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Your friend always,

Helen "I want you to meet my family," Paul announced a little more than a week after their first date They’d spent every available ether; they’d been to the Seattle Center and the Space Needle, rowing on Lake Washington, out to dinner and had seen a couple ofon the campus lawn, he waited for Ruth after her last class of the day He stood when she reached hi as he issued the invitation

"When?"

"Mom and Dad are at the house"

"You mean you want me to reen grass toward the visitors’ parking lot If she’d known she wasPaul’s parents she would’ve been better prepared She would’ve done so about her hair and worn a different outfit and…

"Yeah," Paul muttered

Ruth stopped and he walked forward two or three steps before he noticed Frowning, he glanced back

"What’s going on here?" she asked, clutching her books to her chest

Paul looked everywhere but at her "My parents feel they shouldure it, you must be someone i "Aid expression cas "I don’t know the answer to that yet"

"Really?" she teased

"Listen, Ruth, I’ you my heart so you can break it You don’t want to be involved with a soldier Well, I’m a soldier, and either you accept that or at the end of these teeks, it’s over"

He sounded so…so ht a relationship could be that sihtforward Life didn’t divide evenly into black and white There were plenty of gray areas, too All right, so Paul had a point In the back of her et out of the war business She wasn’t the kind of woman who’d be content to sit at home while thehis life Experiencing dreadful things Suffering Maybe dying

"You’d rather I didn’t ht"

That hurt "I see"

Some of her pain must have been evident in her voice, because Paul caer beneath her chin Their eyes est moment "If my family meets you, they’ll kno ed to slad you care, because I care about you, too," she ad"

"No, it doesn’t," she agreed, leaning forward so their lips could meet She half expected Paul to pull away, but he didn’t

Instead, he groaned and forcefully brought his mouth to hers Their kiss was passionate, deep--honest She felt the sharp edges of her textbooks digging painfully into her breasts, and still Ruth s impossible," he mumbled when he lifted his head from hers

"I’ve been known to do that"

Paul reached for her hand and led her into the parking lot "I randmother to my parents," he said casually as he unlocked the car doors

"Ah," Ruth said, slipping into the passenger seat "That explains it"

"Explains what?"

"Why your faht you to my family They feel cheated"

Paul shook his head sole of your grandain?"

"To before my classes and she asked e could make a return visit"

"You’re curious about what happened, aren’t you?" Paul asked as he inserted the key into the ignition

"Very much so," Ruth adht about her grandain She’d done so the Internet and a number of library books on the war In fact, Ruth was so absorbed by the history of the Resistance movey essay she was trying to write

She’d had several days to beco the Second World War And yet she still had trouble ihter for the French Resistance

"She loved Jean-Claude," Paul corand reality that would not have made sense at any other time in Helen’s life And then, at some point after that, Helen had met her Sam How? Ruth wondered When did they fall in love? Faht in the European ca the Second World War He’d been in France toward the end of the war, she recalled She wondered how much he’d known about Helen’s past

Ruth could only hope her grand with Paul’s fahtful--ih and a big heart She brought Ruth into the kitchen and settled her on a stool at the counter while she fussed with the dinner salad

Paul and his father, Greg, were on the patio, firing up the grill and chatting Every now and then, Ruth caught Paul stealing a glance in her direction