“I’m afraid I might have been pushy about getting airtime.”

“You were the most annoying, most persistent person ever to darken my door.”

“I was a woman with a cause.”

“That’ll do it,” Steve said. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but I’ve always wondered if you made these dog recipes yourself. Do you stay up late making dog soup and bacon dog burgers?”

“I never gave a recipe for bacon dog burgers!”

“You know what I mean.”

“Some of it’s serious. Americans lavish a great deal of time and money and affection on their pets. Sometimes I think it’s because of the disappearance of the extended family. We’re substituting dogs and cats and hamsters for aunts and uncles and grandparents. And when someone considers a pet as a member of the family, they start to become more concerned with its health and nutrition. I don’t think there are many people out there slaving over my recipes for dog granola, but I think some of them pay attention to the advice I give about a balanced canine diet. And I think some of them bake their own dog biscuits once in a while just because it’s a fun project for kids. And I think lots of people are listening to me because I’m pop entertainment, I’ve become sort of a fad.”

So not only did she smell great, Steve thought, but she was perceptive, too. Why hadn’t he noticed that sooner? He plunged his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “What about your motives? Do you have a dog? Do you feed him homemade liver soup?”

Daisy smiled. She was beginning to feel more comfortable around him. “My motives are terrible. I did it for money. I thought the book would be a novelty item and help me get through my last couple years of school.”

Her smile just about knocked him over. It was a wide, generous smile that tipped up at the corners of her mouth and warmed him. If his hands hadn’t been stuffed into his pockets, he would have traced a fingertip along her lower lip. “What are you studying?”

She leaned against the car. “Psych. My specialty is geriatric psychology.”

She had a soft spot in her heart for dogs and old people. Steve thought that was nice. He wondered how she felt about minorities. Probably, she loved minorities. He was a shoo-in, he decided. He’d buy a dog, introduce her to his grandparents, then show her his bedroom.

“We should get going,” she said. “Every-one’s probably waiting for a traffic report.” She was eager to start her new job, and she was beginning to feel uncomfortable again. She preferred to have Steve Crow’s disturbing brown eyes trained on something other than her. She edged her way past him and slunk down into the passenger seat.

“What are all these gizmos?” she asked, patting the dashboard.

Steve moved to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel, taking a fast survey of the equipment. “You have three scanners, a two-way radio, car phone…” He fiddled with the scanners. “It’s been a lot of years since I’ve done a traffic report.”

“I didn’t know you were a traffic reporter.”

He turned the key in the ignition and backed out of the parking space. “I’ve done just about everything there is to do in radio. I started as an intern when I was still in high school, and over the years I’ve worked my way around the newsfloor.”

“Came up the hard way, huh?”

“Not exactly. My dad owned a radio station.”

“Oh.”

He paused for a minute on the off-ramp while he blinked in the sudden glare of the sun. “You sound disappointed.”

“No. Just surprised. I’ve never met anyone whose father owned a radio station.”

Steve shrugged. “The ancestral land turned out to have lots of oil. Several years ago my dad was told to diversify his holdings, and communication was an area that appealed to him.”

“Does he own WZZZ?”

“No. He owns a network in the Southwest. When I got out of college I decided I wanted to make my own success, so I stayed on the East Coast.”

Steve called in to the studio on the two-way radio to let the editor know he was on the road and would be broadcasting.

“Every fifteen minutes you get a sixtysecond spot,” he told Daisy. “You watch the clock on the dash and when you’re coming up to newstime you use the headset to listen for your cue from the anchor.”

He clicked the scanners on and showed her how to use them to get the priority channels.

“We’ll take Route 66 to the beltway, then head north. We want to avoid the oil spill on the outer loop. You always want to avoid traffic.”

He looked at the clock. It was eight minutes after eleven. He turned the volume down on the scanners and put the earplug in his ear.

“This is Steve Crow giving you the WZZZ traffic report,” he said into the two-way radio. “Hazmat teams are still on the scene of that oil spill on the Braddock Road off-ramp, but traffic is finally moving around it. Keep to the two left lanes-”

Daisy felt a jolt of fear hit her stomach. Steve was doing fifty, weaving in and out of traffic, broadcasting live, talking off the top of his head, cramming as much information as was possible into a sixty-second slot. Daisy stared at him openmouthed, wondering how he’d managed to make a newscast out of the squawking coming off the scanners. And she was wondering how she was going to do it. She needed notes to relay a dog-food recipe! And if that wasn’t problem enough, she was uncoordinated. She couldn’t chew gum and drive at the same time. What was she thinking of? Money, she reminded herself-that’s what she was thinking of. Pure unbridled greed had led her to the WZZZ traffic car.

Steve gave his name and call letters, removed the earphone, and put the two-way radio back into its cradle. “It’s really not so bad,” he said. “A good memory helps, and you need to be able to talk fairly fast, giving continuous information.”

“No problem,” Daisy said. “This doesn’t look too tough. I can do this.” Daisy, Daisy, Daisy, she silently screamed, stick with waitressing! Keep the newspaper route!

For the next hour they drove north on the beltway, passing from Northern Virginia into Maryland, then south toward the WoodrowWilsonBridge. Daisy concentrated on the scanners and tried composing traffic reports in her mind. She was used to talking on the radio-at least she had that going for her, she thought. She didn’t usually feel stage fright.

At six minutes to twelve Steve handed Daisy an auxiliary earplug and the handset for the two-way. “I’ll keep driving. You do the talking this time.”

She felt her throat constrict and her eyes glaze over. Her mind went blank. The sound of the anchor cuing in the traffic report came loud and clear through the earplug. The anchor repeated the cue and Steve tapped Daisy on the top of the head with a rolled-up newspaper that had been lying on the front seat.

“This is Daisy Adams,” she said. “WZZZ traffic at eleven-fifty-five.”

There was a long pause while she bit her lip. Steve hit her on the head again and she snatched the newspaper from him while she frantically groped for something to say. “Traffic is… um, the same as before,” she finally said. “If you listened fifteen minutes ago, then you pretty much know what’s going on. Stay tuned for an update. We’ll let you know if the traffic changes. This is Daisy Adams signing off.”

There was a pause about four heartbeats long before the anchor resumed broadcasting. The man’s voice sounded strangled, and Steve had a horrifying image of the entire newsroom doubled over with laughter.

“Oh my Lord,” Daisy said. “I couldn’t think of anything to say!”

Steve noticed his knuckles were white as he gripped the wheel. Relax, he told himself. It wasn’t the end of the world. It wasn’t nuclear war. It wasn’t famine in Ethiopia. It was just a one-minute traffic report. And this was an emergency situation. Besides, she’d probably be fine. She just needed more time. When they were done driving the loop he’d park her somewhere and let her listen to the scanners. The next time she could take notes and read from them when her airtime came up.

Chapter 2

At twelve-thirty Steve pulled into the Belle Haven Marina parking lot. He faced the news-car toward the Potomac River, giving Daisy a view of grassy parkland, the river, and the WoodrowWilsonBridge that joined Virginia and Maryland.

“It isn’t necessary for us to do any more driving,” he said to Daisy. “We’ve checked out all the trouble spots. You get good scanner reception here, and you’re free from interference on the two-way. You have a good view of bridge traffic. It’s the perfect place to wait out the afternoon.”

It was the perfect place to roll around in the grass like cats in heat, he thought. That’s how he felt-like a battle-scarred tom that had finally found the love of his life. He wanted to crawl into the backseat and yowl. But he didn’t think Daisy was ready for his yowling and besides, he had meetings all afternoon, so he squashed his animal instincts and used his cell phone to call for a cab.

While he waited, he leaned his back against the driver’s-side door, stretched his long legs as best he could in the compact, and draped an arm over the steering wheel. He didn’t want to leave yet. He wanted time to get to know her better. And he wanted to stay and help with the traffic report. It wasn’t fair to throw her into this job and abandon her after less than two hours of instruction.

“Are you going to be able to handle this?”

Their gazes locked, and she knew he needed an honest answer. “I’m not going to give up on it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That was part of it.”

“And the other part? I suppose that has to do with ability. I’ll be able to do a decent traffic report after a few days. Just don’t expect me to sound like Menken.” Daisy thought the key word there was decent. She was going to give it her best shot, but she didn’t think traffic was ever going to be her forte.

The cab arrived, and Steve turned to face Daisy.

“You’ll be fine,” he said.

He got out of the car and walked the short distance to the cab.

She watched him, then looked at the bridge in the distance. The cars crawling across it seemed like tiny toys. A small boat made its way upriver, a man and a woman sat eating lunch at a nearby picnic table, two cyclists skimmed along the blacktopped bike trail in front of the car. The air coming through the open windows was warm, carrying with it the smell of grass baking in the sun.

An hour and a half earlier she’d been afraid to be alone in a car with Steve. Now she was scared to death to have him leave. He still looked very much the predator, with his dark, sensual eyes and sleek, muscled body, but he’d been a perfect gentleman all morning. He’d been patient and polite and extremely helpful. Just proved how deceiving looks could be, she told herself. Never judge a book by its cover. Steve Crow obviously didn’t have a lecherous bone in his body-at least not where she was concerned.

Daisy had her head in the freezer compartment of her refrigerator when her fourteen-year-old brother tapped her on the shoulder.

“There’s a lecher at the door,” Kevin Adams announced. “He says he’s come to see you.”

Daisy stopped foraging for supper. She withdrew from the freezer with a bag of french-fried potato balls and a plastic tray of chicken nuggets. “A lecher?”

“You probably think I’m given to exaggeration, but I know a lecher when I see one. And this guy has a big-bucks car. A sexy two-seater foreign job.Long and low and black. Man, would I ever like to have a car like that. I tell you, his car is evil. It could probably get airborne.”

Daisy walked into the foyer and found Steve Crow standing on her front porch. He was holding several bags, and he smiled at her through the screen door.

“Decided I needed to tell you some more things about the job,” he said. He held the bags up for her inspection. “I know I’m coming unannounced at an awkward time, so I brought supper.”

“Supper?” Kevin said to Daisy. “Maybe he’s not so bad, after all. Besides, you could probably use a lecher in your life. I know I sure as heck could use some food in mine.”

Daisy rolled her eyes. Her little brother drank a gallon of orange juice and a gallon of milk a day. It took him two days to go through a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, fifteen minutes to eat a half gallon of ice cream, twenty minutes to eat a chicken, and if she bought a pie, it was gone before she had a chance to take the rest of the groceries out of the bag. “Don’t you ever think about anything except food?”

“Sure. I think about girls. That’s why I eat so much-substitute gratification. I have all this nervous energy. Us fourteen-year-olds are just a hotbed of hormonal activity. That’s how come I’m so good at recognizing a lecher. I figure if I work hard enough at it, I could grow up to be a lecher someday.”