She was trying to sound tough and impatient, but she knew that vulnerable desire to be wooed was still brimming in her tone.

I can't imagine what my life was before. I can't imagine ever being without you for very long again.

There was plenty of life left and if he had to he would use it all to get her back. The time had passed for making promises to her-all that was left for him was to act.

She had rarely been near Henry since then, and the sight of him now was like a concentrated dose.

She was like a heroine in a novel that she herself was writing the character kept protesting that she was too strong for love and yet the narrator went on describing her desire.

She should have know that villains often come with pretty faces.

Henry shook his head, 'I was drunk,' he said, trying to sound both ashamed and firm in this belief. He remembered the rosebush incident very clearly, of course, but he knew that sneaking into the bedroom window of his fiancee's little sister wasn't something he wanted to explain to his father. Sometimes, Henry reflected, being taken for a perpetual drunk was sort of convenient.