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.”
Daisy grimaced at her brother and opened the door to Steve. “This is very nice of you. I was just about to defrost something.” She motioned to Kevin. “This is my brother Kevin. He’s staying with me while my parents are away. My dad is being transferred to San Antonio and my parents are in Texas house hunting.” Truth was her dad had been a victim of downsizing. Daisy’s parents had never been rich, but they’d always managed to pay the bills… until two years ago when after twenty-two years at Gruber Printing her dad had been let go. Finally, the job search had paid off, but it involved relocation.
“Boss car,” Kevin said.
Steve could see the family resemblance. Same blond hair and blue eyes. Same nose, same wide smile. That was where the similarity stopped. Kevin was all gangly arms and legs, and he had feet that looked like they belonged on Bozo the Clown. Fourteen years old… the hungry age. Steve decided to change his strategy for the evening. He handed Kevin a bag. “You like ribs?”
“We’re gonna be friends,” Kevin said. “What are your intentions toward my sister? Are you going to marry her?”
“Not on an empty stomach,” Steve said. “One thing at a time.” He gave Kevin the other two bags. “Biscuits and coleslaw and ice cream,” he told Kevin. “And they’re all yours. I’m going to take your sister on a field trip. We’ll eat out.” He looked at Daisy. “Is that okay? Did you have plans for this evening?”
“I was going to the library…”
“She always goes to the library,” Kevin said. “She’s a real brain. She rented this place because it’s near a library. Can you believe it?”
“I don’t have much time,” Daisy said. “I try to be efficient.”
Steve took the bags of frozen food from her and stuffed them into the crook of Kevin’s arm. “Put these back into the freezer.”
“So what kind of field trip is this?” Kevin asked.
“I work at WZZZ. Daisy’s taken over the job of traffic reporter, and I wanted to show her how to use the portable equipment.”
“Awesome.”
“I won’t be late,” Daisy said to Kevin. “Don’t blast the neighbors out of their houses with the stereo. Mrs. Schnable just had a hysterectomy and needs her rest.”
She stopped midway to the car and stared. Kevin had been right-it did look a little evil. And it looked very expensive.
“Nice car,” she said.
Steve nodded. “It’s transportation.” Did she buy that? It was a toy, and he knew it. He’d bought it on a whim and regretted it ever since. It attracted weird women. Women left their phone numbers attached to his windshield wipers. Sometimes he found panties draped over his antenna. And one time he’d returned from grocery shopping to find a woman had handcuffed herself to his grille. His next car was going to be a big, stupid SUV, he’d decided. Women probably didn’t handcuff themselves to an SUV.
They got in the car and drove to a Mexican restaurant close to Daisy’s subdivision. Steve took a small leather rucksack from the backseat and carried it inside with him.
When they were seated in a booth and had given their order, he said, “I forgot to tell you about the portable scanner this afternoon.”
He took it from the rucksack and handed it to her. “If you have to leave the newscar for
Daisy noticed there was something else in the leather bag. She slid her hand in and withdrew a small tape recorder. “What’s this for?”
“It’s nothing. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“It must be here for a reason…”
Steve mentally cussed himself out. In his haste to see Daisy he’d forgotten to remove the recorder. In some ways WZZZ was the last bastion of old-fashioned reporting. Most of the programming was done live, and because they had a newscar circling the city, they were often first on the scene of a fast-breaking story. Menken could reach the site of a plane crash or a Metro accident quickly, use the recorder for an on-scene interview, and broadcast the recorded interview from his car. But Menken was a seasoned reporter, as was the rush-hour team. Daisy Adams was not.
He searched for another purpose for the recorder. “You could use it to prerecord your one-minute slot, but I don’t think that will be necessary. Your reports later today sounded fine.” Actually, they were terrible, but he wasn’t completely stupid. He didn’t destroy a fledgling reporter’s confidence with harsh criticism, and he didn’t insult a woman with cornflower eyes.
Daisy felt like giving a sigh of relief. She’d been afraid he’d taken her to dinner to fire her! And here he was telling her she was fine. She could hardly believe it. “Was I really fine? I was scared to death.”
“It was actually unique. It was the first time we’ve ever had a traffic reporter sign off the air with a recipe for meat loaf.”
“I thought people might be getting bored listening to the same old traffic stuff. And it was so depressing. There were accidents and jam-ups everywhere.”
He took a few deep breaths and told himself to remain calm. She obviously didn’t understand the concept of continuous traffic reporting. It was a natural mistake. He’d have to discuss it with her-sometime when there weren’t more pressing subjects of conversation. Sometime when he’d already learned about her favorite color and what kind of music she liked and whether she slept in the nude.
“To tell you the truth, the recipe came from my
The waitress brought a soda for Daisy and a beer for Steve. It was the second time she’d made reference to her lack of time, Steve thought, sipping his beer. He hoped it wasn’t a boyfriend that was keeping her so busy. That would complicate his plans.
“I suppose graduate school is pretty demanding,” he said. “Doesn’t leave much time for cooking and socializing?” He congratulated himself on being so slick.
“I think I must not be very good at managing my time. I never seem to have enough of it.”
“Maybe I can help. I’m good at time management. You can tell me what you do every day, and I’ll tell you what you’re doing wrong.”
“I don’t know-”
“For instance, what time do you get up in the morning?”
“I get up at five.”
Steve took that under consideration. The last time he saw five o’clock was four years ago when there was a fire in the basement of his apartment building. “Why do you get up so early?”
