Kitabı oku: «Christmas Eve Wedding»
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 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.
Christmas Eve Wedding
Penny Jordan
MILLS & BOON
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CHAPTER ONE
A LITTLE hesitantly Jaz pressed the button for the lift to take her to her hotel bedroom. She was alone in the dimly lit foyer apart from the man who was also waiting for the lift. Tall, broad-shouldered, and subtly exuding an aura of very male sexual energy. Being alone with him sent a frisson of dangerous nervous excitement skittering over her skin.
Had he moved just that little bit closer to her whilst they waited, blocking her exit and hiding her from the view of anyone walking past the lift bay so that only he knew she was there, or was she imagining it? Like she had ‘imagined’ that look he had just given her body…her breasts…
And had he noticed the treacherous reaction of her body to his sexually predatory glance? The taut peaking of her breasts, the sudden soft gasp of her indrawn breath. Could he tell that recklessly she was in danger of actually becoming physically excited, not just by his presence but also by her own thoughts?
There was an awesome sexuality about him that made her tremble inside with arousal and guilt.
Was it possible he guessed what she was thinking? Was that why he had moved closer to her?
Colouring up self-consciously, Jaz looked away from him, determined to focus her thoughts elsewhere. She pondered on what had brought her to this hotel in New Orleans in the first place.
On the other side of the city her godfather would be going through the final details of the sale of his exclusive and innovative English department store to the American family who had been so eager to buy it, to add to their own equally prestigious and larger chain of American stores. They needed the store to give them an entrée into the British market.
She knew that her own job as the store’s display coordinator and window designer was totally secure, but it had been a struggle for her, and a test of her determination and resolve to prove herself and succeed in her chosen career.
Her parents, loving and caring though they most certainly were, had initially been shocked and disbelieving when their only child had been unable to share their commitment to the farm she’d grown up on, and had instead insisted on making her own way in the world.
They had been very reluctant to accept her decision to go to art college, and Jaz knew that it was really thanks to the intervention of her godfather, Uncle John, that her parents had finally taken her seriously. Thanks to him too that she now had the wonderful job she did have.
It was no secret that her parents still harboured the hope that she would fall in love with someone who shared their own lifestyle and ambitions, but Jaz was fiercely determined never to fall in love with a man who could not understand and did not share her feelings. She felt that the right to express the artistic side of her nature had been hard-won, and because of that it was doubly precious to her. She was ambitious for her talent, for its expression, and for the freedom to use it to its maximum capacity, and she knew how impossible that would be if she were to marry a man like her father, kind, loving and generous though he was.
To further validate her ability she had recently been head-hunted by a top London store, but she had chosen to remain loyal to her godfather and to the unique and acclaimed store which had originally been begun by his grandfather.
Now in his late seventies, her godfather had been for some time looking for a worthy successor who would nurture the store’s prestigious profile, and although at first he had been dubious about selling out to new owners on the other side of the Atlantic, a visit to New Orleans to see the way the Dubois family ran their business—a trip on which he had invited Jaz to go with him—had convinced him that they shared his own objectives and standards. Since he had no direct heirs to pass the business onto, he had decided that the best way to preserve the traditions of the store was to sell it to the like-minded Dubois family, a decision Jaz herself fully endorsed.
As the lift arrived and the doors slid open Jaz’s thoughts were snapped back into the present. She couldn’t help snatching an indiscreet look at the man waiting to step into it with her, her heart bumping against her ribs as she acknowledged the buzz of sexual excitement she had felt the moment she had seen him. Was it the fact that she was out of her own environment, a stranger in a different country, that was encouraging her to behave so recklessly? Or was it something about the man himself that was making her touch the tip of her tongue to her lips as she stared boldly at him, her female senses registering his sexy maleness?
Just the thought of being alone in the lift with him was filling her mind with all manner of forbidden erotic scenarios. A wanton inspection of his body verified just how completely male he was. A soft, dangerous lick of excitement ran over her as her senses reacted to the way he was looking at her, silently responding to the fact that she had looked at him for just that little bit too long, challenging him in a way that was wholly female to show her that he was equally wholly male.
‘Seen something you like, hon?’ he asked her as the lift door closed, trapping Jaz inside the intimate space with him.
Apprehension curled feather-soft down her spine. She knew that what she was doing was totally out of character, but for some reason she didn’t care. There was something about him that brought the secret ache deep within her body to a wire-sharp intensity that could not be ignored.
Refusing to back down, she met his amused look head-on, tossing her head as she replied huskily, ‘I might have done.’ She had been warned before her visit that New Orleans was home to a very dangerous type of sexually attractive man—men who never refused to gamble against fate or to take up a challenge. And she held her breath now, wondering how he would respond. She couldn’t resist glancing into the mirrored wall to her side to take another peek at him.
His shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, exposing an exciting ‘V’ of male flesh. Impulsively she took a step towards him. She wondered how it would feel to caress that flesh with her lips, to taste and tease it until he had no option but to reach for her and—
She could feel her body melting with arousal. Everything about him tormented her senses in ways she had never imagined. Just looking at him made her want him. She could feel her face burning, her heart racing at the explicitness of her own thoughts and fantasies. She felt shocked by them.
Her heart thumping, she continued to study him. Over six foot, with very thick rich brown hair just touched with honey-gold where the fierce heat of the sun had lightened it. In the close confines of the lift she could smell the cool expensive tang of his skin. Everything about him looked expensive. From his clothes and his haircut to his elegantly discreet watch. Everything apart from his hands which for some reason, whilst immaculately clean, were slightly callused. Her stomach lifted and clenched with female excitement at the thought of those hands, so tellingly male, pressed against the soft femininity of her own skin.
She had started to breathe too fast, betrayingly fast, she recognised as his glance locked on her mouth.
‘Go ahead,’ she heard him urging her shockingly. ‘Go ahead, hon, and do what you want to do. And you do want to, don’t you?’ he guessed, his voice dropping until it was a low sexy murmur, as rawly sensual as though he had actually caressed the most sensitive parts of her body with the rough male heat of his tongue.
Somehow she had actually put one hand against his chest!
His skin was warm and tanned, with tiny lines fanning out from his eyes. His eyes…
Her breath locked in her chest and another wave of sensual dizziness filled her. She had never, ever seen eyes so blue before. It was a denser, deeper, stronger blue than the bluest sky she had ever seen, the colour so intense that she felt her own golden-brown eyes must look totally insignificant in comparison.
‘I can’t,’ she responded shakily, too lost in her own desire to conceal what she was feeling from him. ‘Not here.’ Her voice faltered and fell to a husky whisper. ‘Not in the lift.’ But as she spoke her gaze went betrayingly to where his jeans were now visibly straining against the tautness of his arousal.
‘Liar!’ he taunted her softly. ‘I could take you here and now. And if you want me to prove it—’ His hand was already reaching for the buckle of his belt.
Jaz felt dizzy with the aching intensity of her fevered longing. Impulsively she moved even closer to him, and then stopped.
The knowing smile that accompanied the look he was giving her brought a deep flush of colour to Jaz’s skin.
He had the whitest, strongest teeth, and it was hard not to imagine him biting them into her skin with deliberate sensuality. A fierce, shocked shiver ran through her at the explicitness of her own thoughts, and she moved a little uncomfortably, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
‘Careful, hon,’ she heard him warning her. ‘If you keep on looking at me that way I guess I’m just going to have to give you what those big eyes of yours are asking me for. In fact…’
Jaz shook her head and tried to deny what he was saying, but it was too late for her to say or do anything. He had moved so quickly, so light-footedly for such a big man, and he had somehow imprisoned her against the back of the lift, his hands planted firmly either side of her as he lowered his head until his lips were resting on hers.
The feeling of being surrounded by him, by the heat of his body, the weight of it that was almost resting on her, the scent of it that filled the air around her, was so intensely erotic that she felt almost as though he had laid her bare and actually touched her. She shuddered as he placed his hand on her breast, caressing it through the fine silk of the dress she was wearing. He bent his head and she turned her own to one side, then cried out in protest as she felt his lips caressing her nipple through the fine silk.
Swooningly Jaz closed her eyes. She ought not to be doing this. It was so dangerous. Common sense told her that. But her hand had already gone to his groin, seeking, stroking, needing the hot hard feel of him to prove to her that she was not alone in the savage almost frightening urgency of her need. The sensation of him swelling fiercely beneath her touch soothed her fractured ego, just as the sudden rough acceleration of his breathing brought her a swift feminine surge of triumph. She was not alone. He wanted her as much as she wanted him!
The lift shuddered to a halt and the door opened. Immediately she pushed past him.
They stepped out of the lift together, Jaz aware that her face was burning hotly and that her legs felt so weak they were barely able to support her. What if they had remained in the lift for longer? Would he…? Would she…?
As she turned away from him she heard him saying softly to her, ‘Let’s go to your room.’
Helplessly she stared at him. He was a man totally outside all her previous experience—which she had to admit was less than worthy of any kind of comparison. She had always led an unfashionably sedate kind of life, compared with the lives of her peers. Her battle to prove to her parents how important her chosen career path was to her had not left her with time to indulge in the sexual experimentation of other girls her age.
But it was a life which suited her and which she had always been very happy with. Sexual adventures of the kind that involved kissing tall, dark, handsome men in lifts were not something that had ever remotely interested her—or if they had she was certainly not prepared to admit it publicly, she hastily amended, as she wordlessly led the way to her hotel bedroom with her head held high but her heart thumping frantically in a mixture of excitement and apprehension.
It was only when they reached the door that qualms of conscience made her hesitate. She turned to him as she searched in her bag for her key.
‘I don’t think—’ she began, but he had taken her bag from unresisting fingers and was reaching out to draw her into his arms. In the same movement he slid open the door.
‘What is it that you don’t think, hon?’ he asked her with male emphasis. ‘That you don’t want this?’
Jaz’s whole body shook in the hard embrace of his arms as he bent his head and kissed her, a long, slow, lingering kiss that melted her bones and her will-power. They were inside the room, now and he had closed and locked the door, all without letting go of her, and now in the soft darkness he was still kissing her. Though what he was doing to her mouth was more, much more than merely kissing it. What he was doing was…
Jaz shuddered convulsively as his hands touched her body lightly, delicately, knowingly…This man knew women…He knew them very, very well. She could feel it in his touch…feel it in him. His tongue caressed her lips, as though he sensed and wanted to soothe her fears, circling them slowly and carefully, until the delicate pressure of his tongue-tip became not soothing but frustrating, tormenting…making her want…
The darkness seemed to increase her awareness of him, of the hot, musky male scent of his body. It made her doubly aware of the feel of his skin against her as she felt the roughened rasp of his jaw on her cheek, and the corresponding texture of his jacket sleeve against her bare arm. She was almost intoxicated by the cool fresh hint of cologne he was wearing.
In her mind’s eye she could see him in a very different environment from that of her hotel room—the Bourbon court had been exited from France to New Orleans, and it didn’t take much imagination on Jaz’s part to picture him at Versailles at the height of the Sun King’s reign. How well he would have fitted into that sophisticated and splendid milieu; his sexuality would have driven the court ladies into swooning fits of desire—would have had much the same effect on them as it was having on her right now!
He was like no other man she had ever met, dangerous and exciting, and she was drawn to him in a way that both shocked and thrilled her.
His teasing kiss was beginning to aggravate her. He was treating her like a girl, not a woman—not like the woman she knew she could be with him. All fire and passion, need and hunger. A woman to whom nothing else mattered more than her man, the feelings and desires they were generating and creating between them. Her made her feel…He made her feel alive, primitive, sensual—all woman! His woman!
Reaching up, she wrapped her arms around him, boldly tangling her tongue with his, drawing him into a kiss of fierce passion.
‘Uh-huh, so that’s what you want, is it?’ he demanded thickly against her mouth as he responded to her. ‘Well, in that case, hon—’
Jaz gasped as he picked her up as easily, as though she were a child, making his way sure-footedly towards the bed like a mountain cat.
As he laid her down he was already undressing her, and she made no move to stop him. She had known the moment they stepped into the lift together that this was going to happen. Had wanted it to happen. As it had happened with this man so many times since she’d arrived in New Orleans. She positively longed for Caid’s now familiar touch.
Moonlight streamed in through the unclosed curtains, silvering her exposed breasts. She gasped in pleasure as he touched them, running the slightly coarse pad of his fingertip round the exquisitely sensitive flesh surrounding each pouting nub.
Excitement, as hot and sweet as melting chocolate, filled her with shocked pleasure. Her body arched like a bow as she offered her breasts to him in the silent heat of the shadowy room, its stillness broken only by the raw tempo of their aroused breathing.
This was what she had been imagining them doing in the lift—she’d been picturing their naked bodies entwined in the still heat of the Louisiana night.
Fiercely she reached for him, her fingers tugging at buttons and fastenings, not stopping until she was able to touch the hot skin that held the muscled tautness of his naked body.
Just touching him unleashed within her a driven hunger she was half afraid to recognise. It was far, far outside the boundaries of her normal emotions. A reckless and alien, dangerous and wild wantonness that refused to be controlled or tamed.
As he reached for her, covering her body in fierce, rawly sensual kisses, she sobbed beneath the onslaught of her own response—which was immediate, feral and unstoppable.
Passionately they clung together, stroking, touching kissing, devouring one another in their mutual driving need. In the moonlight Jaz could see the scratches she had scorched across his back, and in the morning she knew her own body would bear the small bruise-marks of his hotly male demands on her, his desire for her. Then perhaps she would wonder at her own behaviour, but right now her thoughts were elsewhere.
‘Ready, hon?’ he demanded as he gathered her closer, so close that she could feel the heavy thud of his heart as though it were beating within her own body.
Wordlessly she answered him with her body, lifting her legs to wrap them tightly around him as he thrust into her.
The sensation of him filling her, stretching her, made her shake with almost unbearable pleasure.
Each movement of his body within hers, each powerful thrust, increased the frenzy of need that was taking her higher, filling her senses with the immensity of what was happening. And then abruptly the fierce, breath-catching ascent was over, and she was cresting the topmost wave of her own pleasure, surfing its heights, awed by the power of what she was experiencing. She cried out unknowingly, clinging to the body covering her own, feeling the male release within her; her body accepting the satisfaction of knowing it had given him completion whilst her exhausted senses relaxed.
Caid leaned up on one elbow and gently tickled the impossibly delicate curve of Jaz’s jaw with his fingertips. She was so tiny, so fragile, and yet at the same time so breathtakingly strong, this Englishwoman who had walked so unexpectedly into his life and his heart.
He had had his doubts—one hell of a lot of them, if he was honest—and with good reason. But then he had overheard her godfather talking to his mother about her background, and Caid had started to relax. Knowing that she came from farming stock—that she had been raised in a country environment and that her role within the store was simply a temporary one she had taken on to show her independence until she was ready to settle down and return to her roots—was all he had needed to lower his guard and stop fighting his feelings for her.
Which was just as well, because there was no way he could stop loving her now. No way he would ever contemplate settling down with a girl who did not share his deep love of country living and his determination that their children would be raised on his ranch, with their mother there for them, instead of travelling all over the world in the way his own mother had done. She had never been there when he had most needed her, and his parents finally divorced when his father had grown tired of his mother’s constant absences, her single-minded devotion to the family store. Caid had never been in any doubt that the store mattered more to his mother than he did. She had always been frank about the fact that his conception had been an accident.
As a young boy Caid had been badly hurt by his mother’s open admission of her lack of maternalism. As a teenager that hurt had turned to bitter resentment and as Caid had continued to grow his resentment had become an iron-hard determination to protect his own children from the same fate. Like many people who’d experienced a lonely and painful childhood, Caid had a very strong desire to have his own family and create the kind of closeknit unit he felt he had missed out on.
One of the most painful episodes of his childhood had been the time when his mother had not even been able to be there for him when his father—her ex-husband—had been killed in a road accident.
Caid had been eleven at the time, and he had never forgotten just how it had felt to be taken to the mortuary to identify his father…How alone, how afraid and how angry with his mother he had felt.
He had made a vow then that there was no way anything like that was ever going to happen to his kids. No way!
Consequently he had been very wary of becoming emotionally involved, despite the number of women who had tried to coax and tempt him into falling in love with them.
Until now…Until Jaz.
He had walked into the restaurant where the family, including his mother, was having dinner with Jaz and her godfather, and the moment he had set eyes on her he had known!
He had known too, from Jaz’s dazed expression and self-conscious pink-cheeked colour, that she was equally intensely aware of him.
It hadn’t taken him long to skilfully detach her from the others, on the pretext of showing her the view of the Mississippi from the upper floor of the restaurant, and even less time to let her know how attracted he was to her.
That his behaviour had been somewhat out of character was, he recognised, an indication of just how strong his feelings for her were.
Ironically, he had almost not met Jaz at all.
Although Caid had now established a workable and accepting adult relationship with his mother, one of the legacies from his childhood was his intense dislike of the family business. Had he been able to do so he would have preferred to have nothing whatsoever to do with the stores at all. However, that simply wasn’t possible. His maternal grandfather had left him a large portfolio of shares in the family business, which he held in trust, and as a further complication his mother had put emotional pressure on him to take on the role of the business financial adviser, following the completion of his Masters in Business Studies, claiming that if he didn’t she would never be able to believe he had forgiven her for his childhood.
Rather than become involved in painful wrangling Caid had given in, and of course the family had insisted that he further his role as financial adviser on their proposed purchase of the English store his mother was so keen to acquire—to add to the portfolio of highly individual and specialised stores already operating in Boston, Aspen and New Orleans.
Unlike the rest of his mother’s family, Caid’s first love was the land, the ranch he had bought for himself and was steadily building up, financed by the money he earned as a much sought-after financial consultant.
But he had come to New Orleans, protesting all the way like a roped steer, and thank heavens his mother had persevered, insisted on his presence. Because if she hadn’t…
The sexy smile curling his mouth deepened as Jaz opened her eyes.
‘Mmm, that sure was another wonderful night we spent together, ma’am,’ he teased her softly.
As he had known she would, Jaz started to blush. It fascinated him, this delicate English colour of hers that betrayed her every emotion, and made him feel he wanted to wrap her up and protect her.
‘You’d better go,’ Jaz told him unsteadily. ‘You know we both agreed that we wanted to keep this…us…to ourselves for now, and my godfather will be expecting me to have breakfast with him. Your mother has arranged for us to visit her warehouse this morning.’
Jaz gave a small soft gasp as Caid leaned forward and covered her mouth with his own, kissing her into silence, and from silence into sweetly hot fresh desire.
‘Are you sure you want me to leave?’ he asked, breathing the words against the sensitivity of her passionately kissed mouth whilst his hand pushed aside the bedclothes to mould round her breast.
As she struggled to keep her head and behave sensibly Jaz breathed in the intoxicating warm man-scent of Caid’s skin and knew she was fighting a lost cause.
Much better simply to give in, she acknowledged giddily as Caid started to kiss her again, gathering her up in his arms and rolling her swiftly beneath him.
‘Oh!’ Just the feel of his naked flesh against her own was enough to prompt Jaz’s soft betraying gasp, swiftly followed by a second and much more drawn out murmur of female pleasure as Caid made his intentions—and his hungry desire for her—very clear.
In terms of days they had known each other for very little time, but in terms of longing and love it felt to Jaz that they had known one another for ever.
‘A month ago I never dreamed that I’d be doing anything like this,’ she gasped as Caid’s hand stroked her body.
‘I should hope you didn’t,’ he growled mock-angrily.
‘After all, a month ago we hadn’t met.’
Immediately Jaz’s eyes filmed with tears.
‘Hon…What is it? What’s wrong? What did I say?’ Caid demanded urgently, cupping her face with his hands, his expression turning from one of amusement to anxious male concern.
‘Nothing,’ Jaz assured him. ‘It’s just that…Oh, Caid…If I hadn’t come to New Orleans—! If we hadn’t met—! If…I hadn’t known…’
‘You did come to New Orleans. We did meet, and you do know. We both know,’ Caid emphasised rawly. ‘I know, Jaz, that we were made to be together, that you are perfect for me. Perfect,’ he repeated meaningfully, glancing down the length of her body and then looking deep into her eyes.
Jaz could feel her toes curling as she looked at him. The way she felt about him still totally bemused and awed her. She had never thought of herself as the kind of woman who fell head over heels in love at first sight, who behaved so rashly that nothing would have stopped her sharing Caid’s bed or his life once he had told her how much he wanted her there.
It still made her feel giddy with happiness to know that Caid, who was surely the epitome of everything she had ever imagined she could possibly want in a man, had fallen in love with her. Caid was exactly the kind of man she had always secretly hoped she might meet: sophisticated, virile, sexy. A man who shared her world, who understood how important it was for her to be able to give free rein to her artistic nature; a man whose background meant that he would know instinctively why she preferred to stroke the sensual silkiness of rich velvet than to rub down the hindquarters of a horse. And why she could spend hours, days, wandering in delight through an art gallery, whilst the delights of a cattle market left her cold.
‘Will you be joining us this morning?’ Jaz asked him.
Caid shook his head and Jaz tried to conceal her disappointment. As excited as she was at the thought of seeing behind the scenes of the store, so to speak, she knew it would have been an even more wonderfully fulfilling experience if Caid had been there with her.
She knew that his mother had overall control of all the buying for the stores, and that she travelled the world seeking out new and different merchandise to tempt their discerning customers, but it was through Caid’s eyes that she wanted to see the Aladdin’s cave she suspected the warehouse would be—in Caid’s presence that she wanted to explore a part of the world he had made it clear they were going to share.
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