“Colt, you’re a cop. I’m fairly certain you realize what you are proposing is illegal. As in bigamy.”He laughed. “You don’t legally marry us both. Just one of us. Then the three of us make our own private vows.”“Fine,” she leaned back and gave him a smug look as if expecting her next question to jar some sense into them. “Who am I going to legally marry?”He grinned at her transparency. Obviously, she thought this was going to be a sticking point. “We’ll arm wrestle to decide that.”

“The point I was trying to make before you interrupted with your inventoryof my personality is that neither of us is going to be able to stay celibate for the next six months."She dropped her eyes. If only he knew that she'd stayed that way all her life.We'll be living in close quarters," he went on. "We're legally married, and it's only natural that we're going to get it on."Get it on? His bluntness reminded her that none of this meant anything to him emotionally, and contrary to all logic, she'd wanted to hear something romantic. With some pique, she said, "In other words, you expect me to keep house, work for the circus, and 'get it on' with you."He thought it over. "I guess that's about the size of it.”

“I'm fine with marrying Tove.""You're 'fine' with marrying him?" Willa laughed and looped her arm through Matt's. "How romantic.""You should've seen the proposal," I said."Where is the ring,by the way?" Willa asked, looking at my hands. "Is it getting sized?""I don't know." I held my hands out to look at them,as if I expected a ring to magically appear. "He didn't give me one.""That's horrible!”

“[Grandfather] would manufacture funnies with Grandmother before she died about how he was in love with other women who were not her. She knew it was only funnies because she would laugh in volumes. 'Anna,' he would say, 'I am going to marry that one with the pink hat.' And she would say, 'To whom are you going to marry her?' And he would say, 'To me.' I would laugh very much in the back seat, and she would say to him, 'But you are no priest.' And he would say, 'I am today.' And she would say, 'Today you believe in God?' And he would say, 'Today I believe in love.”

“The first time Mr. Darcy asked Lizzy to marry him in Pride and Prejudice, he went about it all wrong,” I started, smiling at the connection I’d just made in my mind. “He insulted her and herfamily. But after her refusal, he made a conscious effort to change for the better, and everything worked out for them the second time he proposed. It’s the same with us. You learned from your past mistakes, and everything’s different now. Just as Lizzy gave Mr. Darcy a second chance, I’m going to do the same for you.”“I’m glad that Lizzy gave Mr. Darcy a second chance.” He smiled at the comparison. “She was the only one for him. He would have been miserable without her.”“And she would have been miserable without him.” I laughed. “Even though she might not have admitted it.”

“You still with your floozy girlfriend?” Ah, there is was. The elephant in the car…He gave her an incredulous look. “Obviously not.”She smacked him on his arm. “Don’t look at me like I asked a stupid question. Because it not a stupid question at all, and you damn well know it.”“Fine.”“So you broke up with her?”“Yes,” he said sharply.“Way to find your balls, man,” Ada congratulated him and sat back in her seat.”