2

      BY THE TIME Thursday came, Sara’s brain was still holding on to her conviction with the tenacity of a bulldog with a bone. Unfortunately, her stomach wasn’t faring so well. For the past hour, it had been doing funny little flip-flops that were making her a little nauseous. On top of that, the snow predicted for that afternoon had come through with a vengeance, snaring her and Karen in traffic. They were now almost late, so Sara didn’t have time to stop and compose herself, which meant she was pretty much a nervous wreck.

      They walked into the lobby of the radio station and told the receptionist who they were. Sara shook the snow off her shoulders, then took her coat off and held it in front of her in a death grip.

      “Stop looking so uptight,” Karen said.

      Sara squeezed her eyes closed. “I told you I didn’t want to do this.”

      “Just don’t let him see you sweat.”

      “I used extrastrength antiperspirant this morning. Think that’ll do the trick?”

      “Will you take it easy? It’s time to let your hair down a little. Get your message out, but have fun with it.”

      Fun? She felt as if she were heading to her own execution.

      A few moments later, a man came out to the lobby. He was balding, in his midforties, wearing a scruffy pair of khakis and a sweatshirt.

      “That must be the producer,” Karen whispered. “You’ll be on in a minute. Just be sure to stick to English when you talk.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “Whenever you get nervous, you slip into geek speak.”

      “What are you talking about?”

      “Big words nobody cares about. Just talk to people.” She patted Sara on the arm. “I’ll be waiting for you out here.”

      Take it easy, keep your cool, stay on message, she told herself. How hard could that really be?

      The man introduced himself as Butch Brannigan. He hung Sara’s coat on a nearby rack, then led her down a long hall. As he swung open the door that led to the studio, her heart beat wildly. She thought she was ready for her first glimpse of Nick Chandler. Unfortunately, his photo on the Web site had barely given a hint of the man in the flesh.

      He wore jeans. A ragged V-neck cotton sweater over a white T-shirt. Boots that looked as if they’d been to a war zone and back. He hadn’t seen the business end of a razor that morning, or maybe the morning before, either. Few men could pull off the shabby look without appearing unkempt, but Nick merely looked careless and uninhibited. And those eyes. Dear God. In the war between men and women, they were lethal weapons.

      He stood up as she came in. “Hi. You must be Sara.”

      “Yes,” she said, extending her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

      “No,” he said, his lips easing into a captivating smile. “The pleasure’s all mine.”

      He enveloped her hand in a warm, solid handshake, sending goose bumps crawling all the way up her arm. Then he pulled out her chair. “Have a seat. We’ll be on in just a little bit.”

      His deep, resonant voice meshed perfectly with his seductive smile and his incredible good looks, creating a package of pure temptation that could turn a defenseless woman with low self-esteem into a mindless love slave in a matter of minutes. Fortunately, Sara wasn’t defenseless, her self-esteem was thoroughly intact and Nick Chandler was going to have to fill the position of love slave elsewhere.

      Butch left the room and slipped back into the glassed-in booth that looked into the studio. “Thirty seconds, Nick.”

      She sat down, and Nick handed her a set of headphones. After putting them on, she folded her hands on the desk in front of her. Then realizing how uptight that looked, she stuck them in her lap instead.

      “Nervous?” Nick asked.

      She whipped around. “No. Not at all.”

      “Ever do radio before?”

      “No. This is my first time.”

      “Ah. A radio virgin.” He smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle.”

      Her heart jolted at the mental image that created. “It’s okay. I’ve done a lot of interviews.” She forced a look of indifference on her face. “This is just one more, right?”

      He nodded, still smiling. “Right.”

      Pleasant tone of voice. Agreeable expression. Nonconfrontational body language. Everything about him said, You can trust me. So why was she still so terrified?

      Because she’d heard his show before. She knew his point of view. A copy of her book lay on the desk beside him, and she wondered if he’d read anything more than the inside flap copy.

      A few seconds later, Nick hit a button and leaned into the microphone. “Next in the hot seat is Doctor Sara Davenport, author of a book called Chasing the Bad Boy. Hi, Sara. Glad you could join us today. You don’t mind if I call you Sara, do you? We’re pretty informal around here.”

      She wished she could keep her doctorate wedged between them, along with the title that came with it, but she didn’t want to look stuffy. Just have fun with it, Karen had told her.

      “Of course you can call me Sara. If I can call you Nick.”

      “Sweetheart,” he said with a dazzling smile, “you can call me anything you want to.”

      Little prickles of awareness danced across the back of her neck. Stay on your toes.

      “Why don’t you give us your book in a nutshell?” Nick said. “Then we’ll chat about it.”

      She took a deep, silent breath. Here we go.

      “Well, the premise of my book is that there are certain men who some women have a hard time resisting. They’re the guys they meet at the gym with the incredible bodies who want them for their bodies and nothing else. The mystery men who are here today and gone tomorrow. The amazingly handsome men who sweep women off their feet, then hit on their sisters the moment they leave the room. These men are all very enticing on the outside, but in reality, most of them are immature, reckless and irresponsible, offering nothing to the women who fall for them.”

      “Wow,” Nick said. “So how many men do you think are out there who fit that description?”

      Sara blinked with surprise. As if she had an actual number? “Well, I don’t know exactly. But obviously not all men are like that.”

      “So some of them are pretty good guys.”

      “Of course.”

      “So it’s really just a select few who are causing a whole bunch of problems.”

      Her heart skipped. “I didn’t say there were a lot of problems, just—”

      “Sara. You wrote an entire book on the subject. Of course there must be a lot of problems. In this country we don’t fell trees just for the heck of it, you know.”

      Sara just stared at him, her heart thumping. What was she supposed to do now? Defend the logger who’d cut the trees to make the materials that the printer had bought so he could commit her words to paper?

      “Okay, so let’s narrow it down a little,” Nick said. “What’s the biggest problem you see with this situation between good girls and bad boys?”

      “Women think they’re going to change men’s thought processes. Make them into something they’re not.”

      “So men are inflexible.”