“You can gloss over it, you can write it with style and intelligence, but it’s still gossip.” Before Lee could retort, he rose up so quickly, so furiously, her own words were swallowed. “You’ve no right working forty hours a week on anything but the novel you have inside you. Talent’s a two-headed coin, Lenore, and the other side’s obligation.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She rose, too, and found she could shout just as effectively as he. “I know my obligations, and one of them’s to write a story on you for my magazine.”

“And what about the novel?”

Flinging up her hands, she whirled away from him. “What about it?”

“When do you intend to finish it?”

Finish it? She should never have started it. Hadn’t she told herself that a dozen times? “Damn it, Hunter, it’s a pipe dream.”

“It’s good.”

She turned back, her brows still drawn together with anger but the eyes beneath them suddenly wary. “What?”

“If it hadn’t been, your camouflage would have worked very well.” He drew out a cigarette while she stared at him. How could he be so patient, move so slowly, when she was ready to jump at every word? “I nearly called you last night to see if you had any more with you, but decided it would keep. I called my editor instead.” Still calm, he blew out smoke. “When I gave the chapters to her to read, she recognized your name. Apparently she’s quite a fan of Celebrity.”

“You gave her…” Astonished, Lee dropped into the chair again. “You had no right to show anyone.”

“At the time, I fully believed you were precisely what you’d led me to believe you were.”

She stood again, then gripped the back of her chair. “I’m a reporter, not a novelist. I’d like you to get the manuscript from her and return it to me.”

He tapped his cigarette in an ashtray, only then noticing her neatly written notes. As he skimmed them, Hunter felt twin surges of amusement and annoyance. So, she was trying to put him into a few tidy little slots. She’d find it more difficult than she’d imagined. “Why should I do that?”

“Because it belongs to me. You had no right to give it to anyone else.”

“What are you afraid of?” he demanded.

Of failure. The words were almost out before Lee managed to bite them back. “I’m not afraid of anything. I do what I’m best at, and I intend to continue doing it. What are you afraid of?” she retorted. “What are you hiding from?”