Page 11 of The Perfect Deception

“What do you mean?”

“Noth­ing. Never mind.”

He fixed his at­ten­tion on her, as if wait­ing for her to con­tinue, but she wasn’t about to pour out her dis­com­fort to some­one she was never go­ing to see again. So she nod­ded to­ward the menu. “Is there a par­tic­u­lar wine you were think­ing of?”

“I was go­ing to ask what you like.”

“Any­thing but Man­is­che­witz.”

He laughed. “Hey, we have the same taste in wine!”

Dina couldn’t help the laugh that es­caped. Maybe he rec­og­nized how in­con­gru­ous they were too. “Good to know. Be­cause that might have been a deal breaker.”

“You re­ally have no pref­er­ence for red or white even?”

“I’m open to try­ing some­thing new.”

The slow smile spread. Mo­tion­ing for the wait­ress, he gave their wine or­der. Turn­ing his at­ten­tion back to her, he leaned for­ward. “So, do you get first dibs on the books that come in?”

She laughed again. “Not ex­actly. I mean, I get to see what’s in stock so I know what to add to my list, but we usu­ally have a wait­ing list of peo­ple who want the books, and I don’t get to jump ahead in line.”

“The peo­ple seem pretty nice. What’s your friend like, the one you were talk­ing to the other day?”

Wait. Why was he ask­ing about Tracy? “What do you want to know about her?”

“How’d you two meet?”

That was in­nocu­ous. The knot in her stom­ach loos­ened. “We work to­gether. She started a few years be­fore I did. She took me un­der her wing. I filled in for her when she took ma­ter­nity leave.”

“Are there a lot of peo­ple our age work­ing there or just you and Tracy?”

It was a good ques­tion, and an easy one. “There’s a pretty de­cent mix, ac­tu­ally.”

They paused to study their menus and or­der, and when the waiter left, Adam con­tin­ued with his ques­tions. “Do you two so­cial­ize out­side of work much?”

Dina re­laxed as she thought about her friend. “She’s pretty busy with her fam­ily, but we go to lunch. Oc­ca­sion­ally we’ll go shop­ping or see a movie on a week­end.”

“Oh, the Mor­ris­town movie the­ater is great—their seats are re­ally com­fort­able.”

“Yeah, al­though I wish they’d get more clas­sic movies, but I guess those don’t ap­peal to as many peo­ple.”

“The black and white ones? There are a few I’ve seen that are re­ally great.Cit­i­zen Kanewas one of my fa­vorites. What’s yours?”

“Or­son Welles was ter­rific in that,” she said.

“‘I don’t think there’s one word that can de­scribe a man’s life.’ I love that line.”

“Why?”

Just then, the waiter brought their din­ners, a steak for Adam and filet of sole for Dina. The meat siz­zled. Its gar­licky scent mixed with the smell of the fish and the fruity salsa, mak­ing Dina’s stom­ach growl. Once they’d each tasted their food, she prompted him. “The movie line?”

“Oh. I like how it’s such a sim­ple way to de­scribe the com­plex­ity of a per­son. It’s not dra­matic, it doesn’t ex­ag­ger­ate things, but it shows there can be more to some­one or some sit­u­a­tion than meets the eye.”

Her heart thud­ded. Mr. Flashy­pants had a soul. A fairly deep one at that. “Dis­cov­er­ing those hid­den facets can be the most re­ward­ing part of get­ting to know some­one.”

A flicker of un­cer­tainty passed over his face. He sat back in his chair, ad­just­ing his nap­kin on his lap. “Un­less there’s noth­ing there.”

“What do you mean?” The sole was melt-in-your-mouth de­li­cious. She hadn’t stopped eat­ing since the waiter set the plate in front of her. Now, how­ever, she put down her fork.