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His thoughts scrambled as he tried to find the right details to throw his friend off the scent of the truth. “Yeah. Yep. Me and Eden. Dating.”
“I see.” Adam sat forward, his expression saying he saw directly through Chandler’s bullshit excuse. “And you didn’t mention this before?”
Sell it. Make him believe it.Hell, he’d been trained for these situations in the SEALs, when they dealt with foreign adversaries. Adam was his friend, though, so it was majorly awkward. He didn’t like lying, but he liked going back on his word even less. Chandler swallowed hard and sat forward as well, clasping his hands atop his desk and forcing his tense shoulders to relax. “Well, we…um…didn’t want to let your family know until we were sure it was going somewhere.”
“You didn’t go visit her in the hospital after the crash,” Adam pointed out.
“I couldn’t—it was family only, remember?”
“When we went to pick her up, you didn’t say anything about the two of you being together.”
“You’d told me about the amnesia. I wasn’t sure if she’d remember we’d been dating, and I didn’t want to burden her by bringing it up. When we saw her and she didn’t seem to remember me as anything other than your friend, I didn’t want to make things worse by mentioning it.”
“If she didn’t remember, how does she know about it now?”
“She…um…went through her phone and found our text messages,” Chandler said, hoping Adam would think he was stumbling for words because he was embarrassed, not because he was making it up as he went.
“So now you’re back on again?” Adam asked.
“We’re spending some time together,” Chandler said carefully. “Getting to know each other again. Seeing how it goes.” There. That would actually make for a pretty good excuse if he kept spending time with Eden as they worked on the case. Adam was the one who saw them the most and would be the most likely to pick up on something, and this was an explanation he’d accept.
Or maybe he wouldn’t accept it, and Chandler was about to get punched. That was always a possibility.
Several seconds crawled by until finally Adam huffed out a breath and grinned. “You and my sister, huh? I guess I’m okay with it if she is.”
The invisible tight bands around Chandler’s chest loosened and he inhaled deep. Oxygen was good. “Yeah. She’s good with it.” He looked away, hating that he was digging his hole deeper, but not seeing another way out of it at that point.
“Not happy about you keeping it a secret from me, dude. But I know our family can be kind of a lot, so I guess I understand why the two of you would want to keep things quiet at first. As long as my sister’s happy, I’m happy.”
“Yep. Me too.” Chandler flashed his friend a smile, waiting until Adam left the office before scrubbing a hand over his face. Well, shit. He’d convinced his friend he and Eden were dating. But he doubted he’d have as much luck persuading the lady herself that this was a good idea and not some half-baked disaster.
Chandler stood and checked his watch once more before pulling on his jacket. At least he wouldn’t have to wait long to get it over with since he was due at Eden’s place in fifteen minutes.
