by Nora Roberts
But two days. She closed her eyes, telling herself that everything she’d done and everything she’d seen would be forever implanted in her memory. Did the time left have to be so short? And the time ahead of her loomed so long.
“Here.” Hunter came up alongside her, holding out a pair of binoculars. “You should always see as far as you can.”
She took them, with a smile for the way he had of putting things. The canyon zoomed closer, abruptly becoming more personal. She could see the water rushing by in the creek, rushing with a sound too distant to be heard. Why had she never noticed how unique each leaf on a tree could be? She could see other campers loitering near their sites or mingling with the day tourists on paths. Lee let the binoculars drop. They brought intrusion too close.
“Will you come back next year?” She wanted to be able to picture him there, looking out over the endless space, remembering.
“If I can.”
“It won’t have changed,” she murmured. If she came back, five, ten years from then, the creek would still snake by, the buttes would still stand. But she couldn’t come back. With an effort, she shook off the mood and smiled at him. “It must be nearly lunch-time.”
“It’s too hot to eat up here.” Hunter wiped at the sweat on his brow. “We’ll go down and find some shade.”
“All right.” She could see the dust plume up from his boots as he walked. “Some place near the creek.”
She glanced to the right. “Let’s go this way, Hunter. We haven’t walked down there yet.”
He hesitated only a moment. “Fine.” Holding her hand, he took the path she’d chosen.
The walk down was always easier than the walk up. That was another invaluable fact Lee had filed away during the last couple of weeks. And Hunter, though he held her hand, didn’t guide or lead. He simply walked his own way. Just as he’d walk his own way in forty-eight hours, she mused, and stretched her stride to keep pace with him.
“Will you start on your next book as soon as you get back?”
Questions, he thought. He’d never known anyone with such an endless supply of questions. “Yes.”
“Are you ever afraid you’ll, well, dry up?”
“Always.”
Interested, she stopped a moment. “Really?” She’d considered him a man without any fear at all. “I’d have thought that the more success you achieved, the more confident you’d become.”
“Success is a deity that’s never satisfied.” She frowned, a bit uncomfortable with his description. “Every time I face that first blank page, I wonder how I’ll ever get through a beginning, middle and end.”
“How do you?”
He began to walk again, so that she had to keep up or be left behind. “I tell the story. It’s as simple and as miserably complex as that.”
So was he, she reflected, that simple, that complex.
Lee thought over his words as she felt the temperature gradually change with the decrease in elevation.
It seemed tidier in this section of the canyon. Once she thought she heard the purr of a car’s engine, a sound she hadn’t heard in days. The trees grew thicker, the shade more generous. How strange, she reflected, to have those sheer, unforgiving walls at her back and a cozy little forest in front of her. More unreality? Then glancing down, she saw a patch of small white flowers. Lee picked three, leaving the rest for someone else. She hadn’t come for them, she remembered as she tucked them in her hair, but she was glad, so very glad, to have found them.
“How’s this?” He turned to see her secure the last flower in her hair. The need for her, the complete her, rose inside of him so swiftly it took his breath away. Lenore. He had no trouble understanding why the man in Poe’s verse had mourned the loss of her to the point of madness. “You grow lovelier. Impossible.” Hunter touched a fingertip to her cheek. Would he, too, grow mad from mourning the loss of her?
Her face, lifted to the sun, needed nothing more than the luminescence of her skin to make it exquisite. But how long, he wondered, how long would she be content to shun the polish? How long would it be before she craved the life she’d begun to carve out for herself?
Lee didn’t smile, because his eyes prevented her. He was looking into her again, for something… Something. She wasn’t certain, even if she’d known what it was, that she could give him the answer he wanted. Instead, she did what he’d once done. Placing her hands on his shoulders, she touched her mouth to his. With her eyes squeezed shut, she dropped her head onto his chest.
How could she leave? How could she not? There seemed to be no direction she could go and not lose something essential. “I don’t believe in magic,” she murmured, “but if I did, I’d say this was a magic place. Now, in the day, it’s quiet. Sleeping perhaps. But at night, the air would be alive with spirits.”
He held her closer as he rested his neck on top of her head. Did she realize how romantic she was? he wondered. Or just how hard she fought not to be? A week ago, she might have had such a thought, but she’d never have said it aloud. A week from now… Hunter bit back a sigh. A week from now, she’d give no more thought to magic.
“I want to make love with you here,” he said quietly. “With the sunlight streaming through the leaves and onto your skin. In the evening, just before the dew falls. At dawn, when the light’s caught somewhere between rose and gray.”
Moved, ruled by love, she smiled up at him. “And at midnight, when the moon’s high and anything’s possible.”
“Anything’s always possible.” He kissed one cheek, then the other. “You only have to believe it.”
She laughed, a bit shakily. “You almost make me believe it. You make my knees weak.”
His grin flashed as he swept her up in his arms. “Better?”
Would she ever feel this free again? Throwing her arms around his neck, Lee kissed him with all the feeling that welled inside her. “Yes. And if you don’t put me down, I’ll want you to carry me back to camp.”
The half smile touched his lips. “Decide you aren’t hungry after all?”
“Since I doubt you’ve got anything in that bag but dried fruit and sunflower seeds, I don’t have any illusions about lunch.”
“I’ve still got a couple pieces of fudge.”
“Let’s eat.”
Hunter dropped her unceremoniously on the ground. “It shows the woman’s basic lust centers around food.”
“Just chocolate,” Lee disagreed. “You can have my share of the sunflower seeds.”
“They’re good for you.” Digging into the pack, he pulled out some small clear-plastic bags.
“I can handle the raisins,” Lee said unenthusiastically. “But I can do without the seeds.”
Shrugging, Hunter popped two in his mouth. “You’ll be hungry before dinner.”
“I’ve been hungry before dinner for two weeks,” she tossed back and began to root through the pack herself for the fudge. “No matter how good seeds and nuts and little dried pieces of apricot are for you, they don’t take the place of red meat—” she found a small square of fudge “—or chocolate.”
Hunter watched her close her eyes in pure pleasure as she chewed the candy. “Hedonist.”
“Absolutely.” Her eyes were laughing when she opened them. “I like silk blouses, French champagne and lobster with warm butter sauce.” She sighed as she sat back, wondering if Hunter had any emotional attachment to the last piece of fudge. “I especially enjoy them after I’ve worked all week to justify having them.”
He understood that, perhaps too well. She wasn’t a woman who wanted to be taken care of, nor was he a man who believed anyone should have a free ride. But what future was there in a relationship when two people couldn’t acclimate to each other’s life-style? He’d never imposed his on anyone else, nor would be permit anyone to sway him from his own. And yet, now that he felt the clock ticking the hours away, the days away, he wondered if it would be as simple to go back, alone, as he’d once expected it to be.
“You enjoy living in the city?” he asked casually.
“Of course.” It wasn’t possible to tell him that she hated the thought of going back, alone, to what she’d always thought was perfect for her. “My apartment’s twenty minutes from the magazine.”
“Convenient.” And practical, he mused. It seemed she would always choose the practical even if she had a whim for the fanciful. He opened the canteen and drank. When he passed it to Lee, she accepted. She’d learned to make a number of adjustments.
“I suppose you work at home.”
“Yes.”
She touched a hand absently to one of the flowers in her hair. “That takes discipline. I think most people need the structure of an office away from their living space to accomplish anything.”
“You wouldn’t.”
She looked over then, wishing they could talk about more personal things without bringing on that quiet sense of panic. Better that they talked of work or the weather, or of nothing at all. “No?”
“You’d drive yourself harder than any supervisor or time clock.” He bit into an apple slice. “If you put your mind to it, you’d have that manuscript finished within a month.”
Restlessly, she moved her shoulders. “If I worked eight hours a day, without any other obligations.”
“The story’s your only obligation.”
She held back a sigh. She didn’t want to argue or even debate, not when they had so little time left together. Yet if they didn’t discuss her work, she might not be able to prevent herself from talking about her feelings. That was a circle without any meeting point.
“Hunter, as a writer, you can feel that way about a book. I suppose you have to. I have a job, a career that demands blocks of time and a great deal of my attention. I can’t simply put that into hiatus while I speculate on my chances of getting a manuscript published.”
“You’re afraid to risk it.”
It was a direct hit to her most sensitive area. Both of them knew her anger was a defense. “What if I am? I’ve worked hard for my position at Celebrity. Everything I’ve done there, and every benefit I’ve received, I’ve earned on my own. I’ve already taken enough risks.”
“By not marrying Jonathan Willoby?”
The fury leaped into her eyes quickly, interesting him. So, it was still a sore point, Hunter realized. A very sore point.
“Do you find that amusing?” Lee demanded. “Does the fact that I reneged on an unspoken agreement appeal to your sense of humor?”
“Not particularly. But it intrigues me that you’d consider it possible to renege on something unspoken.”
From the meticulous way she recapped the canteen, he gauged just how angry she was. Her voice was cool and detached, as he hadn’t heard it for days. “My family and the Willobys have been personally and professionally involved for years. The marriage was expected of me and I knew it from the time I was sixteen.”
Hunter leaned back against the trunk of a tree until he was comfortable. “And at sixteen you didn’t consider that sort of expectation antiquated?”
“How could you possibly understand?” Fuming, she rose. The nerves that had been dormant for days began to jump again. Hunter could almost see them spring to life. “You said your father was a dreamer who made his living as a salesman. My father was a realist who made his living socializing and delegating. He socialized with the Willobys. He delegated me to complete the social and professional merger with them by marrying Jonathan.” Even now, the tidy, unemotional plans gave her a twinge of distaste. “Jonathan was attractive, intelligent, already successful. My father never considered that I’d object.”
“But you did,” Hunter pointed out. “Why do you continue to insist on paying for something that was your right?”
Lee whirled to him. It was no longer possible for her to answer coolly, to rebuff with aloofness. “Do you know what it cost me not to do what was expected of me? Everything I did, all my life, was ultimately for their approval.”
“Then you did something for yourself.” Without hurry, he rose to face her. “Is your career for yourself, Lenore, or are you still trying to win their approval?”
He had no right to ask, no right to make her search for the answer. Pale, she turned away from him. “I don’t want to discuss this with you. It’s none of your concern.”
“Isn’t it?” Abruptly as angry as she, Hunter spun her around again. “Isn’t it?” he repeated.
Her hands curled around his arms, whether in protest or for support she wasn’t certain. Now, she thought, now perhaps she’d reached that edge where she had to make a stand no matter how unsteady the ground under her feet. “My life and the way I live it are my business, Hunter.”
“Not anymore.”
“You’re being ridiculous.” She threw back her head, the better to meet his eyes. “This argument doesn’t even have a point.”
Something was building inside him so quickly he didn’t have a chance to fight it or reason it through. “You’re wrong.”
She was beginning to tremble without knowing why. Along with the anger came the quick panic she recognized too well. “I don’t know what you want.”
“You.” She was crushed against him before she understood her own reaction. “All of you.”
His mouth closed over hers with none of the gentle patience he usually showed. Lee felt a lick of fear that was almost immediately swallowed by raging need.
He’d made her feel passion before, but not so swiftly. Desire had burst inside her before, but not so painfully. Everything was as it always was whenever he touched her, and yet everything was so different.
Was it anger she felt from him? Frustration? Passion? She only knew that the control he mastered so finely was gone. Something strained inside him, something more primitive than he’d let free before. This time, they both knew it could break loose. Her blood swam with the panicked excitement of anticipation.
Then they were on the ground, with the scent of sun-warmed leaves and cool water. She felt his beard scrape over her cheek before he buried his mouth in her throat. Whatever drove him left her no choice but to race with him to the end that waited for both of them.
He didn’t question his own desperation. He couldn’t. If she held off sharing certain pieces of herself with him, she still shared her body willingly. He wanted more, all, though he told himself it wasn’t reasonable. Even now, as he felt her body heat and melt for him, he knew he wouldn’t be satisfied. When would she give her feelings to him as freely? For the first time in his life he wanted too much.
He struggled back to the edge of reason, resisting the wave after wave of need that raged through him. This wasn’t the time, the place or the way. In his mind, he knew it, but emotion battled to betray him. Still holding her close, he buried his face in her hair and waited for the madness to pass.
Stunned, as much by his outburst of passion as by her unquestioning response, Lee lay still. Instinctively, she stroked a hand down his back to soothe. She knew him well enough to understand that his temper was rarely unguarded. Now she knew why.
Hunter lifted his head to look at her, seeing on a surge of self-disgust that her eyes were wary again. The flowers had fallen from her hair. Taking one, he pressed it into her hand. “You’re much too fragile to be handled so clumsily.”
His eyes were so intense, so dark, it was impossible for her to relax again. Against his back, her fingers curled and uncurled. There was a warning somewhere in her brain that he wanted more than she’d expected him to want, more than she knew how to give. Play it light, Lee ordered herself and deliberately stilled the movement of her fingers. She smiled, though her eyes remained cautious.
“I should’ve waited until we were back in the tent before I made you angry.”
Understanding what she was trying to do, Hunter lifted a brow. Under his voice, and hers, was a strain both of them pretended not to hear. “We can go back now. I can toss you around a bit more.”
As the panic subsided, she sent him
a mild glance. “I’m stronger than I look.”
“Yeah?” He sent her a smile of his own. He had the long hours of night to think about what had happened and what he was going to do about it. “Show me.”
More confident than she should’ve been, Lee pushed against him, intent on rolling him off her. He didn’t budge. The look of calm amusement on his face had her doubling her efforts. Breathless, unsuccessful, she lay back and frowned at him. “You’re heavier than you look,” she complained. “It must be all those sunflower seeds.”
“Your muscles are full of chocolate,” he corrected.
“I only had one piece,” she began.
“Today. By my count, you’ve polished off—”
“Never mind.” Her brow arched elegantly. The nerves in her stomach hadn’t completely subsided. “If you want to talk about unhealthy habits, you’re the one who smokes too much.”
He shrugged, accepting the truth. “Everyone’s entitled to one vice.”
Her grin became wicked, then sultry. “Is that your only one?”
If she’d planned to make her mouth irresistible, she succeeded. Hunter lowered his to nibble at the sweetness. “I’ve never been one to consider pleasures vices.”
Sighing, she linked her arms around his neck. They didn’t have enough time left to waste it arguing, or even thinking. “Why don’t we go back to the tent so you can show me what you mean?”
He laughed softly and shifted to kiss the curve of her shoulder. Her laugh echoed his, then Lee’s smile froze when she glanced down the length of his body to what stood at their feet.
Fear ripped through her. She couldn’t have screamed. Her short, unpainted nails dug into Hunter’s back.
“What—” He lifted his head. Her face was ice-white and still. Though her body was rigid beneath his, there was lively fear in the hands that dug into his back. Muscles tense, he turned to look in the direction she was staring. “Damn.” The word was hardly out of his mouth before a hundred pounds of fur and muscle leaped on him. This time, Lee’s scream tore free.