Proposing? To her? She gripped the shelf harder and pressed her free hand to her chest, to her tumbling, fluttering mess of a chest.

“Mrs. Paxton?” Mrs. Sheridan gave her a bewildered look. “Is this your . . . ?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she whispered.

Clay swept off his garrison cap and bowed. “Sgt. Clay Paxton at your service, ma’am.”

Leah gave the librarian a tiny nod to let her know she was all right, although she was anything but.

Mrs. Sheridan raised a mischievous smile and sauntered toward the office. “I’ll leave y’all be.”

Thank goodness there were no patrons. Leah darted to the table and gripped the back of a chair. “What are you doing up there?”

He smiled down at her. “Showing you I’m not acting out of charity.”

In all the time she’d known him, she’d never known him not to make sense. “By standing on a table?”

“Look around, Leah.” He gestured toward the bookshelves. “How many of these books tell of men doing heroic deeds for their ladies? I’m a Ranger. Rangers climb cliffs. You don’t have any cliffs in this here library, so I climbed this table.” He tapped the surface with his foot and grinned with satisfaction. “I didn’t even need a rope.”

Had he suffered a head injury in Normandy? “Clay, are you all right?”

“I will be when you agree to remain my wife.”

Still not making sense. “I mean, are you well?”

“Am I well?” He threw his head back and laughed. Then he raised his arms and shook them like a football player who had made the winning score. “I’m alive, Leah! Alive! I want to live. I want to live a long, long life, and I want to live it with you.”

Did he mean it? Was he saying what she longed for beyond longing?

His hands drifted down to his sides, and his gaze to hers. “I want to live my life with you out of love, not out of charity. I’ve fallen in love with you.”

Leah’s mouth opened, but all her words, all her beautiful words failed to come together to express the poetry in her heart. How could this man love her in return?

“I never told you what happened in Normandy.”

The swerve in topic threw her off balance, and she clutched the chair tighter. “Normandy?” Her voice sounded thin and breathless.

“I needed to tell you in person.” He lowered himself to sit on the edge of the table, his legs straddling the chair Leah required to support her rubbery legs, especially with his chocolate gaze at her eye level.

“I told you we climbed the cliffs,” he said. “We found and disabled the German guns, blocked the road, and fended off counterattacks. But by the end of the day, I was still alive and hadn’t seen a pillbox like in my dream.”