Stranger in Paradise (Home Front - Book #2) by Barbara Bretton Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
    Not the kind of thoughts a man should be entertaining when he was ten seconds away from meeting his woman’s only living relative. Think of something less dangerous, Weaver . Baseball. Tennis. A rousing game of rugby. Anything but the way she’d feel in his arms.
    The second-floor landing opened into a narrow library, lined on both sides with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves of deep mahogany. Thousands of leather-bound books filled those shelves, interspersed here and there with green plants and the accumulated paraphernalia of a life well lived.
    Nigel Albert Townsend was a portly man in his early seventies. His skin was pink and clear—English skin, Mac called it. A product of fog and lorry exhaust and that odd collection of genes that produced Churchill and Richard the Lion Heart and