513f-e9a5-54bb-adf4-9aeed1e77d9f">
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 [email protected] and I’d be happy to hear from any of my wonderful readers.
Forbidden Flame
Anne Mather
Table of Contents
PEERING through the fly-spotted window of the hotel in Las Estadas, Caroline thought she must have been slightly mad to agree to come here. Whatever had possessed her to apply for this job? Why on earth had she imagined it would be exciting, a challenge, something to divert her from the sudden emptiness of her life in England? What did she, a university graduate, with honours in English and history, know of teaching an eight-year-old child, and why had she been chosen when there had obviously been others more suitable?
Of course, the advertisement she had read would have interested anyone with a spark of adventure in their blood. The chance to work in Mexico—the land of the Aztecs, steeped in history, and peopled by the ancestors of Montezuma and Cortez—but Caroline wondered now how many of those other applicants had baulked when they were expected to travel to a remote village north of Yucatan. She had spoken with several of the other girls, waiting in the drawing room of the hotel suite in London, and almost all of them had gained the opinion that they were to work in Mexico City.
But even when Caroline had learned where the job was she had not been discouraged. She knew a little about Mexico, or so she had imagined, and the idea of living within driving distance of the Mayan city of Chichen Itza had been a glowing inducement. Only now, waiting in the seedy surroundings of the Hotel Hermosa, a misnomer surely, did the full realisation of what she was committed to occur to her, and if there had been some way she could return to Merida without anyone’s knowledge, she would have surely done so.
Outside, a drenching downpour had turned the street into a muddy river, and given a grey aspect to buildings already dirt-daubed and ramshackle. This was not the Mexico she had imagined, the colourful blending of past and present in a kaleidoscope of rich mosaics and even richer architecture. This was poverty and squalor, and the simple struggle for survival against enormous odds. Las Estadas had not yet felt the impact of the oil boom that was supposedly going to transform Mexico’s economy. Here life was still held cheaply and governed by the whims of weather, and a seemingly unkind fate. To Caroline, used to the social and cultural advantages of a Western civilisation, the sight of so much deprivation was doubly shocking, and she was uncomfortably aware that she would have much preferred not to have seen what she had.
Turning away from the window, she viewed the sordid little room behind her without liking. A rag mat beside the narrow iron-railed bedspread was all the covering the floor possessed, and the water in the chipped jug on the washstand was the
