It's difficult for most of us to be completely honest with ourselves - we hate to admit how vulnerable or needful we are.

Leo smiled and stroked her hair. 'We'll both be fine, Marks. We've just begun our journey...and there's so much we have yet to do.' He spoke more softly as he heard her breathing turn even and steady. 'Rest against my heart. Let me watch over your dreams. And know that tomorrow morning, and every morning after that, you'll awaken next to someone who loves you.' 'Dodger?' she mumbled against his chest, and he grinned. 'No, your confounded ferret will have to stay in his basket. I was referring to myself.' 'Yes, I know.' Catherine slid her hand up to his cheek. 'Only you,' she said. 'Always you.

I've never wanted to be loved. And God Knows no one's done it yet.

I think you'll have to marry me, Miss Fielding." "To save your reputation?" Derek grinned, bending to kiss the flash of pale throat revealed by the robe. "Someone has to make a respectable man of me.

I had learned that there were substitutes for a mother who couldn't be a mother. You could find love with other people. You could find it in places you weren't even looking. But the original wound would never heal. I would carry it with me forever, and so would Tara. That was the trick . . . accepting it, going on with your life, knowing it was part of you.

I have always been an obsessive reader - I remember going back and forth to the local library with stacks of books taller than I was.

The truth is, you can never really know a man until you've loaned him money. And you can never know a woman until you've slept in her bed.