Do you picture long nights making love by the fire and talking about everything and anything under the sun, and do you have the feeling that of anyone in the world, he just gets you? Like no other person in the world ever can?

Because she did love him, and not from afar, not with the moony dreaminess she’d used as a crutch for so many years, but with a deep, aching tenderness she felt might just kill her.

He wasn’t looking for a soulmate. That would require having a soul to share, and he’d sold his off long ago

What the hell are you doing with my underwear?” He kept his response flippant. “I don’t have this color in my collection.

It’s not over, Maddie. It’s still not over between us. We need to talk.

They’d used sex instead of communication in the past, and it had turned out disastrously.

How was it that the one man who could take their company down appeared to be the only one who believed in her?

Taking over Kingston Shoes would be the final string that would unravel and cut them off from one another for good.

He was making up a story, and she was buying into his bullshit. That was a recipe for disaster

Dear God, she was getting turned on in the middle of a roadside emergency. This had to stop.

She’d vowed to be braver and take more risks, but this seemed out of her league. Because sometimes what you wanted the most was the one thing you were most afraid to get.

Maybe it was time to cut the strings of everyone’s expectations and free-fall for once in her life

He’d never be the kind of man she deserved, whole and strong, not physically and mentally crippled.

Kiss after wet kiss, he devoured her, almost a full year of pent-up desireunleashing in one terrible flood.

The war had changed him, inside and out, in ways he could never have fathomed.

And in that moment, he knew one thing. If it was possible to slay his dragons, he’d do it. For her.