Prince Charming in Dress Blues by Maureen Child Read Free Book Online

kidding.
    “And what about that old phrase woman’s work? ” she asked.
    “Never heard it,” he said on a laugh. “At least, not in my house. My mom was a firm believer in her sons knowing how to cook and clean. She always said she didn’t want our future wives coming to her with complaints.”
    Annie had the distinct impression she would really like John’s mom.
    “What about you?” he asked, his gaze settling on her. “What’s your family like?”
    “Small,” she said, and folded her arms on the tabletop. “I’m an only child.”
    “Oh, man,” he said wistfully, “how many times did I wish I could say that growing up?”
    “You don’t mean that,” she said. She’d heard too much love in his voice when he’d described his family to believe that.
    “Nah, I guess not. But at the time…” John smiled for a moment at the memory. “When you’re the youngest of three brothers, you end up being the punching bag—or the one who gets blamed for everything—or the one who gets left behind. But once we got older, it was kind of nice having them around.” The baby fell asleep in his arms, and John took the bottle out of her mouth again and set it on the table.
    He stared down at the tiny girl with an expression of such wonder that Annie’s heart tightened in response. Why hadn’t she found a man like him first? Why couldn’t Mike Sinclair have been even half the man John Paretti was? Why hadn’t she given her daughter a father worthy of her?
    “What about your folks?” he asked, snatching her out of her woolgathering and drawing her back to the present. “What do they do?”
    Safer ground, she told herself and gratefully snatched at the lifeline he’d inadvertently thrown her. “My father’s an archaeologist,” she said, “officially retired, but—you can take the archaeologist out of the dirt, but you can’t take the dirt out of the archaeologist.” She shrugged and smiled. “He’s always off exploring—looking for new digs or for a dig he thinks has been handled badly.”
    He nodded, but didn’t smile, almost as if he was hearing beyond her words to the sigh she hadn’t uttered. “And your mom?”
    “She’s his assistant. They’ve been all over the worldtogether. My father’s even mentioned in a few college textbooks.”
    “And you went with them when you were a kid?”
    “Yes,” she said. “I’d visited Egypt, Israel and Iraq before I was six years old. We’ve been all over Europe and the Middle East.”
    “Sounds fascinating,” he said quietly, thoughtfully. “We traveled a lot, too, what with my dad being in the Corps.”
    “Ah,” she said, lifting one hand, “but did you have nannies who couldn’t speak English?”
    “No,” he said softly, “I didn’t. It sounds lonely.”
    “It was,” she admitted, and realized that it was the first time she’d ever complained aloud about her unusual childhood. Sympathy and something else she didn’t want to identify shone in his eyes as he looked at her, and Annie suddenly wanted a change of subject. Desperately. “I would have given anything for some older brothers to torment me,” she said, a false note of humor coloring her voice.
    Thankfully, he went along with her.
    “That’s easy for you to say,” he told her, and gave her a smile that said he knew darn well what she was doing. “You weren’t the one tied to a clothesline pole for a game of cowboys and Indians.”
    “They didn’t,” she said.
    “Like hell they didn’t,” John said, laughing now. “And as soon as they had their ‘prisoner’ tied up, they took off to play somewhere else without me tagging along. It was an hour before Mom found me.”
    “What happened to them?”
    He grinned with obvious enjoyment. “Had theirbacksides smacked and sent to bed without dinner. I, on the other hand, had cake. ”
    “Which you no doubt rubbed in their faces.”
    “Naturally.”
    “You know, I’m beginning to see how a little brother would be