“She thought of him sprawled in the armchair in the downstairs study, calmly demolishing pastry after pastry while Aubrey looked at him in shock. Or what about that god-awful dinner? A variety of people looked daggers at him and tried several times to deliver a direct verbal cut, while he plowed through alarming amounts of beautifully prepared food with evident enjoyment for the cuisine and a monumental indifference for anybody else’s opinion.”

“Tiago decided he enjoyed armchair warfare. It was so comfortable, and there were pastries.”

“That’s why I quit,” said Tiago. He popped another pastry into his mouth.”

“If she were meeting him for the first time and he looked at her like that, she would be spinning on her heel and on the run before you could say Kentucky Derby.”

“She was his beacon to what others called decency, not because she told him how to act but because she made him want to try.”

“She leaned forward and staggered, as she confided in a whisper, “You’re the sexiest guy I’ve ever seen too. You know, your long, scaly, reptilian tail really is bigger than anybody else’s. Not that I’ve been with very many guys. Or was comparison shopping or anything.” She hiccupped and watched him worriedly as he guffawed. “Have I just gone over a conversational cliff?”

“He also ate every scrap of the cold meat she had cooked for him, and good gods, it was pretty awful. Somehow she had managed to wreck the simple task of browning chicken in a skillet. The outside was charred black, and the inside oozed juice that was still pink.”