>
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.
Penny Jordan Tribute Collection
Falcon’s Prey
The Sheikh’s Virgin Bride
One Night with the Sheikh
Woman to Wed?
Best Man to Wed?
Too Wise to Wed?
The Mistress Purchase
The Demetrios Virgin
Marco’s Convenient Wife
A Bride for His Majesty’s Pleasure
Her Christmas Fantasy
Figgy Pudding
The Mistress Assignment
Mistress of Convenience
Mistress to Her Husband
The Six-Month Marriage
Injured Innocent
Loving
Penny Jordan
Dear Reader,
Falcon’s Prey was Penny’s first novel published by Mills & Boon and she was always rather proud of it. It’s easy to see why. The story contains all the essential elements which were to become trademark Jordan. The ordinary heroine in the shabby coat. The powerful male who intimidates everyone around him… until he falls hopelessly in love with that very ordinary girl.
Picking up the book today, it’s astonishing to find that it’s just as fresh as when it first came out in 1981. Immediately, the reader is swept up in the story and carried away by it. Penny had that knack of portraying emotion so openly and so honestly that it’s easy to feel instant identification with the heroine. And, of course—to fall in love with the hero! She went on to create this incredible alchemy with every single one of her books—two more of which are also included in this sizzling volume.
So many things have been written since Penny’s untimely death. Words like “legendary” and “glamorous” have peppered her eulogies—both true (and how she might have smiled to hear them!). Many people have pointed out what a fantastic mentor she became to new writers, and what a consummate professional she was. Again, true.
But I shall remember Penny as an animal-mad friend who lived for her writing. Who was as passionate about her hundredth-plus novel as she was about her first. Who poured everything she had into her current story and then found that extra something to pour in a little bit more. That’s the ‘secret’ behind a really great writer.
I hope you enjoy reading this as much as millions of others have done.
With warmest wishes,
Sharon Kendrick
CHAPTER ONE
THE restaurant was well known and expensive, and Felicia had to pretend to be unaware of the waiter’s contemptuous appraisal of her shabby coat as she hurriedly surveyed the occupants of the tables.
Her spirits lifted when she saw Faisal, and the waiter, plainly reviewing his opinion of her when he saw with whom she was to dine, cleared a path for her with an alacrity which she secretly found amusing. It spoke volumes for the power of money, she reflected, as Faisal pushed back his chair and stood up, an appreciative smile lighting his handsome features.
‘I’m sorry I’m so late,’ she apologised as they sat down. ‘I was late leaving the office.’
‘The office! Zut! Have I not told you before to give up this worthless job?’ Faisal demanded with an arrogance that slightly dismayed her.
An attractive girl, with auburn hair that curled on to her shoulders and sombre green eyes that hinted at a natural reserve, Felicia was unaware of the assessing glances of some of the other diners. Although her neat ribbed sweater and toning tweed skirt instantly placed her apart from the elegant creatures in silks and furs who sat at the other tables, she had a lissom grace which automatically drew the male eye.
That Faisal was aware of this was obvious from the jealous looks he gave these other men who dared to look upon his Felicia; but Felicia herself was completely unaware of the slight stir caused by her entrance.
She had known the young Kuwaiti for just six breathless weeks. A mutual interest in photography had led to their initial meeting at night school classes and one or two casual dates had grown into regular thrice weekly meetings, and more latterly dates most nights of the week as Faisal grew increasingly possessive.
With Faisal’s insistence that he take her out to lunch most days of the week, and dates nearly every night as well, it had proved impossible to keep their romance a secret from the other girls in her office. At first they had teased her unmercifully, until they realised that the affair was becoming serious. Then their lighthearted teasing had turned to warnings of a more serious nature as they repeated direful tales of what could happen to European girls foolish enough to take the promises of rich males too seriously. Felicia kept her own counsel. She was sure that Faisal respected her too much to hurt her in the way that they were suggesting, but even so, she had been surprised and then flattered when he began to talk about marriage.
During these talks he had told her a good deal about his family, just as she had told him about her parents, dying so young and so tragically when she was little more than a baby, and leaving her to be brought up by Aunt Ellen and Uncle George in their bleak granite house on the Lancashire moors.
Her childhood had not been a happy one. Uncle George had been a strict and unbending guardian, whose constant rejection had built up in her a lack of self-confidence coupled with the feeling that in failing to gain his love she had somehow failed as a human being. Consequently, in the warmth of Faisal’s readily expressed adoration she had begun to bloom