Free In Deep with the FBI Agent by Lynne Silver

why you didn’t eat your dinner? Because you were scared to tell me? I thought you had an eating disorder or something.”
    “Don’t make jokes.” Especially not about eating disorders, though Sam could have no way of knowing how on target he’d hit the bull’s-eye. She pushed back from the table, fighting the tears stinging her eyes. She strode past the other diners, her thighs brushing tables’ edges, and narrowly missing knocking over a waiter with a full armload.
    “Casey, wait. Why are you running?”
    She couldn’t answer, she only knew she had to get out of the restaurant. Dammit . She’d been doing well. Food hadn’t been a trigger for nearly two years, and she’d maintained her healthy weight, but now with becoming a whistle-blower, the upcoming reunion, and Sam Cooper in her life, it was as if her worst anorexic freshman year of college were back. She couldn’t go back. She couldn’t.
    Sam caught up to her when she had one foot out the door to the restaurant. He tried to pull her back inside, but she shook him off, and he followed her outside.
    “They’re going to think we did a dine-and-dash,” Sam said. “I have to go back in to pay. But what the hell happened? Did I say something wrong?”
    She brushed away the tears that dared to dampen her cheeks. “I don’t want to talk about it, Sam. Can you take me back to my car? Please?”
    He didn’t say a word for a long minute, and she stood bravely fighting her tears and looking him dead-on.
    “Fine.” He ducked back into the restaurant and reappeared a few minutes later. He looked down at the cash in her hand. “What’s that?”
    “My share of the dinner.”
    “I invited you. Hell, I practically kidnapped you for dinner, and for the record, I was hoping this was kind of a date. When I ask a woman out on a date, I pay. Put your money away.”
    Maybe it was his unwitting comment about what she’d eaten for dinner, but she was feeling petty and mean. “It wasn’t a date, Sam. I wouldn’t date you. We have too much history.”
    She started walking toward the car, feeling his hurt radiating off him, which only compounded her own pain. Dammit, this night had started off well and gone to hell. Sam silently followed her to his car and they got in.
    “Want to talk about it? Why is it such a big secret Montgomery Prep got hacked? If it’s true, they’ll have a legal obligation to inform the parent body.”
    “Start the car, Sam.”
    “Casey, I don’t understand what happened. I was having a good time at dinner, and I promised I wouldn’t tell your secret unless I had to, and then you were running out crying. If this were a first date with a woman I’d just met, I’d chalk it up to crazy and we’d be done. But I’ve known you for fourteen years. You’re not crazy. You’re hurting.”
    “Sam, start the car. Please. ”
    Finally, she heard the beautiful sound of the ignition turning over and she relaxed a fraction, but then he kept the car idling.
    “You’re killing the environment, Sam,” she said.
    “It’s a hybrid. It can wait until I find out why one of my oldest friends looks like she is going to go home and cry herself to sleep.”
    At last, she turned her gaze away from the windshield and onto him. His expression of concern and worry was her undoing. “Am I one of your oldest friends?” she asked. “I don’t see how you can say that when I was such a bitch to you in high school.”
    “I think you had your reasons. I never understood them entirely, but you were never that mean to me. Mostly you ignored me.” There was a tiny amount of humor threaded into the quiet concern of his tone.
    “You were too nice, and you had too much of a crush on me.”
    “Is there such a thing as too much?” he asked softly.
    She released a puff of air from her nose. “Yes. You never stopped staring at me, and you’d leave those notes in my locker…”
    He grinned. “You knew it was me?”
    She rolled her eyes, and for a moment she