So he’d let her go, aches and fury under the calm. She’d be back.

But a month had passed, and she hadn’t come. He wondered how long a man could live when he was starving.

Call her. Go after her. You were a fool to ever let her go. Drag her back if necessary. You need her. You need …

His thoughts ran this way like clockwork. Every day at dusk. Every day at dusk, Hunter fought the urge to follow through on them. He needed; God, he needed. But if she didn’t come to him willingly, he’d never have what he needed, only the shell of it. He looked down at his naked finger. She hadn’t left everything behind. It was more, much more, than a piece of metal that she’d taken with her.

He’d given her a talisman, and she’d kept it. As long as she had it, she didn’t sever the bond. Hunter was a man who believed in fate, omens and magic.

“Dinner’s ready.” Sarah stood in the doorway, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her narrow face streaked with a bit of flour.

He didn’t want to eat. He wanted to go on writing. As long as the story moved through him, he had a part of Lenore with him. Just as, whenever he stopped, the need to have all of her tore him apart. But Sarah smiled at him.

“Nearly ready,” she amended. She came into the room, barefoot. “I made this meat loaf, but it looks more like a pancake. And the biscuits.” She grinned, shrugging. “They’re pretty hard, but we can put some jam or something on them.” Sensing his mood, she wrapped her arms around his neck, resting her cheek against his. “I like it better when you cook.”

“Who turned her nose up at the broccoli last night?”

“It looks like little trees that got sick.” She wrinkled her nose, but when she drew back from him, her face was serious. “You really miss her a lot, huh?”

He could’ve evaded with anyone else. But this was Sarah. She was ten. She knew him inside out. “Yeah, I miss her a lot.”

Thinking, Sarah fiddled with the hair that fell over his forehead. “I guess maybe you wanted her to marry you.”

“She turned me down.”

Her brows lowered, not so much from annoyance that anyone could say no to her father, but in concentration. Donna’s father hardly had any hair at all, she thought, touching Hunter’s again, and Kelly’s dad’s stomach bounced over his belt. Shelley’s mother never got jokes. She didn’t know anybody who was as neat to look at or as neat to be with as her dad. Anybody would want to marry him. When she’d been little, she’d wanted to marry him herself. But of course, she knew now that was just silly stuff.