“How the hell did he get himself into this position in the first place? Oh, yeah, some little woman approached him in a bar and said she paid him for sex.”

“She trusted him. She had faith in him. And he left her forever. Something tells me she's not forgetting that anytime soon.”

“Cade motions with a nod to follow him. He's holding the pole, and I'm the fish on the line. Just how far will he pull me in?”

“Looking at these pictures,I wonder,did that part of methat flourished around him,like prized perennialsunder a tender gardener's care,die along with him?”

“You smell like a bar," he said.I thought, You smell like a library. But I wanted to have sex right then, so I said, "You smell like a poem.”

“Too racy?" I asked.She snorted. "Too asinine. For being such a brilliant woman in all other respects, apparently, she was completely flummoxed by sex. When she wrote about it, it was either all buttoned up or completely, pardon the expression,screwy. Between you and me, the letters to Willing are just sloppy and boring. The spicy bits read like old Cosmopolitans now. The rest is just simpering and scolding him for not writing in kind.""Of course he didn't. He loved Diana."Maxine swept a shred of paper from her desk with a quick backhand. "Oh, for heavens sake." She huffed out a breath. "The heart of a teenager.”

“It's not the scar and it's abso-freakin-lutely not you."I dropped my hand. "Yeah, right." I sagged against him a little. For being as little as he is, Frankie's really solid. "It's never me."I felt his sigh against my shoulder blades.”