The Rocky Road to Romance Read Free

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.
    â€œWhat 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.”
    â€œI 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 asan intern when I was still in high school, and over the years I’ve worked my way around the newsfloor.”
    â€œCame up the hard way, huh?”
    â€œNot exactly. My dad owned a radio station.”
    â€œOh.”
    He paused for a minute on the off-ramp while he blinked in the sudden glare of the sun. “You sound disappointed.”
    â€œNo. 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.”
    â€œDoes he own WZZZ?”
    â€œNo. 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.
    â€œEvery fifteen minutes you get a sixty-secondspot,” 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.
    â€œWe’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.
    â€œThis 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 thesquawking 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.”
    â€œNo 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 Woodrow Wilson Bridge. Daisy concentrated on the scanners and tried composing traffic reports in her mind. She was used to talking on the