“Where I come from, any girl with eyes in her head would grab a guy who looks like that and hold on to him,” Emma said. Pru had tried to get Emma interested in Ed, but she said she still wasn’t over the boyfriend she had lost in the first year of the war. She didn’t want to get hooked on another guy who might die, and Ed flew dangerous missions. They all did. There were no safe jobs in the war, even for civilians. The building you were in could be bombed at any time, or even the home where you slept at night. They were all at constant risk, and even more so in the RAF, doing what they did. They were all fully aware that they could die on any day, and they were willing to take that risk, for the good of the men they rescued.

After he left the bar, Ed thought about what he had said to her, about opening her heart again, and he realized that it wasn’t entirely without motive. He hadn’t been as attracted to any woman since Belinda had died, and the speech he had made to her was somewhat self-serving.

They flew together the next day, and he tried to stay professional. Pru wasn’t feeling well, but had come to work anyway, and she let Lizzie do most of the work. It was good practice for her, and she was entirely equal to the task. And it threw Lizzie and Ed together more than it would have otherwise. And at one point, without thinking, he gently touched her arm, and she looked up at him, surprised. He took his hand away quickly and moved away from her, on the pretext of taking a patient’s vital signs, but he had just wanted to touch her and connect with her in some deeper way. He was still thinking about it after work that night. He didn’t want to frighten her away, but he was suddenly thinking about her all the time. Pru had noticed it too: how close he stood to her, how often he spoke to her, how gentle he was when he helped her with a patient, or helped her down the ladder at the end of the day. Lizzie took his breath away when he was close to her.

“You’re falling for her, aren’t you?” Pru said to him in the supply closet one day after a flight, and he didn’t know what to say. He just nodded, and their eyes met. “That’s dangerous here,” Pru reminded him. “Any of us could die any day. You’ll get your heart broken again if that happens.” It was something they had to be aware of, and remember every day. And she knew he was more sensitive than he looked. Dating lots of women kept him from getting attached to one.