Harsh pace, not without love (8)
I believe the answer is:
strident
'harsh' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'pace not without love' is the wordplay.
'pace' becomes 'stride' ('stride' can be a synonym of 'pace'**).
'without' suggests deleting specific letters.
'love' becomes 'o' (In tennis, 'love' means 'zero').
'not' with 'o' taken out is 'nt'.
'stride'+'nt'='STRIDENT'
(Other definitions for strident that I've seen before include "giving views forcefully" , "ear-piercing" , "Loudly assertive" , "Unpleasantly loud and harsh" , "Unpleasantly rough" .)