He drew her in, not kissing her now, undoing her blouse and her skirt, slipping off her underclothes. Then he lay her on the bed, removed all of his clothes and held her as close as he could, as if he wanted to sweep her inside him, one of her legs threaded between his, one of his arms wrapped over her and one wrapped under her, braided together.

“Dan,” she said hesitantly, shy in a way she’d never been before, because there seemed, in this moment, to be so much at stake. “That night in the ballroom…” Her voice trailed off.

He kissed her and repeated her words. “That night in the ballroom…” It was his turn to pause. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way but I’d always just assumed the rumors I’d heard of you sleeping with this man and that were true. I didn’t think any less of you for it,” he hastened to add as she pulled away, his arms firm, not letting her withdraw from the embrace.

“You’re a gorgeous woman,” he said, eyes searching out hers and holding them while he spoke. “God knows we all need to feel good from time to time but it made me think there was this divide: the men you would sleep with, and then me, who you’d never shown any interest in beyond friendship. Which was fine, because I valued our friendship more than one night of infatuation. But when you told me none of it was true, that you hadn’t been with anyone, the divide disappeared. That night in the ballroom, I couldn’t think about anything else but you, a woman I’d known as a friend, a woman who was the most beautiful thing from the inside out. When we danced,” he whispered into her ear, “and I touched your back, it was like walking into a fire and all I could do was curse myself for ruining our friendship because I knew, after feeling that, it would be impossible just to sit next to you on a sofa on a balcony ever again.”

God, he was going to make her cry and she didn’t want to spend the last five minutes with him sobbing. “Why didn’t you say something?” she asked, voice husky with emotion.

“Jess,” he said, and his voice had changed.

It was as if he was preparing her. She was used to that certain inflection; she’d heard it throughout the war as officers told the men which of their number had died, or what suicidal target they were to attack next, or any other of the myriad pieces of news one didn’t want to hear.

No, no, no, she thought, unable to stop her eyes from filling with tears now. What had he said? A night of infatuation. That’s all it could be in France in April 1945 with the war still firing on. He was going to tell her that it was time to go back to being friends. But that was unthinkable.