Page 14 of The Perfect Deception

Dina might go to tem­ple ev­ery Fri­day, but he didn’t. “Sure.”

Chap­ter Four

The next evening, Adam rode the train to Hobo­ken and fid­geted with his phone. Should he call Dina? She’d prob­a­bly know some ob­scure fact about trains. He started to smile. He had a feel­ing she wouldn’t ever un­der­stand his rules. Rule num­ber one be­ing no strings. Rule num­ber two be­ing if you start get­ting at­tached, reread rule num­ber one. He’d had a nice time with her last night, hell, more than a nice time. De­spite her sense of hu­mor, which was sub­tle like her, she had depth. He couldn’t af­ford that and he didn’t want to hurt her. Frus­trated, he shoved his phone back in his pocket and as the train stopped, dis­em­barked with the other pas­sen­gers. A short walk later, he en­tered the com­muter bar where he’d ar­ranged to meet Ja­cob.

His friend was seated at a ta­ble half­way back and raised his arm to flag Adam down.

“Hey, good to see you,” Ja­cob said, shak­ing his hand. “It’s been too long.”

“You too. Tell me what’s hap­pen­ing with you.” Adam lis­tened as Ja­cob filled him in on mar­ried life to Aviva and his job with a bou­tique law firm in Jer­sey City. Adam’s stom­ach clenched. The beer he’d been drink­ing turned sour. An­other one with a per­fect life.

“You’re usu­ally a lot more talk­a­tive, Adz. What’s go­ing on?”

Adam opened his mouth, about to brush him off with his usual flip an­swer. But this was Jake, the one per­son he opened up to, even if only a lit­tle bit. He gripped the neck of his beer tighter and rubbed the con­den­sa­tion away. “My life’s a mess.” He gave him a quick run­down about the de­ba­cle at work.

Ja­cob winced. “Oh man, that’s rough. Has your dad for­given you yet?”

“Nope, and in the mean­time, I’m do­ing scut work at the of­fice. I’m also benched so­cially. Sort of.”

“What’s ‘sort of’ mean?”

“It means that nor­mally I’d drown my sor­rows with some gor­geous babe, but I can’t since that only fu­els my dad’s fire. I need to keep my nose clean. Which, for the most part, I am.”

“For the most part?”

“There’s a woman but she’s to­tally not my type.”

Ja­cob raised his brows. Adam banged the back of his head against the wall. “She isn’t. She’s ev­ery­thing I don’t look for in a woman. Se­ri­ously, my fa­ther needs to for­give me so I can get back to my so­cial life and for­get about this.”

“Isn’t that what landed you in this mess to be­gin with?”

Adam shook his head. He took an­other swig of beer. “I was sure Ash­ley would take care of it, and Dina? I don’t see it hap­pen­ing.” He blocked out im­ages of her creamy skin, shak­ing his head and star­ing off into the dis­tance.

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “She’s not a ‘no-strings’ kind of woman.”

“You’re pos­i­tive you’re still a ‘no-strings’ kind of guy?”

Didn’t mat­ter what he wanted. She wouldn’t want him when she found out about him. His mom, the one woman who was sup­posed to love him no mat­ter what, hadn’t given him a sec­ond thought when she’d left and cut off all con­tact. “Please. Not all of us are bor­ing like you.”

Ja­cob laughed. “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it. You know if you want, I can have my mother set you up.”

Adam pulled away from the ta­ble in hor­ror, his chair legs scrap­ing against the floor. “YentaKaren? You’d sic her on me? Are you kid­ding?”

“Yep. Just wanted to see you sweat.”

“I love your mother, but there’s no way I want her med­dling in my life.”

“I think you’re miss­ing out on a great op­por­tu­nity,” Ja­cob said with a wink. “I think you should re­con­sider Dina. Some­thing in the tone of your voice when you talk about her makes me think your feel­ings for her are dif­fer­ent.”

“There’s no point.”

Dina walked into tem­ple Fri­day night and let her wor­ries fade away. The peace­ful­ness of the sanc­tu­ary, with its stained glass win­dows de­pict­ing bib­li­cal scenes from the Torah, the or­nately carved ma­hogany doors of the Ark where the Torah scrolls were kept, and the dim light­ing calmed her. It was just the place she needed to be af­ter a week filled with such un­cer­tainty about Adam and her feel­ings to­ward him.

She sat in the pew to­ward the front and waited for the rabbi to be­gin her ser­vice. A rustling next to her brought her at­ten­tion to Re­becca, her hus­band, Aaron, and their three chil­dren slid­ing into her row. Scoot­ing over, she made room for them and handed prayer books down to them as they set­tled.

Af­ter the ser­vice, she fol­lowed Re­becca and her fam­ily into the So­cial Hall for theOneg, where ev­ery­one so­cial­ized and ate dessert af­ter recit­ing brief prayers over the wine and thechal­lah.