“If I’m still here,” she said cautiously. She liked him more than she had expected to, as a person and a man. He was someone she could respect, without pretension or artifice. She liked how hard-working he was. He had explained to her all about his business. He was thirty-three years old. She was twenty-four, but the war had aged them all.

“Maybe you could come to Paris, before we all ship back to the States. And I could visit you in New York.” She smiled at the thought of it. Her mother would have a heart attack if she saw him. Dan Stanley, a wholesale butcher from Pittsburgh, but she thought he was the most attractive man she’d met in years. He was a man’s man, and there was nothing phony about him. He was real.

“You won’t like my family,” she said.

“And they won’t like me either. Will that matter to you, Alex?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think they like me much either. They’ve disapproved of me all my life. They think I’m weird.”

“Do they have any idea what you do here?” he asked her. “I’ve asked around about what your unit does. They call you the Flying Angels, and it sounds to me like that’s exactly what you are. I’ve never seen you in action. But you were an angel to me while I was here. Omaha Beach was pretty damn rough. I figured I was dying there, and then I woke up here in the hospital, and I met you, and I felt like maybe I was meant to be here, so I could meet you. I’ve never met a woman I was serious about. I was too busy building the family business into something we could all be proud of, and I am. And now you show up. The women I’ve met all wanted something. They had an agenda, a plan. You don’t want a damn thing from me. You’re just who you are, an angel in a flight suit. I don’t want to lose sight of you. I want to see you again when we’re back home. I’ll come to New York and take you to a Yankees game, and then take you out for a decent dinner. Some of our best customers are in New York. The Plaza Hotel, the Pierre. The Twenty-One Club.” She realized then just how major his business was. They were some of the best restaurants in New York. He hadn’t wanted to try to impress her before. He just wanted to meet her as a man and a woman, as a nurse and a butcher, not a debutante and a successful businessman.