“I lacked some essential skill for attracting people, for giving and receiving love easily. It meant too much to me. I seemed to be driving away the people I most wanted. Finally I had realized that getting someone to love you was like trying to coax a bird to perch on your finger . . . it wouldn't happen unless you stopped trying so hard.”

“May be, Churchill had pointed out, I should stop trying so hard not to love Hardy, and accept the some part of me might always want him. "Some things," he said, "you just have to learn to live with.""But you can't love someone new without getting over the last one.""Why not?""Because then the new relationship is compromised."Seeming amused, Churchill said that every relationship was compromised in one way or the other, and you were better off not picking at the edges of it.I disagreed. I felt I needed to let Hardy go completely. I just didn't know how. I hoped someday I might meet someone so compelling that I could take the risk of loving again. But I had serious doubts such a man existed.”

“I was going to have to leave you anyway. Because I loved you too much to drag youdown with me."My hand crept up to caress the rigid line of his jaw. "Why'd you change your mind?" I whispered."After I calmed down a little and had a chance to think, I figured . . . I love you enough to try and deserve you. I would do anything, be anything, for you.”

“You'll be my wife," he said inexorably."You want to own me!" she accused, trying to crawl away from him."Yes." He flung her down on the bed and flattened his weight on her. As he spoke, his hot breath fannedher mouth and chin. "Yes. I want other people to look at you and know you're mine. I want you to takemy name and my money. I want you tolive with me. I want to be inside you . . . part of your thoughts . . . your body . . . all of you. I want you totrust me. I want to give you whatever elusive, impossible, goddamned mysterious thing it is you need inorder to be happy. Does that frightenyou? Well, it frightens the hell out of me. Don't you think I'd stop feeling this way if I could? It's not as ifyou're the easiest woman in the world!!”

“The letter had been crumpled up and tossed onto the grate. It had burned all around the edges, so the names at the top and bottom had gone up in smoke. But there was enough of the bold black scrawl to reveal that it had indeed been a love letter. And as Hannah read the singed and half-destroyed parchment, she was forced to turn away to hide the trembling of her hand. —should warn you that this letter will not be eloquent. However, it will be sincere, especially in light of the fact that you will never read it. I have felt these words like a weight in my chest, until I find myself amazed that a heart can go on beating under such a burden. I love you. I love you desperately, violently, tenderly, completely. I want you in ways that I know you would find shocking. My love, you don't belong with a man like me. In the past I've done things you wouldn't approve of, and I've done them ten times over. I have led a life of immoderate sin. As it turns out, I'm just as immoderate in love. Worse, in fact. I want to kiss every soft place of you, make you blush and faint, pleasure you until you weep, and dry every tear with my lips. If you only knew how I crave the taste of you. I want to take you in my hands and mouth and feast on you. I want to drink wine and honey from you. I want you under me. On your back. I'm sorry. You deserve more respect than that. But I can't stop thinking of it. Your arms and legs around me. Your mouth, open for my kisses. I need too much of you. A lifetime of nights spent between your thighs wouldn't be enough. I want to talk with you forever. I remember every word you've ever said to me. If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place, I would stay forever. I would become a citizen of you. You would say it's too soon to feel this way. You would ask how I could be so certain. But some things can't be measured by time. Ask me an hour from now. Ask me a month from now. A year, ten years, a lifetime. The way I love you will outlast every calendar, clock, and every toll of every bell that will ever be cast. If only you—And there it stopped.”

“No more Dane,” he eventually said with unnerving finality. I tried to be funny. “I can't decide if that means you don't want me to see him again or if you're planning to kill him.” “It means if the first thing happens, the second thing is likely to follow.”

“Bending his head over hers, Leo murmured, "When I give you away at the altar, Bea, I want you to remember something. I'm not really giving you away. I'm merely allowing him the chance to love you as much as the rest of us do.”