“Standing in the corner, leaning aginst the wall, is a fifth man. If Grange is a Hummer, this guy's an 18-wheel Mack truck, thinks Roddy. Parked, with its engine idling. He reminds Roddy of Ivan Drago from that Rocky movie. The guy must stand six five and tip the scales at 270. Pure, rock-hard muscle. His crew-cut blond hair is slickly gelled; his face--especially those cheekbones and that lantern jaw--could be carved from granite. He, no doubt, spends counteless hours at some muscle emporium. Pure muscle, but probably clumsy; he would go down fast if Roddy drove a flurry of punches into his gut and face. A gold earring pierces the guy's left earlobe. The drape of the jacket on his Schwarzenegger shoulders shows a bulge on the left side. The guy's packing some serious hardware. Mack Truck stares blankly and stands rock-still, hands clasped in front of his gargantuan body.”

“He grabbed something off the floor and held it in front of his hips as he stood up. She drank in the sight of him: The tattooed slave bands around his wrists and neck, the plug in his left earlobe, his black eyes, his skull-trimmed hair. His body was as starkly lean as she remembered, all striated muscles and hard cut veins. And he threw off raw power like a scent.”

“He sang like an angel, he was faithful to God and he waited honorablyfor the wife he believed God chose for him. He made two daughters whoshone like mirrors in the direct sun; he blazed his path with a scytheand his broad shoulders, and he was who he chose to be, which is thehardest and bravest thing a man can do. He looked at us, his parents,his sisters, his whole crooked family, and he flexed his jaw muscles,packed up his truck, and drove away.”

“At some point Ewan had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. His forearms were bulging with muscle, and his shoulders appeared likely to rip through the thin linen of his shirt. Annabelle swallowed, thinking of Ewan without his shirt at their picnic. He wasn't even breathing hard."Where do you get all these muscles?" she asked."Lifting damsels in distress." He grinned at her, and there was a slight lurch as he leaped off the carriage and landed with a splash in the ditch.”

“He stands in the kitchen doorway, a black figure surrounded by the yellow light background, the small details of his face unseen from the darkness of the living room. His left shoulder leans slightly against the threshold, a pistol suspended from the left hand, dangling in the yellow space between the hip and the dark.”

“He stands up, slowly, and puts his hands on the zipper of his jeans, where I notice there's a bulge that looks like someone stuck a cucumber in his pants. That can be his...thing, can it? He undoes the button then his fly and then slides his jeans down. He's wearing those tight boxer-briefs things, like that guy in the Calvin Klein commercial, and I realize, it's definitely not a cucumber.”