Page 51 of Coveted Justice

Chloe waltzed out of the door and Amanda fell down into her chair in relief. The air had been filled with so much weird tension when there were three of them.

I just met her, but I know I don’t like her.

Josh sat down and reached for his coffee.

“I didn’t know she was going to stop by like that. I told her she should have called first.”

Amanda gave him a careless shrug. More careless than she was currently feeling.

“It’s fine. No big deal or anything.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Josh went on as if she hadn’t said a word. “She’s sort of a friend of a friend.”

“Okay.”

“She’s a nice person.”

Amanda looked up from her slice of angel food cake. Josh was staring at her intently, but she couldn’t read his expression. She had to admit to herself that she was curious if Chloe was Josh’s type. He’d had girlfriends, of course, but Amanda had never met any of them. Did he like blondes with big boobs? Then he wasn’t going to be attracted to her.

Wait…I don’t want him to be. We’re just friends.

“Did I say that she wasn’t? I’m sure that she is.”

“You didn’t say much to her.”

Sighing, Amanda placed her fork on the table.

“She didn’t say much to me either. We met and were in each other’s company for less than ten minutes. And you could have gone with her if you wanted to.”

“Did you want me to go?”

This conversation was going in circles. In other words, nowhere.

“What you do is your business. If you wanted to go, I wouldn’t have stopped you.”

Josh pointed to the myriad of boxes surrounding them.

“We have things to do.”

“We do,” she agreed. “But if you really want to go, I could have told Brian that you weren’t feeling well or something.”

“That would be a lie.”

“Yes, it would.”

“I don’t want anyone to lie for me.”

“Then you made the right decision to stay. Are you going to drink your coffee? It’s getting cold.”

Amanda reached into the box closest to her and pulled out a stack of flyers. They weren’t going to jump into the envelopes on their own.

Josh could do whatever he liked. She wouldn’t have cared if he’d left with Chloe. She didn’t care if Chloe was gorgeous, either. None of this affected her in the slightest.

She almost - almost - believed what she was thinking.

This wasn’t good. In fact, it was bad. Everything was changing in her life, and she couldn’t seem to stop it.

“What did Abby say?”

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