She tilted her head, considering the sensation. "It is strange." He gave a hiss of laughter at the words. "It only gets stranger, darling. But we shall try for something more.

Sometimes, love was not enough.

I've spent twenty-eight years doing what everyone around me expected me to do...being what everyone around me has expected me to be. And it's horrid to be someone else's vision of yourself.

It didn’t matter the quality of the writing— Callie’s fantasies about her fictional heroes were entirely democratic.

Truth is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether or not they believe it." The logic in the words grated. "The first rule of scoundrels?

So, are you... intrigued ... by Stanhope?" "Intrigued by him?" "Indeed. Do you find him ..." he paused. "Intriguing?" she teased. He sent her an exasperated look.

Even as she’d come to know the real Ralston—the Ralston who was not cut from heroic cloth—Callie had failed to see the truth. And, instead of seeing her own heartbreak coming, she had fallen in love, not with her fantasy, but with this new, flawed Ralston.