[ It had been the perfect set up, really, an offering rarely enticed, and Donny...had botched it.

With the moment effectively ruined, Anne's smile falters, and her sigh is one of the mildest of disappointments, as she straightens up. She needs not to be lectured on what love is... Hasn't he already preached something like that to her before? Did he think her so ignorant she didn't understand that she controlled who could take her heart?

Maybe the talk of love had hit too close to home, and it was too soon. But as hard as she tries, as sweetly as she has tried to coax enjoyment into their night despite, he keeps insisting on making everything as cold and damp as it is outside, and it not only irritates her, it offends her, and she draws up just as he. ]

Is that so? You suddenly speak easily on love, when it seems your heart was stolen away long ago. You have so long been without that you cannot even recognize.