Daughter…Sarah…
Lee turned her head to meet the dark, direct eyes that were a duplicate of Hunter’s. Yes, they were a duplicate. It struck her like a blast of air. He had a child? This lovely, slender girl with a tender mouth and braids secured by mismatched rubber bands was Hunter’s daughter? So many opposing emotions moved through her that she said nothing. Nothing at all.
“Sarah.” Hunter spoke into the drumming silence. “This is Ms. Radcliffe.”
“Sure, I know, the reporter. Hi.”
Still sitting on the ground, with the dog now sniffing around her shoulder, Lee felt like a complete fool. “Hello.” She hoped the word wasn’t as ridiculously formal as it sounded to her.
“Dad said I shouldn’t call you pretty because pretty was like a bowl of fruit.” Sarah didn’t tilt her head as one might to study from a new angle, but Lee had the impression she was being weighed and dissected like a still life. “I like your hair,” Sarah declared. “Is it a real color?”
“A definite lesson in manners,” Hunter put in, more amused than annoyed. “I’m afraid Sarah’s a bit of a brat.”
“He always says that.” Sarah moved thin, expressive shoulders. “He doesn’t mean it, though.”
“Until today.” He ruffled the dog’s fur, wondering just how he would handle the situation. Lee was still silent, and Sarah’s eyes were all curiosity. “Take Santanas back to the house. I assume Bonnie’s there.”
“Yeah. We came back yesterday because I remembered I had a soccer game and she had an inspiration and couldn’t do anything with it in Phoenix with all the kids running around like monkeys.”
“I see.” And though he did, perfectly, Lee was left floundering in the dark. “Go ahead, then, we’ll be right along.”
“Okay. Come on, Santanas.” Then she shot Lee a quick grin. “He looks pretty ferocious, but he doesn’t bite.” As the girl darted away, Lee wondered if she’d been speaking of the dog or her father. When she was once again alone with Hunter, Lee remained still and silent.
“I’ll apologize for the rudeness of my family, if you’d like.”
Family. The word struck her, a dose of reality that flung her out of the dream. Rising, Lee meticulously dusted off her jeans. “There’s no need.” Her voice was cool, almost chill. Her muscles were wire-taut. “Since the game’s over, I’d like you to drive me into Sedona so I can arrange for transportation back to L.A.”
“Game?” In one long, easy motion, he came to his feet, then took her hand, stopping its nervous movement. It was a gesture that had become so much of a habit, neither of them noticed. “There’s no game, Lenore.”
“Oh, you played it very well.” The hurt she wouldn’t permit in her voice showed clearly in her eyes. Her hand remained cold and rigid in his. “So well, in fact, I completely forgot we were playing.”
Patience deserted him abruptly and without warning. Anger he could handle, with more anger or with amusement. But hurt left him with no defense, no attack. “Don’t be an idiot. Whatever game there was ended a few nights ago in the tent.”
“Ended.” Tears sprang to her eyes, stunning her. Furiously she blinked them back, filled with self-disgust, but not before he’d seen them. “No, it never ended. You’re an excellent strategist, Hunter. You seemed to be so open with me that I didn’t think you were holding anything back.” She jerked her hand from his, longing for the luxury of dissolving into those hot, cleansing tears. “How could you?” she demanded. “How could you touch me that way and lie?”
“I never lied to you.” His voice was as calm as hers, his eyes were as full of passion.
“You have a child.” Something snapped inside her, so that she had to grip her hands together to prevent herself from wringing them. “You have a half-grown daughter you never mentioned to me. You told me you’d never been married.”
“I haven’t been,” he said simply, and waited for the inevitable questions.
They leaped into her mind, but Lee found she couldn’t ask them. She didn’t want to know. If she was to put him out of her life immediately and completely, she couldn’t ask. “You said her name once, and when I asked, you avoided answering.”
“Who asked?” he countered. “You or the reporter?”
She paled, and her step away from him said more than a dozen words.
“If that was an unfair question,” he said, feeling his way carefully, “I’m sorry.”
Lee stifled a bitter answer. He’d just said it all. “I want to go back to Sedona. Will you drive me, or do I have to arrange for a car?”
“Stop this.” He gripped her shoulders before she could back farther away. “You’ve been a part of my life for a few days; Sarah’s been my life for ten years. I take no risks with her.” She saw the fury come and go in his eyes as he fought against it. “She’s off the record, do you understand? She stays off the record. I won’t have her childhood disturbed by photographers dogging her at soccer games or hanging from trees at school picnics. Sarah’s not an item for the glossy pages of any magazine.”
“Is that what you think of me?” she whispered. “We’ve come no further than that?” She swallowed a mixture of pain and betrayal. “Your daughter won’t be mentioned in any article I write. You have my word. Now let me go.”
She wasn’t speaking only of the hands that held her there, and they both knew it. He felt a bubble of panic he’d never expected, a twist of guilt that left him baffled. Frustrated, he stared down at her. He’d never realized she could be a complication. “I can’t.” It was said with such simplicity her skin iced. “I want you to understand, and I need time for that.”
“You’ve had nearly two weeks to make me understand, Hunter.”
“Damn it, you came here as a reporter.” He paused, as if waiting for her to confirm or deny, but she said nothing. “What happened between us wasn’t planned or expected by either one of us. I want you to come back with me to my home.”
Somehow she met his eyes levelly. “I’m still a reporter.”
“We have two days left in our agreement.” His voice softened, his hands gentled. “Lenore, spend those two days with me at home, with my daughter.”
“You have no problem asking for everything, do you?”
“No.” She was still holding herself away from him. No matter how badly he wanted to, Hunter knew better than to try to draw her closer. Not yet. “It’s important to me that you understand. Give me two days.”
She wanted to say no. She wanted to believe she could deny him even that and turn away, go away, without regrets. But there’d be regrets, Lee realized, if she went back to L.A. without taking whatever was left. “I can’t promise to understand, but I’ll stay two more days.”
Though she was reluctant, he held her hand to his lips. “Thank you. It’s important to me.”
“Don’t thank me,” she murmured. The anger had slipped away so quietly, she couldn’t recall it. “Things have changed.”
“Things changed days ago.” Still holding her hand, he drew her in the direction Sarah had gone. “I’ll come back for the gear.”
Now that the first shock had passed, the second occurred to her. “But you live here in the canyon.”
“That’s right.”
“You mean to tell me you have a house, with hot and cold running water and a normal bed, but you chose to spend two weeks in a tent?”
“It relaxes me.”
“That’s just dandy,” she muttered. “You’ve had me showering with lukewarm water and waking up with aching muscles, when you knew I’d’ve given a week’s pay for one tub bath.”
“Builds character,” he claimed, more comfortable with her annoyance.
“The hell it does. You did it deliberately.” She stopped, turning to him as the sun dappled light through the trees. “You did it all deliberately to see just how much I could tolerate.”
“You were very impressive.” He smiled infuriatingly. “I admit I never expected you to last out a week, much less two.”
“You sonofa—”
“Don’t get cranky now,” he said easily. “You can take as many baths as you like over the next couple of days.” He swung a friendly arm over her shoulder before she could prevent it. And he’d have time, he thought, to explain to her about Sarah. Time, he hoped, to make her understand. “I’ll even see to it that you have that red meat you’ve been craving.”
Fury threatened. Control strained. “Don’t you dare patronize me.”
“I’m not; you’re not a woman a man could patronize.” Though she mistrusted his answer, his voice was bland with sincerity and he wasn’t smiling. “I’m enjoying you and, I suppose, the foul-up of my own plans. Believe me, I hadn’t intended for you to find out I lived a couple miles from the campsite in quite this way.”
“Just how did you intend for me to find out?”
“By offering you a quiet candlelight dinner on our last night. I’d hoped you’d see the—ah—humor in the situation.”
“You’d’ve been wrong,” she said precisely, then caught sight of the house cocooned in the trees.
It was smaller than she’d expected, but with the large areas of glass in the wood, it seemed to extend into the land. It made her think of dolls’ houses and fairy tales, though she didn’t know why. Dolls’ houses were tidy and formal and laced with gingerbread. Hunter’s house was made up of odd angles and unexpected peaks. A porch ran across the front, where the roof arched to a high pitch. Plants spilled over the banister—bloodred geraniums in jade-green pots. The roof sloped down again, then ran flat over a parallelogram with floor-to-ceiling windows. On the patio that jutted out from it, a white wicker chair lay overturned next to a battered soccer ball.
The trees closed in around it. Closed it in, Lee thought. Protected, sheltered, hid. It was like a house out of a play, or… Stopping, she narrowed her eyes and studied it again. “This is Jonas Thorpe’s house in Silent Scream.”
Hunter smiled, rather pleased she’d seen it so quickly. “More or less. I wanted to put him in isolation, miles away from what would normally be considered civilized, but in reality, the only safe place left.”
“Is that how you look at it?” she wondered aloud. “As the only safe place left?”
“Often.” Then a shriek, which after a heart-stopping moment Lee identified as laughter, ripped through the silence. It was followed by an excited bout of barking and a woman’s frazzled voice. “Then there’re other times,” Hunter murmured as he led Lee toward the front door.
Even as he opened it, Sarah came bounding out. Unsure of her own feelings, Lee watched the girl throw her arms around her father’s waist. She saw Hunter stroke a hand over the dark hair at the crown of Sarah’s head.
“Oh, Dad, it’s so funny! Aunt Bonnie was making a bracelet out of glazed dough and Santanas ate it—or he chewed on it until he found out it tasted awful.”
“I’m sure Bonnie thinks it’s a riot.”
Her eyes, so like her father’s, lit with a wicked amusement that would’ve made a veteran fifth-grade teacher nervous. “She said she had to take that sort of thing from art critics, but not from half-breed wolves. She said she’d make some tea for Lenore, but there aren’t any cookies because we ate them yesterday. And she said—”
“Never mind, we’ll find out for ourselves.” He stepped back so that Lee could walk into the house ahead of him. She hesitated for a moment, wondering just what she was walking into, and his eyes lit with the same wicked amusement as Sarah’s. They were quite a pair, Lee decided, and stepped forward.
She hadn’t expected anything so, well, normal in Hunter Brown’s home. The living room was airy, sunny in the afternoon light. Cheerful. Yes, Lee realized, that was precisely the word that came to mind. No shadowy corners or locked doors. There were wildflowers in an enameled vase and plump pillows on the sofa.
“Were you expecting witches’ brooms and a satin-lined coffin?” he murmured in her ear.
Annoyed, she stepped away from him. “Of course not. I suppose I didn’t expect you to have something quite so…domesticated.”
He arched a brow at the word. “I am domesticated.”
Lee looked at him, at the face that was half rugged, half aristocratic. On one level, perhaps, she mused. But only on one.
“I guess Aunt Bonnie’s got the mess in the kitchen pretty well cleaned up.” Sarah kept one arm around her father as she gave Lee another thorough going-over. “She’d like to meet you because Dad doesn’t see nearly enough women and never talks to reporters. So maybe you’re special because he decided to talk to you.”
While she spoke, she watched Lee steadily. She was only ten, but already she’d sensed there was something between her father and this woman with the dark-blue eyes and nifty hair. What she didn’t know was exactly how she felt about it yet. In the manner of her father, Sarah decided to wait and see.
Equally unsure of her own feelings, Lee went with them into the kitchen. She had an impression of sunny walls, white trim and confusion.
“Hunter, if you’re going to keep a wolf in the house, you should at least teach him to appreciate art. Hi, I’m Bonnie.”
Lee saw a tall, thin woman with dark-brown shoulder-length hair streaked liberally with blond. She wore a purple T-shirt with faded pink printing over cutoffs as ragged as her niece’s. Her bare feet were tipped at the toes with hot-pink polish. Studying her thin model’s face, Lee couldn’t be sure if she was years older than Hunter or years younger. Automatically she held out her hand in response to Bonnie’s out-stretched one.
“How do you do?”
“I’d be doing a lot better if Santanas hadn’t tried to make a snack of my latest creation.” She held up a golden-brown half circle with ragged ends. “Just lucky for him it was a dreadful idea. Anyway, sit.” She gestured to a table piled with bowls and canisters and dusted the flour. “I’m making tea.”
“You didn’t turn the kettle on,” Sarah pointed out, and did so herself.
“Hunter, the child’s always picking on details. I worry about her.”
With a shrug of acceptance, he picked up what looked like a small doughnut and might, with imagination, have been an earring. “You’re finding gold and silver too traditional to work with these days?”
“I thought I might start a trend.” When Bonnie smiled, she became abruptly and briefly stunning. “In any case, it was a small failure. Probably cost you less than three dollars in flour. Sit,” she repeated as she began to transfer the mess from the table to the counter behind her. “So, how was the camping trip?”
“Enlightening. Wouldn’t you say, Lenore?”
“Educational,” she corrected, but thought the last half hour had been the most educational of all.
“So, you work for Celebrity.” Bonnie’s long, twisted gold earrings swung when she walked, much like Sarah’s braids. “I’m a faithful reader.”
“That’s because she’s had a couple of embarrassingly flattering write-ups.”
“Write-ups?” Lee watched Bonnie dust her flour-covered hands on her cutoffs.
Hunter smiled as he watched his sister reach for a tin of tea and send others clattering to the counter. “Professionally she’s known as B. B. Smithers.”
The name rang a bell. For years, B.B. Smithers had been considered the queen of avant-garde jewelry. The elite, the wealthy and the trendy flocked to her for personal designs. They paid, and paid well, for her talent, her creativity, and the tiny Bs etched into the finished product. Lee stared at the thin, somewhat clumsy woman with something close to wonder. “I’ve admired your work.”
“But you wouldn’t wear it,” Bonnie put in with a smile as she shoved tumbled boxes and tins out of her way. “No, it’s the classics for you. What a fabulous face. Do you want lemon in your tea? Do we have any lemons, Hunter?”
“Probably not.”
Taking this in stride, Bonnie set the teapot on the table to let the tea steep. “Tell me, Lenore, how did you talk the hermit into coming out of his cave?”
“By making him furious, I believe.”
“That might work.” She sat down across from Lee as Sarah walked to her father’s side. Her eyes were softer than her brother’s, less intense, but not, Lee thought, less perceptive. “Did the two weeks playing pioneer in the canyon give you the insight to write an article on him?”
“Yes.” Lee smiled, because there was humor in Bonnie’s eyes. “Plus I gained a growing affection for box springs and mattresses.”
The quick, stunning smile flashed again. “My husband takes the children camping once a year. That’s when I go to Elizabeth Arden’s for the works. When we come home, both of us feel we’ve accomplished several small miracles.”
“Camping’s not so bad,” Sarah commented in her father’s defense.
“Is that so?” He patted her bottom as he drew her closer. “Why is it that you always have this all-consuming desire to visit Bonnie in Phoenix whenever I start packing gear?”
She giggled, and her arm went easily around his shoulder. “Must be coincidence,” she said in a dry tone that echoed his. “Did he make you go fishing?” Sarah wanted to know. “And sit around for just hours?”
Lee watched Hunter’s brow lift before she answered. “Actually, he did, ah, suggest fishing several days running.”
“Ugh” was Sarah’s only comment.
“But I caught a bigger fish than he did.”
Unimpressed, Sarah shook her head. “It’s awfully boring.” She sent her father an apologetic glance. “I guess somebody’s got to do it.” Leaning her head against her father’s, she smiled at Lee. “Mostly he’s never boring, he just likes some weird stuff. Like fishing and beer.”
“Sarah doesn’t consider Hunter’s shrunken-head collection at all unusual.” Bonnie picked up the teapot. “Are you having some?” she asked her brother.
“I’ll pass. Sarah and I’ll go and break camp.”
“Take your wolf with you,” Bonnie told him as she poured tea into Lee’s cup. “He’s still on my hit list. By the way, a couple of calls from New York came in for you yesterday.”
“They’ll keep.” As he rose, he ran a careless hand down Lee’s hair, a gesture not lost on either of the other females in the room. “I’ll be back shortly.”
She started to offer her help, but it was so comfortable in the sunny, cluttered kitchen, and the tea smelled like heaven. “All right.” She saw the proprietary hand Sarah put on her father’s arm and thought it just as well to stay where she was.
Together, father and daughter walked to the back door. Hunter whistled for the dog, then they were gone.
Bonnie stirred her tea. “Sarah adores her father.”
“Yes.” Lee thought of the way they’d looked, side by side.
“And so do you.”
Lee had started to lift her cup; now it only rattled in the saucer. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re in love with Hunter,” Bonnie said mildly. “I think it’s marvelous.”
She could’ve denied it—vehemently, icily, laughingly, but hearing it said aloud seemed to put her in some kind of trance. “I don’t—that is, it doesn’t…” Lee stopped, realizing she was running the spoon handle through her hands. “I’m not sure how I feel.”
“A definite symptom. Does being in love worry you?”
“I didn’t say I was.” Again, Lee stopped. Could anyone make evasions with those soft doe eyes watching? “Yes, it worries me a lot.”
“Only natural. I used to fall in and out of love like some people change clothes. Then I met Fred.” Bonnie laughed into her tea before she sipped. “I went around with a queasy stomach for weeks.”
Lee pressed a hand to her own before she rose. Tea wasn’t going to help. She had to move. “I have no illusions about Hunter and myself,” she said, more firmly than she’d expected to. “We have different priorities, different tastes.” She looked through the kitchen window to the high red walls far beyond the clustering trees. “Different lives. I have to get back to L.A.”
Bonnie calmly continued to drink tea. “Of course.” If Lee heard the irony, she didn’t respond to it. “There are people who have it fixed in their heads that in order to have a relationship, the two parties involved must be on the same wavelength. If one adores sixteenth-century French poetry and the other detests it, there’s no hope.” She noticed Lee’s frown but continued, lightly. “Fred’s an accountant who gets a primal thrill out of interest rates.” She wiped absently at a smudge of flour on the table. “Statistically, I suppose we should’ve divorced years ago.”
Lee turned back, unable to be angry, unable to smile. “You’re a great deal like Hunter, aren’t you?”
“I suppose. Is your mother Adreanne Radcliffe?”
Though she no longer wanted it, Lee came back to the table for her tea. “Yes.”
“I met her at a party in Palm Springs two, no, must’ve been three years ago. Yes, three,” Bonnie said decisively, “because I was still nursing Carter, my youngest, and he’s currently terrorizing everyone at nursery school. Just last week he tried to cook a goldfish in a toy oven. You’re not at all like your mother, are you?”
It took a moment for Lee to catch up. She set down her tea again, untasted. “Aren’t I?”
“Do you think you are?” Bonnie tossed her tousled, streaked hair behind her shoulder. “I don’t mean any offense, but she wouldn’t know what to say to anyone not born to the blue, so to speak. I’d’ve considered her a very sheltered woman. She’s very lovely; you certainly appear to’ve inherited her looks. But that seems to be all.”
Lee stared down at her tea. How could she explain that, because of the strong physical resemblance between her and her mother, she’d always figured there were other resemblances. Hadn’t she spent her childhood and adolescence trying to find them, and all of her adult life trying to repress them? A sheltered woman. She found it a terrifying phrase, and too close to what she herself could have become.
“My mother has standards,” she answered, at length. “She never seems to have any trouble living up to them.”
“Oh, well, everyone should do what they do best.” Bonnie propped her elbows on the table, lacing her fingers so that the three rings on her right hand gleamed and winked. “According to Hunter, the thing you do best is write. He mentioned your novel to me.”
The irritation came so quickly Lee hadn’t the chance to mask it. “He’s the kind of man who can’t admit when he’s made a mistake. I’m a reporter, not a novelist.”
“I see.” Still smiling blandly, Bonnie dropped her chin onto her laced fingers. “So, what are you going to report about Hunter?”
Was there a challenge under the smile? A trace of mockery? Whatever there was at the edges, Lee couldn’t help but respond to it. Yes, she thought again, Bonnie Smithers was a great deal like her brother.
“That he’s a man who considers writing both a sacred duty and a skilled profession. That he has a sense of humor that’s often so subtle it takes you hours to catch up. That he believes in choices and luck with the same stubbornness that he believes in fate.” Pausing, she lifted her cup. “He values the written word, whether it’s in comic books or Chaucer, and he works desperately hard to do what he considers his job: to tell the story.”
“I like you.”
Cautiously, Lee smiled. “Thank you.”
“I love my brother,” Bonnie went on easily. “More than that, I admire him, for personal and professional reasons. You understand him. Not everyone would.”
“Understand him?” Lee shook her head. “It seems to me that the more I find out about him, the less I understand. He’s shown me more beauty in a pile of rocks than I’d ever have found for myself, yet he writes about horror and fears.”
“And you consider that a contradiction?” Bonnie shrugged as she leaned back in her chair. “It’s just that Hunter sees both sides of life very clearly. He writes about the dark side because it’s the most intriguing.”
“Yet he lives…” Lee gestured as she glanced around the kitchen.
“In a cozy little house nestled in the woods.”
The laugh came naturally. “I wouldn’t precisely call it cozy, but it’s certainly not what you’d expect from the country’s leading author of horror and occult fiction.”
“The country’s leading author of horror and occult fiction has a child to raise.”
“Yes.” Lee’s smile faded. “Yes, Sarah. She’s lovely.”
“Will she be in your article?”
“No.” Again, she lifted her gaze to Bonnie’s. “No, Hunter made it clear he objected to that.”
“She’s the focal point of his life. If he seems a bit overprotective in certain ways, believe me, it’s a completely unselfish act.” When Lee merely nodded, Bonnie felt a stirring of sympathy. “He hasn’t told you about her?”
“No, nothing.”
There were times Bonnie’s love and admiration for Hunter became clouded with frustration. A great many times. This woman was in love with him, was one step away from being irrevocably committed to him. Any fool could see it, Bonnie mused. Any fool except Hunter. “As I said, there are times he’s overly protective. He has his reasons, Lenore.”
“And will you tell me what they are?”
She was tempted. It was time Hunter opened that part of his life, and she was certain this was the woman he should open it to. “The story’s Hunter’s,” Bonnie said at length. “You should hear it from him.” She glanced around idly as she heard the Jeep pull up in the drive. “They’re back.”
“I guess I’m glad you brought her back,” Sarah commented as they drove the last mile toward home.
“You guess?” Hunter turned his head, to see his daughter looking pensively through the windshield.
“She’s beautiful, like a princess.” For the first time in months, Sarah worried her braces with her tongue. “You like her a lot, I can tell.”
“Yes, I like her a lot.” He knew every nuance of his daughter’s voice, every expression, every gesture. “That doesn’t mean I like you any less.”
Sarah gave him one long look. She needed no other words from him to reaffirm love. “I guess you have to like me,” she decided, half teasing, “’cause we’re stuck with each other. But I don’t think she does.”
“Why shouldn’t Lenore like you?” Hunter countered, able to follow her winding statement without any trouble.
“She doesn’t smile much.”
Not enough, he silently agreed, but more each day. “When she relaxes, she does.”
Sarah shrugged, unconvinced. “Well, she looked at me awful funny.”
“Your grammar’s deteriorating.”
“She did.”
Hunter frowned a bit as he turned into the dirt drive to their house. “It’s only that she was surprised. I hadn’t mentioned you to her.”
Sarah stared at him a moment, then put her scuffed sneakers on the dash. “That wasn’t very nice of you.”
“Maybe not.”
“You’d better apologize.”
He sent his daughter a mild glance. “Really?”
She patted Santanas’s head when he leaned over the back of her seat and dropped it on her shoulder. “Really. You always make me apologize when I’m rude.”
“I didn’t consider that you were any of her business.” At first, Hunter amended silently. Things changed. Everything changed.
“You always make me apologize, even when I make up excuses,” Sarah pointed out unmercifully. When they pulled up by the house, she grinned at him. “And even when I hate apologizing.”
“Brat,” he mumbled, setting the brake.
With a squeal of laughter, Sarah launched herself at him. “I’m glad you’re home.”
He held her close a moment, absorbing her scent—youthful sweat, grass and flowery shampoo. It seemed impossible that ten years had passed since he’d first held her. Then she’d smelled of powder and fragility and fresh linen. It seemed impossible that she was half-grown and the time had been so short.
“I love you, Sarah.”
Content, she cuddled against him a moment, then, lifting her head, she grinned. “Enough to make pizza for dinner?”
He pinched her subtly pointed chin. “Maybe just enough for that.”