A good story's like a door, and you can go through it whenever you need to. After you've read it or seen it or heard it, you can still go back through it. Once it's yours, it's always yours.

Roarke's brow cocked as he noted Casto take in the black satin that slithered over Eve's body. In the manner of men or unfriendly male dogs, Roarke showed his teeth.

He'd done as he'd pleased and even had often enjoyed long runs of luck where he hadn't been caught. But the luckiest moment of his life had been being caught.

Do you know how many ways love can hit you? So it makes you happy, or miserable? It makes you sick in the belly or hurt in the heart. It makes everything brighter and sharper, or it blurs all the edges. It makes you feel like a king or a fool. Every way love can hit you, it's hit me when it comes to you.

Okay. Look, why don't you take care of the half a million things you've been letting dangle in Roarke's Empire of Everything?" "Catchy title. I may use it one day.

Happily ever after?" "If justice doesn't triumph and love doesn't make the circle in entertainment fiction, what's the point? Real life sucks too often.

To fate and the strange way that it twists us all together.