I don’t cook much. I can, but I don’t because my husband is a better cook than I am. He works contract, so when he’s between jobs, I give him full control over the kitchen - the shopping, the cooking, the clean… uh, well, no. I still pretty much do most of the cleaning, though my adult daughter who’s moved home temporarily does more than I do! The husband is a ratio cook, probably because he’s the scientific type. I need recipes - with words - because I’m a wordsmith.

Awhile back, he was out on a rig for a week, coming home only for hour long snatches to shower, nap, eat something besides Jack In The Box which was the only fast food joint in driving distance from the lease where the oil well was being drilled. One night I realized we had three monster bell peppers that needed to be used, so I searched out a recipe. I’m not usually a fan of stuffed bell peppers. I’ve had too many that are flavorless, too much bland rice, etc. This one below from Diana’s Kitchen was great, and it’s possible the difference was that for the bread crumbs? I used Zatarains Panko Style breading. We’ve made these twice now, and they’re SO good.

Stuffed Bell Peppers with Ground Beef from Diana’s Kitchen

* 6 large bell peppers
* 4 tablespoons butter
* 1 cup chopped onion
* 2 celery ribs, finely chopped
* 3 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
* 2 large cloves garlic, fnely minced
* 2 pounds lean ground beef
* 3 cups soft bread crumbs
* 3 eggs, slightly beaten
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1 teaspoon seasoned salt
* 1 scant teaspoon ground black pepper
* 1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
, or Creole seasoned tomatoes
* 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

Remove the stems and seeds from the bell peppers; set them aside. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium low heat. Add the onions, celery, parsley, and garlic. Add the ground beef and saute together until the beef is completely cooked and the vegetables are lightly browned. Add the bread crumbs and season with salt and pepper. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

Work the eggs into the stuffing. If more moisture is needed, add a little milk or broth to the stuffing mixture. Spoon the stuffing into the prepared bell peppers and place them in a shallow baking dish. Bake in a preheated 350° oven for 30 minutes or until the bell peppers are tender. Spoon tomato sauce or tomatoes over each stuffed pepper and sprinkle with shredded cheese; bake 8 to 10 minutes longer.

Of course, the husband was the one who saved me when I couldn’t decide the best way to bake the peppers without cutting off the bottoms to make them sit flat.

I dropped them into my extra-large muffin tins!

I love finding recipes in books and trying them out. I posted about doing so here, when I made a yummy soup from Barbara O’Neal’s THE LOST RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS. Have you ever cooked up a recipe you’ve found in a novel?

If you follow me on Twitter, you will have seen me post this on April 12th:

Few hours of panic. Thot laptop had been stolen from car during @cuppacafe’s 2 a.m. coffee stop, but maid at ranch found and moved it!

So I had this whole post done for today about the vacation my laptop took without me, and about my hard drive crashing in September 2005 the MORNING AFTER I uploaded the newest version of my overdue manuscript to my web hosting space.

But then Tessa did a fab post yesterday about the same thing, sigh. The downside of belonging to a group blog. One doesn’t always know what one’s co-bloggers will be blogging about.

Square one. We are here.

I have a new book releasing on Tuesday. Actually, it’s already shipping from Barnes & Noble, but the official release date is the 28th. Because I have no other blog topics ready, I’m going to do a giveaway, but you have to work for the prizes. Comment here by Sunday night, April 26, 2009, 8:00 p.m. CDT to be eligible to win. I’ll pick two names, and give each winner a copy of NO LIMITS and A LONG, HARD RIDE. You can read an excerpt of NO LIMITS here, and here, and a naughtier one here, and one of A LONG, HARD RIDE at this link.

This week on Twitter I also polled readers to ask for discussion questions to use on another blog, but serendipity now allows me to use those here. I’ve got several, so feel free to pick a question and answer it below, but give me more than a yes or no answer!

• Do you like tattoos on your heroes? Any memorable ones?
• What is your favorite romance trope, and why?
• About covers. What is your favorite sort? Food? Flowers? Landscapes? Couples? Hero only? Nekkid hero only?
• In a sexy romance, do you like the couple to already be in an intimate relationship when the story opens, or to wait on the good stuff until after the book starts?
• What would you think of a book where the heroine had two equally worthy heroes to choose from, and you didn’t know for sure who the hero would be until she made her decision near the end of the book?

That’s it! Let’s have some conversation!

Awhile ago on Twitter, I tweeted to Sybil at TGTBTU that I don’t reread. This caused a flurry of replies, some readers tweeting that they reread favorites every year, others saying they never read a book more than once. There are a couple of reasons I don’t reread. The first is simple.

Too many books, too little time. Thanks to Amazon Prime, I own more books than any person should, unless that person is a public library. Of course, my daughter (who recently returned to the nest - temporarily, she says) owns almost as many, so it’s a family affair. Were I never to buy another book and were I to read a book a day, it would take me probably five years to get through what I have waiting for me here. And honestly, it could be more than that. I have boxes everywhere, and bookshelves filled, and stacks next to my bed and desk and other places. I call it market research. My husband calls it an addiction. We’re both right, and really it doesn’t matter. *g* I’m not a fast reader. An average mass market paperback takes me three days to read - at least - because I have so much else going on. I need to read what I have.

Which brings me to the second reason I don’t reread, and the reason I *do* watch favorite movies and television shows over and over again. Reading involves hours of concentration and solitary time, rereading just as much. When I first watch a movie or TV show, I’m focused for those hours on what’s happening, but if I rewatch, it’s while I’m folding laundry, or cooking dinner (these days I’m usually running Two and a Half Men in the background), or even answering email. I have a DVD player on the treadmill for the same reason. I can multitask, get the dishes or the exercise out of the way and be entertained while doing so. And - the big part - I don’t have to pay close attention. With a book, miss a word and miss a nuance. Not so with visual storytelling.

Lastly, though, and this is probably the biggest reason I don’t reread. I want to cherish the fond memories of the books I loved. I don’t want to reread them, be in the wrong mood or frame of mind for that story, and ruin it all. I don’t want to revisit THE FLAME AND THE FLOWER (my first big historical romance) and realize what a jerk Brandon was to Heather. I want to remember how romantic I found their story when I read it as a naive twenty year old. *g* And let’s not even talk about the fact that I read most of my favorites before I was published. To pick them up and read them now would be subjecting them to my picky author’s eye. I’d see things that in the past wouldn’t bother me, but now would make me nuts. Like crazy bunny point of view shifts, hopping here, hopping there. No, I prefer to remember the books I loved as they were in that moment because, for me, the reading experience - where I was, who I was, what I needed from that particular read at that particular time - can’t be duplicated.

Actually, now that I’ve said all of that, there is one book I know I’ve read twice, and I’m thinking about reading it again to see if it stands the test of time. Since it’s still in print, I’m going to think it’s done pretty well. It was first published in 1977, is a family saga, was made into a TV mini-series, and I named my middle daughter after the main female character, though I spelled it differently. Any one want to take a guess? I’ll offer up a copy of my May Brava release, NO LIMITS, to someone who comments here by Sunday night, March 22, 2008, at 8:00 p.m. CDT. (A guess is not required to win, just a comment will do!)

Last October, the husband and I took a week long vacation, our first. We’d traveled to several RWA conferences together and done sightseeing while in Chicago and St. Louis and Denver, and taken short day or weekend trips to San Antonio, Austin, Galveston, etc., and we spent about five days on the Guadalupe River in 2003 (me working, the husband rafting), but we hadn’t scheduled a real getaway since we’d been married. Too many kids in school and bills to pay and conflicting work schedules kept us close to home. So when October 2008 rolled around, it was time. I was coming off writing A LONG, HARD RIDE, and was in serious need of a break.

To me, vacation means doing nothing. I want to sleep and read and relax and hopefully be waited on hand and foot. *g* I don’t want to keep to a tour guide’s schedule, or cram museums and monuments and landscapes that deserve weeks of exploration into days. I want to do my own thing on my own time, including the museums and monuments. (The husband and I spent a long afternoon at this one a couple of years ago; all his years in Texas, he’d never been.)

I had been in the dentist’s office a couple of months before we were taking off for parts still undecided when I ran across an article on the 25 best swimming holes in Texas. I was fascinated by this one in Balmorhea, a spring-fed pool where swimmers share the water with turtles and fish, and I booked us into the state park there. Scuba diving in West Texas? Who knew!

Rains in the mountains closed the pool the week we were to go, so we changed from a September trip to one in October - meaning the swimming was too cold for me except for one afternoon, though the husband braved the chill several days.

One very cool day, we drove into Fort Davis (and ended up eating at two of the small town’s restaurants during our trip), made the circle to Marfa (terribly boring drive) then Alpine (much more landscape to see) and back. We drove through the Davis Moutains State Park, but were unable to stay at Indian Lodge as it was booked (cool history; we discovered its existence too late).

One of the most fun things we did was attend a star party at the McDonald Observatory. Talk about cold!
Their website says: “Observatory facilities are located atop Mount Locke and Mount Fowlkes in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, which offer some of the darkest night skies in the continental United States.” Stars, nebulae, galaxies, satellites - even the Hubble telescope visible to the naked eye.

I’d set a previous book in the Chihuahuan Desert area of West Texas, but knew I was going to do another, so I turned Fort Davis into Weldon, Texas, the setting for my September Blaze, ONE GOOD MAN.  Since Midland, Texas, approximately a three hour drive from Balmorhea, is the home of the Texas Rangers Company E, and my book is part of a Blaze Texas Ranger miniseries, the vacation was totally serendipitous.

To ground the book in the area, I mention the McDonald Observatory and Indian Lodge and the spring fed pool at the state park in Balmorhea, and reference the Hotel Limpia as one of the only places to stay in Fort Davis, though in ONE GOOD MAN it’s the Cordoba Inn and it’s in my fictional town of Weldon. My heroine grew up in Junction, Texas, and attended Texas Tech University there, and at one point when I mention a hamburger she ate at Isaack’s? Yeah, I ate that one. Mmm-mmm-mmm.

During our constant driving through the area, we saw many farms and ranches, most with a lot of acreage but existing as small, one family operations because the terrain is not made for growing or grazing, though javelinas and white-tailed deer and coyotes abound. I based my hero’s hunting lease and cabin on one of the spots, and when he and the heroine swim in his pond, it’s stocked with the same tiny fishes we swam with in the pool at Balmorhea (a bit of literary license there).

Twice during our trip, the husband was pulled over (once for speeding, once for driving in the right instead of the left lane, yeah) and the trooper who wrote his warning between Fort Davis and Balmorhea made it into the book, too. I have no idea what it’s like to live in a town that small (Balmorhea’s population is 451, Fort Davis’s 1066) but I had a great time imagining it. And a great time taking my vacation again from my own backyard!

Recently on my personal blog, I shared the creative process I had gone through for Tess Autrey’s story. Tess is the heroine of UNBROKEN, my novella in the anthology TEX APPEAL. Though in every version she ended up with Wyatt Crowe, the plots morphed and changed and evolved over time. What makes the February release of TEX APPEAL so cool is that February is the month of the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, and Wyatt and his ranch hands are all ex rodeo cowboys and rodeo bullfighters (previously referred to as rodeo clowns).

From Wikipedia:

The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, also called RodeoHouston, is the world’s largest livestock exhibition as well as the world’s largest rodeo event. In 2007, attendance reached more than 1.8 million keeping with an average of almost 2 million a year which requires the support of approximately 19,000 volunteers. The 20 day event is held at Reliant Park in Houston, Texas and features bull riding, livestock judging, concerts, a parade, a carnival, trail rides, barbecue and wine competitions, shopping, sales, and auctions. Traditional trail rides, which start in different areas of Texas and end in Houston, precede the Rodeo events. The rodeo has drawn some of the world’s biggest stars and music legends including Selena, Elvis Presley, George Strait, Reba McEntire, Barry Manilow, Willie Nelson, Beyoncé Knowles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Maroon 5.

Not too shabby a crowd, eh? For comparison’s sake, that’s the same arena where the Houston Texans, our pro football team, plays. One of the cool things for the husband and I is that the Salt Grass Trail Ride comes right by our neighborhood. On this map, you can see Katy Park, where I have sat and written many a page by hand or on my Alphasmart the last few years. The street we live on isn’t shown here, but one of the squares lists streets just a couple of blocks over from ours. Here are a few shots the husband took as last year’s trail ride went by. (You can click the small pictures to see larger versions.) The group is due again at the end of next month, and we’ll (or at least *he*) will be there to watch!

Though I live in urban cowboy country, I also live in REAL cowboy country. The odors from the pasture edging our neighborhood waft quite strongly at times, reminding us that we neighbor with horses and cows and goats as well as with people. Drive another twenty minutes, and there are any number of small operations scattered around. Setting UNBROKEN on my home turf was easy. When I was a kid, my best friend’s family had horses, and my favorite thing to do was spend Friday nights at her house then spend Saturdays riding. (This is probably where I should mention the scar on my right thigh from going completely over a horse’s back once when mounting and landing on a piece of rebar.)

Since most of the scenes in UNBROKEN are with Tess and Wyatt and focused on their developing romance, my research needs were limited to the article Tess was writing on buckle bunnies. The article and the newspaper where it is being published is part of the hook of the anthology, as each individual novella is set in a different Texas city, and the newspapers in those cities are holding a competition.

One of the most interesting sources I came across when reading up on the psychology of buckle bunnies was an article in an interdisciplinary journal put out by the Taylor & Francis Group called Deviant Behavior which in July 2000 published their Volume 21, Issue 4 which included the article “buckle bunnies: groupies of the rodeo circuit” by authors DeAnn K. Gauthier and Craig J. Forsyth.

This article is a descriptive analysis of female groupies who follow rodeo cowboys. Cowboys call these women buckle bunnies. Data were obtained from interviews with rodeo cowboys, wives of rodeo cowboys, rodeo affiliates, and buckle bunnies. Data were also collected from observations of professional and amateur rodeos as well as the interactions between bunnies and cowboys at bars and hotels following the rodeo. Data were obtained from the Internet as well. This research focuses on several aspects of the buckle bunny role: where they meet cowboys, the types of interaction, and the rating system. Finally the authors frame the data within the sociological literature.

That information gave me a chance to have Tess broach similar questions to the ranch hands she was interviewing for her piece, and then put the cowboys in the hot seat explaining their carousing ways! It was especially fun to write Wyatt, a genuine rodeo celebrity a la Ty Murray, and have him admit to Tess his past enjoyment of what the buckle bunnies offered - and doing so without apology.

Thing is, I will never tire of writing cowboys. In fact, I hope to do more. My first book for Temptation, CALL ME, had a cowboy hero, as did the sequel and my second, THE HEARTBREAK KID. Wyatt Crowe in TEX APPEAL is only my third true cowboy hero to write, though most of my heroes are cowboys at heart. I’ll be writing a Texas Ranger Blaze hero soon for release in 2009, and though he’s law enforcement, he’s cowboy through and through.

Willie Nelson urges mamas not to let their babies grow up to be cowboys. Paula Cole wants to know where all the cowboys have gone. So what’s the appeal? One of my favorite blogs is Confessions of a Pioneer Woman, and Ree captures a lot of it in her posts about this hardworking, honorable breed of man, and then getting to the female heart of the matter:

And all I know is that if I ever did ponder the kind of man I’d eventually end up with, “Cowboy” wasn’t anywhere in the picture. Neither was “Rancher,” for that matter, but before I met Marlboro Man I’d never distinguished between the two. Not that there’s really any difference when it comes right down to the nitty-gritty business of the All Time Most Appealing Activity a Woman Can Possibly Witness a Man Doing — Riding a Horse.

And whew. This one’s bad, ladies. It didn’t take me but two seconds once I saw Marlboro Man on a horse to decide that there was absolutely no going back for me. And consistently, throughout the ten years we’ve been married, just one glance of him on his horse has always been nothing short of an instantaneous revival of every ounce of love, lust, respect, and adoration I’ve ever felt for Marlboro Man. He gets on a horse? It all comes rushing back. I get busy and bogged down with laundry and temporarily forget all about the butterflies and hiney tingles that caused me to drop everything and move to the boonies in the first place? I see him on a horse and it all makes sense. It’s a magical, powerful feeling.

No doubt she’s got a point, though I think sometimes it’s just about the clothes . . .

Or maybe all that responsibility weighing heavily on their shoulders . . .

Since UNBROKEN is just one of the three novellas you’ll find in TEX APPEAL, I thought I’d ask the authors joining me in the anthology to join me here, too, and tell you a little bit about their novellas. Kimberly Raye opens the anthology with REAL GOOD MAN, and Cara Summers closes it out with I CAN STILL FEEL YOU.

Kim says . . . “My heroes have always been cowboys and so it only made sense that I would jump at the chance to participate in the Tex Appeal anthology. The fact that we’re talking Texas cowboys made the invitation that much more exciting. I’ve been writing Blaze cowboys for a long time now, and most of my books center around small fictitious Texas towns. I’m currently working on a cowboy vampire series (DEAD SEXY, DROP DEAD GORGEOUS and A BODY TO DIE FOR) that takes place in Skull Creek, Texas, and so I decided to set the anthology there, as well. In addition to cowboys, I love writing reunion type stories, where the hero and heroine have a past, which is exactly what I did in REAL GOOD MAN (kudos to hot, hunky Tim McGraw for inspiring this title—and a few late-night fantasies).

RGM is the story of good girl Cheryl Anne Cash who’s desperate to shake things up and pull her life out of the boring rut it’s fallen into. She decides to ditch everything that’s not working—from her boring job and old lady wardrobe to her ho-hum relationship with her long-time boyfriend Dayne Lambert. Once upon a time, Dayne had been the hottest, most exciting bad boy in town. Back then, he’d thought that great sex was the be all and end all of a good relationship. Now he’s older, reliable and totally convinced that the key to long-term love is communication. When Cheryl gives him the heave-ho, he smartens up, heats up the relationship (everything isn’t just bigger in Texas, it’s hotter, as well!) and realizes that good ole Tim was right all along. A real bad boy can be a real good man.”

Cara says . . . “The idea for I Can Still Feel You…came to me as soon as I learned that the headquarters of the Texas Rangers is located in Austin, Texas. I knew right then that my story would be about a sexy Texas Ranger (of course), a personal chef, and a crazy bank robber. Two months after Ranger Cade Dillon walked into her life and then dumped her with no explanation after three sizzling nights, Macy Chandler has her life back on track.

The editor of the local “Sex in the Saddle” column has chosen Macy’s personal chef business, Some Like It Hot, as the prize they will award in Austen to three lucky winners of their Valentine’s Day Contest, and a local TV station is filming the preparation and delivery of each meal. As a result, her phone is ringing off the hook with new clients. Macy barely thinks about Cade Dillon at all anymore. Soon he’ll be out of her dreams too. End of story.

On the way home from the second prize, (a brunch in bed—guaranteed to keep you there), Macy’s brakes fail, her car is totaled, and Ranger Cade Dillon walks back into her life. The bad news only continues when he informs her that the eccentric bank robber she identified two months ago is trying to kill her, and Cade will be keeping an eye on her twenty-four seven. And as if there isn’t enough rain already falling on her parade, Macy discovers that the attraction she feels for Cade has only exponentially increased in the time they’ve spent apart.

As the attempts on Macy’s life escalate, so does the attraction that Cade and Macy feel for one another. This time, Macy decides that she’ll have sex with Cade, but she’ll keep her feelings under control. And this time around, Cade is determined to prove to Macy that he wants a lot more than sex from her. He wants her to be a permanent part of his life.”

Since our editor, Brenda Chin, came up with all of our novella titles, I asked her to tell y’all a little bit about that process.

Brenda says . . . “I listen to country music every chance I get. I find that the lyrics of my favorite songs tend to speak to me, to be really evocative of every aspect of the human experience. They’re not only about loving and losing the way they used to be, although there’s still a fair amount of those. Look at Tim McGraw’s If You’re Reading This, Lonestar’s Front Porch Looking In or even Garth Brook’s Unanswered Prayers. The best country songs strike a chord in all of us. So, it made sense, when titling 3 stories I hope will strike a chord with readers, to look at country music titles. In fact, our art director still says Cara’s I Can Still Feel You is his favorite Blaze title.”

So let’s talk about the appeal of cowboys! Do you love them? Do you hate them? Do you prefer them in historicals instead of contemporaries? What is it about a man on horseback in chaps and jeans . . . I’ll choose three winners from those of you commenting to receive copies of TEX APPEAL, and one of the three of you will also receive a 2008 Pioneer Woman calendar and copies of CALL ME and THE HEARTBREAK KID. I’ll choose the winners on Monday night, January 28, 2008, at 8:00 p.m.ish CST.

But some things wouldn’t wait while he searched for the pieces of the puzzle. So, he took a step to the corner of the cart, reached for his zipper, and arced a yellow stream onto a stunted fern.

Hugely relieved, he gave the plant a Vulcan salute. “One-hundred proof, son. Live long and prosper.”

Now about that water.

Scowling, he considered his bare feet, flexed his toes and shrugged. If the natives could do it, he’d give it the ol’ Boy Scout try.

He headed into the brush. The prospect of a body that smelled more of man than beast made it easier to ignore the wet stuff squishing between his toes.

Vines clutched his arms and neck. Branches lashed and whipped his bare head, pulling at the roots of his needed-a-haircut hair.

Insects swarmed thicker here, going for his eyes, up his nose, even dive-bombing his feet. Jack slapped at his upper arm, smashing a palmful with one blow.

Bugs he could deal with. He just hoped the decapitated viper hadn’t left any vengeful relatives hanging around.

And that whoever had saved his ass with the Indiana Jones whip-and-knife routine wasn’t in the mood for human target practice.

That’s a short snippet from my April Brava release, THE PERFECT STRANGER. When my critique partner first read this section many many MANY years ago, she couldn’t get beyond the idea of my hero being so desperately in need of a bath. It grossed her out, hit her eww, squick, and ick buttons.

No matter how much I toned it down - and I did; I just couldn’t take it out and keep the scene working - the scene made her turn up her nose at the thought of Jack’s B.O., and his being in the jungle without access to soap or water for several days. She knew that it was necessary for the time line and set-up of the story, but it was just TOO MUCH for her personal comfort.

What about you? Have you run across something in a book you really wanted to read that was just TOO MUCH for you? I can see a spider-torture scene making an arachnophobic very uncomfortable, or a P.I. who tosses hamburger wrappers and coke cans in his car floor getting on a neatnik’s nerves. Have you ever left such a book unfinished because you just couldn’t deal? Let’s hear about them!!

Over my dinner of chile relleno poblano last night and his of chicken enchildas, the husband and I started talking about M. Night Shyamalan’s movies, specifically Signs, Unbreakable, and The Sixth Sense. We haven’t seen Lady in the Water, and I’ll talk about The Village in a minute.

I’m much more of a fan than the husband is, and I think it’s the storyteller approach I take to watching Night’s movies. First of all, I find them incredibly slow, but since I also find them compelling, I deal. I know he’s setting a mood and allowing for rising tension, but yes. At times, I find the pace grueling. *g*

When the husband and I were talking, however, I realized why I like “The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable” more than “Signs” - and it has nothing to do with Mel Gibson!

SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!

In “Signs”, the characters faced an external threat from the aliens. They had no real conflict between themselves. Yes, Mel’s character had to deal with his wife’s death, etc., but overall, the story was about the invasion and the affect it had on his family. If the invasion hadn’t occurred, the characters would have had no reason to change.

In “The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable”, the threat or conflict is between characters we’ve grown involved with while the movie unfolds. In “Unbreakable”, the story ends with a showdown between the Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson characters. In “The Sixth Sense”, Bruce’s character is forced to face his own demons.

I don’t know what that has to do with anything except that I related it to my love of writing and reading character-driven books. Character-driven books are what brought me to romance in the first place. I’d grown up reading a lot of Alistair MacLean novels, loving the espionage and the action. I also read Robert Ludlum and Larry McMurtry before discovering romance. I still read primarily outside the genre (the homework thing), but my love of love stories is what keeps me writing there.

Of course, what I really wanted to talk about was “The Village” - a movie more viewers hated than loved, and a movie that was one of my favorites of 2004. How can that be, you ask? Simple. Because of the romance between Lucius Hunt and Ivy Walker.

There were so many tiny moments in the movie that showed the relationship developing between these two characters. At the dance when chaos ensues and he finds her hand . . . it takes my breath away every time. But nothing gets to me like his declaraion there on the porch in the fog in the dark:

“Everyone is forever plaguing me to speak further. Why? What good is it to tell you you are in my every thought from the time I wake? What good can come from my saying that I sometimes cannot think clearly or do my work properly? What gain can rise of my telling you the only time I feel fear as others do is when I think of you in harm? That is why I am on this porch, Ivy Walker. I fear for your safety before all others. And yes, I will dance with you on our wedding night.”

What about you? What are your favorite romantic declarations in romance novels? (And we can discuss Shyamalan, too, if you like!)