Second-Best Husband

“In fact, in my view…” Stuart stopped and then said more calmly, “I’ve already said that I don’t want to pressure you. At least we can be sure of one thing,” he added, turning away from her slightly. “There can be no doubt that sexually we’re going to be extremely compatible.”

How on earth did he know that? How on earth could he know that? Sara opened her mouth to ask him and then closed it again, conscious of a naiveté and self-consciousness that tied her tongue and kept her silent, while her pulse raced and a sensation like a tiny jolt of electricity burned through her body….

Penny Jordan is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixtyfive. 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-bepublished authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

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‘SO YOU’VE actually done it, then? You’ve handed in your notice and left?’

‘Yes,’ Sara agreed in a low voice, flinching a little as though hearing the words physically pained her.

Her friend and neighbour grimaced sympathetically. She was ten years older than Sara and had known her ever since Sara had bought the house next to their own four years before, and personally she felt like giving a very, very loud cheer. Ian Saunders, Sara’s boss, might be six feet odd of blond good-looking manhood, all outward charm and attractiveness, but inwardly he was as cold and callous as it was possible for a man to be. That was her considered opinion, but in the past, no matter how many times she had voiced it, Sara had refused to listen to her, to hear a word against the man she worked for and loved.

‘Well, you know what I think,’ she told Sara now. ‘For what it’s worth, I consider that leaving is the best thing you could have done.’

Sara’s mouth twisted sadly. She was a tall, slender woman of twenty-nine, with a quiet, calm manner that masked a keenly efficient brain. Her looks mirrored her personality. Her face was delicately oval in shape, her features elegant and well-proportioned, only her mouth, with its unexpected fullness, hinting that her outward control might mask deep and fiery passions.

‘It wasn’t exactly a calm and reasoned decision made of my own free will.’

The pain in her voice made Margaret, her neighbour, turn her head away from her in angry sympathy.

How could Ian Saunders have treated Sara so badly after all she had done for him, working for him like a slave, helping him to build up his business into the success it was today, and all the time loving him, hoping…? Although Sara had always been openly honest in her own knowledge that Ian didn’t return her love, privately Margaret suspected he must have surely guessed how she felt, and, having guessed, out of compassion and concern ought to have suggested years ago that it might be wiser for Sara to find a job elsewhere. Instead of which he had allowed an intimacy to develop between them, a closeness, even if that relationship had been completely non-sexual, which had held out just enough unspoken promise, just enough allure, to make poor Sara go on hoping that maybe one day a miracle would occur and that he would turn to her…want her…need her…not as his faithful PA but as a woman, his woman.