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, midtwenties—”

“Yes, sir,” the clerk interrupted. “She just stepped into the restroom. 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 stunning, 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?”