Huh. Sensing a pattern here . . . “When Samantha arranged this time for us to meet, she said you’d be happy to do so.”

“Happy is the wrong adjective.”

“I’d settle for resigned.”

“I told Samantha to cancel the interview. I have another appointment.” His voice was low and husky, with a whisper of the deep South.

Which meant they had something in common. “Is it to your doctor?”

“Why would I need a doctor?”

“Because something made you pitch like crap today.”

He let out a sound that might have been a laugh and stopped again. Behind his sunglasses, he gave nothing of himself away, just a wry amusement. “You know, most reporters try a different approach. A softer one.”

“Yes,” she said. “I imagine you get kissed up to quite a bit.”

“I do.” He pulled down his sunglasses and slid her a long look. “You could try it.”

A little furl of something dangerous slid into her belly as she looked into his face, at the lines etched around his dark eyes, his strong jaw, the stubble . . . “I don’t kiss up.” But her knees wobbled. Dammit. “All I want is the interview.”

He let his gaze run over her, and just as she knew he was trying to distract her, she also knew what he saw when he looked at her. Average brown hair, average body, average everything, including clothes. She wore a simple skirt, jacket, and athletic shoes, which she happened to be grateful for since he’d made her run through the lot. She wasn’t exactly a fashion plate. Her budget didn’t allow for it, but even if it had, she wouldn’t have spent more. Her wardrobe made a statement, one that had started out as a protective gesture when she’d been very young but had become hard habit, and that statement said that she was smarter than she was pretty.

Unlike her, he hadn’t dressed with a budget. He wore a pair of brown cargoes and an untucked white button-down, both clearly made for him, both revealing taste, sophistication, and just enough of that tough athletic body that he demanded so much of on a daily basis.

And it was a very nice body, she could admit, not that it mattered. His body wasn’t what interested her. Okay, so it did, but it shouldn’t. Wouldn’t.

Be sweet but firm and distant. That’s what she’d learned in her twenty-eight years, and it was all she’d ever needed to know when dealing with a man, any man. Be sweet but firm and distant, with everything, and ignore all sexual innuendoes unless she planned to get naked—which she most definitely did not. “I’ll make this painless, Pace, I promise.”

He shot her yet another look, this one with that disconcerting flare of awareness, but also filled with something else she recognized all too well—annoyance and exasperation. Yeah. She got that a lot.