Someone to Watch Over Me

by Lisa Kleypas

So simple, the clasp of hands. And yet infinite possibilities were born in the small private space between two palms. Reassurance, rescue, protection, promise, fear, or faith. The complex pressure could mean hello, goodbye, thank you, or please. It could open the door to intimacy, an entire seduction woven within the lattice of fingers, the kiss of fingertips, the spark of nerve endings just beneath the skin. If only Vivien understood that in holding her hand, Grant was holding all of her . . . who she was and had been, and all the hopes and struggles and mistakes she couldn’t remember, and all the places the future might take her. He accepted everything about her, without reservation, no matter what. Everything.

“But I was also thinking . . . a beautiful woman, a fire on the hearth, a bottle of wine, and a roomful of books . . . It might not be every man’s idea of heaven, but God knows it’s mine.”

“Life is beautiful and painful and harrowing, and it’s precious because it ends. Because we each decide what meaning to give it. As for happiness . . .”

That’s happiness—a lost thing we could find if we just looked for it in a different way.”

“I know about Occam’s razor,” Vivien said. “It’s not a principle so much as a heuristic, to avoid stacking a problem with unnecessary complications. Except that sometimes a complex problem can only be solved with a complex answer. Someone once told me . . .” She paused, her gaze turning distant and slightly unfocused. “Someone told me that Occam’s razor should never be used to end an argument, only to begin the search for truth. I think . . . it may have been my father.”