Yesterday's Echoes. PENNY JORDAN
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.
Yesterday’s Echoes
Penny Jordan
CHAPTER ONE
‘I’M BEGINNING to dread christenings. In fact, I only have to hear the word “baby” these days and I come over all broody…and me a mother of two hulking great teenagers. I ought to know better.
‘I know what it is, of course…It’s the threat of empty nest syndrome looming, with nothing to look forward to but Greg’s mid-life crisis and hormone replacement therapy…Rosie…are you listening to me?’
Obediently Rosie turned towards her elder sister, and repeated obediently what she had just been told.
‘Of course, plenty of women are having babies at forty these days,’ Rosie heard her muse. ‘Although what the kids would have to say about it…and how on earth I’d even manage to get pregnant in the first place…You’ve no idea how inhibiting it is having almost-adult children in the house with you. It’s amazing how guilty and embarrassed they can make you feel. Mind you, talking of sex lives, how’s yours going at the moment?’
Rosie felt her stomach muscles tense and prayed that her facial muscles weren’t reacting equally betrayingly.
There was virtually a decade between her and her elder sister, and this had led to Chrissie’s adopting an almost parental attitude to her. Although Rosie knew that Chrissie would have been outraged had she been as inquisitive and critical of her most intimate personal life as Chrissie was of Rosie’s, she also knew that Chrissie would never be able to understand that there were times when she found her sister’s questions intrusive and over-personal. After all, she knew how much Chrissie loved her and that her questions, no matter how awkward, sprang from love and concern.
And of course today she was feeling extra-intensely sensitive, she admitted. Christenings always had that effect on her, and it was pointless expecting Chrissie to understand that, to know what she was going through, to know about the tearing, wrenching pain within her, the sense of loss and anguish.
It was all very well for Chrissie to talk glibly about feeling broody, about having another child, to assume that she, Rosie, as a single woman of thirty-one with a business to run—a woman who, as Chrissie was always reminding her, had chosen to keep any men who approached her at a wary distance—did not know what it meant to see another woman with a child, and to feel that aching sense of deprivation within her—that tight feeling of panic and pain, of loss and fear, of so many complex emotions that she herself could barely find the words to describe them.
And then for Chrissie to make that comment about her sex life!!
The Hopkinses’ lawn wasn’t very big; they were a very popular couple and had invited a large number of people to the christening party. Rosie winced as someone standing behind her stepped backwards, and she felt a sharp elbow accidentally striking against her, jolting her glass and causing the other woman to immediately apologise as Rosie automatically turned round.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she began, but Rosie wasn’t listening to her.
Her whole body frozen rigid with shock and rejection, she was staring past her at the man standing several yards away watching her.
Jake Lucas! What was he doing here? Watching her! She hadn’t realised that he knew the Hopkinses. If she had suspected for a moment that he was going to be here…
‘Rosie…’
She shivered, the rigidity leaving her body as she responded to the quick anxiety in her sister’s voice.
Across the space which divided them, Jake Lucas continued to watch her. She could feel the concentrated burn of that look. She knew exactly what he was thinking…how he viewed her…without having to look directly into his eyes.
‘Rosie…’
This time Chrissie wasn’t content with speaking to her; she was touching her as well—an elder-sisterly hand placed firmly on her arm, giving it an admonishing little shake.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
Wrong? Alarm bells clamoured violently inside her.
‘Nothing…Nothing’s wrong,’ she denied quickly, turning her head back towards her sister so quickly that her hair spun round her, fanning out of its neat, shoulder-length cut before falling silkily back into place, its thick russet sleekness concealing her expression as she lowered her head defensively.
Jake Lucas. Even now that she was no longer looking at him, his features remained burnt into her memory so that it wasn’t her sister’s firm but anxious face she saw, but his, with its hard, masculine features, his mouth curling disdainfully, his hard, flinty grey eyes watching her with distaste, everything about him, even down to the way he was standing, registering his contempt for her—that and the knowledge of her which they both shared.
‘Rosie, what is it? And don’t tell me nothing. You’ve gone as white as a sheet,’ Chrissie accused. ‘Is it the sun? You should have kept your hat on; you know how vulnerable you are to sunstroke. You’d better not drive home.’
Numbly Rosie let her sister’s bossy fussing wash over her, for once unable to summon the independence to remind her sister that she was an adult and not one of her children.
‘It’s time we left, anyway. I promised Greg I wouldn’t be late. We’ve got the Curtises coming round this evening, and I want to make sure that Allison and Paul aren’t