“He waited a few more seconds, hoping her tight jaw would unclench and she’d ask him to stay, but she sat staring down the empty track.There was nothing for him to do but walk away. The drum of his boot heels as he left Amanda and Lydia behind sounded like the clang of thedoor slamming shut on his prison cell in Lexington. Each step away fromthem felt like a year added to his sentence.Spence only walked about a hundred yards before he stopped. His chest ached so much he could hardly draw breath. He couldn’t do this.He looked back over his shoulder at Amanda sitting on the bench. She held Lydia on her lap facing her, resting against her arms and looking up into her face. They were involved in an intimate, one-sided conversation.He stood and stared. He couldn’t leave them, but Amanda had made it clear she didn’t want him. God, he would give anything if he could goback and change the way they’d met. But how could he have done thingsdifferently and still have met Amanda? If he hadn’t pretended to be Travis Baxter that day at the station, she never would’ve spoken to him at all. Spence couldn’t regret what he’d done nor could he condone it. It was a double-edged sword.”

“If Spence had really wanted to bed Miss Nordstrum, he would have said how she’d been in his mind since the moment he arrived in Reederville. He’d have added that her visits to Amanda after the baby’s birth had given him hope that she might have come in part to see him.And he would have ended by assuring her that when he agreed to go riding with her today it hadn’t been with the intention of kissing her, buther beauty had stolen his senses away and he couldn’t resist hercharms. He wouldn’t have fucked her that afternoon, but sometime within a month, he could’ve seduced her into bed.Spence was a master at weaving a spell of words to charm a womaninto doing what he wanted. Hadn’t he proven that with Amanda? Amanda, who wouldn’t leave his head, day or night.Amanda, the most colossal mistake of his life.”

“He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t tell her how much she had come to mean to him. She could destroy him with her rejection. If she had feigned her feelings for him – if he’d bought into her lies and her quest for freedom…. He wasn’t sure what he would do. He could hurt her." Caleb.”

“Piney woke up wearing a big grin on his face. He couldn’t remember when he’d slept so well. He pulled the pillow next to him up over his face. He could smell her hair on it.“Jesse,” he murmured to himself. He liked her. He really liked her. And he loved, loved, loved doing her.Being inside her. She was so hot. She was so tight. She was…Piney stopped himself in midthought and rolled out of bed. His mind was headed where his body could not go.”

“How could she have reacted like that? She didn’t understand what had come over her. She’d felt his passion and her own. It made her anxious. On edge. For something. Something that made her skin prickle whenever he was in the room with her. Indeed, she found it difficult to concentrate when he wasaround. He was big and strong and smelled incredible. She wanted to curl up against his chest and never leave. She’d never had such strong urges. But then again, she’d never met a man who made her feel so protected simply by his solid presence and his confident command of everything around him. His strength was strangely soothing. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d felt so…content.”

“He tightened his grip on her hand and pulled her toward him in the darkness. He knew exactly how she’d respond, her other hand coming up to push him away, her hand touching the bare, hot skin of his chest so that she drew back in surprise, long enough for him to wrap her tightly against his chest, trapping her hand between them. He knew she’d try to jerk her head away when he slid his hand into her hair and tilted her face back for his kiss. And he knew she’d open her mouth for him.What he hadn’t guessed was what it would feel like. [...]He hadn’t known a mouth could feel like that. That a woman, an argumentative, reluctant woman could feel so hot in his arms, so incredibly right that his monumental self control could start to slip.”