“Don’t worry, JJ,” she told him, as she unbuttoned his shirt. She clearly had other things on her mind.

“All right, Liss,” he said. “Tell me what’s going on. Who was that guy?”

When she looked up, she couldn’t hold back a smile. “Nick,” she said.

“Nick! You mean that’s the bastard you wrote me about? I thought he had a fiancée back home.”

Her brow wrinkled. “I thought he did, too, but he said the strangest thing.”

“What?”

“He said Grandpa had told him that I was engaged to Ben Granton and showed Nick a picture of the two of us. I know which picture it was. It was when Mom and Dad and I went up to see Ben when he was home on leave, a few summers ago. The thing was, Ben joked all day about how if I was just a little older and if our fathers weren’t such good friends—but it was just in fun. Mom and Dad and Mr. Granton were teasing us about it, because Ben kept looking at me and saying, ‘Wow, you’ve really grown up!’ Because I hadn’t seen him in ages, before that. They took a picture of us, just for fun, and I gave a copy to Grandpa because he’s always asking me for pictures to put on his desk and I thought it was cute. But Grandpa knew there was nothing between Ben and me! So I don’t know why he’d show that picture to Nick! And then tell me that Nick had a fiancée back home.”

She sighed. “Because I don’t think that Nick did, JJ! And now he’s come back because he read about Ben being killed. He proposed to me! Before I could even explain about Ty! And before I knew it, before I could say anything at all, he just kissed me and I—Oh, JJ, what am I going to do?”

JJ boosted himself up onto his elbows. “He did what? Proposed to you? I thought you were marrying Ty.”

“I am, of course! Of course!” She shook her head quickly, and turned her attention back to him. “You’d better take your pants off so I can get that leg off of you.”

“Turn around for a minute, then,” he said. She did so, and he unfastened his belt, unbuttoned and unzipped his pants. “Jesus Christ, Lissa, you’d better tell Nick. You didn’t say anything about Ty?”

“I didn’t have a chance!”

He had his pants halfway off, and double-checked that his shorts weren’t flapping open. “You can turn around and help me with these,” he said.

She did. “I was so surprised to see him, and then—well, he had a ring and everything and he—he sort of swept me off my feet.”