“I begin to wonder,” she said, at length, “if you’ve put something on that lure that chases fish away.”

He’d been smoking lazily and now he stirred himself to crush out the cigarette. “Want to change rods?”

She slanted him a look, taking in the slight amusement in his arresting face. When her muscles quivered, Lee stiffened them. Would she never become completely accustomed to the way her body reacted when they looked at each other? “No,” she said coolly. “I’ll keep this one. You’re rather good at this sort of thing, for a boy who didn’t go fishing.”

“I’ve always been a quick study.”

“What did your father do in L.A.?” Lee asked, knowing he would either answer in the most offhand way or evade completely.

“He sold shoes.”

It took a moment, as she’d been expecting the latter. “Sold shoes?”

“That’s right. In the shoe department of a moderately successful department store downtown. My mother sold stationery on the third floor.” He didn’t have to look at her to know she was frowning, her brows drawn together. “Surprised?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “A bit. I suppose I imagined you’d been influenced by your parents to some extent and that they’d had some unusual career or interests.”

Hunter cast off again with an agile flick of his wrist. “Before my father sold shoes, he sold tickets at the local theater. Before that, it was linoleum, I think.” His shoulders moved slightly before he turned to her. “He was a man trapped by financial circumstances into working, when he’d been born to dream. If he’d been born into affluence, he might’ve been a painter or a poet. As it was, he sold things and regularly lost his job because he wasn’t suited to selling anything, not even himself.”

Though he spoke casually, Lee had to struggle to distance herself emotionally. “You speak as though he’s not living.”

“I’ve always believed my mother died from overwork, and my father from lack of interest in life without her.”

Sympathy welled up in her throat. She couldn’t swallow at all. “When did you lose them?”

“I was eighteen. They died within six months of each other.”

“Too old for the state to care for you,” she murmured, “too young to be alone.”

Touched, Hunter studied her profile. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Lenore. I managed very well.”

“But you weren’t a man yet.” No, she mused, perhaps he had been. “You had college to face.”

“I had some help, and I waited tables for a while.”

Lee remembered the wallet full of credit cards she’d carried through college. Anything she’d wanted had always been at her fingertips. “It couldn’t have been easy.”