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your brother. He could have hired anyone—he gave me a huge break.” She says this as if she’s escaped something terrible as she glances down at her unfinished meal and pushes it away.
    “Did Carson tell you that I’d be handling the biggest accounts? They’re high maintenance and want direct attention from us instead of going through our sales group, Mercer. I won’t be available to help you much with client issues and on the sales end here. I’ll need you to become very familiar with the Mercer people and make more trips into the city to work with them on distribution.”
    “I don’t need you to babysit me, Dylan.” There’s defiance in her tone and a stony expression across her countenance. “You can trust me to work hard and do a good job.”
    But you probably can’t trust me, Emma, especially my unedited imagination that has you in several very creative positions.

 
     
     
    Four
    Emma
     
    For the rest of the week, Dylan doesn’t laugh once. I guess that boisterous outburst I witnessed on my first day has been the laugh he allots himself once a year.
    I am past the point of thinking of him as a jackass or a scary assassin. Now he just seems like some arrogant, hot guy who sits five feet from me every day. When he is in the office, he’s constantly on the phone talking to clients. When he is not here, he is roaming the building, conversing with other employees. He talks to everyone except me. He mumbles and grunts some information periodically my way, however he seems to be working awfully hard at preventing any lengthy conversations between us, which is just fine.
    I keep my crackling hormones in line, even though they spark constantly when Dylan is near me. I regularly catch an unnoticed observation of his profile or the back of his broad shoulders and well-packaged jeans when he leaves the office. For holy heck, when he throws on a tool belt to work in the factory, there is a pull in my center and I get unbelievably fluttery excited; I have to exit any room quickly when we have prolonged contact.
    Sometimes, he looks rather uncomfortable around me, too, and perhaps all that tinkering and woodworking he really doesn’t have to do anymore is because he likes to busy himself in the factory to get away from me.
    Then there’s his lunchtime running. I have a bowl of soup every day at the diner to catch up on the girl chat with Lauren and Imogene, who both work that shift. They sit with me between serving their customers, and I always manage to catch Dylan running by the big booth window.
    Today, Archie sits with me, wearing a three-piece suit and polished wingtips. He’s impeccably groomed, and I find this both refreshing and amusing in this small town where everyone else dons jeans and t-shirts most days. But then, Archie is the only attorney in town and seems to handle a lot of clients across the county.
    “So, I’m going to skip my usual burger and try the vegetable soup that Emma is having,” Archie says to Imogene who scribbles his order on a pad before her head jerks up to the window.
    Lauren dashes over, giggling.
    “Oh, here comes Ironman!” Imogene says, picking up a fork and using it as a microphone.
    Archie looks at me and shakes his head at our juvenile hilarity, but I can’t stop myself from laughing along with the girls.
    “And he hurdles the fire hydrant! Excellent. Now, will he run around Karen and her stroller or will he hurdle the stroller? Oh! He runs around it,” Imogene continues.
    Lauren and I are laughing so loudly that other customers turn to watch. The truth is, I can’t tell my friends that I think Dylan looks magnificent and that I look forward to these lunches everyday just to see him in action, sprinting shirtless.
    “Bill Jamison just cut Dylan off with his truck!” Imogene continues in her mocking, sportscaster voice. “And now Dylan is giving Bill the finger, and wait, yes… Bill is laughing and he’s giving the bird back to Dylan. It doesn’t slow our