Penny Jordan - Beyond Compare

Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author

PENNY JORDAN

Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!

Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.

This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.

PENNY JORDANis 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 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-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

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Concept Page Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author PENNY JORDAN Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies! Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last. This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.

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 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-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.

Title Page Beyond Compare 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

Copyright

End Page

‘AND HE’S ACTUALLY had the gall to invite you to his engagement party?’

‘Yes,’ Holly agreed glumly, her normally gamine features doleful. ‘And I can’t get out of it because he already knows I’ve got the weekend off. When he asked me to keep it free, I thought it was because he was going to propose to me, and all the time… Besides, I can’t not go. All our old crowd will be there, and if I don’t…’

‘Yes, I know what you mean,’ her employer agreed thoughtfully. ‘What you could do with is a new man to show off in front of him.’

‘To make him jealous, you mean?’ Holly exclaimed, immediately brightening. ‘You’re right.’ And then her face fell again. ‘But where on earth would I find one? Eligible, available men aren’t exactly beating a path to my flat door at the moment.’

‘No… not to make him jealous,’ Jan Holme said with exasperation. ‘He’s getting engaged to someone else, Holly. No, what I meant was that if you had someone else to go with you to the engagement party, it would boost your ego and make you feel better.’

‘Nothing could make me feel better,’ Holly announced mournfully, clinging on to her mood of self-pity. ‘I love him, Jan.’

Privately, Janet Holme doubted it. And, as she looked down at her youngest and favourite employee, she suspected that, as yet, for all her pretence to sophistication, Holly had hardly any idea what love was.

Certainly she had imagined herself in love with the charming and very shallow young man she was presently mourning, but at twenty-two Holly Witchell was still touchingly naïve in many ways, and what she had been in love with had been the idea of love.

When she had first come to London a year ago she had had a vulnerable quality about her that had made Jan take her firmly under her wing, and she still hadn’t quite lost it.

‘I take it this engagement party’s not being held in London?’

‘No… at home,’ Holly told her briefly. ‘Rosamund, the girl he’s getting engaged to, wants to have it at her parents’ house.’ She made a face. ‘They’re the richest people in the village and very much aware of it. Pots of money… You know the kind of thing.’