David leaned over to look down into Honor’s sleeping face.
Even in her sleep she was smiling. What was she dreaming of—him? He grimaced a little at his own vanity and then wondered if she would still be smiling if she knew the truth about him. In reality they hardly knew one another, but there had been an honesty, a purity, about their coming together that had elevated it way, way above anything cheap or carnal. Honor had talked to him openly about her life, her past, but he had not been able to be similarly honest with her. There was no real point, he reminded himself. Their time together could only be brief, the relationship transitory, and once she knew the truth she was bound to reject him. Who could blame her? But he knew he would have to tell her, even though he couldn’t really understand the compulsion that was drivng him to do so. Just as he didn’t understand why he had felt that he must come home. “Honor …” Reluctantly, she opened her eyes. “There’s something I have to tell you,” David began. 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. A Perfect Family The Perfect Seduction Perfect Marriage Material Figgy Pudding The Perfect Lover The Perfect Sinner The Perfect Father A Perfect Night Coming Home Starting Over Coming Home Penny Jordan
Table of Contents
The Crightons
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EPILOGUE
‘HOW’S GRAMPS?’ ‘Not too good, I’m afraid, Joss,’ Jenny Crighton admitted in response to her youngest child’s question, looking past the tall, gangly shape of the seventeen-year-old to where her husband Jon was standing, frowning a little. ‘Maddy managed to have a word with me in private after I’d been to see him,’ Jenny told her husband. ‘She’s very concerned about the way he seems to be deteriorating. Despite the fact that medically both his hip operations have been a success, he still complains that he’s in pain and that his joints ache. He’s quite definitely losing weight and Maddy’s worried that he isn’t eating as well as he was. He’s looking positively gaunt.’ ‘He is in his eighties, Jen,’ Jon reminded her, but Jenny could see that he was still frowning and she knew he was troubled. Ben was his father after all and even though they all knew that Ben could not possibly receive better care than that given to him by Maddy, their daughter-in-law, the wife of their eldest son Max, Jenny also knew that Jon still felt that he should be the one to carry the main responsibility for Ben, just as he still felt guilty because … ‘Aunt Ruth says that Ben is turning into a curmudgeonly old man,’ Joss informed them both. ‘She says he actually enjoys being grumpy.’ ‘Grumpy perhaps,’ Jenny allowed, ‘but no one enjoys being in constant physical pain, Joss,’ she reminded him gently. Joss had always preferred the company of Great-Aunt Ruth to that of his grandfather, and Jenny knew that she could hardy blame him. Ruth had been far more of a grandparent and a mentor to Joss than Ben had ever been. Out of all his grandchildren, there was only one for whom Ben Crighton had ever shown any real liking and that was for Max. Not that such favouritism had had either her or Jon’s backing. Once there had been an acute degree of antagonism between Max and his parents, but thankfully that rift was now healed. Jenny only had to watch Max with his wife Maddy and their three children to feel overwhelmed not just with love and pride but with a humbling gratitude to whomever or whatever had drawn the master plan for her son’s life. To say that Max had completely changed virtually overnight
