Liv Overgaard

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Taking a rich wife . . . a duke’s daughter . . . there would be strings. Golden chains. It would all have to be her way. Her decision would always be the last.” West tugged irritably at his trapped finger. “I’ll be damned if I dance to her tune, or her father’s.”

“We all have to dance to someone’s tune. The best you can hope for is to like the music.”

West scowled. “You never sound like more of an idiot than when you try to say something wise and pithy.”

“I’m not the one with his finger stuck in a teacup,” Devon pointed out. “Is there any other reason you won’t pursue her, besides the money? Because that one rings hollow.”

It wasn’t just the money. But West was too tired and surly to try to make his brother understand. “Just because you’ve given up all masculine pride,” he muttered, “doesn’t mean I have to do the same.”

“Do you know what kind of men are able to keep their masculine pride?” Devon asked. “Celibate ones. The rest of us don’t mind doing a little begging and appeasing, if it means not having to sleep alone.”

“If you’re finished—” West began, with an irritated gesture of his hand.

At that moment, the teacup came unstuck, flung itself off his finger, and went soaring through an open window. Both brothers stared blankly after the path of its flight. A few seconds later, they heard a crash of porcelain on a graveled pathway.

In the silence, West shot a narrow-eyed glance at his brother, who was trying so hard not to laugh that his facial muscles were twitching.

Finally, Devon managed to regain control of himself. “So glad your right hand is free again,” he said in a conversational tone. “Especially since it seems that for the foreseeable future, you’ll be making frequent use of it.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil's Daughter

“He learned how to love them without changing them. To let them be what they were meant to be.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Spring

“I don't want bright and happy,” he whispered roughly. “I want real.”
― Callie Hart, Quicksilver