Now he smiled fully, appreciating determination when he saw it. “In Sedona. I’ll contact you when I’m certain of the date—and when my editor’s let me know she’s received the rest of your manuscript.”

“I hardly see why you’re using that to blackmail me.”

He crossed to her then, unexpectedly combing his fingers through her hair. It was casual, friendly and uncannily intimate. “Perhaps one of the first things you should know about me is I’m eccentric. If people accept their own eccentricities, they can justify anything they do. Anything at all.” He ended the words by closing his mouth over hers.

He heard her suck in her breath, felt her stiffen. But she didn’t struggle away. Perhaps she was testing herself, though he didn’t think she could know she tested him, too. He wanted to carry her to the rumpled bed, slip off that thin swirl of silk and fit his body to hers. It would fit; somehow he already knew. She’d move with him, for him, as if they’d always been lovers. He knew, though he couldn’t explain.

He could feel her melting into him, her lips growing warm and moist from his. They were alone and the need was like iron. Yet he knew, without understanding, that if they made love now, sated that need, he’d never see her again. They both had fears to face before they became lovers, and after.

Hunter gave himself the pleasure of one long, last kiss, drawing her taste into him, allowing himself to be overwhelmed, just for a moment, by the feel of her against him. Then he forced himself to level, forced himself to remember that they each wanted something from the other—secrets and an intimacy both would put into words in their own ways.

Drawing back, he let his hands linger only a moment on the curve of her cheek, the softness of her hair, while she said nothing. “If you can get through two weeks in the canyon, you’ll have your story.”

Leaving her with that, he turned and strolled out the door.

“If I can make it through two weeks,” Lee muttered, pulling a heavy sweater out of her drawer. “I tell you, Bryan, I’ve never met anyone who says as little who can irritate me as much.” Ten days back in L.A. hadn’t dulled her fury.

Bryan fingered the soft wool of the sweater. “Lee, don’t you have any grub-around clothes?”

“I bought some sweatshirts,” she said under her breath. “I haven’t spent a great deal of my time in a tent.”

“Advice.” Before another pair of the trim slacks could be packed into the knapsack Lee had borrowed from her, Bryan took her hand.

Lee lifted one thin coppery brow. “You know I detest advice.”