Sentimental Journey by Barbara Bretton

From the Publisher

The year is 1943

On the home front of the American Dream

Like so many American women during WWII, Catherine Wilson was waiting for her fiancé's return from the Pacific and dreaming of married life. Then her father enlists, too, and it's left to Catherine to manage his factory — devoting every waking hour to the hardest work of her life.

When Catherine first meets Johnny Danza at the Stage Door Canteen, he's just another GI heading overseas. But when her fiancé is killed, Johnny's V-Mail becomes a lifeline, and soon their letters blossom into more than friendship. But it's only when a wounded Johnny arrives unexpectedly at Catherine's door, that true healing . . .and true love . . .can begin.

Product Details

• Read a Sample Chapter

Read a Sample Chapter

Sentimental Journey

Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.

Chapter One

American women are learning how to put planes and tanks together, how to read blueprints, how to weld and rivet and make the great machinery of war production hum under skillful eyes and hands. But they're also learning how to look smart in overalls and how to be glamorous after work. They are learning to fulfill both the useful and the beautiful ideal.

-Woman's Home Companion, 1943 Catherine Anne Wilson was no different from a million other young women on that warm June evening in 1943. She was twenty-one years old, engaged to be married, and impatient to get on with the rest of her life. If the war hadn't come along, she and Douglas Weaver would be married by now, snug and safe in their own little apartment with a baby in the cradle and one on the way.

Instead, there she was, still in her parents' house in Forest Hills, curled up on the window seat in the pastel-pink room where she'd played with dolls and learned how to curl her hair and dreamed of how wonderful it would be to be grown-up and married.

Now, years later, she was still waiting to find out. She was a grown woman living the life of a dutiful daughter. Each morning she arose at seven, gulped down oatmeal and a cup of cocoa, then kissed her mother goodbye, in the same routine she'd followed for four years at Forest Hills High School when she was counting the days until she was grown-up. The only difference was she no longer headed for the classroom; she headed for work, where she spent nine hours a day posting numbers at her father's manufacturing firm. She came home at night to her mom's meat loaf and her sister's Sinatra recordings and an abiding emptiness inside her heart that almost took her breath away.

Even the songs matched her mood. "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" and the painfully beautiful "As Time Goes By" only served to point out how different this world was from the one she'd imagined when she was a foolish girl.

It wasn't as if she wanted very much out of life. All she wanted was the same things women had wanted for hundreds and hundreds of years. Her own house and her own husband. Children to care for and a life that was her very own. Woman's Home Companion said that these should be the happiest years of her life, a time when childbirth was easier and housework more satisfying. They even hinted that the love between a man and a woman could prove that sometimes heaven was found right there on earth. Instead, Catherine felt like a hungry child with her nose pressed against the window of a bakery, longing for something as simple and natural as a loaf of bread fresh from the oven. Something that was as impossible as flying to the moon.

When her mother was twenty-one, Dot had already given birth to Catherine and was pregnant again with Nancy. She'd had a husband and a home and the happiness Catherine dreamed about every single night.

"Don't you worry," everyone said, their tones jovial and reassuring. "Things will be back to normal before you know it" The tide was about to turn any day. Hitler and Tojo and Mussolini were on the run, and any minute the Allies would strike the blow that would put an end to this insanity.

Like most other Americans, Catherine had been raised on happy Hollywood endings, firm in the belief that the good guys always won. Lately, however, she'd been finding it harder to hold on to the notion that everything would work out the way it did in Betty Grable movies. Instead of coming to an end, the war grew larger and more frightening with each day that passed. The headlines in the New York Daily News and the Herald Tribune talked of massive troop movements and losses that brought a chill to the blood.

Six million Americans were in the military, and each day the ranks swelled as eager men signed up to defend their country. The Allies had suffered badly in Corregidor and the Bataan death march was all too real. The Movietone News put a good face on the truth, but it wasn't until Guadalcanal, just a few months ago, that the Allies had scored their first victory.

None of it, however, seemed to register with her sister, Nancy. The girl's voice floated up to Catherine's window from the front stoop, where the high-school senior sat chatting with her pals. Had it only been four years since Catherine herself had sat on the stoop with Douglas and made plans for the senior prom? She felt like an old woman sitting in her rocker watching the youngsters have all the fun.

Nancy's voice was high and excited - after all, it wasn't every day you got to go into Manhattan and see the real-life Stage Door Canteen. Their father had pulled a few strings and made special arrangements to take the family into the city to meet some of his squadron members. They would have a good old-fashioned celebration before he boarded a troop ship the next morning to Europe. "We're not going to sit here watching the clock tick," he had said to Dot and his daughters at the breakfast table that morning. "Let's meet the fellows and make an evening of it."

Nancy had been beside herself. It seemed to Catherine that her little sister had been baptized with stardust and blessed by Max Factor. Nancy pored over her stacks of Photoplay and Modern Screen as if they held the secret of life. Nancy believed in love at first sight, that Clark Gable was the most handsome man in the whole world, and that if she only had Betty Grable's legs, Rita Hayworth's hair and Lana Turner's smile, her happiness would be assured.

"Do you know that little girl is positive she'll meet Van Johnson and Tyrone Power tonight?"

Catherine turned away from the window at the sound of her mother's voice in the doorway. "What's worse," she said, summoning up a smile, "is that she believes they'll both fall in love with her."

"The child is starstruck," said Dot as she entered the room. Her slender figure was hidden inside the lavender housecoat Grandma Wilson had made for her birthday present, and her thick light brown hair was tightly wound into curls crisscrossed with bobby pins and dampened with Wave-Set.

Her mother's familiar scent of Cashmere-Bouquet and Pacquin's hand cream was a balm to Catherine's troubled soul. She made room for her mom on the window seat. "I'm glad Nancy's the way she is," Catherine said. "One serious daughter is enough, don't you think?"

Dot glanced at the alarm clock ticking away on Catherine's nightstand, then leaned over and poked her head out the bedroom window. "You have one hour to get yourself ready, young lady. Daddy expects us dressed and on our way to the subway at six o'clock sharp."

Dot and Catherine both laughed at Nancy's shriek of "I don't know what to wear!" followed by the sound of her black-and-white saddle shoes pounding up the front steps. Lucky Nancy, with nothing more to worry about than choosing between her red blouse and her white one.

"Are you going to wear your green dress?" Catherine asked her mother.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from Sentimental Journey by Barbara Bretton Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---