Marriage Make-Up

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.

Marriage Make-up

Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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CHAPTER ONE

‘MUM…’

Abbie Howard frowned as her twenty-two-year-old daughter’s slightly hesitant voice interrupted her concentration on the accounts on which she was working. She had promised her accountants she would let them have them by the end of the week, but so much had happened since her daughter and her boyfriend had announced their engagement the previous weekend that she was now rather behind. Not that she minded Cathy interrupting her; the two of them had always had a very close relationship and everyone knew how much her daughter meant to her—too much, some people were occasionally inclined to say.

‘You’re not going to believe this,’ Cathy informed her, perching on the edge of her mother’s desk, swinging her long leg, which was still brown from her summer holidays.

People often remarked on how very dissimilar in looks mother and daughter were. Abbie was small, barely five feet two, and very fragile-looking, with delicate bones and an air of vulnerability about her that drew men to her like bees to honey—only for them to be both astonished and then huffily offended as she made it plain that playing the helpless little woman to their big strong man was the last thing she needed or wanted.

Her straight silky hair was naturally blonde, her eyes a deep and mesmerising blue-green, and at forty-three she could easily, had she wished to do so, have laid claim to being no older than a mere thirty-three and have been believed—not just by the male sex but by her own as well.

Not that she was likely to do any such thing. Abbie had no inhibitions about being open about her age, nor about the fact that she had a grown-up daughter.

Cathy, on the other hand, whilst she possessed her mother’s entrancing blue-green eyes, was tall, with long bones and a mane of wild, tumbling deep brunette curls. As a child she had been inclined to be clumsy, and had even gone through a stage of secretly wishing she were more like her mother, of almost hating her own taller, stronger body, until Abbie had guessed what was happening and very quickly put a stop to it, making sure that her daughter, instead of rejecting her body shape, came to appreciate it.

‘But I look just like Dad…you said so yourself when you showed me his photograph.’ She had said so, Abbie remembered, and she also remembered how upset she had been when Cathy had told her that she didn’t think she had ever had a daddy because she had never seen a picture of him. Abbie had shown her then the few photographs she had of Sam which she had not destroyed, hating having to look at them herself because of all the memories they brought back, all the pain.

Cathy had protested further. ‘And he was horrible and you hate him…’

‘But you aren’t horrible and I don’t hate you,’ Abbie had comforted her, hugging and kissing her. ‘I love you, and even though you have inherited your father’s bone structure and colouring you’re still your own person, Cathy, and I promise you that when you grow up you’re going to love being so tall and elegant.’

‘But at school they call me beanpole and beanie,’ Cathy had wept.

‘When I was at school they called me tiny,’ Abbie had told her. ‘But it doesn’t matter what other people say or think, my darling. What matters is what you think, and I promise you that when you grow up you are going to be very glad that you are you…’

And her mother had been right. Cathy was now the first person to acknowledge that. Just as she was always right…well, almost always. There were some things…

Hastily Cathy dismissed the disloyal thought she could feel forming. How was her mother going to take what she had to say to her? She had been marvellous when she and Stuart had told her about their engagement, insisting only that she be allowed to indulge herself as befitted the prospective mother of the bride.

Stuart had been more than willing to agree. He himself came from a large family and was comfortable with the idea of a large wedding.

And, despite the unhappiness and trauma of her own marriage, her mother had never tried to put her off getting married herself, Cathy acknowledged. Not that it would have done much good. She had fallen in love with Stuart virtually the moment she had seen him, and he with her, so he had told her later.

‘What’s wrong?’ Abbie asked her daughter, pushing away her papers and turning to look up at her.

‘I know you’re not going to believe this,’ Cathy responded nervously. ‘But…I think…I think…’ She looked down and started fidgeting with the laces on her boots. ‘I think I…’

‘Yes, go on…you think what?’ Abbie encouraged her wryly.

‘I think I saw Dad today…’

As she finished speaking she looked up warily to meet her mother’s eyes.

The shock was rather like believing you were crossing a completely empty road and then suddenly realising there was a ten-ton truck bearing down on you at high speed, Abbie recognised, and she felt her body’s adrenalin system surge to fight off the blow she had just been dealt.

‘You’re right,’ she agreed flatly, when she thought she had her voice under control. ‘I don’t believe you. Cathy, It’s impossible for your father to be here,’ she added more gently, when she saw her daughter turn her head away and bite her lip. ‘Your father is in Australia. He emigrated there just after…just after you were born, and there’s no reason—’ She stopped.

But Cathy picked up her unfinished sentence for her and supplied harshly, ‘There’s no reason for what? No reason for him to come back? No reason for him to want to see me…to know me…?’

Abbie could feel the lump forming in her throat. It hurt her unbearably that she who had learned to be so tough and protective of her child, who had thought she had done so well in making herself independent, in supporting them both, in giving her precious little girl all the love and security she could, had still somehow failed her.

She knew what it was, of course. Now that Cathy and Stuart were planning to get married, now that she had seen at first hand how Stuart’s happily married parents related to one another, now that she was no doubt thinking of the future, and the children she would have herself, her natural curiosity about her father had risen to the surface of her consciousness. It was making her more curious about him, making her want to know more about him and no doubt making her wish that he felt the same way about her.

When Cathy had still been a small baby, Abbie had made a vow that she would always be honest with her about her father, that she would never lie to her about him or what he had done, but that at the same time she would do her best to protect her from the hurt she was bound to suffer once she was old enough to understand the truth.

And she had stuck by that vow, even though at times it had been very hard, and of course the older Cathy had got, the more aware, the harder it had been to protect her from what Abbie knew her daughter’s own intelligence and emotions must tell her about her father.

How could she…how could anyone protect a child from the pain of knowing that its father didn’t want it? She had done her best to make it up to Cathy, and she had been so proud when people commented on how well adjusted, how happy her daughter always seemed, but now she was wondering if she had congratulated herself too soon.

Because of that, because of her fear that she might not have been enough, that Cathy might still yearn for the father she had never had, she was less understanding and gentle with her than she might otherwise have been, telling her almost harshly, ‘Forget about your father, Cathy. He doesn’t have any place in your life. He never has had. I understand how you feel, but—’

‘No, you don’t. How can you?’ Cathy interrupted her passionately. ‘How can you understand?’ she repeated, tears filling her eyes. ‘Gran and Gramps love you. Gramps never, ever turned round and told Gran that you weren’t his child, that he didn’t want you… You never went to school and listened to all the other children talking about their fathers. You didn’t have to walk down the aisle without—’ Cathy broke off and whispered apologetically, ‘I’m sorry, Mum…I didn’t mean…I know it’s not your fault…it’s just…’

Abbie slid off her chair. With Cathy perched on her desk and her standing on her feet they were almost the same height. She wrapped her arms around her daughter, holding her close, comforting her just as she had done when she was a little girl, and for what felt like the hundred-millionth time she silently cursed the man who had brought them so much unhappiness.

Sam come back…? He wouldn’t dare…Not after what he had done. She had made it more than plain to him the last time she’d seen him that henceforward she wanted nothing more to do with him, that he could keep his name, his money, his house and every other damn thing he had ever given her…except for his child. The child he had refused to accept could be his, the child she was claiming for herself and whom she would never, ever allow him to see again.

He had accused her of having sex with someone else, of conceiving her child with another man; had even had the gall to blame poor Lloyd. Lloyd, who would never…

He had started to say something else to her but she hadn’t let him finish, pushing past him and preparing to walk out of the house she had shared with him for such a brief period of time.

That had been just after she had learnt she was pregnant, and she hadn’t seen him since.

Abbie gave a pleased smile as she totted up the final column of figures some time later and closed the account book, placing it on top of the pile of other papers she had prepared for her accountants.

She knew how dubious several of her friends had been all those years ago—ten years ago—when she had announced that she was going to set up her own employment agency, but after fifteen years of experience of working in the hotel and catering trade, doing everything from waitressing and chambermaiding right through to being asked to take responsibility for organising a conference, she had learned enough to take such a big step and, more importantly, in her mind at least, she had the contacts on both sides of the business to succeed.

And she had been proved right; some of the staff who had been with her at the very start were still on her books. Her reputation had been passed by word of mouth to others. Along with her honesty and her loyalty to her staff, she was known never to supply staff to anyone she felt would abuse their position of authority over them in any way.

Her rates of pay were good and she explained firmly to anyone who quibbled about the amount she charged that she supplied the best and paid them accordingly. Abbie could supply catering staff right across the range, from a butler to lend gravitas to a formal private affair to a French chef to step in at the last minute and provide a buffet for five hundred people at an important convention, and everything in between.

Cathy, just as soon as she herself had been old enough, had been encouraged to earn her own extra pocket money by waiting at tables and serving behind a bar, just as her mother had once done. It didn’t matter that once her daughter was at university Abbie could quite easily have afforded to supplement her grant very generously indeed; she’d wanted Cathy to have the independence and pride of knowing she could earn something for herself—just so long as her part-time work didn’t detract from her studies, of course.

Abbie’s own parents had offered to help her when her marriage had fallen apart, and had even begged her to move back home with them, but she had stubbornly insisted on supporting herself and now she was glad that she had done so, that she had made an independent life for herself here in this middle-sized, middle England town, where Sam had brought her as a new bride. Then they had both planned to make their future here—Sam as a university lecturer, with plans to become a writer one day, and Abbie also working at the university, in the archive department.

She glanced at her watch. Abbie had promised a friend who had become an aficionado of car-boot sales that she would go through her attic and see if she could find anything she wanted to dispose of. She had just enough time, if she was quick, to do so before her evening appointment with the manager of the new luxurious conference centre which had recently been opened as an extension of a local hotel.

Abbie herself had actually been approached to see if she would be interested in taking up the appointment as manager of the centre, but she had declined. She preferred being her own boss, being in charge of her own life. It might sometimes be lonelier that way, but it was also much safer—and safety when it came to her relationships, be they professional or personal, was something that was very, very important to her.

Not even her closest women-friends were allowed to get too close to her, just in case they might hurt her in some way, and as for men…

It wasn’t that she was a man-hater, she denied as she made her way up the narrow flight of steps that gave her access to the attic space, no matter what some men might think. It was just that having been hurt very badly once, having been called a liar and worse, she was not about to give any man the opportunity to do so a second time. Why should she? She would be a fool if she did. That didn’t mean there hadn’t been times…men who had tempted her, but the memory of the pain Sam had caused her had always held her back. He had told her he loved her, that he would always love her, that he would never hurt her, but he had lied to her and she had believed him. How could she allow herself to trust another man after that? And not just for her own sake, for her own protection, but for Cathy’s as well. Letting herself be hurt was one thing—she was an adult capable of making her own choices and of paying the price for them—but Cathy was more at risk. Cathy needed love and security.

Abbie pushed open the loft door, wrinkling her nose against the smell of stale air and dust. She hadn’t been up here since just after Cathy had left home for university.

That was where Cathy had met Stuart, who had been taking a postgraduate course, and for a while, during the early stages of their relationship, Abbie had been worried that history was going to repeat itself.

It had been Fran, one of her oldest friends, who had warned her that she was in danger of alienating Cathy and damaging their relationship by becoming almost fixated on the belief that Stuart would hurt Cathy as Sam had hurt her.

‘Stuart isn’t the same,’ Fran had told her, ignoring Abbie’s refusal to discuss the subject with her. ‘And even if he was,’ she had added hardly, ‘it’s Cathy’s right to make her own mistakes and her own choices. Sometimes the hardest thing about being a parent is letting go,’ she had added wisely. ‘I understand how you feel about Cathy, we all do, but she’s an adult now, Abbie, and she’s in love—’

‘She thinks she’s in love,’ Abbie had interrupted angrily. ‘She’s only known him a matter of months, and already she’s talking about moving in with him and—’

‘Give her a chance,’ Fran had counselled her. ‘Give them a chance.’

‘It’s all right for you,’ Abbie had grumbled. ‘Your two are still only teenagers…’

‘And you think that makes things easier?’ Fran had rolled her eyes theatrically.

‘Lloyd and Susie haven’t been speaking all week. Lloyd caught her in a passionate embrace on the front doorstep the other night, and, predictably, he’s suddenly turned into a protective, outraged father. And, of course, Susie’s just at that age where she thinks she’s old enough to make her own decisions—even though she isn’t—and then she had to go and make matters worse by telling Lloyd that she was the one who snogged Luke, and not the other way round.’

‘Hmm…’ Momentarily Abbie had been diverted from her own problems.

Susie, Lloyd and Fran’s elder daughter, was her godchild and back then had been a formidably feisty fourteen-year-old.

Along with Michelle, Fran and Lloyd’s younger daughter, she had inherited her father’s striking red hair and there was certainly no way that there was any remote resemblance between Lloyd’s two daughters and her own, Cathy; if Sam had stayed around long enough he would very quickly have been forced to withdraw his accusation that Lloyd was Cathy’s father.

Poor Lloyd. He hadn’t met Fran when she and Sam had split up, and he had been wonderfully supportive in the early months when she had first been on her own, even hesitantly suggesting that perhaps they should marry. She had refused him, of course. She had known that she didn’t love him, nor he her, even if everyone else had considered them to be a pair before Sam had appeared in her life.

Gingerly kneeling down in the only space she could find in the piles of stuff heaped all over the loft floor, Abbie started moving things out of the way so that she could get to the boxes of bits and pieces she knew were stored up there, and which she intended to hand on to her friend for her car-booting sorties.

As she did so she knocked over a pile of children’s books. She paused to straighten them up, her eyes misting unexpectedly with tears as she recognised Cathy’s first proper reading books.

How well she remembered the thrill of wonder and excitement she had felt when Cathy read her first proper word, her first full sentence. How proud she had been, how sure that her daughter was the cleverest, prettiest little girl there ever was, how humbled by the knowledge that she had given birth to this special, magical little person—the same special, magical, perfect child who had refused to eat her supper and later thrown a tantrum in the supermarket of blush-making proportions!

Abbie’s smile faded as she also remembered how it had felt to have no one to share the special moments with, to have to wait until she could telephone her parents to tell them of Cathy’s wondrous achievement.

Firmly she resisted the temptation to indulge in nostalgia. She was a busy career woman with a full diary and very little time; the daydreamer who went soft-eyed and emotional over every small incident in her life had been firmly suppressed and controlled. Another Abbie had had to develop and take shape. An Abbie whom people respected and sometimes even found slightly formidable, an Abbie who had learned to deal with life and all its small and manifold problems by and for herself…An Abbie who could and would, if necessary, fight like a tigress to protect her child, an Abbie who had no need of sentiment or regrets about the past, and who had certainly no need for a man in her life to mistrust her and hurt her.

She crawled across the floor to where she thought the boxes were stored, cursing as the dust made her cough and then cursing again and trying to ignore the ominous pattering and scuffling sounds she could hear in the rafters above her. Birds, that was all…nothing to worry about.

She reached the boxes and pulled the first one out, reaching for the one behind it. Only it wouldn’t move; it appeared to be wedged against something. Gritting her teeth, Abbie felt behind it and then froze as her fingers curled round a piece of net fabric.

She knew immediately what it was, but, even though caution warned her to leave well alone and ignore it, for some reason she didn’t.

Instead…Instead, her fingers trembled as she tugged harder on the fabric, clenching her teeth as she heard it rip slightly and the balled-up grey-white bundle of fabric finally came free of the small space she had jammed it into.

Once it had been pristine white, the tiny crystals sewn onto it glittering just as much as the diamonds in her engagement ring as she’d pirouetted around the fitting room, turning this way and that, her face flushed a delicate, happy pink as she waited for her mother to admire it.

She had been a fairy-tale bride, or so the report in the local paper had said, her wedding dress every little girl’s dream and most big girls’ as well—at least in those days. She had felt like a princess—a queen—as she’d walked proudly down the aisle on her father’s arm. And when Sam had finally raised her veil after the vicar had married them, and she had seen the look in his eyes, she had felt as if…as though…She had felt immortal, she remembered. Adored, cherished…loved…And it had never even occurred to her that there might come a day when she would feel any different, when Sam wouldn’t continue to look at her with that mixture of adoration and desire.

How naive she had been…How…how stupid.

Her mother, her parents, had tried to warn her that she was rushing into marriage, that she and Sam barely knew one another, but she wouldn’t listen to them. They were old; they had forgotten what it was like to be in love, how it felt to be wanted, to want to be with that one special person so much that you actually hurt when they weren’t there.