“People think loneliness is absence. It isn't. It's a filling up, a rising, spilling tide that crashes into every gully and chasm of your mind and soul until you're choked with emptiness, awash with desolation, thrashing in the foam of it, reaching for a hand to hold and yet finding no hand, no refuge, no comfort.”

“We are only moments away from the past. But it only takes a moment for everything to change, for the world to wobble on its axis and make the familiar strange.”

“Owen stepped into the saddle and reached a hand down as he took his foot out of the stirrup, so Bay could mount behind him. Once she was settled, he said, “Hang on. And don’t be wiggling around. We can’t afford any more accidents.”Bay glowered at him. She clamped her hands on either side of his waist at his beltline, but his Colt .45 was holstered on one side, which kept her from getting a comfortable hold. She put her right hand above the gun, but that meant it was practically under his armpit. Then she moved it below the gun, but that put her hand low on hips close to his crotch.“Sonofabitch.” He grabbed her hands and pulled them around his midriff. “Now hang on.”Bay kept her breasts rigidly distanced from Owen’s back, but her nipples puckered anyway. It was that damned washboard of male abdominal muscle under her hands. The man could do commercials for those workout machines they advertised on TV.The horseflies were a surprise. Where had they come from? She let go with one hand and swatted at one that seemed determined to bite her on the nose.And knocked Owen’s hat askew.“That does it. Off.”“It wasn’t my fault,” Bay said. “I was getting bitten.”“Off.” He grabbed her arm and levered her out from behind him and onto the ground.”

“Bay caressed his smooth cheek. “You shaved. It feels soft.”He caught her hand and kissed her palm. “Go,” he said, opening the bathroom door again. “Before I change my mind and you end up making love to a man who smells like a bear.”

“One little temper tantrum isn’t going to scare me away.”“I can’t guarantee it won’t happen again.”“I work every day with cantankerous beasts who growl and bite, when I’m only trying to help. I think I can handle you.”“I’d like to see you handle me,” he said, eyeing her up and down. She ignored the double entendre, but she was pretty sure he wasn’t sizing her up as an adversary on the tae kwan do mat. She put a hand to her stomach, which was doing a strange flip-flop. “Don’t think I couldn’t take you down,” she said seriously. “I’ve trained in the martial arts.”He smirked. “That I’ve got to see.”

“All I'm saying is: if there's a pool and people are in the pool and you're not in the pool, you want to be in the pool just like those people in the pool. It's just a fact of nature.”

“On a lazy Saturday morning when you're lying in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, there is a space where fantasy and reality become one. Are you awake, or are you dreaming? You see people and things; some are familiar; some are strange. You talk, you feel, but you move without walking; you fly without wings. Your mind and your body exist, but on separate planes. Time stands still. For me, this is the feeling I have when ideas come.”