Free Guarding the Socialite by Kimberly Van Meter

punches. She had to remind herself at times that she appreciated that facet of the woman’s personality. “I know that.”
    Chick held her stare. “Do you?”
    â€œYes, Chick,” she answered but she didn’t have the guts to hold her best friend’s gaze. Chick might be younger than her by a few years but she saw too much. She knew. The sound of her office door opening gave her a reprieve from where the conversation was going. She jumped to her feet and rushed into the hallway to catch Bella’s expression. The teen looked deceptively fine. “Everything all right?” she asked, striving for a normal tone but her nerves were strung taut.
    â€œHe wants to see you,” Bella said. “And yes, I’m fine. Stop treating me like I’m some kind of basket case.” She looked to Chick. “Is there any food? I’m starved.”
    Emma pursed her lips. Perhaps Bella had a point. She had been hovering. She’d hate that, too. She gestured to the kitchen, saying, “You can heat up the leftover spaghetti Cari made last night during one of her late-night cravings. She made enough to feed an army.”
    She opened the door to her office and found Dillon standing by the wide window that graced her south wall. His profile, sleek and sinewy without looking feminine, cut an impressive silhouette that was hard to overlook. Her thoughts raced without her permission to all sorts of things she imagined he was good at without the encumbrances of clothing. Perhaps it was because he was a foreigner. She’d always been a little weak for the ones with an accent. There was also the mystery. How did an Englishman come to jointhe FBI? Of course, those were personal questions and none of her business but the curiosity remained.
    â€œHow’d the interviews go?” she asked, almost loath to pull him away from his thoughts. Was he thinking of someone special? She suspected it was hard to keep a relationship going with the long hours and dangerous cases he worked but it wasn’t impossible. Especially given that he was devastatingly handsome. Devastating? Oh, truly, Emma. You’re sinking fast into melodramatic territory. He was passing attractive. Perhaps a little too slim for her tastes. No, that wasn’t true at all. She found men who were covered with lumps of muscle to be off-putting but he surely filled out his clothes nicely. She cut sharply away to take a seat behind her desk. “I assume none of the girls gave you any trouble,” she said, trying to keep the worry or distraction from her voice. Evie and Bella were her prime suspects in the trouble department. Either one could deliberately become difficult with the switch in the wind.
    Instead of answering, he startled her with a statement. “You have interesting criteria for your boarders at Iris House. Has it always been this way?”
    â€œWhatever do you mean?” she asked, folding her hands neatly in front of her, if only to keep the trembling hidden. He affected her in the worst way. Plain and simple, she was wildly attracted to him. She was an adult; she could admit it. But where did that put her? In a terrible predicament. It could go nowhere and she wasn’t in a habit of being casual so she had no choice but to bottle that annoying little jitterbug in her stomach and move on as if it had never been acknowledged.
    â€œA pregnant woman, a drug addict—”
    â€œA recovering drug addict,” she corrected automatically.
    He lifted a brow at the correction and continued.“ Recovering drug addict, a surly teen with a record, a working prostitute and an ex-con…not your typical sorority house.”
    â€œWe pride ourselves on that,” she said, taking careful note that although he hadn’t talked to Ursula he had found out that she was still hitting the streets. It made her wonder what else he had gathered from the girls. “They all have a past…but that