Stranger in Paradise (Home Front - Book #2)

by Barbara Bretton

  He still wanted to protect her, but he also wondered why nobody had tried to protect him from doing something as crazy and impulsive as marrying a total stranger. Not that she wasn’t a beautiful stranger; hell, any man with eyes could see she was as perfectly made as a woman could be. Soft where she should be soft. Curved where you want a woman to be curved. Smart and sassy and sweet. Everything a guy could want in a woman. Only trouble was, he knew more about Queen Elizabeth than he did about Jane Townsend Weaver, the woman who happened to be his wife.

  She looked up at him, all dewy-eyed and expectant. He wanted to say, “It’s not too late... we haven’t signed the papers yet... the ship hasn’t sailed...” but there was something so appealing about the soft swell of her lower lip, the sweep of her dark lashes against her cheeks, that he wondered what one kiss could possibly hurt.

  For a moment Jane was terrified that he wasn’t going to kiss her. Once on a trip to the country she’d seen a deer trapped in the headlights of a lorry. That was the look in Mac’s eyes when the priest pronounced them man and wife, then commanded Mac to kiss his brand-new bride.

  Not that Jane felt like a bride. Right now, she didn’t feel anything so much as bewildered. They had kissed their way through London last night, then kissed their way down from London to Southampton, cuddled together in a salon away from prying eyes. Now it seemed as if kissing her was the last thing he had in mind.

  But then he dipped his head toward her and she raised hers to him and his mouth found her mouth and she remembered what it was that had brought them to this unexpected spot in the first place.

  “Married,” he said against her lips.

  “I know,” she answered.

  “Mrs. Weaver.”

  A delicious thrill rippled through her. “Yes, Mr. Weaver?”

  He kissed her again. The priest chuckled softly and Jane drew away from her husband, embarrassed that their pleasure in each other should be so obvious to a man of God. But the man of God understood the ways of the world and he blessed the newlyweds and sent them on their way.

  “I wish we had time for a wedding breakfast,” said Mac as they hurried toward the dock where the Queen Mary was being prepared for the westward voyage.

  “We’ll have five days of wedding breakfasts,” she pointed out, curling the fingers of her left hand so that her makeshift band stayed put.

  Of course five days meant five nights, and that thought sent Jane spiraling back into silence.

  Mac was doing his best not to think of anything but boarding the ship on time. He knew there was bound to be a problem negotiating passage for Jane, his unexpected traveling companion, and he wanted to have his arguments—and his pound notes—ready. Besides, it was easier dealing with concrete problems like passports and customs duties than the more abstract problems of falling for—and marrying—a woman he’d known less than twenty-four hours.

  They rounded a corner and Jane gasped as they found themselves staring up at the Queen Mary in all her glory. There was something almost frightening about the massive structure, whose three red smokestacks, banded in the traditional Cunard black, scraped the overcast Southampton sky. Dockworkers loaded huge steamer trunks into the hold of the ship while an elegant Afghan hound waited with its mistress for permission to go aboard. Men carried huge crates of live lobsters and laughed as an occasional claw poked through an opening to grab an unsuspecting ear. A man, wearing a towering white chef’s hat, inspected each crate as it went by. Jane laughed as a gust of wind lifted the hat from his head and deposited it gracefully atop the back of the Afghan.

  They stopped at the foot of the gangway. Mac turned to Jane. “Last chance.”

  She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.

  “Next stop, America,” she said.

  * * *

  When Mac had called in a few favors and secured a suite on the Main Deck, he hadn’t known it would be his honeymoon cabin. Fate must have been watching over him, for when he swept Jane up into his arms and carried her across the threshold—to the amusement of other passengers milling around—the room waiting for them was beyond their wildest expectations. The walls were paneled in sycamore wood of the palest cream, a stunning counterpoint to the rich carpet and spread of sea-foam green. Dressers, nightstands, boudoir table were all built in to the wall in the same sycamore as the paneling. Also built-in was a round clock that silently kept track of the hours. Nigel and Roxie had sent a huge bouquet of roses, which the steward had arranged in the watered niche over the mantelpiece.

  Mac and Jane made it through the deliberately comical lifeboat drill with the same good grace exhibited by their fellow passengers. No one had to be reminded of the fate suffered by the Titanic just forty years ago—or of the importance of flotation vests and lifeboats.

  There were, of course, many ways to save your life, and maybe marriage was the best way of all. The trouble was, as the harbormaster eased the Queen Mary from her berth and piloted her toward open waters, both of the Weavers were struck with the certainty that they had made a dreadful mistake.

  Not a simple mistake, mind you, but one of such cataclysmic proportions that Jane actually gauged the distance from the railing where she stood down to the water below. More than likely she’d break her neck in the dive, but for an instant it almost seemed worth the chance. After all, what could be more dangerous than marriage to a stranger?

  As for Mac, he, too, had a fleeting moment of panic when the blast from the ship’s horn rattled his teeth and the great ship took to the sea. Weddings at sea were commonplace. He wondered if anyone had tried annulments at sea.

  But the itinerary kept them busy those first hours. Jane had to speak with the purser, show her passport and marriage certificate, and certify she was neither a fugitive, an agitator, or totally daft. The last one gave her pause, but she signed her name to the form. Her hand balked at the unfamiliar name. The exuberant “W” and the elegant curves of “e-a-v-e-r.”

  “Feels strange, does it?”

  She looked into the amused eyes of the silver-haired purser and nodded. “That it does.”

  “You’ll get used to it. First time’s always the hardest.”

  The purser’s words came back to haunt her later that night as she prepared herself for bed.

  Mac had excused himself, saying he wanted to go back up to Promenade Deck for a little while longer, leaving Jane alone to do whatever it was a bride did on her wedding night.

  Elegant nightware didn’t have much place in Jane’s life. When you lived in a tiny cold-water flat right off the Mersey River, you concerned yourself more with warmth than allure. Mac must have noticed the heavy cotton nightgowns as she’d unpacked her overnight case, for when she retired to the cabin after supper and their stroll on Promenade Deck, a peignoir set of delicate ivory silk lay across the turned-down bed.

  The fever began deep inside, in a place so dark and secret she’d not known of its existence until that moment. The negligee was in the center of the bed; the bed was at the center of her universe. Her mouth grew dry with anticipation and a sense of inevitability embraced her.

  The cabin was spacious but by no means large. Mac had filled the room with his presence. There would be no secrets tonight, she thought, as she gathered up her toiletries and headed for the small bathroom. No place to hide. When he walked back through that door again, it would be to claim his rights as her husband.

  * * *

  The last time Mac had seen the good Queen Mary, she had been stripped of her luxurious fittings and painted battleship gray. The Queen Mary had joined her sister ship, the Queen Elizabeth, at war. The destruction of the two queens of the North Atlantic had been a prime German objective, but God must have been watching over the vessels, for they not only survived the long war intact, but the Queen Mary had the honor of ferrying the first load of GIs back home after V-E Day had been declared.

  Tom Wilson had come home on the Queen Mary in June 1945. Mac had followed two weeks later, en route to the battleg
round in the Pacific. The Queen Mary had been strung from stem to stern with hammocks below-deck. Mac would never forget the stink of flesh and cigarette smoke and soda pop as 20,000 men counted down the hours to freedom. He would also never forget the thrill as the Ambrose Channel Lighthouse appeared in the distance, signaling that the end of the journey was at hand. A roar had risen from the GIs as the sun rose in the east and spread a mantle of gold across the shoulders of the Statue of Liberty, that great lady who welcomed her children home at last.

  Even Mac, hard-bitten cynic that he was, had blinked back bittersweet tears of joy that he had made it home. If only his brother had been so lucky...

  Tonight, however, those memories were far from his mind.

  The war was over eight years ago. The Queen Mary was once again clad in splendor.

  And Mac Weaver was waiting to take his bride to bed.

  He tossed his cigarette into the ocean then lit another one. He’d left Jane in the stateroom, although it would have been swell to be there to see her face when she found the ivory lace nightgown he’d left draped across the bed.

  “This one,” he’d told the shopkeeper in the ship’s arcade while Jane was ironing out details of her passport at the purser’s office. The gown was delicate, spun sugar, impossibly beautiful. So was his new wife.

  The ship had stopped in Cherbourg for a few hours in late afternoon, then finally set out into the waters of the North Atlantic a little after sunset. Jane’s passport problems had taken longer than anticipated, and then there was the obligatory stroll on the Promenade Deck. They’d passed on dinner in the main dining room in favor of a light supper at the Verandah Grill on the aft end of the Sun Deck. Huge windows overlooked the stern of the ship, and the endless ocean in all its splendor had been their only dinner companion.

  Conversation that had flowed so easily twenty-four hours earlier was stilted and forced now. Mac smoked half a pack of cigarettes while Jane picked at her lamb chop.

  Another walk on the Promenade Deck, then Mac said, “Guess it’s time to turn in.”

  “I imagine so,” said Jane, eyes averted.

  And so there he was, alone at the railing, wondering what the rules were in a situation like this. If he stayed away too long, she’d wonder where he was. If he went back too soon, he might embarrass her. You think you’re sophisticated, that you’ve seen the world, but when push comes to shove, there’re times when you just have to let your heart tell you what to do.

  Moonlight glittered off the dark ocean. Overhead the stars were silver spangles in the night sky.

  In their cabin his wife was waiting.

  He tossed his cigarette into the ocean and turned toward the stairway.

  It was time.

  * * *

  “My husband,” Jane said aloud to her reflection in the tiny bathroom mirror. The word resonated inside her chest. Husband. It sounded of permanence. Years ago she had believed in permanence, back before she lost her brother and father to the senseless waste of war. War did nothing if not drum home the temporal nature of most things women held dear. She hadn’t asked for Mac to come into her life; their meeting had been serendipitous, an act of chance just like a turn of the roulette wheel in the casino below-deck. Was she mad to pray that permanence could come from such a beginning?

  She brushed out her thick dark hair with the silver-handled brush that had belonged to her mother. Her stomach rumbled ominously. She’d barely eaten supper; the thick lamb chops and rich side dishes had overwhelmed her senses, and coupled with nervousness, her appetite had fled. So much food on one plate! After years of hardship, both during the war and after, it was hard to conceive of such bounty, just there for the taking. Beef was still a luxury for the working classes; on the Queen Mary, roasts and steaks and chops were there for the taking.

  The nightgown hissed its way over her breasts, then slid over her hips and thighs until the hem brushed her toes. She wished she had an elegant pair of satin mules, the kind she’d seen Lana Turner wear in the movies. She wished she had a crystal flacon of Shalimar to dab behind her ears and on the pulse points at her wrists and throat. But all she had was a delicate tea-rose cologne that she applied liberally along the curve of her breasts and at the back of her neck.

  Her hair drifted over her bare shoulders and down her back, and she lifted it up with one hand as she slipped on the gossamer robe that matched the nightgown. Her blue eyes looked dark and smoky with emotion, and she laughed softly at the seductive picture she presented in her décolleté lingerie.

  Twenty-seven years old and she had never once been with a man. Was Mac expecting a woman with experience to match his own? Most of her friends had lost their virginity during the war, unable to resist the appeal of strapping young men in uniform. War had lent an urgency to everything. Why wait until tomorrow when tomorrow might never come? American GIs had been the servicemen of choice. They were young, strong, healthy and rich. Jane had had her share of crushes on the handsome young men, but she’d been too shy and too filled with her own losses to seek solace from one of them. Two of Jane’s closest schoolmates had married U.S. soldiers and after V-E Day went to America as war brides. Leave it to Jane Townsend—no, Jane Weaver—to climb aboard the bandwagon eight years late.

  She heard the creak of a door opening. Her heart thundered inside her chest. The steward, perhaps, come to turn down the bed? But it wasn’t the steward. The bed was already turned down and the pillows fluffed.

  “Janie?” Mac tapped on the closed door to the bathroom.

  She rested her forehead against the cool glass of the mirror and waited for the wave of dizziness to pass. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “I’m coming out.”

  His footsteps retreated and her breath caught at the subtle squeak of bedsprings, followed by the double thud of his shoes hitting the floor of the cabin. The memory of his kisses, hot and sweet and demanding, rushed in at her, and desire once again sprang to life inside her belly.

  Her hand trembled on the latch as she swung open the door to the bathroom and stepped into the main part of the cabin. The lamps had been switched off and moonlight, pale and silvery, filtered in through the open porthole. Mac, clad in trousers and an open shirt, stood near the porthole, gazing out. The tip of his cigarette glowed in the darkness.

  “Mac.” Her voice was husky, not her voice at all.

  He turned slowly. His breath caught at the sight of her, small and exquisite in the delicate gown, and he was glad he had the cigarette as a prop against the sudden attack of jitters. She was so beautiful as she stood there near the edge of the bed. Did she know how beautiful? He drew deeply on the cigarette then stubbed it out in a crystal ashtray on the desk to his right.

  His eyes never left her. The nightgown clung to her body, emphasizing the swell of her breasts and the inward curve of her waist. Her dark hair flowed over her shoulders like a mantle of silk, and he had a fierce image of that silken hair across his chest. He imagined the dusky pink of her nipples beneath the garment. He imagined taking one of those tender nubs between his lips, into his mouth, grazing his teeth against its succulence...

  “Come here, Janie.” He opened his arms to her.

  His words jolted her like a shot of pure electricity. She started toward him, small steps across the soft carpet, then stopped. This wasn’t like her, such total unthinking obedience to a man’s command. But then this wasn’t just any man. This was her husband. And this was the moment she’d been waiting for from their very first hello. Why then couldn’t she take those final steps into his arms?

  He saw the look in her eyes, the flicker of uncertainty. He wanted no uncertainty tonight. No questions. It was her wedding night and he owed her more than memories. He rounded the foot of the bed to where she stood, arms hanging loosely at her sides, breasts rising and falling with each shuddering breath.

  “Don’t be scared, Janie.” He lifted her chin with a touch of his index finger.

  Her laugh was more a shaky intake of breath. She was a
fraid she would incinerate beneath the onslaught of pure heat gathering in her veins. “I’m not.” She met his eyes. “I’m terrified.”

  She saw Mac and herself reflected three times over in the mirrors angled over the dressing table.

  He drew his finger across the line of her jaw, then let it trail down the column of her throat to the angle of her collarbones. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  She bit her lower lip. He watched her, eyes darkening. “Can you promise me?” she asked. The triple image beckoned to her, drawing her into the glass. He was built along heroic proportions, her husband, strong and tall. The classic warrior come to claim his woman.

  His hands lingered, a whisper of touch, against the indentation between her collarbones. “I can promise you that if it does it won’t for very long.”

  Her gaze lowered to rest on his hands, tanned and large, against the milkiness of her skin. He was honest. He didn’t tell her it would be a painless transition from virgin to wife, but she trusted he would guide her along the way with tenderness. She’d heard her women friends talk about their first time, and she knew enough to realize that wedding nights were rarely the stuff of dreams. The very mechanics involved in the act of love would render the process ungainly at best. The relentless male drive to conquer. The eternal female desire to surrender. Her fears were candles in the wind before those truths.

  She swayed toward him, an almost imperceptible movement but one that registered itself upon both of them. She knew by the look in his eyes, by the heat rising in the air between them.

  “Don’t move.”

  As if she could, with his eyes dark and hot upon her.

  Gently he eased the shimmery robe from her shoulders and down her body until it pooled, light as a dream, at her bare feet. He found the fragile straps of the gown with his fingertips and she shivered involuntarily at his touch on her sensitized skin. He slid the straps from her shoulders and the bodice of the negligee dipped low, exposing the full curve of her breasts. An Atlantic breeze fluttered the curtains pulled across the porthole and her nipples puckered visibly through the gossamer-thin fabric.