Page 10 of The Perfect Deception

“I’m sure. Look, when you ac­cuse one para­le­gal, you ac­cuse all of us, and I don’t think it’s a good idea…” She looked around be­fore re­turn­ing her fo­cus to him. “for us to be to­gether, at least not right now. I need to work with these peo­ple, at least un­til I be­come a lawyer…”

He stiff­ened, gave her a nod and walked back to his of­fice. Sink­ing into his chair, he buried his face in his hand. Kim and he were friends. Did she re­ally be­lieve Ash­ley over him? They had spent hours to­gether and never once had he ever blamed any­one else for his screw ups. She knew him. Or she should.

By Wednes­day, any doubts about whether or not Kim be­lieved him dis­ap­peared. His his­tory with her was ir­rel­e­vant, be­cause Ash­ley had con­vinced all the par­ale­gals he had it out for her, and if they weren’t care­ful, he’d go af­ter them too. He’d tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t budge. Most wor­ri­some of all was that he couldn’t find the pa­per trail on his com­puter he’d left him­self for just such a thing as this hap­pen­ing. He’d searched ev­ery­where for it and it was gone.

This was three marks against him. One of which had lost them the case and un­less some­thing hap­pened quickly, might re­sult in los­ing the client. His fa­ther was pissed. Ash­ley was un­shake­able. The other par­ale­gals were avoid­ing him. Not only was it go­ing to be im­pos­si­ble for him to work if he had to do ev­ery­thing him­self, he was never go­ing to make ju­nior part­ner if this kept up.

He wracked his brain, try­ing to fig­ure out why Ash­ley would do some­thing like this. Other than one time where he’d given her an as­sign­ment and she’d messed it up, their in­ter­ac­tions had been fine. Pro­fes­sional. Sure, she didn’t like hav­ing to stay late, but that came with the job. He was al­ways friendly and re­spect­ful to her. He’d greet her in the morn­ing, just like he did ev­ery­one else. He asked her about her week­end, just like he did ev­ery­one else. He couldn’t think of any­thing out of the or­di­nary. Could he have pos­si­bly said some­thing that an­gered her? And if so, why hadn’t she said some­thing to him, ei­ther at the time, or now? He would have apol­o­gized im­me­di­ately.

In the mean­time, the par­ale­gals gave him wary looks, Kim no longer wanted his help, and his fa­ther gave him grunt work. Putting aside the aban­don­ment by his friends and fa­ther, how the hell was he sup­posed to prove him­self ready for the pro­mo­tion to ju­nior part­ner if he’d been rel­e­gated to han­dling things even a first year could do with their eyes closed? He started to sweat. Why did ev­ery­one as­sume the worst of him?

He stared out the win­dow down to the street be­low. A woman with curly hair walked by, re­mind­ing him of Dina and he smiled for the first time in days.

Dina was sweet. She was funny. Im­ages of Dina smil­ing at him, lean­ing for­ward to ask ques­tions, flit­ted through is head. Her face was round, with clear, pale skin, long lashes and full lips. Her eyes—he still couldn’t be­lieve they were vi­o­let—were beau­ti­ful. Maybe she wore con­tacts? Her hair fas­ci­nated him. It was dif­fer­ent from the smooth, straight tresses he was used to see­ing ev­ery­where. Hers was a deep brown, al­most black, with thick, frizzy waves. He won­dered what it would feel like against his cheek. Would it be soft or springy or some­thing he hadn’t con­sid­ered?

There was some­thing about hav­ing all those curves to him­self—to ex­plore, ad­mire and dis­cover—that made him think about her more than he’d like. She was curvier than the women he typ­i­cally dated, but then those women were model thin and com­plained about ev­ery calo­rie they put in their mouth. Half of his din­ner con­ver­sa­tions with them in­volved food, and not in any way he found fas­ci­nat­ing. His con­ver­sa­tions with Dina, on the other hand. They made him think.

He ex­pelled a breath. It didn’t mat­ter. No mat­ter how much he might have en­joyed din­ner with her, he couldn’t date a woman like her, a woman who could see through him as eas­ily as Dina. A woman who would leave him if she dis­cov­ered the real him—just like his mother, and now, ap­par­ently, Kim.

He shook his head. Dina was more re­li­giously ob­ser­vant than he was if she went to tem­ple ev­ery Fri­day night. Ex­cept last Fri­day night they’d had din­ner at the diner. Was tem­ple just an ex­cuse to avoid him?

No, some­how, he thought Dina would be more di­rect than that. And now, de­spite his con­cerns, he was tak­ing Dina out to a bar to­mor­row night. He didn’t do com­mit­ment, and his dat­ing record showed that. Dina, on the other hand, was prob­a­bly fo­cused on com­mit­ment, which should make him ner­vous. Ex­cept she didn’t seem to want to go out with him in the first place.

So why the hell was he tak­ing her out?

Adam was pick­ing her up in forty-five min­utes. She’d al­ready been stand­ing in front of her closet for close to fif­teen. Who did that? She had work clothes. She had week­end clothes. She had tem­ple clothes. She even had clothes to go on a date. But this was Adam,Mr. Flashy­pants.

He was prob­a­bly used to women show­ing lots of cleav­age and leg. Her boobs were too big for her to be com­fort­able show­ing cleav­age. She wasn’t a mini-skirt kind of per­son. Which left…not too many op­tions.

Ten min­utes later, she set­tled on black boot-cut jeans and a drape-necked green cash­mere sweater that ac­cen­tu­ated her eyes. Black boots, chunky sil­ver ear­rings, her sil­ver Jew­ish star neck­lace, min­i­mal makeup and she was done. Why she was try­ing to im­press him, she had no idea.

When her apart­ment in­ter­com buzzed, she grabbed her purse and jacket and met Adam on the porch of her con­verted Vic­to­rian.

Once again, he greeted her with his slow, small smile. A fris­son of ex­cite­ment went through her. He wore a black but­ton-down, open at the neck and grey slacks. The dark col­ors set off his lighter hair and made his green eyes pop. He leaned over and kissed her cheek, sur­pris­ing her. His lips were soft against her skin. She in­haled his spicy clean scent.

“You look pretty. I like what you did to your hair.”

All she’d done was pull it back off her face in a low half-knot. He prob­a­bly said this to all his dates. She fisted her hand at her side to keep from touch­ing it. “Thanks.”

She was not go­ing to think about her cheek that he’d kissed.

He led her down the walk­way and held open the car door for her. Up close, and in the day­light, she re­al­ized his car was a con­vert­ible. Of course it was. Luck­ily for her hair, the top was up.

“Nice car. Did you know Ger­many started mak­ing BMWs be­cause af­ter the Treaty of Ver­sailles they were pro­hib­ited from mak­ing war­planes or war­plane en­gines?” She gulped af­ter the fact slipped out. She re­ally needed to stop do­ing that.

He looked at her, chuck­led, and eased onto the street. Jazz played through the car’s sound sys­tem. Dina stared out the win­dow as they drove down the high­way and even­tu­ally onto the streets of Newark. She had no idea what to say, but the si­lence didn’t seem to bother him. Adam pulled into a park­ing garage.

He opened the door for her, pock­et­ing the ticket. “Come on, the bar’s this way.”

The area near the bar was busy with young pro­fes­sion­als un­wind­ing af­ter a long day at work and older peo­ple grab­bing a quick bite be­fore the show at the per­form­ing arts cen­ter down the street. As they walked, Adam chat­ted about the types of bands he liked. Most of the names were un­known to her—her mu­si­cal tastes ran more to clas­sic rock. Once there, he gave his name and they were seated down­stairs in a cozy booth in sight of the stage, but not too close. The room was dark, with sil­ver up-light­ing and multi-col­ored wall sconces that pro­vided flair.

Ev­ery­thing about this place screamed, “What are you do­ing here?”

Sit­ting across the sil­very speck­led-gran­ite topped ta­ble from each other, Dina stud­ied Adam’s face while he opened the wine menu. He was even more hand­some than she’d re­mem­bered. Her stom­ach knot­ted.

“What’s wrong?” Adam put the wine menu down.

“This is all just for­eign to me.”