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. “Everyone’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.”