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      One Night in His Arms

       Penny Jordan

      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 eight-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.

      Look out for Penny’s last books: The Price of Royal Duty launched the new continuity THE SANTINA CROWN and was available in May 2012, and her final original novel, A Secret Disgrace, became available in June 2012.

      Dear Reader,

      It is such a pleasure for me to have one of my books linked to a book—Taken for Revenge, Bedded for Pleasure—by fellow author India Grey. I love her books so much for their fresh, zesty approach, and for the special emotional intensity she brings to her writing, and I know that you will enjoy reading this book every bit as much as I did. She has such a wonderful and naturally talented writing voice and such an instinctive sense of what readers look for in Modern™ romance books.

      I have to admit, though, that there is another reason for having a very special place on my bookshelves for India Grey’s books. She and I were members of the same writing group and, after reading her work I encouraged her, indeed bullied her almost, into sending her manuscript in to Mills & Boon. I should also admit here that when I read those opening pages, I became involved with her characters so immediately that I felt rather envious of her talent. However, happily there is room in the Mills & Boon “stable” for a wide variety of authors, each with their own distinctive voice, and it is both a pleasure and a privilege for me to have my book partnered with hers.

      Happy reading to you all.

       Penny Jordan

      NB

      Penny wrote this letter just a few weeks before she passed away.—Ed.

      PROLOGUE

      ‘WHAT the hell are you doing, Sylvie? Just what kind of game are you playing now?’ Ran demanded angrily as he removed her hands, releasing her fingers from his shirt where she had unconsciously curled them in her attempt to get him to listen to what she wanted to say, to understand that she was no longer a child, that she was now completely and totally a woman … a woman who loved and wanted him.

      ‘Ran, this isn’t a game,’ she protested, her eyes starting to fill with anguished tears as he thrust her away. ‘I want—’

      ‘Oh, I know exactly what you want, Sylvie,’ he interrupted her savagely. ‘You want me to take you to bed. But right now what I feel more like doing—’ He broke off, said something she couldn’t quite catch under his breath and then turned to look at her so that the light fell sharply across his face, outlining the aristocratic arrogance of his profile.

      ‘Your stepbrother is one of my closest friends and my employer and—’

      ‘This doesn’t have anything to do with Alex,’ Sylvie protested frantically. ‘This is just between you and me, Ran.’

      ‘You and me? There is no you and me,’ he told her cruelly. ‘You are just a schoolgirl, Sylvie, whilst I am a fully adult man.’

      ‘But Ran, I love you,’ Sylvie pleaded desperately, throwing everything she had left into one last attempt to make him see how she felt.

      ‘Really?’ Ran drawled mockingly. ‘How much? As much as the pop star you were ready to die for six months ago, or the pony you wanted three months before that?’

      ‘That was before I was properly grown up,’ Sylvie told him.

      So very little space separated them—a few feet … that was all. If she let him walk away from her now without at least trying …

      Boldly she closed the distance between them, taking him off guard as she placed her body close to his and wrapped her arms possessively around him, possessively and far too tightly for him to remove them as he had done so easily a few moments ago.

      ‘Ran …’ She pleaded with him, lifting her face to him, her mouth trembling. ‘Ran, please …’

      She felt something that could have been a shudder galvanise his body before clumsily and inexpertly she pressed her mouth against his in a closed-lipped, untutored kiss.

      His mouth felt hard and hot, his skin where he had shaved thrillingly rough against her own. Fireworks ignited and exploded deep within her body; her heart was beating so fast she thought she might die of the excitement.

      ‘Ran,’ she moaned passionately against his mouth as she twisted with innocent provocation against his body.

      Suddenly his own arms were around her, not pushing her away as he had done earlier, but holding onto her, his fingers biting hard into her slender arms as he slid one hand into the back of her hair, holding her head still whilst his mouth started to move on hers.

      Sylvie felt her head start to spin and her knees go weak.

      If she had thought that her heart was beating fast before, that was nothing to the way it was pounding