“I didn’t say it was simple,” Hunter corrected. “We’re all born with a certain set of choices to make. The matter of making the right ones is anything but simple. Every novel written has to do with choices. Writing novels is what I was meant to do.”

He interested her enough that she forgot the unofficial interview and asked for herself, “So you always wanted to be a writer?”

“You’re very literal-minded,” Hunter observed. Comfortable, he leaned back and swirled the wine in his glass. “No, I didn’t. I wanted to play professional soccer.”

“Soccer?”

Her astonished disbelief made him smile. “Soccer,” he repeated. “I wanted to make a career of it and might have been successful at it, but I had to write.”

Lee was silent a moment, then decided he was telling her precisely the truth. “So you became a writer without really wanting to.”

“I made a choice,” Hunter corrected, intrigued by the orderly logic of her mind. “I believe a great many people are born writer or artist, and die without ever realizing it. Books go unwritten, paintings unpainted. The fortunate ones are those who discover what they were meant to do. I might have been an excellent soccer player. I might have been an excellent writer. If I’d tried to do both, I’d have been no more than mediocre. I chose not to be mediocre.”

“There’re several million readers who’d agree you made the right choice.” Forgetting the cool facade, she propped her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Why horror fiction, Hunter? Someone with your skill and your imagination could write anything. Why did you turn your talents toward that particular genre?”

He lit a cigarette so that the scent of tobacco stung the air. “Why do you read it?”

She frowned; he hadn’t turned one of her questions back on her for some time. “I don’t as a rule, except yours.”

“I’m flattered. Why mine?”

“Your first was recommended to me, and then…” She hesitated, not wanting to say she’d been hooked from the first page. Instead, she ran her fingertip around the rim of her glass and sorted through her answer. “You have a way of creating atmosphere and drawing characters that make the impossibility of your stories perfectly believable.”

He blew out a stream of smoke. “Do you think they’re impossible?”

She gave a quick laugh, a laugh he recognized as genuine from the humor that lit her eyes. It did something very special to her beauty. It made it accessible. “I hardly believe in people being possessed by demons or a house being inherently evil.”

“No?” He smiled. “No superstitions, Lenore?”

She met his gaze levelly. “None.”

“Strange, most of us have a few.”

“Do you?”