Heaven, Texas

“Don’t you dare walk out of here!”
“This is going to be hard for you to understand, Bobby Tom, so listen very carefully.” She stopped walking. “Despite what everybody’s been telling you from the moment you were born, you’re not always irresistible.”

Suzy jumped out of the car and raced up the sidewalk to her house, running as if all the hounds of hell were nipping at her heels.
Sitting behind the wheel of his car, the most hated man in Telarosa, Texas, watched her disappear inside. As the door slammed, his face contorted with anger, pain, and the barest hint of longing.

The beauty queen was opinionated, self-centered, and considerably less intelligent than the source of those crab legs she’d ordered for dinner.

He played the perfect host, pointing out a sixteenth century temple gong and a floor sculpture made from petrified wood, but in less than ninety seconds, she was alone on the sidewalk.

The old Gracie Snow would have patiently waited for him to return so she could have explained her mission, but the new Gracie Snow craved adventure

He was the embodiment of every man she’d ever dreamed about; all the high school boys who’d ignored her, all the young men who never remembered her name, all the handsome professional men who complimented her on her clear thinking, but never thought to ask her out for a date. He was a glittering superhuman creature who must have been put on earth by a perverse God to remind homely women like herself that some things were unobtainable.

, and he felt as if he’d been poleaxed

he would remember that he was the man every woman wanted, and she was the girl who’d sat home alone the night of her senior prom.

She would give herself to him out of the fullness of her heart, not with the hope of receiving anything in return

her heart had chosen so unwisely to love.