Chapter 21

The Mortons finally left their table and Galen sighed his relief. Lydia rolled her eyes.

"There's one of those in every department, isn't there?" she asked Galen, taking a long draught of her wine. "I thought she'd never stop talking."

"I don't think she ever does," Galen admitted. "But you handled her remarkably well."

Lydia shrugged. "I just told her the truth. I got the impression you didn't want her to know this was a date, so I may have stretched the collaboration issue a bit. But not much. We had mentioned the possibility."

The chuckle escaped him before he could stop it. Her quick thinking and easy poise were as dazzling as her looks. "So we had. And thank you. The woman is the biggest gossip in the department, so if she'd thought this was some kind of tryst, she'd have blabbed it all over campus by morning."

"And we wouldn't want that."

Ouch. He could tell that comment hadn't sat quite right but he had no idea how to fix whatever damage he'd just done. So he opted for dis