Sinful Nights: The Six-Month Marriage / Injured Innocent / Loving

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 a 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.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Reader,

I still remember that day back in 1981 when I opened the very first Penny Jordan book to be published by Mills & Boon. I was hooked from the very first page, read the whole book in under two hours, and just sat back with a smile and a ‘Wow’ once I had read the final page. I was lucky enough to meet Penny some years later and share that memory with her.

Penny was, and will always remain, one of the leading lights of romantic fiction, as well as being a wonderful friend and colleague to so many other authors. This tribute is not just to her talent as an author, but to her warmth, her kindness and wonderful sense of humour. It is a legacy that will continue to shine brightly for all of us in the many books she has left behind.

We all miss you, Penny.

Sweet dreams, until we meet again.

Carolexx

‘SAPPHIRE, YOU HAVEN’T heard a word I’ve said. What’s wrong?’ Alan asked her.

The densely blue, dark lashed eyes that were the reason for Sapphire’s unusual name turned in his direction, her brief smile not totally hiding the concern in their dark blue depths.

‘I’ve had a letter from home this morning, and apparently my father isn’t well.’

‘Home?’ Alan gave her a strange look. ‘Funny, that’s the first time I’ve heard you call it that in the four years that you’ve worked for me. Before it’s always been Grassingham.’

Frowning slightly, Sapphire left her desk, pacing restlessly. It was true that in the four years she had worked in London she had tried to wipe her memory clean of as much of the past as she could, and that included any foolishly sentimental references to the border village where she had grown up as ‘home’, but in times of crisis, mental conditioning, no matter how thorough, was often forgotten. Her father confined to bed and likely to remain a semi-invalid for the rest of his life!

Unconsciously she stopped pacing and stared through the large window of her office, but instead of seeing the vista of office blocks and busy London streets all she could see was her childhood home; the farm which had belonged to many generations of Bells and which had been handed down from father to son from the time of Elizabeth the First. But of course her father had no son to carry on farming the land he loved, that was why … Sapphire gnawed worriedly at her bottom lip. In the Borders people adapted to social changes very slowly. Those who lived there had a deeply ingrained suspicion of ‘new ideas’, but had she wanted to do so, she knew that her father would have encouraged her to undertake the agricultural degree needed to successfully run a farm the size of Flaws. However, although she had grown up on the farm she had had no desire to take over from her father.

Flaws valley was one of the most fertile in the area, and should her father decide to sell, there would be no shortage of buyers. But how could he sell? It would break his heart. After her mother had left him he had devoted himself exclusively to the farm and to her. Her mother. Sapphire sighed. She could barely remember her now, although she knew that she looked very much like her.

It was from her American mother that she had inherited her wheat blonde hair and long lithe body, both of which were viewed with a touch of scorn in the Borders.

‘She’s the looks and temperament of a race horse,’ one neighbour had once commented scornfully to her father, ‘but what you need for these valleys is a sturdy pony.’