Second Nature

by Nora Roberts

  “I was twenty-four,” Hunter corrected. “I’d long since stopped being a boy. I was—we were—responsible for our own actions. I didn’t sleep for two days. I thought of a dozen answers and rejected them all, over and over. Only one thing stuck with me in that whole sweaty, terrified time. I wanted the child. It’s not something I can explain, because I did enjoy my life, the lack of responsibilities, the possibility of becoming really successful. I simply knew I had to have the child. I called her and asked her to come back.

  “We were both calmer the second time, and both more frightened than either of us had ever been in our lives. Marriage couldn’t be considered, so we set it aside. She didn’t want the child, so we dealt with that. I did. That was something a bit more complex to deal with. She needed freedom from the responsibility we’d made together, and she needed money. In the end, we resolved it all.”

  Dry-mouthed, Lee turned to him. “You paid her.”

  He saw, as he’d expected to see, the horror in her eyes. When he continued, his voice was calm, but it took a great deal of effort to make it so. “I paid all the medical expenses, her living expenses up until she delivered, and I gave her ten thousand dollars for my daughter.”

  Stunned, heartsick, Lee stared at the ground. “How could she—”

  “We each wanted something. In the only way open, we gave it to each other. I’ve never resented that young law student for what she did. It was her choice, and she could’ve taken another without consulting me.”

  “Yes.” She tried to understand, but all Lee could see was that slim, dark little girl. “She chose, but she lost.”

  It meant everything just to hear her say it. “Sarah’s been mine, only mine, from the first moment she breathed. The woman who carried her gave me a priceless gift. I only gave her money.”

  “Does Sarah know?”

  “Only that her mother had choices to make.”

  “I see.” She let out a long breath. “The reason you’re so careful about keeping publicity away from her is to keep speculation away.”

  “One of them. The other is simply that I want her to have the uncomplicated life every child’s entitled to.”

  “You didn’t have to tell me.” She reached a hand for his. “I’m glad you did. It can’t have been easy for you, raising a baby by yourself.”

  There was nothing but understanding in her eyes now. Every taut muscle in his body relaxed as if she’d stroked them. He knew now, with utter certainty, that she was what he’d been waiting for. “No, not easy, but always a pleasure.” His fingers tightened on hers. “Share it with me, Lenore.”

  Her thoughts froze. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I want you here, with me, with Sarah. I want you here with the other children we’ll have together.” He looked down at the ring he’d put on her hand. When his eyes came back to hers, she felt them reach inside her. “Marry me.”

  Marry? She could only stare at him blankly while the panic quietly built and built. “You don’t—you don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “I do,” he corrected, holding her hand more firmly when she tried to draw it away. “I’ve asked only one other woman, and that out of obligation. I’m asking you because you’re the first and only woman I’ve ever loved. I want to share your life. I want you to share mine.”

  Panic steadily turned into fear. He was asking her to change everything she’d aimed for. To risk everything. “Our lives are too far apart,” she managed. “I have to go back. I have my job.”

  “A job you know you weren’t made for.” Urgency slipped into his voice as he took her shoulders. “You know you were made to write about the images you have in your head, not about other people’s social lives and tomorrow’s trends.”

  “It’s what I know!” Trembling, she jerked away from him. “It’s what I’ve been working for.”

  “To prove a point. Damn it, Lenore, do something for yourself. For yourself.”

  “It is for myself,” she said desperately. You love him, a voice shouted inside her. Why are you pushing away what you need, what you want? Lee shook her head, as if to block the voice out. Love wasn’t enough, needs weren’t enough. She knew that. She had to remember it. “You’re asking me to give it all up, every hard inch I’ve climbed in five years. I have a life in L.A., I know who I am, where I’m going. I can’t live here and risk—”

  “Finding out who you really are?” he finished. He wouldn’t allow despair. He barely controlled anger. “If it was only myself, I’d go anywhere you liked, live anywhere that suited you, even if I knew it was a mistake. But there’s Sarah. I can’t take her away from the only home she’s ever known.”

  “You’re asking for everything again.” Her voice was hardly a whisper, but he’d never heard anything more clearly. “You’re asking me to risk everything, and I can’t. I won’t.”

  He rose, so that shadows shifted around him. “I’m asking you to risk everything,” he agreed. “Do you love me?” And by asking, he’d already risked it all.

  Torn by emotions, pushed by fear, she stared at him. “Yes. Damn you, Hunter, leave me alone.”

  She streaked back toward the house until the darkness closed in between them.

  Chapter Twelve

  “If you’re not going to break for lunch, at least take this.” Bryan held out one of her inexhaustible supply of candy bars.

  “I’ll eat when I’ve finished the article.” Lee kept her eyes on the typewriter and continued to pound at the keys, lightly, rhythmically.

  “Lee, you’ve been back for two days and I haven’t seen you so much as nibble on a Danish.” And her photographer’s eye had seen beneath the subtle use of cosmetics to the pale bruises under Lee’s eyes. That must’ve been some interview, she thought, as the brisk, even clickity-click of the typewriter keys went on.

  “Not hungry.” No, she wasn’t hungry any more than she was tired. She’d been working steadily on Hunter’s article for the better part of forty-eight hours. It was going to be perfect, she promised herself. It was going to be polished like a fine piece of glass. And oh, God, when she finished it, finished it, she’d have purged her system of him.

  She’d gripped that thought so tightly, it often skidded away.

  If she’d stayed… If she went back…

  The oath came quickly, under her breath, as her fingers faltered. Meticulously, Lee reversed the carriage to make the correction. She couldn’t go back. Hadn’t she made that clear to Hunter? She couldn’t just toss everything over her shoulder and go. But the longer she stayed away, the larger the hole in her life became. In the life, Lee was ruthlessly reminded, that she’d so carefully carved out for herself.

  So she’d work in a nervous kind of fury until the article was finished. Until, she told herself, it was all finished. Then it would be time to take the next step. When she tried to think of that next step, her mind went stunningly, desperately blank. Lee dropped her hands into her lap and stared at the paper in front of her.

  Without a word, Bryan bumped the door with her hip so that it closed and muffled the noise. Dropping down into the chair across from Lee, she folded her hands and waited a beat. “Okay, now why don’t you tell me the story that’s not for publication?”

  Lee wanted to be able to shrug and say she didn’t have time to talk. She was under a deadline, after all. The article was under a deadline. But then, so was her life. Drawing a breath, she turned in her chair. She didn’t want to see the neat, clever little words she’d typed. Not now.

  “Bryan, if you’d taken a picture, one that required a great deal of your time and all of your skill to set up, then once you’d developed it, it had come out in a completely different way than you’d planned, what would you do?”

  “I’d take a good hard look at the way it had come out,” she said immediately. “There’d be a good possibility I should’ve planned it that way in the first place.”

  “But wouldn’t you be tempted to go back to your original plans? After all
, you’d worked very, very hard to set it up in a certain way, wanting certain specific results.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. It’d depend on just what I’d seen when I looked at the picture.” Bryan sat back, crossing long, jeans-clad legs. “What’s in your picture, Lee?”

  “Hunter.” Her troubled gaze shifted, and locked on Bryan’s. “You know me.”

  “As well as you let anyone know you.”

  With a short laugh, Lee began to push at a paper clip on her desk. “Am I as difficult as all that?”

  “Yeah.” Bryan smiled a bit to soften the quick answer. “And, I’ve always thought, as interesting. Apparently, Hunter Brown thinks the same thing.”

  “He asked me to marry him.” The words came out in a jolt that left both women staring.

  “Marry?” Bryan leaned forward. “As in ’til death do us part’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” The word came out like a breath of air as Bryan leaned back again. “Fast work.” Then she saw Lee’s unhappy expression. Just because Bryan didn’t smell orange blossoms when the word marriage came up was no reason to be flippant. “Well, how do you feel? About Hunter, I mean.”

  The paper clip twisted in Lee’s fingers. “I’m in love with him.”

  “Really?” Then she smiled, because it sounded nice when said so simply. “Did all this happen in the canyon?”

  “Yes.” Lee’s fingers moved restlessly. “Maybe it started to happen before, when we were in Flag staff. I don’t know anymore.”

  “Why aren’t you happy?” Bryan narrowed her eyes as she did when checking the light and angle. “When the man you love, really love, wants to build a life with you, you should be ecstatic.”

  “How do two people build a life together when they’ve both already built separate ones, completely different ones?” Lee demanded. “It isn’t just a matter of making more room in the closet or shifting furniture around.” The end of the paper clip broke off in her fingers as she rose. “Bryan, he lives in Arizona, in the canyon. I live in L.A.”

  Lifting booted feet, Bryan rested them on Lee’s polished desk, crossing her ankles. “You’re not going to tell me it’s all a matter of geography.”

  “It just shows how impossible it all is!” Angry, Lee whirled around. “We couldn’t be more different, almost opposites. I do things step-by-step, Hunter goes in leaps and bounds. Damn it, you should see his house. It’s like something out of a sophisticated fairy tale. His sister’s B.B. Smithers—” Before Bryan could fully register that, Lee was blurting out, “He has a daughter.”

  “A daughter?” Her attention fully caught, Bryan dropped her feet again. “Hunter Brown has a child?”

  Lee pressed her fingers to her eyes and waited for calm. True, it wouldn’t have come out if she hadn’t been so agitated, and she’d never discuss such personal agitations with anyone but Bryan, but now she had to deal with it. “Yes, a ten-year-old girl. It’s important that it not be publicized.”

  “All right.”

  Lee needed no promises from Bryan. Trying to calm herself, she took a quiet breath. “She’s bright, lovely and quite obviously the center of his life. I saw something in him when they were together, something incredibly beautiful. It scared the hell out of me.”

  “Why?”

  “Bryan, he’s capable of so much talent, brilliance, emotion. He’s put them together to make a complete success of himself, in all ways.”

  “That bothers you?”

  “I don’t know what I’m capable of. I only know I’m afraid I’d never be able to balance it all out, make it all work.”

  Bryan said something short, quick and rude. “You won’t marry him because you don’t think you can juggle? You should know yourself better.”

  “I thought I did.” Shaking her head, she took her seat again. “It’s ridiculous, in the first place,” she said more briskly. “Our lives are miles apart.”

  Bryan glanced out the window at the tall, sleek building that was part of Lee’s view of the city. “So, he can move to L.A. and close the distance.”

  “He won’t.” Swallowing, Lee looked at the pages on her desk. The article was finished, she knew it, just as she knew that if she didn’t let it go, she’d polish it to death. “He belongs there. He wants to raise his daughter there. I understand that.”

  “So, you move to the canyon. Great scenery.”

  Why did it always sound so simple, so plausible, when spoken aloud? The little trickle of fear returned, and her voice firmed. “My job’s here.”

  “I guess it comes down to priorities, doesn’t it?” Bryan knew she wasn’t being sympathetic, just as she knew it wasn’t sympathy that Lee needed. Because she cared a great deal, she spoke without any compassion. “You can keep your job and your apartment in L.A. and be miserable. Or you can take a few chances.”

  Chances. Lee ran a finger down the slick surface of her desk. But you were supposed to test the ground before you stepped forward. Even Hunter had said that. But… She looked at the mangled paper clip in the center of her spotless blotter. How long did you test it before you took the jump?

  It was barely two weeks later that Lee sat in her apartment in the middle of the day. She was so rarely there during the day, during the week, that she somehow expected everything to look different. Everything looked precisely the same. Even, she was forced to admit, herself. Yet nothing was.

  Quit. She tried to digest the word as she dealt with the panic she’d held off the past few days. There was a leafy, blooming African violet on the table in front of her. It was well-tended, as every area of her life had been well-tended. She’d always water it when the soil was dry and feed it when it required nourishing. As she stared at the plant, Lee knew she would never be capable of pulling it ruthlessly out by the roots. But wasn’t that what she’d done to herself?

  Quit, she thought again, and the word reverberated in her brain. She’d actually handed in her resignation, served her two weeks’ notice and summarily turned her back on her steadily thriving career—ripped out its roots.

  For what? she demanded of herself as panic trickled through. To follow some crazy dream that had planted itself in her mind years ago. To write a book that would probably never be published. To take a ridiculous risk and plunge headlong into the unknown.

  Because Hunter had said she was good. Because he’d fed that dream, just as she fed the violet. More than that, Lee thought, he’d made it impossible for her to stop thinking about the “what ifs” in her life. And he was one of them. The most important one of them.

  Now that the step was taken and she was here, alone in her impossibly quiet midweek, midmorning apartment, Lee wanted to run. Out there were people, noise, distractions. Here, she’d have to face those “what-ifs.” Hunter would be the first.

  He hadn’t tried to stop her when she left the morning after he’d asked her to marry him. He’d said nothing when she’d made her goodbyes to Sarah. Nothing at all. Perhaps they’d both known that he’d said all there was to say the night before. He’d looked at her once, and she’d nearly wavered. Then Lee had climbed into the car with Bonnie, who’d driven her to the airport that was one step closer to L.A.

  He hadn’t phoned her since she’d returned. Had she expected him to? Lee wondered. Maybe she had, but she’d hoped he wouldn’t. She didn’t know how long it would take before she’d be able to hear his voice without going to pieces.

  Glancing down, she stared at the twisted gold-and-silver ring on her hand. Why had she kept it? It wasn’t hers. It should’ve been left behind. It was easy to tell herself she’d simply forgotten to take it off in the confusion, but it wasn’t the truth. She’d known the ring was still on her finger as she packed, as she walked out of Hunter’s house, as she stepped into the car. She just hadn’t been capable of taking it off.

  She needed time, and it was time, Lee realized, that she now had. She had to prove something again, but not to her parents, not to Hunter. Now there was only herself. If she could finish
the book. If she could give it her very best and really finish it…

  Rising, Lee went to her desk, sat down at the typewriter and faced the fear of the blank page.

  Lee had known pressure in her work on Celebrity. The minutes ticking away while deadlines drew closer and closer. There was the pressure of making not-so-fascinating seem fascinating, in a limited space, and of having to do it week after week. And yet, after nearly a month of being away from it, and having only herself and the story to account for, Lee had learned the full meaning of pressure. And of delight.

  She hadn’t believed—truly believed—that it would be possible for her to sit down, hour after hour, and finish a book she’d begun on a whim so long ago. And it was true that for the first few days she’d met with nothing but frustration and failure. There’d been a ring of terror in her head. Why had she left a job where she was respected and knowledgeable to stumble in the dark this way?

  Time after time, she was tempted to push it all aside and go back, even if it would mean starting over at Celebrity. But each time, she could see Hunter’s face—lightly mocking, challenging and somehow encouraging.

  “It takes a certain amount of stamina and endurance. If you’ve reached your limit and want to quit…”

  The answer was no, just as grimly, just as determinedly as it had been in that little tent. Perhaps she’d fail. She shut her eyes as she struggled to deal with the thought. Perhaps she’d fail miserably, but she wouldn’t quit. Whatever happened, she’d made her own choice, and she’d live with it.

  The longer she worked, the more of a symbol those typewritten pages became. If she could do this, and do it well, she could do anything. The rest of her life balanced on it.

  By the end of the second week, Lee was so absorbed she rarely noticed the twelve-and fourteen-hour days she was putting in. She plugged in her phone machine and forgot to return the calls as often as she forgot to eat.

  It was as Hunter had once said. The characters absorbed her, drove her, frustrated and delighted her. As time passed, Lee discovered she wanted to finish the story, not only for her sake but for theirs. She wanted, as she’d never wanted before, for these words to be read. The excitement of that, and the dread, kept her going.