“His sleeve rode up, revealing an armband tattoo that hadn’t been there before. She was not the kind to get turned on by tattoos, normally, but this one, on the hard-muscled arm of the man she’d once loved, the man she was stuck here with—dangerous. Too dangerous.”

“And she understood more than ever before that this big, strong man with the tattoos running up and down his arms perhaps hadn't felt loved by very many people before.”

“She recognized the signs of danger. When she’d said to the duke that she had a certain effect on men, she hadn’t been exaggerating. It was not every man and it was not all the time, but when the effect happened, proposals flew like confetti and all parties involved usually ended up feeling quite mortified.”

“She was brave, wasn’t she? Look what she’d done. She hadn’t run back to the safety of San Francisco, but toward something dangerous and unknown. And Oscar had gone with her. He was it, the man she wanted to be with, and not just in sporadic or imagined trysts, Camille slowed her crawling as it dawned on her. She loved him. She loved Oscar Kildare. She loved him enough to give up everything she’d ever known.”

“I'm not a cop. I'm just a tattoo artist. I'm just a guy who used to be in love with a girl. I'm just a fool who's been fooled too many times before. I'm just a man who's finally getting his revenge.”

“She’d always assumed that falling in love would be like getting slammed into a brick wall. That you’d just be going along as usual and you’d get knocked on your ass and think, Gee, I guess I’m in love. But it hadn’t happened that way. It had just kind of snuck up on her before she’d realized it. It had happened one smile and one touch at a time. One look. One kiss. One pink cat collar. One pinch to the heart and one breathless anticipation after another until she was in so deep there was no denying it. No turning back before it was too late. No more lying about what she felt.”