Donna Kauffman > Quotes

“Sometimes it's good to shake up the status quo. You just have to make sure that when you turn society on its ear, you don't end up on your coutoure-covered backside."--vivian”
― Donna Kauffman, The Cinderella Rules

“Sex, no matter how explosive and emotional, was just sex after all, at least until someone said or did something to make it more than that”
― Donna Kaufmann

“Cinderella Rule #16
Standards. Goals. Everyone has them. Or should. But before you judge yourself a success or failure, make certain the standards you're applying are your own. And that the goals you're trying to achieve aren't being pursued for the wrong reasons.”
― Donna Kauffman, The Cinderella Rules

“And then you realize that when you finally meet, when you finally find
each other, it doesn’t matter. All the rest of it doesn’t matter. Life scattered, life together. . . it’s just
where things begin. It’s where the story is when you jump into it. It doesn’t stay there. You start
writing the next chapter from that moment on.”
― Donna Kauffman, Babycakes

“I guess it's about trust. Trusting what you feel. Trusting the person who inspired those feelings with the weight of them and all they could mean.”
― Donna Kauffman, The Cinderella Rules

“-I didn't mean to hurt you.
-You shouldnae have been able to.
She blinked at that, but knew what he meant.
-I suppose not, no. we're still strangers. More or less.
-Only in the measure of time could we consider ourselved that.

(Graham & Katie)
Some Like It Scot”
― Donna Kauffman, Some Like It Scot

“Colm sighed...
-She's quite beautiful. Like a fairy and a goddess all wrapped into one.
-How very... poetic of you.
...
He felt a sharp tug in the vicinity of his heart.
-And most accurate
He added

Colm & Graham”
― Donna Kauffman, Some Like It Scot

“**“I get it,” he said. “I was supposed to give you your space. I didn’t want to. So...I compromised. Only, you frustrate the hell out of me, and I’m all done with being frustrated. This is what I wanted to do. Pretty much from the moment we stopped doing it. You?”

She was still reeling, from the kiss, and the declaration. “Me, yes. Uh, too. Me, too.”

“Good.”

Then he kissed her again.**”
― Donna Kauffman, Pelican Point

“Shhh. Stop trying to carry the whole world on your shoulders. Let someone hold you. Let me.”
― Donna Kauffman, Bounty Hunter

“On closer notice of her apron, he said, "Is that-?"
"The Mad Hatter," she said. "I told you, I have a collection."
"You collect aprons?"
"Since I was little and my mom taught me to bake." When he smiled, she arched a brow. "Some find it charmingly quirky."
"You never wore any to Gateau."
"Shocking, I know. Because I'm certain the staff would have greatly appreciated the humor in them."
His smile twitched wider at that. "You have a point, I suppose. I must say, this dry side of you is surprisingly appealing. What does it say?" He nodded toward her apron front.
She lifted her arms away so he could read the script that accompanied the copy of an original pen and ink art rendering of the Hatter seated at a long table, holding a teacup aloft.
"YOU'RE NEVER TOO OLD TO HAVE A TEA PARTY," he read out loud, then smiled at her. "I rather agree. You make a charming and somewhat more quirky Alice than I'd have expected. I seem to recall Alice spent the better part of her time being irritated and flustered, too. Perhaps if I'd come bearing tea and crumpets, with a bewildered, bespectacled white rabbit clutching a pocketwatch in his paw, you'd have been more willing to give me the time of day.”
― Donna Kauffman, Sugar Rush

“You won't always have the luxury of a second chance. So be careful with your first one.”
― Donna Kauffman, The Cinderella Rules

“I want you, Leilani. I'm so hard it hurts. But your scent entices me, lures me." He drew the sheet farther down, past her navel, along the soft swell of her stomach. "I want to taste, to savor. Here." He kissed his way to the tender flesh high inside her inner thigh. "And here." He traced a similar path to the other side. "But I want to feast... here." He drew his tongue along the center of her, and groaned at the sweet taste of her.
Lani's hips started to pump harder, and he could feel a fine quivering begin along her skin. She rocked and keened, and when he plunged his tongue deeply into her, she cried out, reached down and buried her fingers in his hair. Guiding him, urging him, demanding him, release broke over her in wracking, wrenching waves.
"Baxter, please... please." Her hips slowed, but her body continued to gather and jerk as the aftershocks kept twitching through her. "Now," she demanded. "I'm- I'm safe, protected, we don't need-" She broke off as he kissed his way back up the center of her torso while she continued to writhe beneath him.
The way she responded to him, making herself vulnerable to him, moved him in unpredictable ways. He shifted so he was directly on top of her and pressed himself between her thighs, which she parted, wrapping them around his hips, digging her heels into his lower back as she lifted for him, and took him in.
Take her, he did, sliding all the way in, groaning as she gripped him fully, so tightly, so wetly, so perfectly, it was the fulfillment of every fantasy he'd ever had. Even though his heart was drumming inside his chest, and his body was priming itself for a ferocious release, climaxing wasn't the only thing dominating his thoughts. He met her every hip thrust, echoed every groan, every growl, as they worked their every frenzied way to completion, together.
He could feel her climb again as she rolled her hips beneath him, and reality continued to eclipse fantasy. "Come with me, yes," he said, claiming her mouth even as she was nodding in agreement.
He pulled her into his arms and moved more deeply, as she instinctively shifted to take him more tightly inside her. They moved with a rhythm that was as old as man's creation, and uniquely and utterly their own.”
― Donna Kauffman, Sugar Rush

“We’re each an amalgamation of all those in our lineage. - Fergus McCrae”
― Donna Kauffman, Pelican Point

“Lights went on in the cottage, lending it an undeniably warm glow. He smiled, amused as he recalled his Snow White references where Leilani was concerned. "Of course she lives in a cottage," he murmured. "All she needs now are the dwarves." With all the comings and goings at the shop, which he'd spotted through the trailer blinds as he'd labored through his various meetings with Rosemary and the crew, Leilani did indeed seem to be recruiting her own miniature army.”
― Donna Kauffman, Sugar Rush

“I’m just glad the jury is still not out where we’re concerned. It feels like it took an awfully long
time to find each other. And I don’t want to waste any more of it.” He leaned down and kissed her,
lingering, and then continuing on a little longer. Then they were laughing and saying meaningless
things and kissing, then laughing again”
― Donna Kauffman, Babycakes

“It would take a lifetime to know everything about her, and he just happened to have one handy and available.”
― Donna Kauffman, The Black Sheep and the English Rose

“Some of us aren’t meant for home and hearth. For white picket fences. Or silly cattle dogs and stone fire pits.”
It was only when Fiona’s gaze sharpened again that she realized she’d said that last part out loud. A knowing smile played at the corners of Fiona’s mouth and her eyes sparked right back to matchmaker life.
“Don’t,” Kerry warned.
“Whatever do you mean?” Fiona said with false innocence. “I hear what you’re saying. And I believe you. At least, I believe you believe you.”
― Donna Kauffman, Starfish Moon

“There’s something here,” he said, searching her gaze. “Something beneath all the pheromones dancing about whenever we’re within reaching distance of each other. Something beyond this…this crazy hunger.”
“I know,” she said in a hushed whisper, the words barely reaching his ears over the sound of the wind and the snap of the sails.
He leaned his head down until his forehead brushed hers. “I want both,” he said. “The friendship and the hunger.”
Her eyes were luminous pools of the deepest sea green as she looked into his, and he thought he could fall into them and never surface again and die a happy man. “Explore them with me,” he said, “and let’s see where it leads. That’s all I’m asking.”
― Donna Kauffman, Starfish Moon

“The way I see it,” she went on, “our friendship, and our working relationship, were solid foundations we built over time. Now you’re here wanting more, and the way we started that next step was with a kiss. So I feel like we’ve done just about everything two people can do in getting to know each other except…finish that kiss. It seemed to me that the logical next step, the next piece of information we needed to know, was what comes next when we let that kiss go to its natural conclusion.”
She did smile then, and her emerald green eyes blazed as she let down a guard he didn’t know she’d still had erected, letting him see for the first time the rest of what she was feeling. “Or at least that was my rationale for finally letting myself have what I fantasized about having, all those months I worked next to you.”
He opened his mouth, then shut it again when her words sank in. “I--what did you just say?”
Her smile remained, but there was a new light flickering in the depths of her eyes now, one that somehow managed to look bold, excited, and endearingly nervous all at the same time. “You weren’t alone, Cooper, in wanting…what you wanted. At least the physical attraction part anyway. I should have been more forthright about that when you showed up at the pub, or afterward. But at least try to see this from my perspective. Suddenly, out of the blue, the man I lusted after all those months was standing, quite improbably, right in front of me, in his full, Technicolor gorgeousness, looking even better than the guy I was sure I’d exaggerated and romanticized. Right there, in the flesh. And before I could even begin to get a grip on that, you went all going down on bended knee on me, and--it was all so much, too much, to even begin to process.”
She let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “Maybe if you’d just dragged me into your arms and not given me a chance to think, I might have surrendered right there on the spot, and the rest of the Cove be damned. But instead you’re all sincere, with your big, beautiful heart hanging on your sleeve, all earnest and lovely, and I so didn’t deserve anything like that, not after the way I left things between me and your entire family. I didn’t have the first clue what to do with that. With you.” Her smile turned decidedly rueful. “So, naturally, I resorted to form. I shut you down, told you to go away. If I couldn’t run away, I was going to make damn sure you did. I mean, it was one thing to leave Cameroo, then insult you and your family by not keeping in touch. It was another thing entirely to do it again, right to your face.”
“I hate to interrupt,” he said, trying like hell not to grin, then drag her into his lap to do what he apparently should have done the moment he’d laid eyes on her again. “But I haven’t heard a word you’ve said since that part where you’ve been lusting after me for two years.”
― Donna Kauffman, Starfish Moon

“Grab your phone from the truck before you go in,” he said.
“Why?”
“So I can send you suggestive and encouraging texts when you take too long with the party planning of course.”
“Of course,” she said. “I really might have to revamp my whole not-thinking plan and put you in charge.”
He lifted his hands. “I’m willing and able,” he said, then sketched a bow. When he stood, he slid his phone out and handed it to her. “To put in your number,” he said when she looked confused.
“Oh, right.” She did as he asked, then that mischievous light sparkled in her eyes as she took a moment and typed in a little more before turning it off and handing it back to him.
“What was that last bit?”
“Just helping to get that encouraging conversation going.” She left him standing there, looking down at his phone then at her retreating back as she headed back around to the parking lot and her truck.
He pocketed the phone without reading the message, thinking he should probably be alone when that happened. And possibly naked.
“Yes, much better when we don’t think.” He planned to do his best to keep them both not thinking for at least the remainder of that day and, if he was lucky, all of the night, too.”
― Donna Kauffman, Starfish Moon

“A slow grin slid across his face, lighting his eyes with a very different, decidedly wicked glow. For the first time, she could honestly believe he'd come from the rough part of town. There was something elemental in the way he was looking at her, like a man willing to brawl, to fight with his bare hands, if that's what it took to get what he wanted. It made her skin prickle with awareness... and her muscles shudder with need.
And her heart ache with want.
"But you should know, Lei, that kissing you, feeling you kissing me back... didn't feel much like torture." He stepped in, and lowered his mouth until his lips were almost, but not quite touching hers. A mere breath of air separated their bodies.
Her breath caught in her throat as his warm, spicy-sweet breath fanned her lips... lips he'd so recently taken with his own. She quivered when he framed his hands, palms in, then moved them slowly down the outline of her body without ever once touching her. She was trembling by the time he finished.
"And this," he whispered gruffly, "is never going to go away, whether we will it or not.”
― Donna Kauffman, Sugar Rush

“Well, look who’s back from her sailing date looking all windblown and smug. Big day on the high seas?”
Kerry knew she’d have to deal with a lot of this kind of flak but didn’t really want to start the ordeal with Hardy. Although, she thought, maybe it was better to get this dealt with up front. He’d said it smoothly enough, and seemed to be simply razzing her, with no other agenda in his eyes, but she treated him as if there was, just in case. “Oh, Hardy, you say the nicest things,” she teased right back. “It was a lovely day for a sail,” she added, then smiled brightly and, as it happened, quite sincerely. “Thanks for asking.”
― Donna Kauffman, Starfish Moon

“Cooper Jax had, basically, proposed to her. Then he’d walked all up and down a kelp-covered, low-tide seashore and listened to her enumerate the reasons why they couldn’t even contemplate such a union. Right before kissing her in a way that defied science and made her wonder if she might need a pregnancy test, before pretty much declaring he was going to spend the next four weeks making it as impossible for her to say no to his doing that again, and maybe more, as he could.”
― Donna Kauffman, Starfish Moon

“So how about we stop putting on a show for everyone out here and go find ourselves a floating playpen?”
He grinned. “Well, when you put it like that…” He leaned down, kissed her soundly, and tried not to let his thoughts stray to what came next. He’d exhausted himself with that the past three days and was thankful they were back to doing, not thinking.
“I’d tell you to get a room, but I happen to know you already have one.”
The sudden intrusion of a deep voice with an entirely different accent made Kerry jump, and it was only because Cooper already had his arms around her that he was able to pull her back before they both went in the drink.
“Sorry,” Brodie said with a grin as he covered the last ten yards at the end of the pier, a small mutt racing down the docks behind him. “Didn’t mean to startle.”
“So, an Irishman and an Aussie walk into a bar,” Kerry said, recovering quickly and teasing Grace’s husband as he stopped a few feet away.”
― Donna Kauffman, Starfish Moon

“I still have to buy tonight’s special--unless you’re about to tell me that’s already been handled, too.”
“Not that I’m aware of,” he replied easily. “But then, I just got into town late yesterday, so I’m not fully up to speed yet.”
Oh, he was speedy all right. “It scares me to think what you’ll know after a full twenty-four hours.”
― Donna Kauffman, Starfish Moon

“For the record, I said yes to lunch just to keep him from showing up every time my back is turned.” She sent a pointed look at her sister. “You know, like a stalker. I didn’t agree to an entire afternoon out on the bay with him.”
“You didn’t agree to that lollapalooza of a kiss either. But that happens and suddenly he’s not on the next plane home. Just saying, Ms. Protests Too Much.”
Kerry opened her mouth, then closed it again, then folded her arms across her chest. “I never should have told you about that.”
Fiona grinned. “I know.” She tugged Kerry’s arms loose and pulled one through her own, leaning her head on her taller sister’s shoulder and beaming up at her, lashes fluttering. “But we’re so glad you did.”
“Oh, hush,” Kerry said, but she didn’t push her sister away. And she had to work harder than she should have to keep her scowl in place.
“You’re just annoyed because you can’t find a way to be in charge and control this whole thing and it’s making you jumpy.”
Kerry considered that, relented a little. “Maybe.”
― Donna Kauffman, Starfish Moon

“Cooper,” she said. “Cooper Jax.” As if saying his name would someone break the spell, vanquish the mirage she was still faintly hoping she was seeing. It didn’t. Instead it brought the mirage a few strides farther into the pub as folks moved to clear a path. “What are you doing here?” she asked as she moved forward until the two were standing no more than five yards apart, encircled by the completely hushed crowd. She wished she sounded strong, strident even. They were on her turf now, in her world. He was the interloper, the traveler. But her voice was hoarse even to her own ears, a mere rasp; her throat was too tight, too dry, too…everything, to manage anything more than that.
His smile was brief, a slash of white teeth framed by a hard jaw, but his gaze never wavered. “It’s been a year, Kerry. More than. And I’ve come to realize there’s a question I didn’t ask you before you left. One I should have. And I can’t seem to get on with life until I know the answer.”
― Donna Kauffman, Starfish Moon

“He’d found Brodie hand sanding the hull of a sailboat he was in the early stages of building, using an old-fashioned hand lathe on the wood. Cooper had questioned him about it, surprised that he wasn’t building the boat up in the big boathouses on land, and using something more high-tech to get the job done. Brodie had just smiled and told him that some boats required a more personal touch and a more personal space.
Cooper understood that. Some women needed the same.”
― Donna Kauffman, Starfish Moon

“You say romantic, I say stalker,” Kerry grumbled to Fiona as they pushed their way into the Rusty Puffin.
“Please,” Fiona retorted, adding an eye roll for good measure. She was a master of those. “Mr. Dead Sexy From Down Under, a hardworking, successful man you greatly admired, with a family you apparently adored, flies halfway around the world to propose to you? Take a poll. That’s off-the-charts romantic.”
“Right,” Kerry said, turning toward her as the heavy door swung closed behind them. “And then I turned him down and he’s still here, hounding me. Stalker.”
“I hardly think asking you to lunch--a lunch you said yes to, by the way--then hiring a sailboat to take you out on the bay could be considered hounding, much less stalking. That’s still firmly in the romantic category. I mean, if you really meant no, I’m sure he’d be on the next plane back to Oz.”
Kerry stopped completely, fists on her hips now. “What makes you think I didn’t really mean no?”
“Well, for one, you’re awfully worked up over the guy. In that she-doth-protest-too-much kind of way. And secondly, Logan said Cooper told him you two had agreed on him staying the full month he’d taken off from the cattle station, to give you both time to figure out if there was something worth pursuing together.”
“He said that? To Logan?” At Fiona’s smug nod, Kerry’s eyebrows drew together. “What else did Cooper tell him? And how could you even know that? We left the docks together before Cooper came back. We didn’t talk to him again, or Logan.”
Fiona turned her phone around so the screen faced Kerry. “It’s called texting. Maybe they don’t have that in Tanzania or on deserted South Pacific atolls, but here in America, we--”
“Okay, okay,” Kerry said, waving her hands, still disgruntled. “It doesn’t matter. For the record, I said yes to lunch just to keep him from showing up every time my back is turned.” She sent a pointed look at her sister. “You know, like a stalker. I didn’t agree to an entire afternoon out on the bay with him.”
“You didn’t agree to that lollapalooza of a kiss either. But that happens and suddenly he’s not on the next plane home. Just saying, Ms. Protests Too Much.”
Kerry opened her mouth, then closed it again, then folded her arms across her chest. “I never should have told you about that.”
Fiona grinned. “I know.”
― Donna Kauffman, Starfish Moon

“...You're just chill all the time. That kind of freaks me out."
"It freaks me out that that freaks you out."
"So we're just a couple of freaks?"
"Seems that way.”
― Donna Kauffman, Unwrapped