High Society
A CELEBRATION OF PENNY JORDAN
Two favourite stories in one collectible volume
These high-rolling bachelors may recognize a good business deal when they see it...but love? That’s another story...
Expecting the Playboy’s Heir
Silas Carter’s jet-set life leaves no room for relationships, but he realizes marriage is a logical next step—and he has the perfect bride in mind! Julia Fellowes is beautiful, and well connected, and Silas is determined to make her his convenient wife. The pleasure of sharing her bed will just be a bonus....
Blackmailing the Society Bride
Millionaire Marcus Canning figures it’s time to become a father—and husband. First he’ll need a wife, and recently divorced, deeply in debt Lucy Blayne is the ideal candidate. But after the vows are exchanged and nights are shared, an outsider raises the stakes, putting life and love on the line!
Praise for
New York Times
bestselling author
Penny
Jordan
“Women everywhere will find pieces
of themselves in
Jordan’s characters.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Expecting the Playboy’s Heir
is a
charming romance, with two lovely characters discovering that they’re in
love.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Jordan’s record is phenomenal.”
—The Bookseller
“Blackmailing the Society Bride
by
Penny Jordan...
charms with romance, passion and drama.”
—RT Book Reviews
“[Penny Jordan’s novels] touch every emotion.”
—RT Book Reviews
Penny Jordan
, one of Harlequin’s most popular authors, sadly passed away on December 31st, 2011. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over 100 million books around the world. Penny wrote a total of 187 novels for Harlequin, including the phenomenally successful
A Perfect Family, To Love, Honor and Betray, The Perfect Sinner
and
Power Play,
which hit the
New York Times
bestseller list. Loved for her distinctive voice, she was successful 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.” It is perhaps this gift for sympathetic characterization that helps to explain her enduring appeal.
Penny Jordan
High Society
Expecting the Playboy’s Heir
CHAPTER ONE
L
IPS
light as the touch of a butterfly’s wings, but far more sensual, brushed the back of her neck, a male hand on her shoulder enclosing the small intimacy in protective secrecy, before he whispered in her ear.
‘Back in a few minutes. Don’t go away.’
She hadn’t moved, not even to turn her head to look at him, and she didn’t move now. Mainly because she couldn’t, Jules realised shakily.
There were times when she would rather be anything other than one of the partners in an event planning organisation. And this was definitely one of them.
Everyone who was anyone in the celebrity world was here in Majorca, thronging the grounds of the exclusive holiday villa currently on loan to the most excitingly ‘in’ Hollywood superstar couple.
A-List Life
, the magazine responsible for paying for this particular ‘bash,’ which was ostensibly being given to celebrate the couple’s first wedding anniversary, had already described them as Hollywood Royalty.
Now their carefully selected celebrity ‘friends’ were ‘celebrating,’ whilst the magazine’s flamboyant owner and editor, Dorland Chesterfield, interviewed the happy couple and its photographers mingled with the guests.
She was getting too cynical, Julia decided. Lucy, her friend and the owner of Prêt a Party, had been thrilled about this commission, and of course Julia could understand why.
Dorland was a millionaire and was
the
most influential person on the upmarket social event scene. Being hired to organise any event the magazine was sponsoring—never mind being selected, as they had been, to organise Dorland’s fabulous and high-profile end-of-summer celeb bash—was virtually a licence to print money, via future commissions, as Nick, Lucy’s husband, had said.
A small frown pleated Julia’s forehead as she remembered Nick’s unkind comments about Dorland.
‘The man’s a fat, brainless star-sucker—if he is a man,’ he had announced derisively when Dorland had first approached them.
‘That’s neither true nor fair, Nick.’ Julia had immediately defended Dorland.
Yes, Dorland was slightly overweight, and it was true that there were rumours that prior to bursting onto the social scene and setting up his magazine he had undergone a sex-change operation, as well as equally unproven gossip and speculation about his sexual orientation. However, Julia privately suspected he might well be one of those people who genuinely were asexual. Although he was surrounded by eager wannabes of both sexes, thanks to the success of
A-List Life
, no one had ever been able to say categorically that he had had any sexual involvements or partnerships. It was Julia’s belief that Dorland reserved all his passion for the great love in his life, which was fame and those who achieved it. Whatever his sexuality, Dorland could tap into the female psyche, and he also had the knack of massaging a vulnerable and famous ego to the point where even the most out-of-reach ‘star’ was prepared to let down their guard with him.
The truth was that Dorland genuinely liked and admired the famous, and they, sensing that, turned to him and his magazine with the kind of exclusive articles that had other editors gnashing their teeth with envy.
Nick affected to loathe and despise him, but Julia couldn’t help wondering if secretly Nick was jealous of both his success and his wealth.
She, not Nick, was the one who had had the headache of organising and co-ordinating the two lavish events Dorland had hired them for. Including dealing with more mammoth egos than any sane person would ever want to know. Nick had cleverly managed to be away chasing up new business or interviewing potential new clients when all the really hard work had had to be done. Nick
was
here today, though.
A pang of pain mingled with guilt squeezed her heart.
There had been a time when in her heart, if not in public, she had begun to dream that she and Nick would become a pair. When he had dropped her for Lucy, shortly after she had introduced them, she had naturally done her best to conceal how she felt, assuring herself that hearts did not break, and that if hers was so very badly cracked that she felt it would never mend, then that was her own affair.
Her mental choice of the word
affair
made her grimace. Nick might have pursued and flattered her, but things had not got to the point where they had exchanged anything more than a few passionate kisses, and thankfully she had not had time to confide in her friends about how she’d felt about him.
But just recently Nick had started to complain to her that his marriage was in difficulties and he felt he had made a mistake. Lucy, too, whilst fiercely loyal to her husband and her marriage, had begun to look strained and unhappy.
After a thorough visual scan, to ensure that nothing needed her attention, Julia was just about to go inside and check on the progress of the interview when Nick came up behind her and put his hand on her bare shoulder again, deliberately caressing the smooth, lightly tanned skin.
‘Don’t, Nick.’ She warned him off.
He ignored her, murmuring tauntingly, ‘Don’t? Don’t what? Don’t stop? You know you want it every bit as much as I do.’
‘That’s not true,’ she denied fiercely. ‘Apart from anything else, you’re married to Lucy.’
‘Don’t remind me.’
Automatically Julia felt herself recoil. These were words she just did not want to hear, just as this was a situation she did not want to be in, but Nick was still holding her, and closing the gap between them as he whispered thickly, ‘Remember how good it was between us? What are you holding back for? Why shouldn’t we enjoy one another when it’s what we both want? I could come to your room later. No one need know, and—’
‘No! It’s over between us, Nick. I mean that. And I won’t change my mind.’
‘Oh, yes, you will,’ he told her softly. ‘You know that, and so do I.’
He was bending his head towards her and in another heartbeat he would be kissing her. Panic and guilt invaded her. The last time he had kissed her had been under a tropical moon in the garden of the luxury hotel where they had met, and where she had assumed they would become lovers. But by the end of the holiday Lucy had been the one Nick had declared he loved. Lucy had been the one he had married. Lucy was his
wife
. And one of her two closest friends. No way was she going to betray that friendship. Every marriage went through a bad patch.
Somehow she managed to wrench herself away from Nick, but she had barely taken a couple of steps when she felt hard male fingers gripping her arm.
‘No, Nick. I meant what I said,’ she said sharply, without bothering to turn her head.
‘Did you? He certainly didn’t seem to think so—and neither do I!’
‘Silas!’
Her whole body went into shock as she stared up in consternation at the man holding on to her.
‘How—?’ she began, only to be cut off with ruthless efficiency.
‘How much did I overhear? All of it,’ he told her succinctly. ‘How long has it been going on?’
‘Nothing is going on!’
The look he gave her—ice-blue eyes narrowed, cynicism tightening his mouth, even the angle of his head as he turned it toward her—reflected his disbelief. She could feel the old familiar mix of anger and antipathy taking hold of her.
‘It’s true,’ she insisted. ‘I met Nick before he met Lucy, and the relationship he was referring to was that relationship—not that it’s any of your business.’
‘A relationship he obviously now believes you want to resume,’ Silas said silkily.
‘Well, he believes wrong. Because I don’t.’
The way he was looking at her was driving up her own anger. They’d never got on, not really. She only tolerated him because of Gramps, whose title and land he would one day inherit.
In Gramps’s shoes, she doubted that she would have been able to take to her heart so warmly this American outsider who, by virtue of being descended in the male line from Gramps’s younger brother, would one day inherit his title and land. But then she did not possess her grandfather’s sanguine outlook on life.
‘But you do want
him
.’
It was a taunt rather than a question.
‘No!’ she said furiously. ‘Nick is married to Lucy. And she is my best friend.’
‘I know that. But I also know that if you want what you’re saying you do, you’ll make damn sure he knows that you aren’t available.’
Julia had had enough. ‘By doing what, exactly?’ she demanded angrily.
Silas gave the kind of shrug that only very tall, very muscular, very
male
men could give. And, as always, being forced to recognise his maleness triggered a frisson of awareness inside her that hiked up her antipathy towards him. He had no right to be so damn sexy. It was somehow all wrong that a man who aggravated her as much as Silas did should possess the kind of physique and looks that made grown women react like hormone-controlled teenagers.
‘By doing whatever it takes. Either by giving up your job—’
‘I won’t do that,’ Julia interrupted him irritably. ‘Especially as Lucy’s already lost Carly, now that she’s married to Ricardo and expecting a baby. I can’t leave as well.’
‘—or by making sure Blayne knows you aren’t available.’
‘I’ve already told him that I’m not.’
‘But, as he can quite plainly see, you are. On the other hand, if there were another man in your life...’
‘But there isn’t.’
‘So find one who’s willing to pretend to be there for long enough to get Nick Blayne to back off.’
‘What? Like who?’
‘Like me.’
‘What?’
Julia shook her head in violent denial. ‘You? No. No way! Ever. Absolutely not. Anyway, everyone knows that we loathe one another.’
‘It isn’t unheard of for couples to discover that what they thought was love is really loathing, so why shouldn’t we have made the discovery the other way around?’
‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Do you really expect me to agree to pretend that you and I are in a relationship?’
‘I thought you said you wanted to protect Lucy’s marriage.’
‘I do, but not by offering myself up as a sacrifice for you to devour.’
‘Very bacchanalian imagery. Although I confess the thought of you offering yourself up...’
‘I wouldn’t. Not to you. Not ever.’
‘But you would to Nick Blayne?’
‘No!’
‘So prove it.’
Julia glared at him.
‘Just what is this all about, Silas? What’s in it for you?’ she demanded trenchantly. ‘And what on earth are you doing here, anyway? You hate this kind of thing.’
‘I’m here because you’re here.’ Another shrug, more lazily dismissive this time, and the movement of powerful shoulders beneath the linen suit jacket unbelievably and very much unwantedly conjured up images of just such a pair of male shoulders naked, and gleaming in the morning sunlight as their owner arched his equally naked and male body over her own.
Silas
naked?
Such an image might not be legally or even morally taboo, but it was certainly not the way she was used to thinking about him. Was this the kind of thing that happened when you were in your mid-twenties and your sex life was an arid desert, refreshed only by watching reruns of
Sex and the City
and determinedly refusing to study the ads in the back of glossy magazines for purveyors of sex toys?
‘Oh, yes. Of course,’ she agreed wryly, hurriedly banishing her unexpectedly erotic mental images.
But before she could ask him why he was really there, he told her coolly, ‘You should wear a hat in this heat. Your face is burning.’
Maybe it was, but the heat it was giving off hadn’t been caused by the sun, Julia admitted to herself.
That was the trouble with Silas. Much as he filled her with wary dislike and suspicion, she still couldn’t stop herself from being aware of him as a man. And not just any man, but a very dangerously sexy man.
‘What is it you really want?’ she demanded.
‘Well, for one thing I want your grandfather’s peace of mind and continued good health. We both know how much it would upset him if it got into the papers—as it more than likely would—that his beloved granddaughter was involved in a sordid love triangle. And for another... Let’s just say that it would be convenient for me right now to be seen publicly as romantically involved.’
It might not, Silas had decided in his practical way, be in his own best interests to discuss Aimee DeTroite and the problems she was causing him with Julia. There was no need, after all, for her to have to know. And as for Aimee herself—since she continued to take such an unwanted and intrusive interest in his private life, hopefully the discovery that he was now ‘coupled up’ with Julia should send a very clear message to her that she was wasting her time.
Not that that was the only or even the most important reason he had for what he was doing.
‘Well, at least you haven’t claimed that you want me,’ Julia told him.
‘Would you like me to?’
Say it or mean it? Julia felt her heart ricochet from one side of her chest to the other.
‘It might be worth it, just for the pleasure of calling your bluff,’ she told him sweetly.
‘Like Blayne was calling yours, you mean?’ Silas challenged her.
‘I meant what I said to him,’ Julia told him hotly.
‘Then prove it.’
‘I don’t have to prove anything to you.’
‘Not to me, perhaps,’ he agreed, in that mocking way of his that so infuriated her. ‘But I rather think that you do have something to prove to Lucy. She was standing right next to me when Blayne was kissing your neck.’
Immediately, and anxiously, she looked beyond his shoulder to where she could see Lucy, talking to the magazine editor.
‘She saw him?’ she demanded, concern for her friend immediately pushing everything else she was feeling out of the way.
‘Yes.’
Lucy, her lifelong friend. Lucy, who always somehow seemed to be struggling to conceal an inner fragility and vulnerability. Lucy, who would be broken and destroyed by the thought that her husband was cheating on her with her best friend. No way could she allow that to happen, no matter what temporary sacrifices she might have to make herself.