Penny Jordan - Perfect Marriage Material

‘Well, for a start, they’re all members of the same profession,’ she told him, raising her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Honestly, men!’ She turned to the papers she had been about to read before he came in, shaking her head.

‘Livvy...’ She stared at Caspar as he drew her gently to him, ‘Look, I know you mean well, and yes, your cousins and Tullah possibly do have something in common, but she’s a high-flying professional woman of almost thirty. Don’t you think if she wanted to settle down and have children she’d have found a partner of her own choice by now?’

Olivia bit her lip. ‘Are you trying to tell me that I shouldn’t interfere?’

‘Well...’

‘I was only thinking of having a couple of dinner parties...returning invitations...that kind of thing.’

‘Mmm... I suppose I should take it as a compliment that you enjoy marriage and motherhood so much that you want to inflict it, er, share its pleasure, with all your friends.’

‘I suppose you should,’ she agreed. ‘Speaking of which...do you remember how we were talking the other night about it being time we thought about a brother or sister for Amelia?’

‘What, you’re not—’

‘Not yet,’ she told him demurely. ‘But we really ought to—’

‘Oh yes, we really ought,’ Caspar agreed, laughing as he turned her towards the kitchen door and the stairs that lay beyond it.

CHAPTER TWO Table of Contents Cover Excerpt Welcome to Penny Jordan’s miniseries featuring the Crighton family . This is no ordinary family, because, although the Crightons might appear to have it all, shocking revelations and heartache lie just beneath the surface of their perfect, charmed lives. Into this family comes a young, spirited woman, with heartfelt prejudices against one particular Crighton son. 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 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. The Crightons Title Page Perfect Marriage Material Penny Jordan www.millsandboon.co.uk CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN EPILOGUE Copyright

‘SO. HAVE you seen anything locally yet that’s taken your fancy?’ Olivia asked Tullah eagerly when she returned from the property viewings organised by the relocation agency.

‘Not really, apart from this little moppet.’ Tullah laughed as she broke off from cuddling Amelia, Caspar and Olivia’s two-year-old daughter, to answer Olivia’s question.

‘Ah well, if that’s what you fancy, it isn’t a house you should be looking for, it’s a man,’ Olivia teased her gently.

‘No thanks,’ Tullah retorted, the smile dying out of her eyes as she handed Amelia over to her mother, her full mouth compressing firmly.

‘Tullah...’ Olivia began, then stopped as she saw the look she was giving her. Good friends though they had always been, Tullah was the type who held herself slightly aloof from others and whom, despite her stunningly voluptuous and sensual looks, the men in the large organisation they had both worked for had very quickly learned to treat with wary caution.

Olivia knew the reason for Tullah’s wariness of the male sex and she also knew that Tullah didn’t like to discuss her love life.

She knew that the only time Tullah did let her guard down with men was when she was with one she knew to be happily attached to another woman. Because she felt safe with such a man?

‘So none of the properties was any good, then?’ she asked sympathetically.

Tullah pulled a face. ‘Well, the modern single-bedroomed flats they showed me were affordable, but very anonymous, and the cottages were either too large or too expensive or both. There was one, though....’ She paused whilst Olivia waited. ‘Well, it just had so many things against it, and even the agent said that it had only been included on the list at the last minute, but...’

‘But...’ Olivia encouraged patiently.

Tullah gave her a rueful look and admitted, ‘But it was quite definitely a case of love at first sight.’

‘Oh dear,’ Olivia sympathised, ‘as bad as that?’

‘And more,’ Tullah agreed wryly, ticking points off on her fingers. ‘It’s overpriced, on the wrong side of town for work. It needs a fortune spent on it. Possibly spraying for infestation of the wood, rewiring, new plumbing—you name it. It doesn’t even have mains drainage.’

‘So what does it have?’ Olivia asked, adding helpfully, ‘It must have some plus points otherwise you wouldn’t have fallen for it.’

‘Oh, it does,’ Tullah agreed. ‘The place is surrounded by farm land. There’s the most wonderful view from upstairs of the river. It has a huge garden. It’s one of a pair of semis, the other half of which is owned by a couple of elderly widowed sisters who apparently travel a lot to Australia to visit relatives. The lane leading to it doesn’t go anywhere other than to a farmhouse that you can’t even see from my cottage.’

‘A farmhouse...’ Olivia was looking intrigued and slightly excited. ‘Where exactly is this cottage, Tullah? It sounds—’

‘It sounds horrendous, I know,’ Tullah finished for her, ‘and certainly not the sort of thing a sane, sensible, professional woman of my age should even think about buying. Even if it were a bargain, which it most certainly isn’t, it could be months before it’s even properly habitable.’

‘Well, you could always stay here,’ Olivia offered generously, and when Tullah shook her head, she asked, ‘So what did you do? Tell the agent it just wasn’t feasible?’

‘No,’ Tullah admitted with a shamefaced grin. ‘I made an offer....’

Both of them were still laughing when Caspar walked into the kitchen and, of course, just like a man, could not really comprehend the reason for their combined mirth even when Olivia had explained the situation to him.

‘Saul rang while you were out,’ he told Olivia. ‘He’s going to be a little later than planned getting here for dinner this evening, something about problems with the babysitter, but he said he’ll definitely be here for eight-thirty.’

‘That’s fine. I’ve invited Saul and Jon and Jenny round for dinner tonight,’ she explained to Tullah. ‘Which reminds me, your cottage—’ She broke off as the young retriever dog lying in its basket in front of the Aga gave a small protesting yelp as Amelia pulled its tail, gently chiding her daughter as she went to rescue the dog. ‘No, Amelia, you’re hurting Flossy. You have to be gentle with her.’