“Hot chocolate should be sinful, and I don't believe in sinning in half measures.”

“I'd made myself some hot chocolate, located a book with a lot of murder and mayhem,curled up on a loveseat near the fireplace, and was happily envisioning Joe as the corpse of this tale.”

“I can't believe you'd rather hold handle bars than a girl."He angled his head thoughtfully."I hadn't considered that.""Maybe you should."He hopped over,gingerly swinging his bad leg over to the other side and settled down behind me on the seat."You got rules on how I can hold you?""Nothing distracting while I'm driving," I tossed over my shoulder, meeting his gaze."We don't need another accident.""And when you're not driving?""The Kate-have-a-good-time fund is getting low.Maybe you should think about making a deposit.”

“Was it possible to measure what the heart felt?”

“He kicked me out,okay?""How can a guy who only has one good leg to stand on kick you out?""He doesn't want me around.""I find that hard to believe, Katie.""Yeah,well,he threw snow at me and told me to leave."She looked astounded.As well she should be."Where did he get snow?" she asked.Okay,I'd obviously misread the reason for her astonishment.It wasn't that he'd thrown snow at me,but that he'd had snow to throw.”

“Falling in love should be the easiest thing in the world, but it's not.”

“He finally cleared his throat. "Well, huh." "Yeah," I said. "What now?" "Well"—he cleared his throat again—"I guess you and I go. I mean, unless you really don't want to." Why put it on me to bail out? "Do you want to?" I asked. "Yeah. I really do. I had to talk Dad into giving me the afternoon off. And since I don't usually go to a lot of trouble to fix lunch, it seems a shame to waste the effort. Besides, there's the thing I want you to see." He said all of this while staring at the door like he was talking to it. I almost expected it to respond.”