“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 12

“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?”