“I was never engaged to Jonathan,” she began furiously, then decisively bit her tongue. “You have no business probing into my life, Hunter. I’m doing the article, not you.”

“I make it a habit to find out everything I can about anyone I do business with. We do have a business arrangement, don’t we, Lenore?”

He was clever with words, she thought grimly. But so was she. “Yes, and it consists of my interviewing you, not the other way around.”

“On my terms,” Hunter reminded her. “I don’t talk to anyone unless I know who they are.” He reached out, touching the ends of her hair as he’d done once before. “I think I know who you are.”

“You don’t,” she corrected, struggling against the need to back away from a touch that was barely a touch. “And you don’t have to. But the more honest and open you are with me, the more honest the article I write will be.”

He uncapped the canteen. When she refused his offer with a shake of her head, Hunter drank. “I am being honest with you.” He secured the cap. “If I made it easier for you, you wouldn’t get a true picture of who I am.” His eyes were suddenly dark, intense and piercing. Without warning, he reached out. The power in his eyes made her believe he could quite easily sweep her off the path. Yet his hand skimmed down her cheek, light as rain. “You wouldn’t understand what I am,” he said quietly. “Perhaps, for my own reasons, I want you to.”

She’d have been less frightened if he’d shouted at her, raged at her, grabbed at her. The sound of her own heartbeat vibrated in her head. Instinctively, she stepped back, escape her first and only thought. Her foot met empty space.

In an instant, she was caught against him, pressed body to body, so that the warmth from his seeped right into hers. The fear tripled so that she arched back, raising both hands to his chest.

“Idiot,” he said, with an edge to his voice that made her head snap up. “Take a look behind you before you tell me to let you go.”

Automatically, she turned her head to look over her shoulder. Her stomach rose up to her throat, then plummeted. The hands that had been poised to push him away grabbed his shoulders until the fingers dug into his flesh. The view behind her was magnificent, sweeping and straight down.

“We—we walked farther up than I’d thought,” she managed. And if she didn’t sit down, very, very soon, she was going to disgrace herself.

“The trick is to watch where you’re going.” Hunter didn’t move her away from the edge, but took her chin in his hand until their eyes met and held. “Always watch exactly where you’re going, then you’ll know how to fall.”