Second Nature

by Nora Roberts

Humor? Yes, under the intensity there was humor in him. She didn’t like recalling how he’d laughed at her, but when she had such a dearth of material, she needed every detail, uncomfortable or not.

  She remembered every word he’d said on his philosophy of writing. But how could she translate something so intangible into a few clean, pragmatic sentences? She could say he thought of his work as an obligation. A vocation. It just wasn’t enough, she thought in frustration. She needed his own words here, not a translation of his meaning. The simple truth was, she had to speak to him again.

  Dragging a hand through her hair, she read over her orderly notes. She should have held the reins of the conversation from the very beginning. If she was an expert on anything, it was on channeling and steering talk along the lines she wanted. She’d interviewed subjects more closemouthed than Hunter, more hostile, but she couldn’t remember any more frustrating.

  Absently, she began to tap the end of her pencil against the table. It wasn’t her job to be frustrated, but to be productive. It wasn’t her job, she added, to allow herself to be so utterly seduced by an assignment.

  She could have prevented the kiss. It still wasn’t clear to Lee why she hadn’t. She could have controlled her response to it. She didn’t want to dwell on why she hadn’t. It was much too easy to remember that long, strangely intense moment and in remembering, to feel it all again. If she was going to prevent herself from doing that, and remember instead all the reasons she’d come to Flagstaff, she had to put Hunter Brown firmly in the category of assignment and keep him there. For now, her biggest problem was how she was going to manage to see him again.

  Professionally, she warned herself. But she couldn’t sit still thinking of it, or him. Pacing, she tried to block out the incredibly gentle feel of his mouth on hers. And failed.

  A flood of feeling; she’d never experienced anything like it. The weakness, the power—it was beyond her to understand it. The longing, the need—how could she know the way to control it?

  If she understood him better perhaps… No. Lee lifted her hairbrush, then set it down again. No, understanding Hunter would have nothing to do with fighting her desire for him. She’d wanted to be touched by him, and though she had no logical reason for it, she’d wanted to be touched more than she’d wanted to do her job. It was unprecedented, Lee admitted as she absently pushed bottles and jars around on her dresser. When something was unprecedented, you had to make up your own guidelines.

  Uneasy, she glanced up and saw a pale woman with sleepy eyes and unruly hair reflected in the glass. She looked too young, too…fragile. No one ever saw her without the defensive shield of grooming, but she knew what was beneath the fastidiousness and gloss. Fear. Fear of failure.

  She’d built her confidence stone by meticulous stone, until most of the time she believed in it herself. But at moments like this, when she was alone, a little weary, a little discouraged, the woman inside crept out, and with her, all the tiny doubts and fears behind that laboriously built wall.

  She’d been trained from birth to be little more than an intelligent, attractive ornament. Well-spoken, well-groomed, well-disciplined. It was all her family expected of her. No, Lee corrected. It was what had been expected of her. In that respect, she’d already failed.

  What trick of fate had made it so impossible for her to fit the mold she’d been fashioned for? Since childhood she’d known she needed more, yet it had taken her until after college to store up enough courage to break away from the road that would have led her from proper debutante to proper matron.

  When she’d told her parents she wasn’t going to be Mrs. Jonathan T. Willoby, but was leaving Palm Springs to live and work in Los Angeles, she’d been quaking inside. Not until later did she realize it had been their training that had seen her through the very difficult meeting. She’d been taught to remain cool and composed, never to raise her voice, never to show any vulgar signs of temper. When she’d spoken to them, she’d seemed perfectly sure of her own mind, while in truth she’d been terrified of leaving that comfortable gilt cage they’d been fashioning for her since before she was born.

  Five years later, the fear had dulled, but it remained. Part of her drive to reach the top in her profession came from the very basic need to prove herself to her parents.

  Foolish, she told herself, turning away from the vulnerability of the woman in the glass. She had nothing to prove to anyone, unless it was to herself. She’d come for a story, and that was her first, her only priority. The story was going to gel for her if she had to dog Hunter Brown’s footsteps like a bloodhound.

  Lee looked down at her notebook again, and at the notes that filled less than a page. She’d have more before the day was over, she promised herself. Much more. He wouldn’t get the upper hand again, nor would he distract her from her purpose. As soon as she’d dressed and had her morning coffee, she’d look for Hunter. This time, she’d stay firmly behind the wheel.

  When she heard the knock, Lee glanced at the clock beside her bed and gave a little sigh of frustration. She was running behind schedule, something she never permitted herself to do. She’d deliberately requested coffee and rolls for nine o’clock so that she could be dressed and ready to go when they were delivered. Now she’d have to rush to make certain she had a couple of solid hours with Hunter before check-out time. She wasn’t going to miss an opportunity twice.

  Impatient with herself, she went to the door, drew off the chain and pulled it open.

  “You might as well eat nothing if you think you can subsist on a couple of pieces of bread and some jam.” Before she could recover, Hunter swooped by her, carrying her breakfast tray. “And an intelligent woman never answers the door without asking who’s on the other side.” Setting the tray on the table, he turned to pin her with one of his long, intrusive stares.

  She looked younger without the gloss of makeup and careful style. The traces of fragility he’d already sensed had no patina of sophistication over them now, though her robe was silk and the sapphire color flattering. He felt a flare of desire and a simultaneous protective twinge. Neither could completely deaden his anger.

  She wasn’t about to let him know how stunned she was to see him, or how disturbed she was that he was here alone with her when she was all but naked. “First a chauffeur, now a waiter,” she said coolly, unsmiling. “You’re a man of many talents, Hunter.”

  “I could return the compliment.” Because he knew just how volatile his temper could be, he poured a cup of coffee. “Since one of the first requirements of a fiction writer is that he be a good liar, you’re well on your way.” He gestured to a chair, putting Lee uncomfortably in the position of visitor. As though she weren’t the least concerned, she crossed the room and seated herself at the table.

  “I’d ask you to join me, but there’s only one cup.” She broke a croissant in two and nibbled on it, unbuttered. “You’re welcome to a roll.” With a steady hand, she added cream to the coffee. “Perhaps you’d like to explain what you mean about my being a good liar.”

  “I suppose it’s a requirement of a reporter as well.” Hunter saw her fingers tense on the flaky bit of bread then relax, one by one.

  “No.” Lee took another bite of her roll as if her stomach hadn’t just sunk to her knees. “Reporters deal in fact, not fiction.” He said nothing, but the silent look demanded more of her than a dozen words would have. Taking her time, determined not to fumble again, she sipped at her coffee. “I don’t remember mentioning that I was a reporter.”

  “No, you didn’t mention it.” He caught her wrist as she set down the cup. The grip of his fingers told her immediately just how angry he was. “You quite deliberately didn’t mention it.”

  With a jerk of her head, she tossed the hair out of her eyes. If she’d lost, she wouldn’t go down groveling. “It wasn’t required that I tell you.” Ignoring the fact that he held one of her hands prisoner, Lee picked up her croissant with the other and took a bite. “I paid my registration fee.”<
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  “And pretended to be something you’re not.”

  She met his gaze without flinching. “Apparently, we both pretended to be something we weren’t, right from the start.”

  He tilted his head at her reference to their initial meeting. “I didn’t want anything from you. You, on the other hand, went beyond the harmless in your deception.”

  She didn’t like the way it sounded when he said it—so petty, so dirty. And so true. If his fingers hadn’t been biting into her wrist, she might have found herself apologizing. Instead, Lee held her ground. “I have a perfect right to be here and a perfect right to try to sell an article on any facet of this conference.”

  “And I,” he said, so mildly her flesh chilled, “have a perfect right to my privacy, to the choice of speaking to a reporter or refusing to speak to one.”

  “If I’d told you that I was on staff at Celebrity,” she threw back, making her first attempt to free her arm, “would you have spoken to me at all?”

  He still held her wrist; he still held her eyes. For several long seconds, he said nothing. “That’s something neither of us will ever know now.” He released her wrist so abruptly, her arm dropped to the table, clattering the cup. Lee found that she’d squeezed the flaky pastry into an unpalatable ball.

  He frightened her. There was no use denying it even to herself. The force of his anger, so finely restrained, had tiny shocks of cold moving up and down her back. She didn’t know him or understand him, nor did she have any way of being certain of what he might do. There was violence in his books; therefore, there was violence in his mind. Clinging to her composure, she lifted her coffee again, drank and tasted absolutely nothing.

  “I’m curious to know how you found out.” Good, her voice was calm, unhurried. She took the cup in both hands to cover the one quick tremor she couldn’t control.

  She looked like a kitten backed into a corner, Hunter observed. Ready to spit and scratch, even though her heart was pounding hard enough to be almost audible. He didn’t want to respect her for it when he’d rather strangle her. He didn’t want to feel a strong urge to touch the pale skin of her cheek. Being deceived by a woman was perhaps the only thing that still had the power to bring him to this degree of rage.

  “Oddly enough, I took an interest in you, Lenore. Last night—” He saw her stiffen and felt a certain satisfaction. No, he wasn’t going to let her forget that, any more than he could forget it himself. “Last night,” he repeated slowly, waiting until her gaze lifted to his again, “I wanted to make love with you. I wanted to get beneath the careful layer of polish and discover you. When I had, you’d have looked as you do now. Soft, fragile, with your mouth naked and your eyes clouded.”

  Her bones were already melting, her skin already heating, and it was only words. He didn’t touch her, didn’t attempt to, but the sound of his voice flowed over her skin like the gentlest of caresses. “I don’t—I had no intention of letting you make love to me.”

  “I don’t believe in making love to a woman, only with.” His eyes never left hers. She could feel her head begin to swim with passion, her breath tremble with it. “Only with,” Hunter repeated. “When you left, I turned to the next best way of discovering you.”

  Lee gripped her hands together in her lap, knowing she had to control the shudders. How could a man have such power? And how could she fight it? Why did she feel as though they were already lovers—was it just the sense of inevitability that they would be, no matter what her choice? “I don’t know what you mean.” Her voice was no longer calm.

  “Your manuscript.”

  Uncomprehending, she stared. She’d completely forgotten it the night before in her fear of him, and of herself. Anger and frustration had prevented her from remembering it that morning. Now, on top of a dazed desire, she felt the helplessness of a novice confronted by the master. “I never intended for you to read it,” she began. Without thinking, she was shredding her napkin in her lap. “I don’t have any aspirations toward being a novelist.”

  “Then you’re a fool as well as a liar.”

  All sense of helplessness fled. No one, no one in all of her memory, had ever spoken to her like that. “I’m neither a fool nor a liar, Hunter. What I am is an excellent reporter. I want to write an exclusive, in-depth and accurate article on you for our readers.”

  “Why do you waste your time writing gossip when you’ve got a novel to finish?”

  She went rigid. The eyes that had been clouded with confused desire became frosty. “I don’t write gossip.”

  “You can gloss over it, you can write it with style and intelligence, but it’s still gossip.” Before Lee could retort, he rose up so quickly, so furiously, her own words were swallowed. “You’ve no right working forty hours a week on anything but the novel you have inside you. Talent’s a two-headed coin, Lenore, and the other side’s obligation.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She rose, too, and found she could shout just as effectively as he. “I know my obligations, and one of them’s to write a story on you for my magazine.”

  “And what about the novel?”

  Flinging up her hands, she whirled away from him. “What about it?”

  “When do you intend to finish it?”

  Finish it? She should never have started it. Hadn’t she told herself that a dozen times? “Damn it, Hunter, it’s a pipe dream.”

  “It’s good.”

  She turned back, her brows still drawn together with anger but the eyes beneath them suddenly wary. “What?”

  “If it hadn’t been, your camouflage would have worked very well.” He drew out a cigarette while she stared at him. How could he be so patient, move so slowly, when she was ready to jump at every word? “I nearly called you last night to see if you had any more with you, but decided it would keep. I called my editor instead.” Still calm, he blew out smoke. “When I gave the chapters to her to read, she recognized your name. Apparently she’s quite a fan of Celebrity.”

  “You gave her…” Astonished, Lee dropped into the chair again. “You had no right to show anyone.”

  “At the time, I fully believed you were precisely what you’d led me to believe you were.”

  She stood again, then gripped the back of her chair. “I’m a reporter, not a novelist. I’d like you to get the manuscript from her and return it to me.”

  He tapped his cigarette in an ashtray, only then noticing her neatly written notes. As he skimmed them, Hunter felt twin surges of amusement and annoyance. So, she was trying to put him into a few tidy little slots. She’d find it more difficult than she’d imagined. “Why should I do that?”

  “Because it belongs to me. You had no right to give it to anyone else.”

  “What are you afraid of?” he demanded.

  Of failure. The words were almost out before Lee managed to bite them back. “I’m not afraid of anything. I do what I’m best at, and I intend to continue doing it. What are you afraid of?” she retorted. “What are you hiding from?”

  She didn’t like the look in his eyes when he turned his head toward her again. It wasn’t anger she saw there, nor was it arrogance, but something beyond both. “I do what I do best, Lenore.” When he’d come into the room, he hadn’t planned to do any more than rake her to the bone for her deception and berate her for wasting her talent. Now, as he watched her, Hunter began to think there was a better way to do that and at the same time learn more about her for his own purposes. He was a long way from finished with Lenore Radcliffe. “Just how important is doing a story on me to you?”

  Alerted by the change in tone, Lee studied him cautiously. She’d tried everything else, she decided abruptly, perhaps she could appeal to his ego. “It’s very important. I’ve been trying to learn something about you for over three months. You’re one of the most popular and critically acclaimed writers of the decade. If you—”

  He cut her off by merely lifting a hand. “If I decided to give you an interview, we’d have to
spend a great deal of time together, and under my terms.”

  Lee heard the little warning bell, but ignored it. She could almost taste success. “We can hash out the terms beforehand. I keep my word, Hunter.”

  “I don’t doubt that, once it’s given.” Crushing out his cigarette, Hunter considered the angles. Perhaps he was asking for trouble. Then again, he hadn’t asked for any in quite some time. He was due. “How much more of the manuscript do you have completed?”

  “That has nothing to do with this.” When he merely lifted a brow and stared, she clenched her teeth. Humor him, Lee told herself. You’re too close now. “About two hundred pages.”

  “Send the rest to my editor.” He gave her a mild look. “I’m sure you have her name by now.”

  “What does that have to do with the interview?”

  “It’s one of the terms,” Hunter told her easily. “I’ve plans for the week after next,” he continued. “You can join me—with another copy of your manuscript.”

  “Join you? Where?”

  “For two weeks I’ll be camping in Oak Creek Canyon. You’d better buy some sturdy shoes.”

  “Camping?” She had visions of tents and mosquitoes. “If you’re not leaving for your vacation right away, why can’t we set up the interview a day or two before?”

  “Terms,” he reminded her. “My terms.”

  “You’re trying to make this difficult.”

  “Yes.” He smiled then, just a hint of amusement around his sculpted mouth. “You’ll work for your exclusive, Lenore.”

  “All right.” Her chin came up. “Where should I meet you and when?”

  Now he smiled fully, appreciating determination when he saw it. “In Sedona. I’ll contact you when I’m certain of the date—and when my editor’s let me know she’s received the rest of your manuscript.”

  “I hardly see why you’re using that to blackmail me.”

  He crossed to her then, unexpectedly combing his fingers through her hair. It was casual, friendly and uncannily intimate. “Perhaps one of the first things you should know about me is I’m eccentric. If people accept their own eccentricities, they can justify anything they do. Anything at all.” He ended the words by closing his mouth over hers.