“It didn’t have to be.” He lit a cigarette, watching the clouds move slowly closer. “By the time I was finished with college, I knew I was a writer.”

“What happened from the time you graduated from college to when your first book was published?”

He smiled through the smoke that drifted between them. “I lived, I wrote, I went fishing when I could.”

She wasn’t about to be put off so easily. Hardly realizing she did it, Lee sat down on the ground beside him. “You must’ve worked.”

“Writing, though many disagree, is work.” He had a talent for making the sharpest sarcasm sound mildly droll.

Another time, she might have smiled. “You know that’s not what I mean. You had to have an income, and your first book wasn’t published until nearly six years ago.”

“I wasn’t starving in a garret, Lenore.” He ran a finger down the hand she held on the rod and felt a flash of pleasure at the quick skip of her pulse. “You’d just have been starting at Celebrity when The Devil’s Due hit the stands. One might say our stars were on the rise at the same time.”

“I suppose.” She turned from him to look back at the surface of the creek again.

“You’re happy there?”

Unconsciously, she lifted her chin. “I’ve worked my way up from gofer to staff reporter in five years.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Neither are most of yours,” she mumbled.

“True enough. What’re you looking for there?”

“Success,” she said immediately. “Security.”

“One doesn’t always equal the other.”

Her voice was as defiant as the look she aimed at him. “You have both.”

“A writer’s never secure,” Hunter disagreed. “Only a foolish one expects to be. I’ve read all of the manuscript you brought.”

Lee said nothing. She’d known he’d bring it up before the two weeks were over, but she’d hoped to put it off a bit longer. The faintest of breezes played with the ends of her hair while she sat, staring at the moving waters of the creek. Some of the pebbles looked like gems. Such were illusions.

“You know you have to finish it,” he told her calmly. “You can’t make me believe you’re content to leave your characters in limbo, when you’ve drawn them so carefully. Your story’s two-thirds told, Lenore.”

“I don’t have time,” she began.

“Not good enough.”

Frustrated, she turned to him again. “Easy for you to say from your little pinnacle of fame. I have a demanding full-time job. If I give it my time and my talent, there’s no place I can go but up at Celebrity.”

“Your novel needs your time and talent.”