Stranger in Paradise (Home Front - Book #2) (2 page)

Your job is all you have, Jane. See to it you don’t lose it, as well.

She uncapped her fountain pen and opened to a fresh page in her spiral-bound notebook. “Sorry,” she said as she elbowed the woman on her right. “A bit cramped here.”

Describe the atmosphere, Leo had said. Our readers want to know all the details. Well, unless the readers of the
Liverpool Times and Tribune
were wildly interested in word portraits describing the backs of men’s suit coats, Jane was in a great deal of trouble.

Think, girl, think
. Certainly there was something she could say. She’d already described the noise—loud—the weather—drizzly and cold—and the footwear—varied. Leo had said Jane and Lillibet had a lot in common. Jane had laughed at that until she gasped for breath, but now she was desperate enough to investigate that notion.

The brand-new queen was twenty-seven.

So was Jane.

Elizabeth had lustrous dark hair and Wedgwood-blue eyes.

So had Jane.

Elizabeth also had a handsome prince for a husband, two blond and beautiful storybook children, and the crown of the British Empire.

So much for comparisons.

Family. Didn’t it always come down to that in the end? That endless chain of relationships, bound in blood and bone, that defied the years and the wars and the onslaught of modern life.

Family. The one thing everyone had.

Everyone, that is, except Jane. Her family was no more than a memory now, a distant memory of love and caring that had disappeared from her life before she was old enough to fully appreciate just how important it was. All that was left of the Townsend clan was Jane, unmarried and destined to remain so, and her dotty Uncle Nigel who wiled away his days in the Oxford library writing his masterwork on Leo Trotsky and catering to his bonbon-loving wife. Jane had been three years out of London before Nigel knew she’d even left.

She sighed and fished her coronation schedule from her pocket.

A roar rose up from the crowd and she craned her neck to see if the queen had finally arrived at Westminster Abbey. She tapped the shoulder of the balding reporter in front of her. “May I?” she asked, gesturing toward the front of the knot of correspondents pressing against the wooden barricade.

He gave her a look generally reserved for insects and other pests, and she wished the rest of his ginger-colored hair would fall out.

“Bloody hell,” she swore under her breath, grateful that no one could hear her. How on earth would she ever finish this story for Leo if she couldn’t see? A bobby with a cheerful face winked at her from his post a few yards away. Flirting was well and good, but if he really wanted to be of assistance, he could part the crowd like Moses parted the Red Sea and let her get a look at what, if anything, was happening in front of Westminster.

A low male voice rumbled in her ear. “Got a problem?”

She turned, looking up into the dazzling green eyes of an extremely handsome stranger. Tall, strong, with shoulders wide as the Thames. An American, she thought. You rarely found men like that in England, men who looked as if they’d spent most of their lives outdoors chopping down trees or climbing mountains, or whatever it was that healthy red-blooded American males were purported to do. She gave him her best smile. “If you happen to have a stepladder with you, I’d be forever in your debt.”

“Can’t help you there,” he said, grinning in the way most Americans of her acquaintance liked to grin. “Left my stepladder in my hotel room.”

“More’s the pity,” Jane murmured, aware that the top of her head barely reached his collarbone.

“I have an idea,” he continued, those forest-green eyes never leaving hers. “Afraid of heights?”

She shook her head. “Fearless, I’m ashamed to admit. Not terribly ladylike, but true.”

The expression on his face told her he found her more than satisfactory. A warmth started sliding upward from her toes.

He extended a bear paw of a hand. “Mac Weaver.
New York Times
.”

She stared as her own hand disappeared into his. “Jane Townsend.
Liverpool Times and Tribune
.”

He started to laugh. “Leo Donnelly’s an old drinking buddy of mine.”

“Leo Donnelly,” said Jane, “is everybody’s old drinking buddy, Mr. Weaver.”

“Mac.”

She looked at her hand, still hidden within his grasp. “Jane.”

His grin widened, but he released her hand. She was almost sorry he’d given up so easily. “Trust me?”

“With my life,” she said solemnly, aware of the twinkle that must be in her own eyes.

“On the count of three,” he said, placing a hand on either side of her waist. “One... two... three.”

Her breath rushed from her lungs in a gasp of utter surprise. One moment she was standing there on the ground, and the next she was swept up into the air and deposited on his shoulder.

“How’s the view?” he asked, one hand against her right hip, holding her steady.

“Perfect.” It took a gargantuan effort to remember why it was she found herself up there in the first place. Oh, yes. The queen. “I think I see her coach in the distance!” She pointed down the road. “If you look closely, you can see the crimson-and-gold harnesses on the Windsor Greys.”

“What’s a Windsor Grey?”

She explained about the elegant horses bred for royal use only, but her mind was only partially engaged. His light brown hair was thick and shiny, bleached in spots by the sun to the color of golden wheat. He didn’t slick it down with hair tonic like the men she knew or have the barber clip it close to his head. In fact, it looked as if he paid his hair little attention, except to keep it clean and have it trimmed now and again. It brushed the collar of his trench coat and the urge to run her fingers through the unruly tendrils almost overpowered her.

Almost, but not quite.

Gathering what was left of her wits, Jane launched into a spirited explanation of royal esoterica, which must have sounded absurd coming, as it did, from a woman seated atop a stranger’s shoulder.

But Jane was nothing if not accustomed to maintaining her composure in untoward situations. You didn’t live through six years of war and not learn how to cope.

“I see her!” Mac Weaver sounded like a kid in his excitement. He whistled low. “Will you get a load of that coach? I’d trade my MG for that baby in a minute.”

“My uncle Nigel would say that coach represents all that’s wrong with England today.”

Mac Weaver’s shoulders shook with laughter. “Your uncle Nigel would love my pal Danny. Danny’s a devout Leninist, although you don’t say that too loud in the States these days.”

“Uncle Nigel’s a Trotskyite,” said Jane, praying she wouldn’t fall from her perch. “If he had his way, he’d hand out the crown jewels in Piccadilly Circus.” Uncle Nigel had been the Townsend family’s pet eccentric, a quasi-socialist professor at Oxford University whose opinions on politics and religion usually ran counter to everything Jane believed in. Now he was all the family she had left, and she loved him despite their differences.

Of course, Nigel had steadfastly refused to attend the coronation. “Rubbish,” he’d said, looking up from his textbooks and his sherry. “Girl should be ashamed, giving in to tradition that way.” Jane, however, had the feeling that even curmudgeonly Nigel Townsend was peering out the window of his flat, hoping for a glimpse of the pomp and splendor.

The crowd erupted in cheers of “Long live the Queen!” when Elizabeth II turned their way and gave a royal wave of her hand. Jane—cynical practical Jane—found herself cheering along with everyone else as the coach moved past them.

“So you don’t agree with your Uncle Nigel,” Mac Weaver said once the cheering died.

Jane quickly smoothed her hair and tried to regain her composure. “I’m afraid I’m a staunch capitalist with a soft spot for royal tradition.”

“I like a woman with respect for tradition.”

I like a man with green eyes
, she thought. “You can put me down now, Mr. Weaver.”

“Mac. I said you can call me Mac.”

She bit back a smile. “You can put me down now... Mac.”

“Why?”

“Why not?” she countered. Dear God, he was an attractive man. He rather reminded her of a fair-haired Clark Gable, all-American swash and buckle, tempered with a dash of European flair, although he’d probably be the first to disagree. Americans so rarely wanted to admit to anything as suspect as style.

“Pretty obvious why not, don’t you think, Janie?”

“Janie!” She started to laugh despite her best intentions. “No one has ever called me Janie before.”

“Good. That’ll be my name for you.”

She started in surprise. “Your name for me?”

Those green eyes of his twinkled wickedly. “I know we have a language barrier, but I think my meaning’s pretty clear.”

“A pet name?”

He shrugged and she clutched at the top of his head for support. “Pet name, nickname, whatever you want to call it.”

“I thought pet names were an offshoot of familiarity.”

She blushed as she became aware of his hand against her thigh and the fact that his mouth was no more than six inches from her rib cage.

“Hard to get much more familiar than this, Janie.”

“Point well-taken. Now put me down.”

“I don’t think so.” He shaded his eyes with his free hand and looked out over the crowd. “There are more coaches coming.”

“The queen’s coach was the last one.”

“What about Princess Margaret?”

“She’s in Westminster.”

“The Queen Mother?”

“Westminster.”

“Prince Philip? Her kids? Her best friend?”

“Put me down, Mac.”

“I’m enjoying myself.”

“And I’m pleased indeed, but we’re attracting attention.”

“Doesn’t bother me.”

She caught the eye of the handsome bobby who’d smiled at her earlier. “I could have you pinched for kidnapping.”

“You needed my help. I’m just doing my duty as a red-blooded male faced with a damsel in distress.”

He wasn’t listening to her. Not even a little bit. What was more, he didn’t care. Normally Jane was quite proficient in putting young men in their places. This, however, was not your average young man. Mac Weaver was older and wiser and, heaven help her, a great deal sexier than the chaps who usually tried to chat her up for a date. Jane was used to being in control of most situations, and this lack of control was intensely frustrating.

And intriguing.

“If I put you down, you won’t take off, will you?”

She gestured regally toward the crowd swarming about them. “Mercury couldn’t take off, as you put it, through this mass of humanity.” Good. She sounded aloof, as if she were studying for her “O” levels.

Again the feel of his large hands encircling her waist. Again the rush of delight as he lifted her into the air. Slowly he lowered her to the ground and she held her breath as her belly, her rib cage, her breasts brushed against his muscular chest.
Dangerous... very, very dangerous....

Say thank-you and goodbye. That was exactly what she would do. Polite, but detached. Courteous, yet distant. She had work to do, after all. And so, she imagined, did he.

But the ground beneath her feet didn’t seem as steady as it had a few minutes earlier, and the air smelled somehow sweeter and the word goodbye never passed her lips. Instead she stood there, fiddling with her notebook and pen, the touch of his hands still palpable against her waist, while he studied her.

“You’re older than you look, aren’t you?” he said.

“That’s an impertinent question.” A pause, then, “How old do I look?”

His fair brows slid together in a frown. “Twenty. Twenty-one.” Again that wicked gleam in his eyes. “Barely legal.”

She struggled to retain her English composure. His intent was all too clear.
And all too thrilling
. “You’re right, Mr. Weaver,” she said. “I am older than I look.”

“I’m thirty-five.”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Same as the queen,” he said with that American grin.

“And there all likeness ends.” She felt off center, suddenly ill at ease and eager to call a halt to this craziness. “I must be off,” she said with a businesslike nod of her head. “I’ve enjoyed the conversation.”
Put one foot before the other, Jane. He isn’t for you.

“The conversation doesn’t have to end, Janie.”

The way he said “Janie,” as if he liked the feel of her name against his tongue—nobody had ever said her name like that before.
Maybe no one ever will again....
“My story,” she said, knowing he would recognize the excuse for what it was. “I have a score of details to investigate before the recessional back to the palace.”

“So have I.”

Her heart sank.
Tell me I can’t go. Tell me you won’t let me leave....
“I won’t keep you.”

“I know of a pub not too far from here where we can have a draft and compare notes.”

“Mac, I—”

“Say yes, Janie.” He reached for her hand. “Something’s happening. Don’t let it end before we find out what it is. Let’s give it a chance.”

She wanted to tell him he was crazy, that only mad dogs and fools believed in love at first sight—but then he hadn’t mentioned love at first sight, had he? It was her own thought, her own realization, that had brought about the trembling deep inside her heart.
Things like this don’t happen,
her usual logical self proclaimed.

Unfortunately the logical Jane Townsend was no longer listening. “Yes,” she said, putting her hands in his. “Let’s.”

Nancy Wilson Sturdevant spread the morning newspaper of June 2, 1953, out on her shiny Formica kitchen table and reached for her second cup of coffee. Underscored with Mac Weaver’s byline, the bold headline stared up at her from the front page.

Coronation Ceremony Undampened by Persistent Rain, it read. Largest Crowd Since V-E Day Expected. Leave it to Mac to mention the war. Didn’t men understand that women didn’t care about the size of the crowd? Queen Elizabeth’s smile, her children, the number of diamonds in her coronet—those were the kinds of details most women wanted to know about.

Of course, there were other things in the paper on that morning in late spring. Not that Nancy cared, mind you, but some people might say the coronation was of less importance than the battle raging on both sides of the thirty-eighth parallel in Korea. After the excitement of V-E and V-J days, most Americans had assumed their fighting days were over. The United States was the most powerful nation in the world—in fact, with the addition of the A-bomb to her arsenal, it was said she was the most powerful nation in
history
. Certainly no one had expected to be pulled into a dirty skirmish half a world away less than five years after we’d said goodbye to casualty lists and hello to the GI baby boom.

The world was a crazy place these days. General Eisenhower was now president of the United States. Truman, the plain-speaking haberdasher from Missouri, had proved too tough for the gentler times and in a paradoxical change of pace, Americans had elected an army hero to lead them. None of it made any sense to Nancy, but then what difference did it make? Now that Russia had the Bomb, it could all be over in the blink of an eye. Basements across the country were being turned into air-raid shelters and school kids learned how to cower beneath their desks in case of an attack. Not that their wooden desks could save them, but it made everyone feel good to know they’d at least tried.

Allies had become enemies—witness the Russians and the Chinese. Enemies had become friends—witness the rebuilding of Japan and Germany. The only thing you could be certain of was the fact that America was the biggest, brashest, most blessed country ever created, and Nancy Wilson Sturdevant was lucky to be part of it.

Even if, at the moment, she devoutly wished she were in London to see the queen.

Sending Mac Weaver to cover the coronation was like sending Mamie Eisenhower to cover the Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood. Oh, what a job Nancy could have done if she’d been lucky enough to spend this past week in Mac’s oversize shoes. She would have made it her business to get right up close to the young queen and her handsome prince, and before you could say cheese, Nancy would have been able to tell you the sizes of their wedding rings. Grainy black-and-white pictures of the ornate golden coach accompanied the lengthy article, and Nancy wished she had her magnifying glass so she could ferret out every last detail. Princess Elizabeth—no,
Queen
Elizabeth—had a sweetly pretty face, and, it was rumored, the bluest eyes in the British Isles. Imagine being queen of England at only twenty-seven years of age. Nancy was twenty-seven, too, and the only thing she was queen of was kitchen detail.

“Twenty-seven years old,” Nancy said aloud to the empty kitchen. “Both of us.” She glanced at the knotty pine cabinets and the freshly waxed white linoleum floor. Gerry was so proud of that floor. “You can see yourself in it,” he pointed out to visitors. “Nance is the best little housekeeper in Levittown!”

Queen Elizabeth II smiled up at her from her official portrait on page two of the newspaper.

“How are your floors?” Nancy asked the monarch. “I’ll bet you don’t have dishpan hands, do you, Liz?”

Not that Nancy was complaining, mind you. How could she possibly complain when she had everything an American woman could possibly want? “It’s a different world,” her mother, Dot, had said the first time she saw the tract house on Robin Hood Lane. “Built-in television, dishwashing machine, laundry room! It’s a dream house, honey!”

And it truly was. In her most elaborate teenage fantasies during the war, she’d never imagined living with Gerry in their very own house on Long Island with a new Ford station wagon in the driveway and every modern appliance you could wish for lined up all shiny and nice on her countertops. A Bendix washing machine. A Dormeyer electric frying pan for making the best Southern fried chicken in town. A hi-fi stacked with “That’s Amore” and “I Love Paris” and the very romantic “Stranger in Paradise.” They even had an air conditioner poking out neatly from their bedroom window.

“This is what it’s all about,” Gerry liked to say when the kids were asleep and they were sitting side by side on the couch in the den with Uncle Miltie on the TV for company. “This is why I go to work every day. I want my girls to have everything.”

They had been blessed with so much. Three beautiful daughters. Lovely furniture. Gerry had a good job with her family’s firm, a solid dependable job where you didn’t have to worry there was a communist working at the desk next to you. They would never want for anything.

The house was everything Nancy could have imagined, and if having that house meant some of her old dreams had to fall by the wayside, well, that’s the way it was meant to be, wasn’t it? Dreams about going to Hawaii or watching the changing of the guard in front of Buckingham Palace were just that: dreams. When they were first married, she and Gerry pored over travel brochures, plotting and planning the trips they would take as soon as he graduated from college. But marriage inevitably meant children, and children meant responsibilities.

The truth was, you grew up. You got married. You helped your husband through school—thanking God and Uncle Sam for the GI Bill—and then he bought you a house where you spent your days polishing and waxing and cooking.

Unless, of course, you were Debbie Reynolds or Elizabeth Taylor or one of the other movie stars Nancy read about each month in
Photoplay
and
Modern Screen
. Nancy doubted if they gave their linoleum a second thought. Their lives, no doubt, were the stuff of dreams. Candlelight. Flowers. Perfect smiling children who never cried or got sick or needed new shoes every time you turned around. Husbands who never fell asleep in front of the television set with their mouths open, then blamed their snoring on the dog.

And she’d bet dollars to doughnuts Queen Elizabeth had never once found herself on the wrong side of a loaded diaper bag.

Now that’s the real story, Mac
, she thought, spooning sugar into her cup of coffee.
Not how big the crowd is
.

“Hey, Nance!” Gerry’s voice pierced the early-morning stillness. “Where are my brown socks?”

“In the top drawer of your bureau.” Darn, now the kids were bound to wake up before she had a chance to finish the paper. The only chance she had to be alone with her thoughts was in the hours before breakfast.

“No, they’re not!” Gerry yelled back.

“Look under your T-shirts.”

“I looked under my T-shirts. They’re not there.”

Grumbling, Nancy tossed the newspaper to the floor and stormed up the staircase to the converted attic room they’d turned into the master bedroom.

“Good thing those socks aren’t alive, Gerry Sturdevant,” she said as she pulled them from the top drawer of the bureau, “They’d bite your nose off.”

Gerry didn’t even look embarrassed. He grabbed the rolled-up socks and sat down on the edge of the bed, naked except for his boxer shorts, and pulled them on. “What would I do without you, Nance?”

She leaned against the doorjamb and stifled a yawn. “Run around without your socks, I suppose.”

He tugged at the cuff of his left sock. “Up early, aren’t you?”

I’m always up early, Gerry
. Amazing how little men noticed about the running of a house. If she lay in bed every morning until the alarm went off, they’d never make it to the railroad station in time for Gerry to catch the 8:05 to Manhattan. “It’s the coronation day,” she said, watching as he pulled on his other sock. “I don’t want to miss a second of it.”

Gerry glanced at the bedside clock on his nightstand. “Must be in progress, with the time difference and everything.”

“I’ve been listening to reports on the kitchen radio. Edward R. Murrow said RAF planes are waiting to bring films back to New York this afternoon. The whole thing will be on television tonight.”

Gerry stood up and reached for his good black suit pants. “Hard to believe how fast things go these days. Remember when we had to wait for the Movietone news clips? Now we get to see all the latest right in our own den.”

Leave it to a man to sing the praises of technology at six-thirty in the morning. “Scrambled eggs and bacon?”

“Fried. Two slices of toast. No coffee.”

She disappeared back down the stairs to set the table before waking the girls. The newspaper had fallen to the floor near the refrigerator. She bent and retrieved it, folded it neatly, then tucked it safely into the bread box to read later. She switched on the Philco radio that rested on the windowsill and tuned it to news about the coronation, then opened the refrigerator door.

Only two eggs. What good was a new pale pink Frigidaire if you didn’t remember to keep it well stocked with the basics? Just last month
Good Housekeeping
magazine had run an article called “Ten Ways to Keep Your Husband Happy,” and number one had been running a perfect household. “Men hate disorganized wives.... Keep his shirts ironed, his socks darned.... Stock the refrigerator with all of his favorite foods....”

“... the splendor and pageantry is awe inspiring,” said an announcer with the unctuous tones of a used-car salesman. “Where else but England, home of the legendary Knights of the Round Table, could you find such grand spectacle and romance?”

Nancy caught a glimpse of herself in the shiny side of her brand-new pop-up toaster. Her hair was mussed, falling in loose curls over her forehead. Without her foundation, her freckles stood out like stoplights and she had smoky circles under her eyes.

“... the young Queen Elizabeth is a vision of feminine loveliness...” the announcer gushed. “A monarch who is both wife and mother, as well as a shining example of how the modern woman lives her life....”

Maybe in London that was how the modern woman lived her life.

Nancy cracked two eggs into a dish, used her thumbnail to fish out a piece of shell from one of the broken yolks, then remembered Gerry wanted his eggs fried. “Sorry, Gerry,” she said as she lit the fire under the skillet. “Fried eggs tomorrow.”

In Levittown in 1953, life ultimately came down to fried eggs or scrambled.

* * *

Jane was small, curvy, intensely female.

Mac was big, broad shouldered, extremely male.

He wanted to throw her over his shoulder and carry her off to his cave—hotel room—and make wild and passionate love to her until she cried out. And then he wanted to do the same thing over and over again until there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that she was the woman he’d waited his whole life to find.

Unfortunately this was 1953 A.D. not B.C., and caveman tactics were frowned upon in polite society.

And society, didn’t get much more polite than it did in London.

He’d known something great was going to happen. He’d felt it all morning long as he waited in the crowd for a glimpse of history being made, a feeling way down in his gut that was too deep for words. Of course there was the small problem of the ticket home on the
Queen Mary
, which was currently burning a hole in the pocket of his trench coat, but they’d work something out.

This was what he’d been waiting for, wasn’t it? Why he’d awakened these past few mornings with his adrenaline flowing, filled with the dead-certain notion that his life was about to change forever. Yeah, Mac Weaver was going home, all right, but he wasn’t going home alone.

* * *

Was she walking or flying?

Jane wasn’t entirely sure, because it seemed as if her feet weren’t making contact with the pavement in quite the usual fashion. Mac Weaver—her brash American—had her hand clasped firmly in his as he propelled her up Whitehall and down Pall Mall in search of his mysterious pub.

Not that she cared if they ever found the pub, mind you. At that particular moment, with her hand in his, she would have been content to spend the rest of her life simply following wherever he led.

What on earth was happening?

One moment she’d been Jane Townsend, practical, young Englishwoman, and the next she was Janie, the bewildered object of Mac Weaver’s attentions. Wouldn’t Leo Donnelly laugh if he could see her now, all tongue-tied and giddy as a schoolgirl? She had the reputation of being as peppery as a parsnip, not the sort a man fancied himself going all romantic over. Oh, she knew she was pretty enough. That wasn’t the problem. It was her attitude, her sharp tongue, the quick mind that put off as many men as it attracted. Maybe Mac hadn’t noticed. Maybe American men weren’t as cowed by strong women.

Maybe it had to do with their cowboy heritage, all that roping and calfing and...

He put his arm around her shoulder and led her into a dimly lit pub with lots of burnished wood and smoky romantic atmosphere. She had been in such a fog she hadn’t noticed what street they were on. No hail-fellow-well-met chums here, lifting mugs of ale between rounds of skittles or darts. This was the kind of pub a man brought a woman to when he wanted to romance her, charm her, woo her.

Mac led her to a cozy round table near the back. His hand lingered along her spine as she took her seat.

“Ale?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Too early. Tonic water.”

He disappeared for a moment then brought their drinks back to the table.

She thanked him. “You should have let the serving girl do that for you.”

“No.” He ignored the seat opposite her and claimed the one next to her instead. “We don’t need company.” Again that gorgeous grin. “Not yet.”

She took a sip of tonic water. “You’re quite a determined man, aren’t you, Mac?”

He lifted the mug of ale. “You don’t know the half of it.”