If it hadn’t been so important that she prove she could do all this for herself, she might have taken the chance of sending those first hundred pages to a publishing house. But then … Shaking her head, Lee watched the people mill through the registration area, all types, all sizes, all ages. Clothes varied from trim professional suits to jeans to flamboyant caftans and smocks. Apparently style was a matter of taste and taste a matter of individuality. She wondered if she’d see quite the same variety anywhere else. Absently, she glanced at the partial manuscript she’d tucked into her briefcase. Just for cover, she reminded herself. That was all.

No, she didn’t believe she had it in her to be a great writer, but she knew she had the skill for great reporting. She’d never, never settle for being second-rate at anything.

Still, while she was here, it wouldn’t hurt to sit in on one or two of the seminars. She might pick up some pointers. More important, she told herself as she rose, she might be able to stretch this trip into another story on the ins and outs of a writers’ conference. Who attended, why, what they did, what they hoped for. Yes, it could make quite an interesting little piece. The job, after all, came first.

An hour later, a bit more enthusiastic than she wanted to be after her first workshop, she wandered into the coffee shop. She’d take a short break, assimilate the notes she’d written, then go back and make certain she had the best seat in the house for Hunter Brown’s lecture.

Hunter glanced up from his paper and watched her enter the coffee shop. Lee Radcliffe, he mused, finding her of more interest than the local news he’d been scanning. He’d enjoyed his conversation with her the day before, and as often as not, he found conversations tedious. She had a quality about her—an innate frankness glossed with sophistication—that he found intriguing enough to hold his interest. An obsessive writer who believed that the characters themselves were the plot of any book, Hunter always looked for the unique and the individual. Instinct told him Lee Radcliffe was quite an individual.

Unobserved, he watched her. From the way she looked absently around the room it was obvious she was preoccupied. The suit she wore was very simple but showed both style and taste in the color and cut. She was a woman who could wear the simple, he decided, because she was a woman who’d been born with style. If he wasn’t very much mistaken, she’d been born into wealth as well. There was always a subtle difference between those who were accustomed to money and those who’d spent years earning it.