Second Nature

by Nora Roberts

  She considered this room the only truly private spot in her life. As a reporter, Lee accepted that she was public property as much as the people she sought out. Privacy wasn’t something she could cling to when she constantly dug into other people’s lives. But in this little corner of the world, she could relax completely, forget there was work to do, ladders to climb. She could pretend L.A. wasn’t bustling outside, as long as she had this oasis of peace. Without it, without the hours she spent sleeping and unwinding there, she knew she’d overload.

  Knowing herself well, Lee understood that she had a tendency to push too hard, run too fast. In the quiet of her bedroom she could recharge herself each night so that she’d be ready for the race again the following day.

  Relaxed, she opened Hunter Brown’s latest effort.

  Within a half hour, Lee was disturbed, uncomfortable and completely engrossed. She’d have been angry with the author for drawing her in if she hadn’t been so busy turning pages. He’d put an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation and done it with such skill that Lee was already relating to the teacher who’d found himself caught up in a small town with a dark secret.

  The prose flowed and the dialogue was so natural she could hear the voices. He filled the town with so many recognizable things, she could have sworn she’d been there herself. She knew the story was going to give her more than one bad moment in the dark, but she had to go on. That was the magic of a major storyteller. Cursing him, she read on, so tense that when the phone rang beside her, the book flew out of her hands. Lee swore again, at herself, and lifted the receiver.

  Her annoyance at being disturbed didn’t last. Grabbing a pencil, she began to scrawl on the pad beside the phone. With her tongue caught between her teeth, she set down the pencil and smiled. She owed the contact in New York an enormous favor, but she’d pay off when the time came, as she always did. For now, Lee thought, running her hand over Hunter’s book, she had to make arrangements to attend a small writers’ conference in Flagstaff, Arizona.

  She had to admit the country was impressive. As was her habit, Lee had spent the time during the flight from L.A. to Phoenix working, but once she’d changed to the small commuter plane for the trip to Flagstaff, her work had been forgotten. She’d flown through thin clouds over a vastness almost impossible to conceive after the skyscrapers and traffic of Los Angeles. She’d looked down on the peaks and dips and castlelike rocks of Oak Creek Canyon, feeling a drumming excitement that was rare in a woman who wasn’t easily impressed. If she’d had more time…

  Lee sighed as she stepped off the plane. There was never time enough.

  The tiny airport boasted a one-room lobby with a choice of concession stand or soda and candy machines. No loudspeaker announced incoming and outgoing flights. No skycap bustled up to her to relieve her of her bags. There wasn’t a line of cabs waiting outside to compete for the handful of people who’d disembarked. With her garment bag slung over her shoulder, she frowned at the inconvenience. Patience wasn’t one of her virtues.

  Tired, hungry and inwardly a little frazzled by the shaky commuter flight, she stepped up to one of the counters. “I need to arrange for a car to take me to town.”

  The man in shirtsleeves and loosened tie stopped pushing buttons on his computer. His first polite glance sharpened when he saw her face. She reminded him of a cameo his grandmother had worn at her neck on special occasions. Automatically he straightened his shoulders. “Did you want to rent a car?”

  Lee considered that a moment, then rejected it. She hadn’t come to do any sight-seeing, so a car would hardly be worthwhile. “No, just transportation into Flagstaff.” Shifting her bag, she gave him the name of her hotel. “Do they have a courtesy car?”

  “Sure do. You go on over to that phone by the wall there. Number’s listed. Just give ’em a call and they’ll send someone out.”

  “Thank you.”

  He watched her walk to the phone and thought he was the one who should have said thank-you.

  Lee caught the scent of grilling hot dogs as she crossed the room. Since she’d turned down the dubious tray offered on the flight, the scent had her stomach juices swimming. Quickly and efficiently, she dialed the hotel, gave her name and was assured a car would be there within twenty minutes. Satisfied, she bought a hot dog and settled in one of the black plastic chairs to wait.

  She was going to get what she’d come for, Lee told herself almost fiercely as she looked out at the distant mountains. The time wasn’t going to be wasted. After three months of frustration, she was finally going to get a first hand look at Hunter Brown.

  It had taken skill and determination to persuade her editor-in-chief to spring for the trip, but it would pay off. It had to. Leaning back, she reviewed the questions she’d ask Hunter Brown once she’d cornered him.

  All she needed, Lee decided, was an hour with him. Sixty minutes. In that time, she could pull out enough information for a concise, and very exclusive, article. She’d done precisely that with this year’s Oscar winner, though he’d been reluctant, and a presidential candidate, though he’d been hostile. Hunter Brown would probably be both, she decided with a half smile. It would only add spice. If she’d wanted a bland, simple life, she’d have bent under the pressure and married Jonathan. Right now she’d be planning her next garden party rather than calculating how to ambush an award-winning writer.

  Lee nearly laughed aloud. Garden parties, bridge parties and the yacht club. That might have been perfect for her family, but she’d wanted more. More what? her mother had demanded, and Lee could only reply, Just more.

  Checking her watch, she left her luggage neatly stacked by the chair and went into the ladies’ room. The door had hardly closed behind her when the object of all her planning strolled into the lobby.

  He didn’t often do good deeds, and then only for people he had a genuine affection for. Because he’d gotten into town with time to spare, Hunter had driven to the airport with the intention of picking up his editor. With barely a glance around, he walked over to the same counter Lee had approached ten minutes before.

  “Flight 471 on time?”

  “Yes, sir, got in ten minutes ago.”

  “Did a woman get off?” Hunter glanced at the nearly empty lobby again. “Attractive, mid-twenties—”

  “Yes, sir,” the clerk interrupted. “She just stepped into the rest room. That’s her luggage over there.”

  “Thanks.” Satisfied, Hunter walked over to Lee’s neat stack of luggage. Doesn’t believe in traveling light, he noticed, scanning the garment bag, small Pullman and briefcase. Then, what woman did? Hadn’t his Sarah taken two suitcases for the brief three-day stay with his sister in Phoenix? Strange that his little girl should be two parts woman already. Perhaps not so strange, Hunter reflected. Females were born two parts woman, while males took years to grow out of boyhood—if they ever did. Perhaps that’s why he trusted men a great deal more.

  Lee saw him when she came back into the lobby. His back was to her, so that she had only the impression of a tall, leanly built man with black hair curling carelessly down to the neck of his T-shirt. Right on time, she thought with satisfaction, and approached him.

  “I’m Lee Radcliffe.”

  When he turned, she went stone-still, the impersonal smile freezing on her face. In the first instant, she couldn’t have said why. He was attractive—perhaps too attractive. His face was narrow but not scholarly, raw-boned but not rugged. It was too much a combination of both to be either. His nose was straight and aristocratic, while his mouth was sculpted like a poet’s. His hair was dark and full and unruly, as though he’d been driving fast for hours with the wind blowing free. But it wasn’t these things that caused her to lose her voice. It was his eyes.

  She’d never seen eyes darker than his, more direct, more…disturbing. It was as though they looked through her. No, not through, Lee corrected numbly. Into. In ten seconds, they had looked into her and seen everything.

  He saw a stu
nning, milk-pale face with dusky eyes gone wide in astonishment. He saw a soft, feminine mouth, lightly tinted. He saw nerves. He saw a stubborn chin and molten copper hair that would feel like silk between the fingers. What he saw was an outwardly poised, inwardly tense woman who smelled like spring evenings and looked like a Vogue cover. If it hadn’t been for that inner tension, he might have dismissed her, but what lay beneath people’s surfaces always intrigued him.

  He skimmed her neat traveling suit so quickly his eyes might never have left hers. “Yes?”

  “Well, I…” Forced to swallow, she trailed off. That alone infuriated her. She wasn’t about to be set off into stammers by a driver for the hotel. “If you’ve come to pick me up,” Lee said curtly, “you’ll need to get my bags.”

  Lifting a brow, he said nothing. Her mistake was simple and obvious. It would have taken only a sentence from him to correct it. Then again, it was her mistake, not his. Hunter had always believed more in impulses than explanations. Bending down, he picked up the Pullman, then slung the strap of the garment bag over his shoulder. “The car’s out here.”

  She felt a great deal more secure with the briefcase in her hand and his back to her. The oddness, Lee told herself, had come from excitement and a long flight. Men never surprised her; they certainly never made her stare and stammer. What she needed was a bath and something a bit more substantial to eat than that hot dog.

  The car he’d referred to wasn’t a car, she noted, but a Jeep. Supposing this made sense, with the steep roads and hard winters, Lee climbed in.

  Moves well, he thought, and dresses flawlessly. He noted too that she bit her nails. “Are you from the area?” Hunter asked conversationally when he’d stowed her bags in the back.

  “No. I’m here for the writers’ conference.”

  Hunter climbed in beside her and shut the door. Now he knew where to take her. “You’re a writer?”

  She thought of the two chapters of her manuscript she’d brought along in case she needed a cover. “Yes.”

  Hunter swung through the parking lot, taking the back road that led to the highway. “What do you write?”

  Settling back, Lee decided she might as well try her routine out on him before she was in the middle of two hundred published and aspiring writers. “I’ve done articles and some short stories,” she told him truthfully enough. Then she added what she’d rarely told anyone. “I’ve started a novel.”

  With a speed that surprised but didn’t unsettle her, he burst onto the highway. “Are you going to finish it?” he asked, showing an insight that disturbed her.

  “I suppose that depends on a lot of things.”

  He took another careful look at her profile. “Such as?”

  She wanted to shift in her seat but forced herself to be still. This was just the sort of question she might have to answer over the weekend. “Such as if what I’ve done so far is any good.”

  He found both her answer and her discomfort reasonable. “Do you go to many of these conferences?”

  “No, this is my first.”

  Which might account for the nerves, Hunter mused, but he didn’t think he’d found the entire answer.

  “I’m hoping to learn something,” Lee said with a small smile. “I registered at the last minute, but when I learned Hunter Brown would be here, I couldn’t resist.”

  The frown in his eyes came and went too quickly to be noticed. He’d agreed to do the workshop only because it wouldn’t be publicized. Even the registrants wouldn’t know he’d be there, until the following morning. Just how, he wondered, had the little redhead with the Italian shoes and midnight eyes found out? He passed a truck. “Who?”

  “Hunter Brown,” Lee repeated. “The novelist.”

  Impulse took over again. “Is he any good?”

  Surprised, Lee turned to study his profile. It was infinitely easier to look at him, she discovered, when those eyes weren’t focused on her. “You’ve never read any of his work?”

  “Should I have?”

  “I suppose that depends on whether you like to read with all the lights on and the doors locked. He writes horror fiction.”

  If she’d looked more closely, she wouldn’t have missed the quick humor in his eyes. “Ghouls and fangs?”

  “Not exactly,” she said after a moment. “Not that simple. If there’s something you’re afraid of, he’ll put it into words and make you wish him to the devil.”

  Hunter laughed, greatly pleased. “So, you like to be scared?”

  “No,” Lee said definitely.

  “Then why do you read him?”

  “I’ve asked myself that when I’m up at 3:00 A.M. finishing one of his books.” Lee shrugged as the Jeep slowed for the turn-off. “It’s irresistible. I think he must be a very odd man,” she murmured, half to herself. “Not quite, well, not quite like the rest of us.”

  “Do you?” After a quick, sharp turn, he pulled up in front of the hotel, more interested in her than he’d planned to be. “But isn’t writing just words and imagination?”

  “And sweat and blood,” she added, moving her shoulders again. “I just don’t see how it could be very comfortable to live with an imagination like Brown’s. I’d like to know how he feels about it.”

  Amused, Hunter jumped out of the Jeep to retrieve her bags. “You’re going to ask him.”

  “Yes.” Lee stepped down. “I am.”

  For a moment, they stood on the sidewalk, silently. He looked at her with what might have been mild interest, but she sensed something more—something she shouldn’t have felt from a hotel driver after a ten-minute acquaintance. For the second time she wanted to shift and made herself stand still. Wasting no more words, Hunter turned toward the hotel, her bags in hand.

  It didn’t occur to Lee until she was following him inside that she’d had a nonstop conversation with a hotel driver, a conversation that hadn’t dwelt on the usual pleasantries or tourist plugs. As she watched him walk to the desk, she felt an aura of cool confidence from him and traces, very subtle traces, of arrogance. Why was a man like this driving back and forth and getting nowhere? she wondered. Stepping up to the desk, she told herself it wasn’t her concern. She had bigger fish to fry.

  “Lenore Radcliffe,” she told the clerk.

  “Yes, Ms. Radcliffe.” He handed her a form and imprinted her credit card before he passed her a key. Before she could take it, Hunter slipped it into his own hand. It was then she noticed the odd ring on his pinky, four thin bands of gold and silver twisted into one.

  “I’ll take you around,” he said simply, then crossed through the lobby with her again in his wake. He wound through a corridor, turned left, then stopped. Lee waited while he unlocked the door and gestured her inside.

  The room was on the garden level with its own patio, she was pleased to note. As she scanned the room, Hunter carelessly switched on the TV and flipped through the channels before he checked the air conditioner. “Just call the desk if you need anything else,” he advised, stowing her garment bag in the closet.

  “Yes, I will.” Lee hunted through her purse and came up with a five. “Thank you,” she said, holding it out.

  His eyes met hers again, giving her that same frozen jolt they had in the airport. She felt something stir deep within but wasn’t sure if it was trying to reach out to him or struggling to hide. The fingers holding the bill nearly trembled. Then he smiled, so quickly, so charmingly, she was speechless.

  “Thank you, Ms. Radcliffe.” Without a blink, Hunter pocketed the five dollars and strolled out.

  Chapter Two

  If writers were often considered odd, writers’ conferences, Lee was to discover, were oddities in themselves. They certainly couldn’t be considered quiet or organized or stuffy.

  Like nearly every other of the two hundred or so participants, she stood in one of the dozen lines at 8:00 A.M. for registration. From the laughing and calling and embracing, it was obvious that many of the writers and would-be writers knew one another
. There was an air of congeniality, shared knowledge and camaraderie. Overlaying it all was excitement.

  Still, more than one member stood in the noisy lobby like a child lost in a shipwreck, clinging to a folder or briefcase as though it were a life preserver and staring about with awe or simple confusion. Lee could appreciate the feeling, though she looked calm and poised as she accepted her packet and pinned her badge to the mint-green lapel of her blazer.

  Concentrating on the business at hand, she found a chair in a corner and skimmed the schedule for Hunter Brown’s workshop. With a dawning smile, she took out a pen and underlined.

  CREATING HORROR THROUGH

  ATMOSPHERE AND EMOTION

  Speaker to be announced.

  Bingo, Lee thought, capping her pen. She’d make certain she had a front-row seat. A glance at her watch showed her that she had three hours before Brown began to speak. Never one to take chances, she took out her notebook to skim over the questions she’d listed, while people filed by her or merely loitered, chatting.

  “If I get rejected again, I’m going to put my head in the oven.”

  “Your oven’s electric, Judy.”

  “It’s the thought that counts.”

  Amused, Lee began to listen to the passing comments with half an ear while she added a few more questions.

  “And when they brought in my breakfast this morning, there was a five-hundred-page manuscript under my plate. I completely lost my appetite.”

  “That’s nothing. I got one in my office last week written in calligraphy. One hundred and fifty thousand words of flowing script.”

  Editors, she mused. She could tell them a few stories about some of the submissions that found their way to Celebrity.

  “He said his editor hacked his first chapter to pieces so he’s going into mourning before the rewrites.”

  “I always go into mourning before rewrites. It’s after a rejection that I seriously consider taking up basket weaving as a profession.”