Should she go to bed with Liam? Conceive his child?
No, she couldnât. It was just a mad thought conjured up by the loneliness of the night. Tears filled Samanthaâs eyes. She so much wanted to be a mother.
As she walked unsteadily toward his bedroom door, Samantha felt her breathing become fast and uneven. As she saw Liamâs sleeping form on the bed, a quick, hot tug of excitement pulled at her heart, accompanied by a sharp sense of the awesomeness of what she was contemplating.
At her husky, slightly tremulous âLiam,â he woke up instantly, his body tensing.
âSam, what is itâ¦? What do you want?â
He had fed her the perfect line, Samantha recognized. All she needed now was the courage to take itâ¦use itâ¦.
âWhat I want, Liam, is youâ¦.â Then she placed her mouth very delicately over his.
PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boonâs 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 PerfectSinner 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 readersâ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan, âWomen everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordanâs charactersâ 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 Novelistsâ Association and the Romance Writers of Americaâtwo organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be published authors. Her significant contribution to womenâs fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelistsâ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
A Perfect Family
The Perfect Seduction
Perfect Marriage Material
Figgy Pudding
The Perfect Lover
The Perfect Sinner
The Perfect Father
A Perfect Night
Coming Home
Starting Over
âT HAT was some game you played over the weekend, Sam. I certainly never expected to see the Corporationâs gold trophy go to a womanâ¦â
âSam isnât a woman, women are small and cute and cuddly, they stay at home and make babiesâ¦. Samâ¦even her name isnât womanlyâ¦â
Samantha Miller drew herself up to her full heightâan inch over six feetâwhich was an impressive four inches above the man who had just so publicly and cruelly criticised her.
âYou know your trouble donât you, Cliff,â she drawled affably. â You just donât know a real woman when you see one. Seems to me that a man isnât so very much of a man if the only kind of woman he can handle is the kind youâve just described, and as for making babiesâ¦â She paused for emphasis, well aware of the fact that she had the attention of their fellow employees who had happened to be in the large airy open-plan office with them, âIâm woman enough to have a baby any time I want one.â
Only now was she revealing the true extent of her anger at the way Cliff had insulted her; her eyes flashing challenging sparks, her voice trembling a little with the force of her feelings.
â You have a babyâ¦â her antagonist jeered angrily before she could continue. âWho the hell would want to impregnate a woman like you? No way. Your only chance of having a child would be via some med studentâs sperm and a syringeâ¦â
Enough of the people standing around broke into laughter for Samantha to recognise that no matter how publicly she might be accepted by her colleagues, an uncomfortable proportion of them seemed to share Cliff Marlinâs views.
Faced with the same situation another woman might have burst into tears or lost her temper but not Sam. You learned young when you were as tall as she was that crying didnât look cute, and besidesâ¦
Looking down from the advantage of her extra inches Samantha bared her teeth in a totally false smile and gave a dismissive shrug.
âYouâre entitled to your opinion, Cliff, but gee, itâs a shame that youâre such a sore loser. Mind, if I played golf as badly as you do, I guess I might be a tad sore about it, too. And as for making babies⦠how many times did you miss that putt on the eighthâ¦â