Come Running

Come Running
Anne Mather

Mills & Boon are excited to present The Anne Mather Collection – the complete works by this classic author made available to download for the very first time! These books span six decades of a phenomenal writing career, and every story is available to read unedited and untouched from their original release.The most attractive man she had ever met!But Matthew Lawford is also completely unsuitable and decidedly unavailable. Matthew is married – unhappily – but married nonetheless! And his duty to his wife can’t be ignored…And yet they can’t resist their impossible attraction. Darrell Anderson decides that whatever terms Matthew wants her on, she will still come running. But could there be any chance of happiness for them even if she does?

Mills & Boon is proud to present a fabulous collection of fantastic novels by bestselling, much loved author

ANNE MATHER

Anne has a stellar record of achievement within the

publishing industry, having written over one hundred

and sixty books, with worldwide sales of more than

forty-eight MILLION copies in multiple languages.

This amazing collection of classic stories offers a chance

for readers to recapture the pleasure Anne’s powerful,

passionate writing has given.

We are sure you will love them all!

I’ve always wanted to write—which is not to say I’ve always wanted to be a professional writer. On the contrary, for years I only wrote for my own pleasure and it wasn’t until my husband suggested sending one of my stories to a publisher that we put several publishers’ names into a hat and pulled one out. The rest, as they say, is history. And now, one hundred and sixty-two books later, I’m literally—excuse the pun—staggered by what’s happened.

I had written all through my infant and junior years and on into my teens, the stories changing from children’s adventures to torrid gypsy passions. My mother used to gather these manuscripts up from time to time, when my bedroom became too untidy, and dispose of them! In those days, I used not to finish any of the stories and Caroline, my first published novel, was the first I’d ever completed. I was newly married then and my daughter was just a baby, and it was quite a job juggling my household chores and scribbling away in exercise books every chance I got. Not very professional, as you can imagine, but that’s the way it was.

These days, I have a bit more time to devote to my work, but that first love of writing has never changed. I can’t imagine not having a current book on the typewriter—yes, it’s my husband who transcribes everything on to the computer. He’s my partner in both life and work and I depend on his good sense more than I care to admit.

We have two grown-up children, a son and a daughter, and two almost grown-up grandchildren, Abi and Ben. My e-mail address is mystic-am@msn.com (mailto:mystic-am@msn.com) and I’d be happy to hear from any of my wonderful readers.

Come Running

Anne Mather

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Table of Contents

Cover (#u26d75279-b80b-5890-9133-b5d92ed1e4ec)

About the Author (#ube46745e-69f5-57ca-91ba-ea7d7356a0a6)

Title Page (#u6e51aadf-0145-5c06-87f7-cfcbd426ded7)

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#ue8aa338d-598a-5f88-93cc-5828366fe177)

The marquee was crowded with friends and relatives all wanting to wish the happy couple every happiness, and Darrell sought the coolness of the moist air outside. It was a pity it had rained, a wet day in the small North Yorkshire town of Sedgeley was not exactly the ideal beginning to a marriage, but Susan and Frank looked so happy that Darrell had to concede that the weather meant little to them. She sighed without envy. Without that move from the London hospital to the Sedgeley Infirmary, it could well have been herself and Barry taking the plunge, but she was glad it was not. She had liked Barry well enough, she still liked him, but not enough to marry him.

She glanced back into the marquee. The toasts were over. Any minute now, Susan and Frank would be leaving for Susan’s mother’s house to get changed before leaving on their honeymoon. They were going to Majorca – where else? thought Darrell wryly – and then chided herself for her cynicism. Susan was a nice girl, she liked her, and as fellow nurses, they worked well together.

Her heels were sinking into the damp ground beneath her feet and she looked down impatiently. The hem of her coffee-coloured gown was going to be ruined, but that couldn’t be helped. No one could have expected a week of torrential rain at the beginning of June which had made the area around the marquee a veritable quagmire.

A sudden breeze brought her hand to her head to secure the wide-brimmed straw boater and with her other hand plucking the hem of her skirt out of the mud, she became aware that she was being observed with some amusement by a man standing just inside the entrance to the marquee.

She knew who the man was. She had been introduced to him earlier. He was Matthew Lawford, Susan’s eldest brother, who, together with his wife, had come up from London for the wedding. But Darrell had heard about him before then. Susan talked about him a lot. She was very proud of her brother who had succeeded in getting to Oxford and was now one of the youngest financiers in the city. A tycoon, Susan called him, although Darrell suspected that was a word coined by her family and not by Matthew Lawford himself.

Her initial impressions of him were mixed. Physically, he was a very attractive man, with straight brown hair, brown eyes, and the kind of tan not associated with summers in Sedgeley. She guessed his age to be around thirty-two or thirty-three, and although his beginnings were not in doubt, several years living in London had smoothed out most of his accent. He was tall, without an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones, and his clothes, obviously out of the class of those of his father and brothers, fitted him with ease and elegance. And yet elegant wasn’t a word Darrell would have used to describe him. His face was too hard for that, his manner occasionally exhibiting a toughness which would not be out of place in the wrestling ring. It was the sinuous way he moved that drew attention to his appearance, a kind of grace simulated with animal-like ease.

No, his appearance, his magnetism with women, was not in any doubt, and in other circumstances Darrell might have felt wary of him. But to counteract this feeling, there was the presence of Celine Lawford, his wife.

She was the discordant note in the whole proceedings, and Darrell had been unable to avoid noticing how unsuited she was to her present surroundings. Small and slender, with a cap of silvery blonde hair framing her piquantly attractive face, Celine was as striking as her husband, but it was obvious that she neither liked nor made any effort to mix with Matthew’s family. It was evident in the bored expression she had worn throughout the ceremony, and afterwards at the reception she had made it painfully apparent that she considered the arrangements gauche and lacking in refinement. Clearly, she had not attended the wedding willingly, and she considered her husband’s relatives coarse and vulgar.

It wasn’t true, of course. The Lawfords were a friendly crowd, and during the eight months Darrell had lived in Sedgeley, she had grown very fond of these down-to-earth northern people. But she, like everyone else, had had to learn to accept them for what they were and not try to change them. They had no time for artifice or pretension, whereas Celine no doubt was used to the bland sophistication of city life.

Matthew Lawford was different. Darrell had had to admit that to herself. He had fitted back into his surroundings with the ease of a chameleon, swallowing beers in the pub before the wedding with his father and four younger brothers as if he was used to doing this every day of his life. The Lawfords were a large family, Susan had two older married sisters as well as the younger one who had been bridesmaid, but it was Matthew who appeared to be the family favourite, and to be charitable Darrell had at first thought that Celine was jealous. She might well be, but it wasn’t just that. Whatever feelings she had for her husband, she cared nothing for his family, and Darrell had hoped that her attitude wouldn’t spoil Susan’s day. It hadn’t. The Lawford clan was too closeknit for that.

“Having problems?”

The attractive unfamiliar voice brought Darrell’s head up with a jerk to find the subject of her thoughts standing right in front of her, regarding her steadily. “Oh – not really,” she demurred, with a rueful smile. “It’s my fault for coming out here.”

Matthew’s eyes travelled down to the toes of her shoes emerging from the hem of her gown. “It was pretty humid in there, though, wasn’t it?” he commented, looking into her eyes again. He had a disturbingly direct stare that disconcerted her. “You’re Miss Anderson, aren’t you? Susan’s nursing friend?”

“Darrell Anderson,” supplied Darrell, nodding. “It’s a pity it’s been such a miserable day.”