Page 17 of The Perfect Deception

As they left the group and Zach walked her to her car, she won­dered what she should do. Was she be­ing too hasty in her judg­ment of Zach? She had no idea if she’d see Adam again any­way. Maybe she shouldn’t write Zach off just yet. He was kind and so­lic­i­tous. His friends were wel­com­ing. She could tell by the way he looked at her that he liked her. He was ex­actly the kind of guy she could pic­ture her­self with.

“It was great meet­ing you, Dina,” Zach said. He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “I hope you had as much fun as I did.”

“I en­joyed get­ting to know you, too, Zach.” She smiled at him, and the re­lief on his face pushed her to make her de­ci­sion. “I hope we can get to­gether again.”

Nod­ding, Zach opened her car door for her and held it while she got her­self set­tled. “I’d like that,” he said. “I’ll call you.”

As she pulled away, she won­dered if he would. Be­cause she wasn’t plan­ning to wait around on the off chance Adam de­cided to call.

Mon­day morn­ing, Adam looked at his phone, scrolled through his con­tacts, and di­aled Dina’s num­ber. The sound of her voice rolled over him, en­velop­ing him like a warm blan­ket, but when he re­al­ized it was just her voice mail, he rolled his eyes. “Hey, Dina, it’s Adam. Give me a call.” He left his num­ber and went back to the brief he was edit­ing. When it was fin­ished, he emailed it to the man­ag­ing part­ner be­fore stop­ping at the thresh­old of her of­fice.

“Hi, Flo­rence, I just emailed you the brief on the Hatchet case. Are we still set for court next week?”

“Oh, Adam, I was just go­ing to call you. James is go­ing to come with me in­stead.”

Adam frowned at the grey-suited woman. He walked into her of­fice. “What’s go­ing on? I’ve been work­ing on that case with you. I thought ev­ery­thing was all set.”

She moved be­hind her desk and peered over her read­ing glasses. “It was, but your fa­ther sug­gested it might be bet­ter to have James work on the case. We re­ally need this case to suc­ceed, and well, to be hon­est, I can’t af­ford any care­less mis­takes. I hope you can un­der­stand that.”

He masked his fa­cial fea­tures and gave her a bland smile as his pulse pounded in his head. “Sure, of course. I’ll send all my files over to James.”

“Thanks, I ap­pre­ci­ate it. I’m sorry about all of this, Adam. You’re one of the smartest lawyers I’ve worked with—and I’m not just say­ing that be­cause your fa­ther is my boss.”

He left her of­fice, hands in fists at his sides, lungs con­stricted. Yeah, right. Of course he was smart. But in­tel­li­gence hadn’t pre­vented Ash­ley from ac­cus­ing him of throw­ing her un­der the bus, or ly­ing—be­cause he was con­vinced she was ly­ing—about giv­ing her the mo­tion to file. It wasn’t con­vinc­ing his fa­ther or any­one else in this of­fice to be­lieve in him. He couldn’t even count on Kim to be­lieve in him. His mother had known he was smart. But it hadn’t kept her from leav­ing. His head hurt. “Smart” wasn’t get­ting him any­where.

Shak­ing his head to ban­ish the mem­o­ries, he re­turned to his of­fice and put to­gether the files for James. It took him twice as long as it should have, be­cause his hands shook. By the time he was fin­ished, the day was al­most over. He had a rag­ing headache. He needed to get away, to for­get about ev­ery­thing hap­pen­ing at work. Dina. Be­fore he could think about why she was the first per­son to pop into his head, he grabbed his phone. He checked his mes­sages, but she hadn’t called him back. He’d stop by the li­brary and pick her up to go some­where. Any­where. She’d take his mind off of here. Maybe they’d go into the city to a club.

Ten min­utes later, he was in his car, screech­ing into a spot in the li­brary lot. The woman who was friends with Dina—what was her name?—was walk­ing to­ward her car. Tracy. That was it.

“Hey Tracy, is Dina around?”

She shielded her eyes from the sun. “Adam? No, she’s home to­day. Ev­ery­thing okay?”

“Sure is,” he said with a grin. Pulling out of the lot, he drove to Dina’s apart­ment.

He pulled up to the old Vic­to­rian build­ing and shook his head. It suited her per­fectly. The con­verted house was well kept, but old fash­ioned. As pretty as it was, with col­or­ful shut­ters and a shaded front porch, it wasn’t his style. He pre­ferred his mod­ern apart­ment com­plex with a gym and un­der­ground garage. He found an empty spot on the street, locked his car, and tried the front door. It was locked, so he buzzed #2.

“Hello?”

Dina’s voice made him smile, his first gen­uine smile all day. Some of the ten­sion left his neck. “Hey Dina, it’s Adam.”

“Adam. Um, come on up.”

She buzzed him in. He took the stairs two at a time. The hall­way had that musty smell of an­cient build­ings, the stair­case was pro­tected by an an­tique-look­ing rail­ing. She was wait­ing for him in the door­way of her apart­ment, her thick hair pulled back in a pony­tail, dressed in a long sleeved T-shirt and sweat­pants. Most women he dated would have been mor­ti­fied to be seen so un­der­dressed. Yet Dina looked per­fect. She smiled. His gaze fo­cused on her pink lips. What would they taste like?

“Get changed, we’re go­ing out.”

Her smile fal­tered. “Did we have plans I for­got about?”

“No, I just thought it would be fun to go some­where. We could go into the city to a club, drive along the wa­ter­front, what­ever you want.” He jin­gled his keys against his leg. He peered over her shoul­der, try­ing to get a view of the in­side of her apart­ment. He saw a glimpse of a kitchen counter, some over­stuffed fur­ni­ture, and a mix of col­ors.

“Adam, I can’t just pick up and do that. I have plans. I was just about to start get­ting ready.”

“Can­cel them. Come out with me.”

She stared at him. He fought the urge to squirm.

“Come on in.”