One Intimate Night. PENNY JORDAN
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“I want you to go to bed…now!”
“Bed…” Georgia’s mobile features betrayed her, shock crimsoning her already pink face.
As Piers saw the expression in her eyes, and realized just what she was thinking, he cursed silently under his breath.
“You’re shivering, you might have caught a chill.” As he spoke, he involuntarily moved closer to her.
“No!” As she lifted her hand from her body to ward him off she inadvertently stepped back onto the hem of her big towel.
Only loosely secured around her body, the towel began to unwrap itself.
Immediately, Georgia made a despairing grab for it and just as immediately, Piers launched himself across the gap that separated them, every instinct propelling him to do the gentlemanly thing and protect her modesty. The towel, though, and perhaps fate, too, had other ideas so that all Georgia’s hands encountered was empty air whilst Piers’s were unexpectedly and explosively filled with warm, silky, damp-fleshed woman.
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.
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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.
One Intimate Night
Penny Jordan
I should like to dedicate this book to everyone at the
Cheadle and Cheadle Hulme Dog Club and, of course, to Sheba and Kerry.
CHAPTER ONE
‘GEORGIA…good…I’m sorry we’ve had to drag you in on your day off but there’s a bit of a flap on.’
Georgia Evans’s smile turned to an anxious frown as she saw the concern shadowing the eyes of the senior partner of the veterinary practice where she had worked since becoming a fully qualified vet six months earlier.
‘I wasn’t doing anything special,’ she responded, ignoring the accusing mental image she had of her half-painted flat walls—a task she had willingly abandoned when she had received the telephone call from the surgery’s receptionist asking if she could come in.
‘What’s—?’
Pre-empting her question, Philip Ross told her quickly, ‘It’s the mare out at Barton Farm; she’s foaling and there are complications. Gary is with her but I suspect we may have to operate. I’m on my way over to join him now. Jenny will take over my morning’s ops and Helen will take Gary’s surgery, which will leave you as our emergency on-call vet, and if you could take the morning’s dog-training class as well…’
As he spoke Philip was on his way out of the room, and, aware of the seriousness of the situation, Georgia made no attempt to delay him.
Once he had gone she walked into the main office and reception area of the practice.
Although all the small pets due to have operations had already been delivered by their owners, the main clinic of the day hadn’t started as yet and Georgia was free to make herself a cup of coffee and check to see if she had any post, whilst discussing what had happened with the other two more senior vets she worked alongside.
‘I hope we don’t get any emergencies,’ she confided to Jenny. ‘I’m not sure…’
‘If I were you I’d worry more about the dog-training class than any emergencies,’ Jenny advised her wryly. ‘Ben will be there…’
‘Ben? Mrs Latham’s Ben?’ Georgia questioned, groaning when Jenny nodded.
‘Oh, no!’
Mrs Latham’s Ben was an English setter. A beautiful dog without an ounce of aggression in him, but unfortunately with more than his share of scattiness. To make matters worse Ben was a rescue dog, with Mrs Latham his second owner. Ben had been rescued from ending up in a dog’s home thanks to her decision to give him a place to stay with her, and Georgia could well remember the first time she had seen him.
She had been working at the surgery for less than a month when a harassed young woman had turned up with Ben, who was just over a year old then and physically fully grown. He was a handsome, lovable, charming and completely dizzy dog, and Ben’s then owner had complained to Georgia, who had been the vet on duty when she had brought him in, that with an elderly father to care for, a husband whose work took him away for days at a time and two young children she simply could not cope with a boisterous, energetic large dog.
As she’d looked from the woman’s anxious eyes to the dog’s trusting ones Georgia’s heart had sunk. Ben was a beautiful dog, healthy, young, and as a fully bred pedigree had no doubt cost his owner an awful lot of money, but here she was telling Georgia defensively that there was simply no way she could keep him.
It had been at that moment that Mrs Latham had walked in, and Georgia’s heart had sunk even further.
Mrs Latham was the owner of a raffish ginger tom cat who had adopted her when his previous owners had moved house. Ginger had cynically pounced on Mrs Latham’s tender heart and the equally tender choice cuts of fish and meat she supplied him with and had moved himself in to Number One Ormond Gardens. But Ginger was, at heart, an independent warrior, and his night-time clashes with other cats in the neighbourhood meant that he was a regular visitor at the surgery.
Having reassured Mrs Latham that Ginger was recovering very well from the small operation he had had to repair a tear in his ear, Georgia had left Mrs Latham in the waiting room with Ben’s owner whilst she went to collect Ginger from the cattery.
On her return she had discovered that Ben’s owner had left