Page 21 of The Perfect Deception

“Okay, what was freak­ing you out at my apart­ment ear­lier?”

He needed to change the sub­ject, fast. He thought back to his brief time in her apart­ment. He hadn’t had time to no­tice much of it from the door­way, ex­cept that it was homey and sweet, like her. There’d been a big fancy en­ve­lope on the ta­ble by the front door.

“What was that fancy in­vi­ta­tion for back at your place?”

Her face blanched. For a mo­ment he thought she was go­ing to faint. Who fainted these days? Maybe the same women who were con­cerned about the walk of shame? She didn’t seem like the faint­ing type. But her cheeks re­gained their color, and more. She looked down at her lap. Mis­sion ac­com­plished, al­though his dis­trac­tion came at her ex­pense.

“It’s noth­ing, just my high school re­union.”

“Which one?”

“Tenth.”

“Are you go­ing?”

She shook her head. “Ab­so­lutely not.”

“Why?”

“Be­cause I don’t feel like ei­ther be­ing ig­nored or talked about. High school was not a fun time for me.”

High school re­unions were the time to show up all the peo­ple who thought lit­tle of you. “Of course you’re go­ing. We’ll go to­gether.”

“What?”

Yeah, what? Had he re­ally just of­fered to take her? “You and me. Your high school re­union.” Ap­par­ently he had.

She shook her head. Her pony­tail whipped back and forth like some over-zeal­ous spec­ta­tor at a ten­nis match. “That’s crazy.”

“You need a lit­tle crazy in your life. It’ll be fun.”

“You have no idea what it will be like. Pop­u­lar girls who looked at me like I wasn’t fit to wipe gum off their shoe. Peo­ple who only talked to me to beg me to give them my home­work to copy. Peo­ple who hid their in­tel­li­gence in or­der to have friends, and ig­nored me. Trust me, there’s no one I want to see.”

Adam stretched his shoul­ders at her de­scrip­tion of peo­ple who sounded a lot like him.

Dina stared him down, as if dar­ing him to do his worst. Ha, she ob­vi­ously didn’t know him. His worst had chased his mother away. His worst was turn­ing his fa­ther into a slave driver. He couldn’t al­low him­self to give her his worst. So he’d give her his best.

“I’m sure they’ve changed. Or at least grown older and fat­ter. You shouldn’t miss it, es­pe­cially if it scares you.”

She yawned. “You’re crazy, but I’m too tired to ar­gue right now.”

She snug­gled down into the blan­ket. Adam had an over­pow­er­ing de­sire to join her. He reached his hand out to hover over her leg. When she moved it as she got set­tled, his hand skimmed the blan­ket. A jolt of elec­tric­ity zinged up his arm. He frowned. How was he at­tracted to her? She wasn’t the sex­i­est woman he’d seen, she wasn’t the pret­ti­est even. But she had a qual­ity about her that made all his other dates seem shal­low. Some­how, he couldn’t get enough of her. That scared the hell out of him.

Dina woke a cou­ple hours later, the room still dark, her mind whirling, her body com­pletely still. She didn’t want to take the chance he’d come out and see her wide awake. She didn’t want him to come out here at all, wear­ing what­ever he wore to sleep—did he even wear clothes when he slept? Pos­si­bil­i­ties danced through her head, but un­like sheep, count­ing them would not help her sleep.

She turned care­fully onto her side, brought her knee up to­ward her chest. She rested her hand on her an­kle, the same an­kle Adam had touched ear­lier. Even now, she felt shoot­ing streaks of warmth up and down her calf from his touch. She won­dered what it would feel like for him to touch her in other places. She buried her head in her pil­low.

No, this couldn’t hap­pen. He wasn’t at­tracted to her—she didn’t fit his pro­file. She wasn’t tall enough, skinny enough, or sexy enough to claim him for her­self. She def­i­nitely wasn’t ex­pe­ri­enced enough. Oh, how he’d laugh at her if he knew how a sim­ple touch on her an­kle through a blan­ket had af­fected her. The men she was used to, the even fewer she’d slept with, had never wo­ken her out of a deep sleep—achy and twitchy, want­ing more of…some­thing. She was com­pletely out of her depth with Adam.

She needed to fall back asleep in or­der to han­dle to­mor­row. Be­cause to­mor­row, she had to leave here with her dig­nity in­tact.

The aroma of ground cof­fee and the whistling of steam brought her to the sur­face of con­scious­ness. She blinked at the dark­ness that con­fronted her. As her sight ad­justed to the lack of light, out­lines of mas­cu­line geo­met­ric fur­ni­ture in the room ap­peared. She glanced to­ward the large win­dow on the op­po­site wall. Street­lights glowed from out­side. How early was it?

Wrap­ping the Star Wars blan­ket around her shoul­ders, she walked into the gal­ley kitchen. The clock set in the stain­less-steel oven said five-thirty. She should leave, now, be­fore too many peo­ple woke up and saw her. But oh, cof­fee. Dina in­haled. The toe-curl­ing smell filled her nos­trils, wak­ing her up even with­out the ben­e­fits of the caf­feine.

“Smells good, doesn’t it?”

She shrieked, glar­ing at Adam as he let out a low, throaty laugh from the door­way be­hind her. He was wear­ing a white T-shirt and pa­jama pants. She swal­lowed. “You scared me on pur­pose.”