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

and protect her from dangers both real and imagined.
    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