“Wow!” Daisy said, looking at the station’s auxiliary newscar. “It’s got enough antennae to get Mars. This is going to be incredible. I think I’m going to like this.” She cracked her knuckles, looked up into Steve Crow’s face, and felt a shiver run along her spine. She wasn’t a shy sort of person, and she wasn’t usually uncomfortable with men. She could tick off on one hand the things that truly made her nervous: the dentist, signing her name to her income tax statement, looking in her rearview mirror and seeing a police cruiser-and Steve Crow. Standing next to Steve Crow was like taking fifteen volts of electricity. He made her feel like her scalp was smoking.

Steve unlocked the car and opened the passenger-side door for Daisy. “I don’t have any meetings until one o’clock, so I’ll ride the loop with you. I’ll do the talking and driving for the first hour, then you can take over.”

An hour alone in the newscar with Steve Crow? She’d die. Her heart would stop beating. “That’s really not necessary. Not at all. I mean, I hate to take you away from whatever it is that you do. Probably you could just give me a few notes and a full tank of gas and send me on my way.”

“You look kind of flushed,” Steve said. “You sure you feel okay? You aren’t sick, are you?”

“It’s you. You make me nervous.”

“You mean because I’m your boss? Don’t worry about it. Your Bowser spot is secure. Those people out there in radio land love you.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“I get a lot of fan mail,” Daisy said. “And last week one of my fans said I should be on Good Morning America.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I don’t know. Isn’t that weird? You’re just sort of scary. I think it might be something chemical.”

He was standing very close to her. Close enough to see the fine texture of her skin, close enough to see that her hair was silky and thick, close enough to see the pulse beating erratically in her neck… close enough to be getting a trifle uncomfortable himself. But unlike Daisy, who seemed to be a little vague about her discomfort, he knew for certain exactly where his originated.

“Maybe we just got off on the wrong foot,” he said. “I have to admit, in the beginning I didn’t see much value in the station running recipes for dogs.” In the beginning he hadn’t noticed her big blue eyes-eyes the color of cornflowers. In the beginning he’d been a sane, rational human being. And what was he now? Now he was a man lusting after a woman who baked dog cookies. He wondered how that could have happened in such a short amount of time.

Daisy saw his gaze drop from her eyes to her mouth, and she felt her blood pressure inch up a notch. This was ridiculous, she thought. She’d allowed herself to become positively unglued over Steve Crow’s high cheekbones and deep, dark eyes. She needed to put things back into perspective. She didn’t even know him! She searched for an appropriate remark.

“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.”