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For a long moment he sat there, staring at her, tiny splotches of crimson dotting his high cheekbones, but deep inside, Eden knew she had him. She avoided giving a fist pump…barely.
Finally, after a small eternity, he shook his head and cursed under his breath before saying, “Fine. I promised your brother I’d protect you, and I will. Even if it means keeping you from going down some dangerous rabbit hole of your own choosing. But I swear to God, Eden, this is the most unorthodox way I’ve ever been hired.”
“Good. Being ordinary is for the birds.” She grinned, sitting back in her chair, feeling like a huge weight had been lifted off of her. Her memory block was a big problem, but maybe with Chandler’s help, she would be able to fix it. And their arrangement was on her terms, not his. That made her feel even better. They sat in silence again and drank their coffee, both trying to look anywhere else but at each other.
That stupid attraction thing still sat like a huge, hairy gorilla between them. God, she still couldn’t quite believe there’d actually been a moment when she’d thought he was her boyfriend in the hospital. How embarrassing. How ridiculous.
How intriguing.
No. Nope. Not going there. Not. At. All.
Eden shifted her weight again and crossed her legs in the other direction under the table, avoiding his legs and feet as much as possible. The last thing she needed right now was to touch him because… Well, it just wouldn’t be a good thing. She forced her mind away from forbidden topics and back to the problem at hand. “Now, what’s our plan?”
Chandler looked as though he wanted to be anywhere but there, helping her with this, but being the good man he was, he gave in and began to throw out ideas. “I think going over the police reports and other public records about the case is a good starting point. Maybe it will be enough to jog your memories. We’ll need to figure out what we know and what we still need to find out about the circumstances surrounding the murder. I can ask Adam—”
“No!” Eden said, far too loudly. Several people at tables around them looked over, and her face heated. She lowered her voice and tried again. “I don’t want my family to know anything about my investigation, all right? They’re far too nosy and overprotective. Dad would hit the roof if he knew I was digging around in all of this, and he’d get Mom fired up, and she’d call all my siblings, and they’d start calling me nonstop, and…yeah. Believe me, it’s better to avoid all that.”
He chewed on his bottom lip, exhaling through his nose. “Fine. I don’t agree with it, and I want it on record that this is against my better judgment, but fine. If anything goes south, though, I’m getting Adam in with us. I can’t promise he won’t tell your mom, but I can promise he knows what he’s doing and is a good person to have at your back. Agreed?”
She could live with that. “Fine.”
Before she could say anything else, her phone beeped with an incoming text. And then another. And another. Scowling, Eden picked up and scrolled through the messages from her mom, asking where she was since she’d called the salon and Lena had told her Eden wasn’t there. In the last message, her mom mentioned she’d reach out to Eden’s sisters to ask if they knew where she was. Knowing it would lead to a whole new wave of people texting her to check up on her, she fought the urge to throw her phone against the wall.
She appreciated their concern, she really did. But it got to the point where she felt smothered with love. To prove her point, she held up the screen for Chandler to see. “This. This is why I don’t want them to know. It would be a constant stream of this.” She sent a quick reply, hoping to head off the worst of the onslaught, then set her phone on the table again, screen down. “Right, now where were we with planning…”
