No Nice Girl

Dear Reader,

Harlequin is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary in 2009 with an entire year’s worth of special programs showcasing the talent and variety that have made us the world’s leading romance publisher.

With this collection of vintage novels, we are thrilled to be able to journey with you to the roots of our success: six books that hark back to the very earliest days of our history, when the fare was decidedly adventurous, often mysterious and full of passion—1950s-style!

It is such fun to be able to present these works with their original text and cover art, which we hope both current readers and collectors of popular fiction will find entertaining.

Thank you for helping us to achieve and celebrate this milestone!

Warmly,

Donna Hayes,

Publisher and CEO

To millions of readers around the world, Harlequin and romance fiction are synonymous. With a publishing record of 120 titles a month in 29 languages in 107 international markets on 6 continents, there is no question of Harlequin’s success.

But like all good stories, Harlequin’s has had some twists and turns.

In 1949, Harlequin was founded in Winnipeg, Canada. In the beginning, the company published a wide range of books—including the likes of Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, James Hadley Chase and Somerset Maugham—all for the low price of twenty-five cents.

By the mid 1950s, Richard Bonnycastle was in complete control of the company, and at the urging of his wife—and chief editor—began publishing the romances of British firm Mills & Boon. The books sold so well that Harlequin eventually bought Mills & Boon outright in 1971.

In 1970, Harlequin expanded its distribution into the U.S. and contracted its first American author so that it could offer the first truly American romances. By 1980, that concept became a full-fledged series called Harlequin Superromance, the first romance line to originate outside the U.K.

The 1980s saw continued growth into global markets as well as the purchase of American publisher, Silhouette Books. By 1992, Harlequin dominated the genre, and ten years later was publishing more than half of all romances released in North America.

Now in our sixtieth anniversary year, Harlequin remains true to its history of being the romance publisher, while constantly creating innovative ways to deliver variety in what women want to read. And as we forge ahead into other types of fiction and nonfiction, we are always mindful of the hallmark of our success over the past six decades—guaranteed entertainment!

www.millsandboon.co.uk

was one of the many pseudonyms of prolific writer Peggy Gaddis, born Erolie Pearl Gaddis in Gaddistown, Georgia, on March 5, 1895. She married John Sherman Dern in 1931. In her career, she is credited with writing close to three hundred books, as well as uncounted short stories that appeared in magazines or serials. She was an expert at romance, particularly the nurse stories from the last ten years of her life. She died on June 14, 1966, though her work continued to be reprinted into the 1970s.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR SLEPT placidly in the moonlight. That is, there were no lights and the curtains were neatly drawn and all was silence. Above, the first full moon of summer hung in the sky, making it almost as bright as day, though with a softness that added clarity to the scene.

The house was small and neat and white, framed by a freshly painted white picket fence behind which grew neat flower beds and carefully trimmed shrubbery. In fact, the house stood out in that rather down-at-heels neighborhood, especially in comparison to the two on either side of it, neither of which boasted a fence, fresh paint or flower beds.

In the dwelling on the left, a girl who was only a dim, shadowy figure, invisible to anyone outside, hunched beside the window, watching the neat little white house with a gleam in her eyes.

Down the street, in the thick shadows cast by an old sycamore tree, stood a handsome, expensive coupe. With the lights off, the car was invisible more than a few feet away—except to the carefully hidden watcher who had seen it being parked there shortly before eleven o’clock, long after the shabby little side street had turned out its lights and gone to bed.

Behind the watcher at the window, a clock chimed twelve. She grinned to herself, decided it was safe to risk a cigarette if she stepped back into the shadows of the room before she struck the match. With the cigarette glowing between her fingers, she settled herself a little more comfortably in the battered old wing chair, and once more took up her vigil.

One o’clock struck, and she yawned and made a little impatient gesture. But she did not give up her vigil until the hands of the clock were approaching three. For then there was the shadow of a movement against the house next door. A door opened somewhere in the darkness, without a sound, and closed as silently. A dim, shadowy shape melted across the brief patch of moonlight and into the shadow of the carefully trimmed hedge. The man had to bend low to take advantage of the shadows. And a moment later, the girl at the window heard the sound of the car: a soft purr of the expensive motor, the careful meshing of gears. But the lights were not switched on until the car was turning the corner into one of the less shabby streets.