Penny Jordan - The Perfect Seduction

Possessed of a sunny, happy temperament with little inclination to brood or go looking for trouble and a logical way of reasoning things, it simply hadn’t occurred to Joss that his parents might not view with equanimity the discovery that his ‘friend’ and their guest at the party was not another ten-year-old boy but, in fact, a twenty-six-year-old woman.

It had occurred to Bobbie, though, as she ruefully admitted during the course of her telephone call home, surreptitiously timed so that she could speak to her sister when no one else was about to overhear them.

‘It’s the perfect access to the family and right into the heart of it, Sam,’ Bobbie admitted a little reluctantly. ‘I couldn’t believe it when he introduced himself to me as Joss Crighton.’

‘And how old did you say this kid was?’ Samantha Miller demanded of her sister.

‘I’m not sure, somewhere around ten or maybe eleven. He’s a real cutie, huge brown eyes and thick hair.’

‘Sounds great,’ Samantha commented enthusiastically.

Bobbie laughed. ‘Oh, he is!’

‘And you say he’s asked you to his sisters’ eighteenth birthday party?’

‘Mmm...’

‘What else did you find out? Did you—’

‘No, not yet,’ Bobbie interrupted her sister quickly. ‘We were a bit public for me to cross-question him too deeply and we might have been overheard. I don’t want anyone getting suspicious of either of us.’

‘Cross-question, I like that,’ Samantha told her grimly.

‘How are things at home?’ Bobbie asked, her voice suddenly becoming slightly tense and anxious. ‘How is Mom?’

‘She doesn’t have a clue,’ Samantha assured her, ‘although even if I say so myself I am doing rather a good job of running interference for you. The first couple of days you were gone she was going crazy, asking me if I knew where you were, if there was some man... Poor Mom, she’s just so desperate to get at least one of us married off.’

‘What did you tell her?’ Bobbie asked.

‘I said you’d mentioned something about needing to get away now that you aren’t seeing Nat any more.’

‘Oh thanks. So now she’ll be thinking I’m suffering from a broken heart,’ Bobbie told her sister indignantly.

‘Having her thinking that is better than having her guess the truth. When is this party by the way? We don’t have a lot of time, not if...’

‘No, I know. It’s on Saturday, at the Grosvenor in Chester where, as good luck has it, I’m staying. It will be the perfect opportunity, not just for me to find out as much as I can from Joss, but also to study the family in general.’

‘Do you think you-know-who will be there?’ Samantha asked, her voice suddenly tensing and becoming brittle with hostility and anger.

‘I don’t know.’

‘When I think of what they’ve done, the unhappiness they’ve caused...’

‘I know, I know....’ Bobbie paused, then said, ‘Look, Sam, I’d better go. I’ll ring you after the party and tell you what I’ve managed to find out.’

She was just about to replace the receiver when she remembered something she had omitted to tell her sister.

‘I nearly forgot,’ she hastened to add. ‘You’ll never guess what...’ Laughing ruefully, she proceeded to tell Samanatha about Joss’s descriptions of, and revelations about, his Chester cousins.

‘What? Cousin Luke sounds like a real ape,’ came Samantha’s immediate and gutsy response, ‘the type that goes for cutesy, brain-dead little blonde bimbos he can wear like a Band-Aid on his pathetic inadequacies. Personally, I’ve always preferred to judge a man by the size and warmth of his heart, not—’

‘Sam...’ Bobbie warned her sister, laughing.

‘What? Oh! What a thing to suggest. I meant size as in height and not...’ Samantha began in wounded dignity, only to break down in a fit of giggles. ‘Well, good luck with Cousin Luke,’ she teased her sister before ringing off. ‘He sounds the perfect match for you, Bobbie, everything you’ve always wanted in a man.’

‘Doesn’t he just,’ Bobbie agreed with heavy irony.

After she had replaced the receiver, she walked over to her window and stared unseeing through the glass. It was no mere whim or casual impulse that had brought her to England, to Chester, to Haslewich, but rather a quest that had been a part of both her and her twin sister’s lives for as long as they had been old enough to understand the story of their mother’s life.

Sombrely Bobbie walked back towards the bed. She supposed she would have to find something suitable to wear for this party. It had been difficult enough getting away without her mother asking what she was up to and without worrying about packing any kind of formal evening wear; as she knew, to her cost, when you were six foot plus, buying off the peg wasn’t always an option.

In the small New England town where Bobbie and her sister had grown up, people were accustomed to their height; after all, it was a family trait. Dad was nearly six-five and his parents were tall, as well, and so were all their paternal kith and kin who were scattered around the area.

Stephen Miller’s family could trace their ancestors right back to one of the founding Pilgrim families and it had not been easy for their mother to gain their acceptance in view of her own family background or rather... Fiercely Bobbie checked her thoughts. As Sam had told her before she left the States, it was high time that justice was done, the tables turned, and a certain person made to see just what they had lost through their pride and cruelty, and her own niggling sense of reluctance and unease had to be severely restrained.

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 affluent Crightons might appear to have it all, shocking revelations and heartache lie just beneath the surface of their perfect, charmed lives. 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 The Perfect Seduction Penny Jordan www.millsandboon.co.uk CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT EPILOGUE Copyright

‘JENNY dear, I’m awfully sorry but I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to make it on Saturday after all.’