Page 24 of The Perfect Deception

“It’s all bull­shit!” Adam hurled him­self out of the chair and paced his fa­ther’s of­fice.

“Sit down.”

Shoot­ing pain ringed his scalp as a ten­sion headache be­gan to form, but he sat.

“And the par­ale­gals are un­happy work­ing with you,” his fa­ther said

“Even if you think I was care­less with the ac­count, which I wasn’t, you know I didn’t throw Ash­ley un­der the bus, Dad. My con­cerns are le­git­i­mate.”

“Are you sure?”

Adam cra­dled his head in his hands be­fore look­ing at his fa­ther. The man was in his fifties and had that age­less white-male priv­i­leged look about him—a full head of white hair, skin tanned and leath­ery from end­less ten­nis matches at the club, and a pow­er­ful stance that made him look as for­mi­da­ble in court as his win­ning record im­plied.

“Yes.”

His fa­ther fo­cused his fa­mous pros­e­cu­tor stare at him. Adam felt as if he was turned the wrong way in a wind tun­nel.

“Then you’re go­ing to need to fix your re­la­tion­ship with the par­ale­gals. As for your care­less­ness, I can’t af­ford any more of your screw-ups. Un­til fur­ther no­tice, you’re tak­ing time off.”

Was there re­ally no one in the para­le­gal de­part­ment who would vouch for him? He might be the boss’s son, but he al­ways thought he had gen­uine re­la­tion­ships with them. Maybe he could talk to Kim in pri­vate.

The log­i­cal side of his brain knew his fa­ther had no choice but to take away his caseload. Bradley & Com­pany was an im­por­tant client with far-reach­ing in­flu­ence. If they left, it would be sig­nif­i­cant loss to the law firm. But the rest of him knew mak­ing him hide away was the equiv­a­lent of an­nounc­ing his guilt to the world. He’d never make ju­nior part­ner this way. He wouldn’t be able to move any­where else with­out a good ref­er­ence or cur­rent cases. He was screwed.

“You’re not go­ing to back me on this?”

His fa­ther stared past Adam’s left ear. “The firm can’t suf­fer, Adam. You know that.”

He’d heard that phrase all his life. He’d just never heard it di­rected at him.

Dina stepped off the el­e­va­tor into the wait­ing area of Man­del & Ryan, At­tor­neys at Law, and looked around wide-eyed. Be­tween ad­just­ing to the idea that Adam seemed to want to be more than just friends, and tak­ing the leap to sur­prise him at his of­fice, she didn’t think she had any more nerves left.

She was wrong.

The smell of money—amounts of which she could never hope to have—prac­ti­cally as­saulted her nos­trils as she looked around the space. Ev­ery­thing she’d ever read about cor­po­rate law of­fices was true. The car­pet be­neath her feet was so soft, she wanted to roll around on it. The fur­ni­ture was ex­pen­sive wood and she thought the door into the in­ner sanc­tum might ac­tu­ally be ze­bra­wood. A woman in a suit that looked like it was straight out of a fash­ion mag­a­zine looked at her over plat­inum-rimmed glasses. Her hair was per­fect. Dina ran a hand over hers in dis­com­fort.

“May I help you?”

Un­like some ac­cents that iden­ti­fied the speaker’s ge­og­ra­phy, hers iden­ti­fied her amount of money—lots.Wow, even the of­fice re­cep­tion­ist makes more money than I do.She shifted from one foot to the other. “Um, I’m here to see Adam Man­del.”

“Is he ex­pect­ing you?”

“No…not re­ally.” The idea of tak­ing Adam out to lunch to thank him for the flow­ers had been a spur-of-the mo­ment thing. It had sounded great in the se­cu­rity of the li­brary stacks. Here, not so much.

The re­cep­tion­ist frowned. At least, Dina thought she frowned. Her face didn’t move, but some­how man­aged to look more dis­ap­prov­ing than she had be­fore. “I’ll see if he’s avail­able.”

Dina perched on the sup­ple black leather sofa and stud­ied the mag­a­zines on the mar­ble ta­ble in front of her—Is­lands, Yachts In­ter­na­tional, Saveur, Unique Homes, Up­scale Liv­ing, Ar­chi­tec­tural Di­gestand theRobb Re­port. As if she hadn’t al­ready known the sec­ond she walked in here, she was way out of her league.

“I’m sorry, but—”

What­ever Lit­tle Miss Botox was about to say was in­ter­rupted by the ze­bra­wood door open­ing.

He looked aw­ful. Ten­sion lines bi­sected his brow and a thin white line out­lined his lips. He stopped dead when he saw her, and she thought maybe she’d made the big­gest mis­take of her life. A wash of red passed across his face and he looked around.

“Uh, Dina. What are you do­ing here?”

That was not the “Hey, I’m so glad to see you, Dina!” re­ac­tion she was look­ing for.

“I thought I’d take you to lunch.”