Stranger in Paradise (Home Front - Book #2) Read Online Free PDF

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