Second Nature

by Nora Roberts

  The size of the tent preoccupied her, so that she didn’t notice what Hunter was doing until she was almost beside him. Fresh rage broke out as she dropped her load of wood on the ground. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Unperturbed by the fury in her voice, Hunter glanced up. In one hand he held a large clear-plastic bag filled with makeup, in the other a flimsy piece of peach-colored material trimmed with ivory lace. “You did know we were going camping,” he said mildly, “not to the Beverly Wilshire?”

  The color she considered the curse of fair skin flooded her cheeks. “You have no right to go digging around in my things.” She snatched the teddy out of his hand, then balled it in her fist.

  “I was unpacking.” Idly, he turned the makeup bag over to study it from both sides. “I thought you knew to bring only necessities. While I’ll admit you have a very subtle, experienced way with this sort of thing—” he gestured with the bag “—eye shadow and lip gloss are excess baggage around a campfire.” His voice was infuriatingly friendly, his eyes were only lightly amused. “I’ve seen you without any of it and had no cause to complain. You certainly don’t have to bother with this on my account.”

  “You conceited jerk.” Lee snatched the bag out of his hand. “I don’t care if I look like a hag on your account.” Taking the knapsack, she stuffed her belongings back inside. “It’s my baggage, and I’ll carry it.”

  “You certainly will.”

  “You officious sonofa—” She broke off, barely. “Just don’t tell me how to run my life.”

  “Now, now, name-calling’s no way to promote goodwill.” Rising, Hunter held out a friendly hand. “Truce?”

  Lee eyed him warily. “On what terms?”

  He grinned. “That’s what I like about you, Lenore, no easy capitulations. A truce with as little interference as possible on both sides. An amiable business arrangement.” He saw her relax slightly and couldn’t resist the temptation to ruffle her feathers again. “You won’t complain about my coffee, and I won’t complain when you wear that little scrap of lace to bed.”

  She gave him a cool smile as she took his hand. “I’m sleeping in my clothes.”

  “Fair enough.” He gave her hand a quick squeeze. “I’m not. Let’s see about that coffee.”

  As he often did, he left her torn between frustration and amusement.

  When he put his mind to it, Lee was to discover, Hunter could make things easier. Without fuss, he had the campfire burning and the coffee brewing. Its scent alone was enough to soothe her temper. The economical way he went about it made her think more kindly of him.

  There was no point in being at each other’s throats for the next two weeks, she decided as she found a convenient rock to sit on. Relaxing might be out of the question, she mused, watching him take clever, compact cooking utensils out of the pack, but animosity wouldn’t help, not with a man like Hunter. He was playing games with her. As long as she knew that and avoided the pitfalls, she’d get what she’d come for. So far, she’d allowed him to set the rules and change them at his whim. That would have to change. Lee hooked her hands around a raised knee.

  “Do you go camping to get away from the pressure?”

  Hunter didn’t look back at her, but checked the lantern. So, they were going to start playing word games already. “What pressure?”

  Lee might have sighed if she weren’t so determined to be pleasantly professional. “There must be pressures from all sides in your line of work. Demands from your publisher, disagreements with your editor, a story that just won’t gel the way you want it to, deadlines.”

  “I don’t believe in deadlines.”

  There was something, Lee thought, and reached for her notepad. “But doesn’t every writer face deadlines from time to time? And can’t they be an enormous pressure when the story isn’t flowing or you’re blocked?”

  “Writer’s block?” Hunter poured coffee into a metal cup. “There’s no such thing.”

  She glanced over for only a second, brow raised. “Oh, come on, Hunter, some very successful writers have suffered from it, even sought professional help. There must have been a time in your career when you found yourself up against a wall.”

  “You push the wall out of the way.”

  Frowning, she accepted the cup he handed her. “How?”

  “By working through it.” He had a jar of powdered milk, which she refused. “If you don’t believe in something, refuse to believe it exists, it doesn’t, not for you.”

  “But you write about things that couldn’t possibly exist.”

  “Why not?”

  She stared at him, a dark, attractive man sitting on the ground drinking coffee from a metal cup. He looked so at ease with himself, so relaxed, that for a moment she found it difficult to connect him to the man who created stark terror out of words. “Because there aren’t monsters under the bed or demons in the closet.”

  “There’s demons in every closet,” he disagreed mildly, “some better hidden than others.”

  “You’re saying you believe in what you write about.”

  “Every writer believes in what he writes. There’d be no purpose in it otherwise.”

  “You think some—” She didn’t want to use the word demon again, and her hand moved in frustration as she sought the right phrase. “Some evil force,” Lee chose, “can actually manipulate people?”

  “It’s more accurate to say I don’t believe in anything. Possibilities.” Did his eyes become darker, or was it her imagination? “There’s no limit to possibilities, Lenore.”

  His eyes were too dark to read. If he was playing with her, baiting her, she couldn’t tell. Uncomfortable, she shifted the topic. “When you sit down to write a story, you craft it, spending hours, days, on the angles and the edges, the same way a carpenter builds a cabinet.”

  He liked her analogy. Hunter sipped at the strong black coffee, enjoying the taste, enjoying the mingled scents of burning wood, summer and Lee’s quiet perfume. “Telling a story’s an art, writing’s a craft.”

  Lee felt a quick kick of excitement. That was exactly what she was after, those concise little quotes that gave an insight into his character. “Do you consider yourself an artist, then, or a craftsman?”

  He drank without hurry, noting that Lee had barely touched her coffee. The eagerness was with her again, her pen poised, her eyes fixed on his. He found he wanted her more when she was like this. He wanted to see that eager look on her face for him, for the man, not the writer. He wanted to sense the ripe anticipation, lover to lover, arms reaching, mouth softening.

  If he were writing the script, he’d keep these two people from fulfilling each other’s needs for some time yet. It was necessary to flesh them out a bit first, but the ache told him what he needed. Carefully he arranged another piece of wood on the fire.

  “An artist by birth,” he said at length, “a craftsman by choice.”

  “I know it’s a standard question,” she began, with a brisk professionalism that made him smile, “but where do you get your ideas?”

  “From life.”

  She looked over again as he lit a cigarette. “Hunter, you can’t convince me that the plot for Devil’s Due came out of the everyday.”

  “If you take the everyday, twist it, add a few maybes, you can come up with anything.”

  “So you take the ordinary, twist it and come up with the extraordinary.” Understanding this a bit better, she nodded, satisfied. “How much of yourself goes into your characters?”

  “As much as they need.”

  Again it was so simply, so easily, said, she knew he meant it exactly. “Do you ever base one of your characters on someone you know?”

  “From time to time.” He smiled at her, a smile she neither trusted nor understood. “When I find someone intriguing enough. Do you ever get tired of writing about other people when you’ve got a world of characters in your own head?”

  “It’s my job.”

  “That�
�s not an answer.”

  “I’m not here to answer questions.”

  “Why are you here?”

  He was closer. Lee hadn’t realized he’d moved. He was sitting just below her, obviously relaxed, slightly curious, in charge. “To do an interview with a successful, award-winning author.”

  “An award-winning author wouldn’t make you nervous.”

  The pencil was growing damp in her hand. She could have cursed in frustration. “You don’t.”

  “You lie too quickly, and not easily at all.” His hands rested loosely on his knees as he watched her. The odd ring he wore glinted dully, gold and silver. “If I were to touch you, just touch you, right now, you’d tremble.”

  “You think too much of yourself,” she told him, but rose.

  “I think of you,” he said, so quietly the pad slipped out of her hand, unnoticed. “You make me want, I make you nervous.” He was looking into her again; she could almost feel it. “It should be an interesting combination over the next couple of weeks.”

  He wasn’t going to intimidate her. He wasn’t going to make her tremble. “The sooner you remember I’m going to be working for the next two weeks, the simpler things will be.” Trying to sound haughty nearly worked. Lee wondered if he heard the slight catch in her voice.

  “Since you’re resigned to working,” he said easily, “you can give me a hand starting dinner. After tonight, we’ll take turns making meals.”

  She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of telling him she knew nothing about cooking over a fire. He already knew. Neither would she give the satisfaction of being confused by his mercurial mood changes. Instead, Lee brushed at her bangs. “I’m going to wash up first.”

  Hunter watched her start off in the wrong direction, but said nothing. She’d find the shower facilities sooner or later, he figured. Things would be more interesting if neither of them gave the other an inch.

  He wasn’t sure, but Hunter thought he heard Lee swear from somewhere behind him. Smiling a little, he leaned back against the rock and finished his cigarette.

  Groggy, stiff and sniffing the scent of coffee in the air, Lee woke. She knew exactly where she was—as far over on her side of the tent as she could get, deep into the sleeping bag Hunter had provided for her. And alone. It took her only seconds to sense that Hunter no longer shared the tent with her. Just as it had taken her hours the night before to convince herself it didn’t matter that he was only inches away.

  Dinner had been surprisingly easy. Easy, Lee realized as she stared at the ceiling of the tent, because Hunter’s mood had shifted again when she’d returned to help him fix it. Amiable? No, she decided, cautiously stretching her cramped muscles. Amiable was too free a word when applied to Hunter. Moderately friendly was more suitable. Cooperative he hadn’t been at all. He’d spent the evening hours reading by the light of his lamp, while she’d taken out a fresh notepad and begun what would be a journal on her two weeks in Oak Creek Canyon.

  She found it helpful to write down her feelings. Lee had often used her manuscript in much the same fashion. She could say what she wanted, feel what she wanted, without ever taking the risk that anyone would read her words. Perhaps it hadn’t worked out precisely that way with her book, since Hunter had read more of her neat double-spaced typing under the steady lamplight, but the journal would be for no one’s eyes but her own.

  In any case, she thought, it was to her advantage that he’d been occupied with her manuscript. She hadn’t had to talk to him as the night had grown later, the darkness deeper. While he’d still been reading, she’d been able to crawl into the tent and squeeze herself into a corner. When he’d joined her, much later, it hadn’t been necessary to exchange words in the intimacy of the tent. She’d made certain he’d thought her asleep—though sleep hadn’t come for hours.

  In the quiet, she’d listened to him breathe beside her. Quiet, steady. That was the kind of man he was. Lee had lain still, telling herself the closeness meant nothing. But this morning, she saw that her nails, which had begun to grow again, had been gnawed down.

  The first night was bound to be the hardest, she told herself and sat up, dragging a hand through her hair. She’d survived it. Her problem now was how to get by him and to the showers, where she could change out of the clothes she’d slept in and fix her hair and face. Cautiously, she crept forward to peek through the tent flap.

  He knew she was awake. Hunter had sensed it almost the moment she’d opened her eyes. He’d gotten up early to start coffee, knowing that if he’d had trouble sleeping beside her, he’d never have been able to handle waking with her.

  He’d seen little more than the coppery mass of hair above the sleeping bag in the dim morning light of the tent. Because he’d wanted to touch it, draw her to him, wake her, he’d given himself some distance. Today he’d walk for miles and fish for hours. Lee could stick to her role of reporter, and by answering her questions he’d learn as much about her as she believed she was learning about him. That was his plan, Hunter reminded himself, and poured a second cup of coffee. He was better off remembering it.

  “Coffee’s hot,” Hunter commented without turning around. Though she’d taken great care to be quiet, he’d heard Lee push the tent flap aside.

  Biting back an oath, Lee scooped up her pack. The man had ears like a wolf. “I want to shower first,” she mumbled.

  “I told you that you didn’t have to fix up your face for me.” He began to arrange strips of bacon in a skillet. “I like it fine the way it is.”

  Infuriated, Lee scrambled to her feet. “I’m not fixing anything for you. Sleeping all night in my clothes tends to make me feel dirty.”

  “Probably sleep better without them.” Hunter agreed mildly. “Breakfast’s in fifteen minutes, so I’d move along if I wanted to eat.”

  Clutching her bag and her dignity, Lee strode off through the trees.

  He wouldn’t get to her so easily if she wasn’t stiff and grubby and half-starved, she thought, making her way along the path to the showers. God knows how he could be so cheerful after spending the night sleeping on the ground. Maybe Bryan had been right all along. The man was weird. Lee took her shampoo and her plastic case of French-milled soap and stepped into a shower stall.

  The spot he’d chosen might be magnificent, the air might smell clean and pure, but a sleeping bag wasn’t a feather bed. Lee stripped and hung her clothes over the door. She heard the water running in the stall next to hers and sighed. For the next two weeks she’d be sharing bathroom facilities. She might as well get used to it.

  The water came out in a steady gush, lukewarm. Gritting her teeth, she stepped under. Today, she was going to begin to dig out a few more personal facts on Hunter Brown.

  Was he married? She frowned, then deliberately relaxed her features. The question was for the article, not for herself. His marital status meant nothing to her.

  He probably wasn’t. She soaped her hair vigorously. What woman would put up with him? Besides, wouldn’t a wife come along on camping trips even if she detested them? Would that kind of man marry anyone who didn’t like precisely what he did?

  What did he do for relaxation? Besides playing Daniel Boone in the woods, she added with a grim smile. Where did he live? Where had he grown up? What sort of childhood had he had?

  The water streamed over her, sluicing away soap and shampoo. The curiosity she felt was purely professional. Lee found she had to remind herself of that a bit too often. She needed the whole man to do an incisive article. She needed the whole man…

  Alarmed at her own thoughts, she opened her eyes wide, then swore when shampoo stung them. Damn the whole man! she thought fiercely. She’d take whatever pieces of him she could get and write an article that would pay him back, in spades, for all the trouble he’d caused her.

  Clean, fragrant and shivering, she turned off the water. It wasn’t until that moment that Lee remembered she hadn’t brought a towel. Campground showers didn’t lay in their own li
nen supply. Damnit, how was she supposed to remember everything?

  Dripping, her chilled skin covered with gooseflesh, she stood in the middle of the stall and swore silently and pungently. For as long as she could stand it, Lee let the air dry her while she squeezed water out of her hair. Revenge, she thought, placing the blame squarely on Hunter’s shoulders. Sooner or later, she’d have it.

  She reached under the stall door for her pack and pulled out a fresh sweatshirt. Resigned, she dabbed at her wet face with the soft outside. Once she’d dragged it over her damp shoulders, she hunted up underwear. Though her clothes clung to her, her skin warmed. In front of the line of sinks and mirrors, she plugged in her blow-dryer and set to work on her hair.

  In spite of him, Lee thought, not because of him, she spent more than her usual time perfecting her makeup. Satisfied, she repacked her portable hairdryer and left the showers, smelling lightly of jasmine.

  Her scent was the first thing he sensed when she stepped back into the clearing. Hunter’s stomach muscles tightened. As if he were unaffected, he finished off another cup of coffee, but he didn’t taste it.

  Calmer and much more at ease now, Lee stowed her pack before she walked toward the low-burning campfire. On a small shelf of rocks beside it sat the skillet with the remainder of the bacon and eggs. She didn’t have to taste them to know they were cold.

  “Feel better?” Hunter asked conversationally.

  “I feel fine.” She wouldn’t say one word about the food being cold and, Lee told herself as she scooped her breakfast onto a plate, she’d eat every bite. She’d give him no more cause to smirk at her.

  While she nibbled on the bacon, Lee glanced over at him. He’d obviously showered earlier. His hair glinted in the sun and he smelled cleanly of soap without the interference of cologne or after-shave. A man didn’t use after-shave if he didn’t bother with a razor, Lee concluded, studying the shadow of stubble over his chin. It should’ve made him look unkempt, but somehow he managed to look oddly dashing. She concentrated on her cold eggs.

  “Sleep well?”