I'm fine right here."All patience, he bent down until his face was close to hers. "What you are is hoping to get drunk enough so that you can take a few punches at someone without worrying about the consequences. With me, you don't have to get drunk, you don't have to worry. You can take all the punches you want.""Why?""Because you have something sad in your eyes and it gets to me.

Try to look like Peabody.""Sorry?""Serious, official, yet approachable.""You forgot adorable.""Peabody is not adorable.""She is from my perspective. Besides, I was talking about me.

After they left the office, Peabody shoved her hands in her pockets. "These nicknames are pissing me off.""But you're not I'm-Too-Good-to-Pee-Body. Harris is.""It's my damn name. And now I have to pee. It's like my bladder has to prove something.""Pee at the bank. Consider it a deposit.

He linked his fingers with hers. And because he had used it when he'd hurt her, he balanced that out by using it now. "A ghra.""Huh?" A line appeared between her brows. "Is that Gaelic again?""Yes." He brought their joined fingers to his lips. "Love. My love.

Any hot plans for the weekend, Peabody?”“My usual, flicking off men like flies, breaking hearts, crushing souls.

I don't want to hear from Traffic that my husband was hotdogging the skyways in his minichopper.""You won't. I bribe too well.

Neither of them knew what it was to be family, to have family, to make a family. They knew cruelty, abuse, abandonment. She wondered if that was why they had come together. They both understood what it was to have nothing, to know fear and hunger and despair- and both had remade themselves.

Drugs, sex, Satan, and power, Eve mused. A religious war? Hadn't humans fought and died for beliefs since the dawn of time? Animals fought for territory; people fought for territory as well. And for gain, for passion, for beliefs. For the hell of it.