“I had experience waiting tables.” He smiled, a bit more easily now. “And detested it. Sometimes you have to put it all on the line, Lenore. So I did.”

“How did you support yourself from the time you graduated from college until you broke through with The Devil’s Due?”

“I wrote.”

Lee shook her head, forgetting the half-full plate on her lap. “The articles and short stories couldn’t have brought in very much. And that was your first book.”

“No, I’d had a dozen others before it.” Blowing out a stream of smoke, he reached for the coffeepot. “Want some?”

She leaned forward a bit, her brows drawing together. “Look, Hunter, I’ve been researching you for months. I might not have gotten much, but I know every book, every article and every short story you’ve written, including the majority of your college work. There’s no way I’d’ve missed a dozen books.”

“You know everything Hunter Brown’s written,” he corrected and poured himself coffee.

“That’s precisely what I said.”

“You didn’t research Laura Miles.”

“Who?”

He sipped, enjoying the coffee and the conversation more than he’d anticipated. “A great many writers use pseudonyms. Laura Miles was mine.”

“A woman’s name?” Confused on one level, reporter’s instincts humming on another, she frowned at him. “You wrote a dozen books before The Devil’s Due under a woman’s name?”

“Yeah. One of the problems with writing is that the name alone can project a certain perception of the author.” He offered her the last piece of bacon. “Hunter Brown wasn’t right for what I was doing at the time.”

Lee let out a frustrated breath. “What were you doing?”

“Writing romance novels.” He flicked his cigarette into the fire.

“Writing … You?”

He studied her incredulous face before he leaned back. He was used to criticism of genre fiction and, more often than not, amused by it. “Do you object to the genre in general, or to my writing in it?”

“I don’t—” Confused, she broke off to try to gather her thoughts. “I just can’t picture you writing happy-ever-after love stories. Hunter, I just finished Silent Scream. I kept my bedroom door locked for a week.” She dragged a hand through her hair as he quietly watched her. “Romances?”

“Most novels have some kind of relationship with them. A romance simply focuses on it, rather than using it as a subplot or a device.”

“But didn’t you feel you were wasting your talent?” Lee knew his skill in drawing the reader in from the first page, from the first sentence. “I understand there being a matter of putting food on the table, but—”