thrown together on a Yuletide skiing trip meant to please their children, they struck sparks off each other immediately.Then they realized that the fire burning between them was more than mere chemistry. It was the harbinger of a love that would warm them through the holidays… and beyond.

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.

The Christmas Bride

Penny Jordan

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

PROLOGUE

‘IT’S A total nightmare, it just couldn’t be any worse.’

‘Spending Christmas in a castle in Spain is a nightmare?’

Tilly gave a reluctant smile as she heard the wry note in her friend and flatmate’s voice.

‘Okay. On the face of it, it may sound good,’ she agreed. ‘But, Sally, the reality is that it will be a nightmare. Or rather a series of on-going nightmares,’ she pronounced darkly.

‘Such as?’

Tilly shook her head ruefully. ‘You want a list? Fine! One, my mother is about to get married to a man she’s so crazily in love with she’s sends me e-mails that sound as though she’s living on adrenalin and sex. Two, the man she’s marrying is a multimillionaire—no, a billionaire—’

‘You have a funny idea of what constitutes a nightmare,’ Sally interrupted.

‘I haven’t finished yet,’ Tilly said. ‘Art—that’s ma’s billionaire—is American, and has very strong ideas about Family Life.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Patience. I am getting there. Ma’s got this guilt thing that it’s her fault that I’m anti-men and marriage, because she and Dad split up.’

‘And is it?’

‘Well, let’s just say the fact that she’s been married and divorced four times already doesn’t exactly incline me to look upon marriage with optimism.’

‘Four times?’

‘Ma loves falling in love. And getting engaged. And getting married. This time Ma has decided she wants to be married at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve in a Spanish castle. So Art is transporting his entire family to spend Christmas and New Year in Spain to witness the ceremony—at his expense. We’re all going to stay at the castle so that we can get to know one another properly “as a family”. Because, according to Ma, Art can’t think of a more Family Time than Christmas.’

‘Sounds good so far.’

‘Well, here’s the bit that is not so good. Art’s family comprises his super-perfect daughters from his first marriage, along with their husbands and their offspring.’

‘And?’

‘And Ma, for reasons best known to herself, has told Art that I’m engaged to be married. And of course Art has insisted that I join the happy family party at the castle, along with my fiancé.’

‘But you haven’t got a fiancé. You haven’t even got a boyfriend.’

‘Exactly. I have pointed this out to my mother, but she’s pulling out all the high-drama stops. She says she’s afraid Art’s daughters are going to persuade him not to marry her, and that if I turn up sans fiancé it will add fuel to their argument that as a family we are not cut out for long-term, reliable marriages. She should really have gone on the stage.’Tilly looked at her friend. ‘I know this sounds crazy, but the truth is I’m worried about her. If Art’s daughters are against the marriage, then she won’t stand a chance. Ma isn’t a schemer. She just can’t help falling in love.’

‘It sounds more like you’re the parent and she’s the child.’

‘Well, Ma does like to imply that she was little more than a child when she ran off with my father and had me. Although she was twenty-one at the time, and the reason she ran off with Dad was that she was already engaged to someone else. Who she then married after she realised she had made a mistake in marrying my dad.’ Tilly was smiling as she spoke, but there was a weary resignation in her tone. ‘I feel I should be there for her, but I just don’t want her to blame me if things go wrong because I didn’t turn up with a fiancé.’

‘Well, you know what to do, don’t you?’

‘What?’

‘Hire an escort.’

‘What?’

‘There’s no need to look like that. I’m not talking about a “when would you like the massage” type escort. I’m talking about the genuine no-strings, no-sex, perfectly respectable and socially acceptable paid-for social escort.’

Sally could see that Tilly was looking both curious and wary. ‘Come on, pass me the telephone directory. Let’s sort it out now.’

‘You could always lend me Charlie,’Tilly suggested.

‘Let you take my fiancé away to some Spanish castle for the most emotionally loaded holiday of the year for loved-up couples?’ Sally gave a vehement shake of her head. ‘No way! I’m not letting him miss the seasonal avalanche of advertisements for happy couples with their noses pressed up against jewellers’ windows.’ Sally balanced the telephone book on her lap. ‘Okay, let’s try this one first. Pass me the phone.’

‘Sally, I don’t…’

‘Trust me. This is the perfect answer. You’re doing this for your mother, remember!’

‘Will I do what?’ Silas Stanway stared at his young half-brother in disbelief.

‘Well, I can’t do it. Not in a wheelchair, with my arm and leg in plaster,’ Joe pointed out. ‘And it seems mean to let the poor girl down,’ he added virtuously, before admitting, ‘I need the money I’ll be paid for this, Silas, and it’s giving me some terrific contacts.’

‘Working as a male escort?’ Beneath the light tone of mockery Silas felt both shock and distaste. Another indication of the cultural gap that existed between him, a man of thirty plus, and his barely twenty-one-year-old sibling—the result of his father’s second marriage—for whom Silas felt a mixture of brotherly love and, since their father’s death, almost paternal concern.