Stranger in Paradise (Home Front - Book #2)

by Barbara Bretton

  “I’m terrified.”

  “You? I doubt you’re afraid of much in life, Mac.”

  “You’d be surprised.” He drew lazy circles on her wrist with his forefinger. “You, beautiful Janie, scare the hell out of me.”

  “I doubt that.”

  He arched a brow, then lifted her hand and placed it against his chest. The rapid beat of his heart against her palm pleased her. “See?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was soft, unintentionally seductive. She moved her hand from his chest and brushed her hair off her face with a swift uncertain gesture.

  “The problem,” he said, leaning closer, “is time.”

  “My job,” she said, sinking into despair. “I go back to Liverpool tomorrow evening.” The rail... he could take the rail to Liverpool... there was a way. There had to be!

  “It’s worse than that, Janie.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a thick packet clearly labeled Cunard. “I sail home tomorrow.”

  She should have known better. She should have known right from the start that there was no hope for it. Some women lived fairy-tale lives. Some women wrote about them. Jane knew quite clearly to which side she belonged. A courtship? His words came back at her. How could he have intended a courtship when all along he knew he had already booked passage back to America.

  “You had no intention of courting me.” Her voice held a sharp edge of anger. “You were right the first time when you said you aimed to seduce me.” And he’d actually had the effrontery to tell her so, bold as brass, right to her face. How her hand itched to feel the hard angle of his cheekbone. “How dare you!”

  “We could always get married first.”

  Her anger turned to laughter that bordered on the hysterical. Dear God, she was losing all semblance of control. “Please, Mr. Weaver, give me credit for some intelligence.”

  “You’re not listening, Janie. As soon as I saw you in the crowd, I knew you were the one.”

  The laughter died in her throat. “If this is some American joke, I’m afraid the humor eludes me.”

  He took her hand. “Look at me, Janie.”

  She did. The world was in his eyes, the earth and the sun and the stars. “You’re mad.” Her voice was a whisper. “Utterly mad.”

  “You’re right.” Half-formed thoughts, all born of hope, tumbled around inside her brain as his expression grew serious. “Totally mad with love.”

  “You don’t know me, Mac. How can you possibly say you love me?”

  “If you’re looking for answers, you’re coming to the wrong guy.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I saw you. I fell in love with you. I want you for my wife.”

  “How like an American to make the incomprehensible sound so terribly simple.”

  His thick wheat-colored brows slid together in a frown. “You don’t have anything against Americans, do you? Hey, I know a lot of GIs made a bad impression during the war, but I figured that had worn off by now.”

  American GIs had been the bane of Englishmen during the Second World War. The cry Oversexed, Overpaid and Over Here had been heard everywhere from Brighton to Liverpool to London and all points beyond. “You may have noticed English women rarely complained about them,” she said smoothly. Truth was, Jane was one of the few of her crowd who hadn’t fallen beneath the spell of a cocky, free-thinking Yankee. But then Jane had yet to fall beneath anybody’s spell. Her heart was as untried in her twenty-seventh year as it had been the day she was born.

  The wooden legs of his chair scraped against the soft pine floor as he pushed away from the table. Why hadn’t she curbed her sharp tongue for once in her life? She was just frightened, that was all. Frightened that the best thing to happen in her entire life was an illusion, a dream, a...

  He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a flat black leather wallet.

  “You’re not leaving?” she managed, afraid to hope.

  “Hell, no. I decided it’s time to put my cards on the table.” He fanned a dozen pieces of identification on the table before her. “Passport. International driver’s license. Press pass. Birth certificate. I’ll show you my bank balance if you want.” He leaned toward her. “MacKenzie Weaver. Born October 23, 1917. Currently living at the London bureau of the New York Times but that’s subject to change. I’m six feet three and one-half inches. I weigh one hundred and ninety pounds soaking wet. I like beer, baseball and bad movies.”

  “Jane Margaret Townsend,” she said slowly as the need to tell him all built inside her. “I was born in London on September 8, 1925. My mother died when I was a child. I... I lost my father and brother during the war. I have one uncle and one job and—” She stopped, horrified by what she’d almost said. And one more chance to be happy...

  She could feel the intensity of his concentration although she chose not to meet his eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had listened to her that way, as if what she said was all-important.

  “I lost my kid brother in ’43.” Mac’s voice was low, his words measured. She had touched a chord of memory deep inside. “A skirmish off the Aleutian Islands. He’d be thirty-two now—if he’d lived.” He couldn’t imagine Douglas as a grown man. Not Doug with his giant laugh and unruly shock of blond hair that fell across his forehead.

  He felt Jane’s hand on his wrist. He looked up and found her gaze, soft blue and direct, on him.

  “It’s hard, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “Funny thing. I can go for months sometimes and not think of Doug—then bang! There he is, standing in front of me, looking the way he did the morning he enlisted.” Tall. Lanky. Filled with the brash self-confidence of foolish youth. Doomed. “Going back home won’t be easy.”

  “That’s why I left London.” The edge was gone from her voice, replaced by something he couldn’t put a name to. “The ghosts are everywhere. I wanted to run as far and as fast as I possibly could.”

  “Liverpool?” He put a gently ironic twist on the word.

  “We’re not all foreign correspondents, Mac,” she said lightly. “Maybe one day I’ll venture farther afield.” I’ve always wanted to see the world. What fun it would be to explore it all with a man like you.

  “You’d like New York. The pace, the excitement.” We don’t have much time, Janie. How in hell am I going to convince you?

  “Maybe I’ll see it one day.” Her hand still rested on his wrist. She grew acutely aware of the warmth of his skin, the hammer of his pulse beneath her fingertips.

  “I’d like to show it to you.”

  She started to say something foolish, like “That would be wonderful!” but the words died in her throat. Suddenly it all mattered too much to be glib.

  Mac shifted position, then linked his fingers with hers. “This is right, you know, Janie. Everything but the timing.”

  “The story of my life,” she said lightly, but the sheen of tears in her eyes gave her away—and gave Mac hope.

  “It’s a new world,” he said, excitement building. “Jet planes. Atomic bombs. One day they’ll send a man to the moon. Everything’s faster than ever. Who says the courtship has to come before the wedding?”

  Jane laughed out loud. “That’s been the accepted way for many years, Mac.”

  He lowered his voice so the barmaid wouldn’t hear. “We could always have an affair.”

  God forgive her, but she didn’t blush or simper the way she ought. Twenty-seven years old and barely kissed... What on earth are you waiting for, Jane? “You’re impertinent, Mac Weaver.” She hoped her easy tone belied the tremor of anticipation his words had brought to life. “It would serve you entirely right if I married you instead.”

  “Go ahead, Janie.” His fingernail grazed her palm and she shivered with delight. “Punish me.”

  “I should.” Her lips curved in a smile. “Believe me, if I had one sign that this was what I was meant to do, I’d marry you so fast that—” She stopped. “Did you hear that?”

  Mac, who was staring intently at her mouth, shoo
k his head.

  “Listen.” Soft at first, then growing in volume, the bells of Westminster Abbey rang out in a glorious tribute to the new queen. One upon the other, the ancient bells of all the churches in London joined in, and a joy Jane had never imagined possible swelled in her heart.

  The pub windows rattled with the noise. The glasses on the shelf behind the bar shook with it. The sound ricocheted off the walls and back again.

  “You asked for a sign,” Mac shouted over the din.

  This is it, she thought wildly. The one instant in time that could change her life forever. She’d be leaving for Liverpool tomorrow. He’d be back home in America next week. There was no time for dinner and dancing, for orchids and perfume, for the rites of courtship every woman dreamed about. They had today and it was slipping away like quicksilver through her hand. Say something, Jane! her heart begged. Don’t let this man go.

  She looked at him. He looked at her. The moment lengthened, the mood intensified.

  “Maybe we—”

  “You first,” he said.

  Who was she to argue with six thousand church bells? “Yes,” she said. “Let’s see where this leads.”

  He smiled at her. She smiled back at him. They had no business being there together, no business talking of a future when they didn’t have a past, but somehow none of it mattered because their smiles turned to laughter and their laughter sealed their fate.

  * * *

  The plan was to go to the bureau office, commandeer a typewriter and knock out their stories with as little fuss as possible. A grand idea, but to their dismay typewriters were in short supply at the bureau office.

  “Uncle Nigel has a battered old Hermes,” Jane said as they stepped back into the rainy London streets. “I’m sure he’d let us borrow it.”

  “Great,” said Mac. “I want to meet your relatives.”

  “Relative,” Jane corrected. “Singular. Nigel is all I have. My father’s brother.”

  Mac took her hand and squeezed it. “I have enough relatives for both of us, Janie. Give me six months and you’ll be sick of their faces.”

  She couldn’t imagine ever being sick of seeing the faces of people she loved. People who loved her back. The whole notion was so foreign to her that she could think of no response to make.

  “You have other brothers and sisters?” she asked as they dashed across the street and headed toward Cheltenham Mews where Nigel kept a flat. “I thought you lost your only sibling.”

  “I did,” he said, stopping to light a cigarette when they reached the curb. She shook her head when he offered her one. “But my parents both come from large families, and my cousins haven’t been shy about adding to the population.”

  “That’s wonderful. I’ve always wished I had a large family.” Her mother’s death had devastated her tiny family. She and her father and brother had clung to one another, trying valiantly to gather their forces and present a strong and united front to the world, only to have that united front shattered by her brother’s death during the war. When her father died months later, she had been so numb that she scarcely remembered his funeral. It wasn’t until months later, when the second notice came from the undertaker, that the reality hit her and she fell apart. Her recovery had been slow and painful, but recover she did. She’d gathered her strength and went about the process of living; the only thing was, she’d vowed never to let herself grow close to anyone ever again. There was a certain reserve about Jane, an aloofness of which she was no longer aware; so despite her beauty, that very aloofness held men at arm’s length. That is, it had done so until Mac Weaver.

  Mac seemed blissfully oblivious to the shield surrounding her heart. He was determined to sweep her off her feet and into marriage with the same enthusiasm and sense of purpose Americans seemed to bring to every endeavor. How wonderful it must be to live in a country that had never known the terror of enemy bombers overhead, of years of living in darkness, the sorrow of watching the city you loved exploding all around you.

  Mac told her about his score of cousins and second cousins, about his three dowager aunts whose tastes ran toward syrupy rum drinks and radio soap operas, about his mother and father and their valor in the face of Douglas’s death, about how they had never—not once!—made Mac feel guilty because he’d been lucky and his brother had not.

  “They’re great people,” Mac said as they wound their way through the old streets of London. “Solid. Decent. The kind who’d give you the shirts off their backs.” He looked down at her, then laughed at her confusion. “That’s a colloquialism. It means they’re generous.”

  She nodded. “I imagine your mother is a marvelous cook.”

  “The best.”

  “Apple pie?”

  He chucked her under the chin. “Been seeing too many old Andy Hardy movies, Janie. America isn’t all apple pie and baseball, you know.”

  Oh, she definitely knew. America had been Jane’s passion for years. During the blitz she’d cowered with her dad in the underground shelter and imagined herself strolling down Fifth Avenue in her best dress with her most becoming hat tilted jauntily upon her head. While the bombs exploded overhead, destroying centuries of civilization and tradition, Jane conjured up visions of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing cheek to cheek and of the glorious Clark Gable as he swept Vivien Leigh into his arms and up that mythical staircase in Gone with the Wind.

  She could have listened to Mac’s stories for hours. As they walked the narrow streets to her uncle’s mews house, London dropped away and she was there on Hansen Street in a place called Forest Hills, watching the Wilsons as they shoveled snow off their walk and helping Mac’s mother, Edna, with her rosebushes. She’d always thought of Americans as being too busy to care about things like gardens, but it seemed Edna Weaver was as besotted with her flowers as any proper Englishwoman.

  And there were Nancy and Gerry who had met each other through the mail and fallen in love without ever having laid eyes upon each other. “We all laughed at her,” Mac admitted with a rueful shake of his head. “I thought she was a love-struck kid with her head in the clouds.” Seven years and three children later, Nancy and Gerry Sturdevant were still together. Still in love. Still happy.

  It can work, her heart whispered. Don’t let happiness slip away....

  Mac launched into a story about his days at Columbia University and the indignities associated with joining a fraternity, and Jane was sorry to see they were in front of Uncle Nigel’s home.

  “Nigel’s a trifle eccentric,” she warned as they pressed the front door buzzer.

  “Doesn’t bother me,” said Mac.

  “He can be a bit off-putting.”

  He gripped her shoulders and spun her around to face him. “Don’t apologize for him, Janie.”

  “It’s simply that I’ve never brought anyone here to meet him before.”

  “First and last, Janie. This is the real thing.”

  “You can’t possibly know that.”

  “And you can’t possibly know it isn’t. Take a chance, Janie. What do you have to lose?”

  “You’re reading too much into this, Mac,” she said, struggling to keep her emotional equilibrium. “We’re here for a typewriter. Nothing more.”

  “You’re lying, Janie.”

  She giggled, a most unusual sound coming from the dignified Jane Townsend, but then this had been a most unusual day. “Mind your manners, Mr. Weaver. My uncle may be eccentric but he’s a bona fide genius when it comes to human nature.” She poked him in the sternum with her forefinger. “Don’t you dare say anything untoward.”

  “Like asking for your hand in marriage?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m not making any promises.”

  “Mac, please! He might take you seriously.” Nigel was both a Trotskyite and a romantic, an odd combination that kept him bemoaning the nature of capitalism on one hand and courting show girls on the other. “If you so much as mention marriage, I shall—”


  The door swung open and Roxie, Nigel’s bleached-blond fortyish wife, clasped Jane to her heroic bosom. “Lovey! It’s been so long. Come in, come in. I was about to fix a cuppa for Peaches. Come upstairs and join us.”

  Jane, who was smothered in lilac perfume and powdered flesh, glanced over at Mac and shrugged. “Roxie, this is MacKenzie Weaver.”

  Roxie abandoned Jane to embrace the handsome American. “Have a look at this one, lovey, will you? Such a strapping boy. American, is it?”

  Mac, who was beginning to wonder if his passport was tattooed on his forehead, submitted to the affectionate hug from the older woman. “Guilty, Mrs. Townsend.”

  Roxie made a face. “Go away with you. Mrs. Townsend!” Her laugh was loud and brassy. “It’s Roxie to my friends.”

  He inclined his head. “Roxie, then.”

  Jane was enduring an agony of embarrassment as she wondered when, if ever, Roxie would release Mac from her hug. “Is Uncle Nigel upstairs?”

  Roxie rolled her big brown saucer-eyes and slapped her forehead with the back of one plump hand. “Raining cats and dogs and I have you standing out here about to catch your death.” She stepped into the vestibule and motioned them inside. “Peaches is in the library. Leave your coats with me and go on with you. I’ll bring up the tea in two shakes.”

  The stairway was part of the original structure. Narrow and steep, it angled sharply to the left at midpoint, then angled back to the right three steps from the top. As far as stairways went, it required the utmost concentration, lest you tumble backward to the stone floor of the vestibule.

  Jane was accustomed to the staircase and navigated it smoothly. Mac, who was following behind Jane, navigated it with great difficulty. Jane’s bottom, small and rounded like a ripe pear, was inches away from him as they climbed the stairs, and it took a monumental act of will to keep from leaning forward and taking a bite. He was glad it was a long staircase because the view was about as good as it gets. Delicate frame. Tiny nipped-in waist he could span with his hands. Gently flared hips that slid sleekly into legs longer than you’d imagine on a woman built on so small a scale. And that hair—silky, black as night, drifting over her shoulder and down her back. That hair was made to fan across his pillow every morning for the rest of his life.