Tanvi > Books: favorites-of-2024‎ (6)

“I’m not interested in being interested in you,” she said, feeling panic slick through her stomach.
“That’s different from not being interested,” Gannon observed.

It was part of what he loved about her. Paige was never just out for Paige. She was a team captain ready to drag the rest of her team into the end zone for a victory. He could count on her, and he hoped she’d learn that she could count on him too.

“Why did you take Marcus’s card?” Paige asked suddenly.
Gannon’s lips quirked. “Because I’m interested.”
“In Marcus?”
“In you, Paige. I’m interested in you.”

“I like you, Paige.”
She sipped and swallowed hard. “I tolerate you, Gannon.”

“You’re not going to cry, are you?” he asked gruffly.
Her lips curved. “No.”
“Good. Save it for when they’re done and burnt and you still have to eat them or you’ll hurt my feelings.”

She snorted. “Are you telling me you’ve been in a relationship with every woman you’ve had sex with?”
“Of course not. I’m telling you we were in a relationship.”
“Well, it couldn’t have been a very good one if I had no idea about it.”

“I saw it and I thought it would make you laugh.” Josh’s eyes soften, and he gives me such an adoring smile, it’s nearly painful. “You look ridicul

“I saw it and I thought it would make you laugh.” Josh’s eyes soften, and he gives me such an adoring smile, it’s nearly painful. “You look ridiculous in that. I hope you wear it all day.”

Before we get started, there are a few things you should know about me:
1. I am both broke and lazy—a terrible combination.
2. I am perpetually awkward at parties and in an effort to relax will probably end up drinking until I’m topless.
3. I tend to like animals more than people.
4. I can always be counted on to do or say the worst possible thing in a delicate moment.
In summary, I am superb at making an ass out of myself.

A tiny voice reminds me that Josh didn’t bother to blow smoke up my butt and tell me what a lovely place I had. He never lies, or fakes enthusiasm. He just accepts me.

I learned a very important thing that day: my mom would never try to change for a man, and I wouldn’t, either.

Inside my chest, my heart melts with the effort she gives every single person, even those who look at her like she’s beneath them.

“I feel like I have a lot to apologize for,” I admit, “but I can’t be sure I won’t be constantly exasperating you, so maybe I’ll just wait until we’re elderly.”
Half of this mouth turns up. “I can say without question I’ve honestly never known anyone else like you.”
“So completely undatable?”
“Something like that.”

He smiles, but it’s not a smile I’ve ever seen before. It’s a dangerous smile; he’s a movie villain, the seductive one, the one who robs you but fucks you real good first.

“You’re telling me The Asher Donovan has nothing better to do with his time than drop by a ballet academy?”
“I have other things I could do,” he sai

“You’re telling me The Asher Donovan has nothing better to do with his time than drop by a ballet academy?”
“I have other things I could do,” he said. “I wouldn’t say they are better.”

“I love you,” he repeated, his words thick with emotion. “I’m so fucking in love with you, darling, and the only reckless thing I want to do is explore how deep this rabbit hole goes with you. Together.”

“Yeah?” His knee brushed mine when he finally shifted to face me. “I thought you liked structure.”
“I do but only on my own terms. I'm a hypocrite that way.”

“Does she know what an idiot she’s dating?”
“Yes, sir, and she loves me anyway.”

He wasn’t my brother’s nemesis or my trainee—he was the person who’d carried me up three flights of stairs, stayed with me until I regained consciousness, and didn’t make me feel like an object of pity when I told him about my accident. And that’s exactly why he’s dangerous.

“If we think we’re perfect and there's nothing we can improve on, we’ll never grow. If there’s no growth, we stagnate. And greatness doesn’t come from stagnation; it comes from progress.”

Facts are facts. She’s cute as a button.
I don’t look twice at cute women. Anything cute, really.

Facts are facts. She’s cute as a button.
I don’t look twice at cute women. Anything cute, really.

I’m just a Bond Girl in a long line of Bond Girls. He’ll look back on me in fifteen years, squint his eyes and say, oh yeah, the one who liked grandma ice cream.

Great. We’ve gone from beautiful to spectacular.
She’s definitely married, you idiot.
Do your job and get gone.

“Come back here.”
“I don’t think I will.”
“Half pint.”
“I have a name.”
“Come back here and tell it to me, then.”
What in God’s name is wrong with me?

She must know what I’m thinking, because she gives me a grudging smile.
Before I can stop myself, I smile back.
I smile back.
It drops faster than a bowling ball. “Give me the guest book, half pint.”

I’ve died and gone to heaven. No, higher. I’m in an undiscovered promised land.
“That’s good, Taylor. That’s so fucking good. Lick what you did. Suck what you did.”

“Taylor,” says the bounty hunter from behind me. In his deep, dumb, sexy rasp. “You’re really going to ignore me?”
I don’t respond.
Take that, bucko.

“From the moment you walked into that pub,” he said, “I knew you’d be the making and the ruin of me all at once, woman.”
And Tamsyn realized she was right—that did go straight to her heart—but wrong at the same time. Because touching her, not touching her, none of it mattered. Bowen didn’t have to touch her to make her love him.
She already did.

But he had never been in love. Never once until here, in this moment, standing in a freezing garden looking at a woman—a human—with wet hair streaming down her back, her skin pale and pebbled with gooseflesh. Someone who had come here to steal a jewel worth a life-changing amount of money, but who, when the woman wearing that jewel had vanished into a cold, harsh night, could only worry that that woman wasn’t wearing a coat.
Christ, he loved her. Desperately, irrevocably.
Completely and totally.
He was still standing there, accepting that knowledge, when the love of his life slapped his chest with one wet hand and yelled, “Fucking do something, you dumbass!”

“When you put someone down all the time, eventually they stop listening to the sensible stuff.”

“We all make mistakes. Go and take your punishment, then come back and start again. Do even better next time. I know you can.”

“Because even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you, if you still had your mother or father at your back, you’d be okay. Some deep-rooted part of you would know you were loved. That you deserved to be loved.”

“If someone wanted to be with you, after all, they just made it happen.”