Page 25 of The Perfect Deception

A va­ri­ety of emo­tions played across his face, but what­ever he was go­ing to say was halted by the ze­bra­wood door open­ing a sec­ond time. A thirty-years older ver­sion of Adam stepped through and Dina didn’t know whether to be im­pressed or fright­ened. Like Adam, he was tall with broad shoul­ders. His full head of white hair was slicked back. His pierc­ing blue eyes were sharp, and he stood as if sur­rounded by a bub­ble of im­pen­e­tra­bil­ity. He scanned the room, look­ing down his aquiline nose.

“Adam, your key.”

Adam stiff­ened and Dina reached a hand out and placed it on his up­per arm. His mus­cle was rock hard—too hard to be caused by any­thing but ten­sion. The mus­cles in his jaw bulged and his teeth ground to­gether.

Why would he have to turn in his key?

Adam’s fa­ther turned his stare to her. “May I help you?” His stare al­most made Dina cringe. In­stead she stepped for­ward.

“I’m Dina Ja­cobs.” She held out her hand. “It’s a plea­sure to meet you.” The words al­most got stuck in her throat.

Lit­tle Miss Botox was prac­ti­cally fall­ing over the re­cep­tion desk eaves­drop­ping, and Mr. Man­del must have no­ticed, be­cause he stepped for­ward and took Dina’s out­stretched hand. His hand­shake was firm. Hers was too and sur­prise flashed across his face be­fore he banked it down.

“Noah Man­del. How do you know my son?”

“Dad!”

She put a calm­ing hand on Adam’s chest. “We’ve been see­ing each other for about a week now.”

She didn’t know whose face was more com­i­cal, Mr. Man­del’s or Lit­tle Miss Botox’s. Both mir­rored each other—open fish mouth, raised eye­brows, flared nos­trils—which was quite a feat for the re­cep­tion­ist, and a lit­tle re­as­sur­ing some­how for Dina.

Adam’s fa­ther, on the other hand, was alarm­ing. Had Adam not men­tioned her at all?

He cleared his throat, looked at Adam, and cleared it again. “Is this true?”

Fi­nally find­ing his voice, Adam spoke. “Yes, Dad, it is.”

“Do you think it’s wise?”

“Yes, I do.”

Sud­denly, Adam put his arm around her shoul­der and pulled her against him. He’d never shown her af­fec­tion pub­licly. Plea­sure, sim­i­lar to the feel­ing she’d had when she saw the flow­ers, flowed through her. Re­mem­ber­ing how sim­i­lar to a gasp­ing fish the other two had looked, she did her best not to let her jaw drop.

But she couldn’t do any­thing about the warmth that spread through­out her body, or the light­head­ed­ness she got from stand­ing this close to him, or the zings of plea­sure that were trav­el­ing up and down her body and pool­ing be­low her stom­ach.

She might not fit in with his life­style, but she knew how to make some­one com­fort­able and her par­ents had taught her man­ners. Look­ing up at him, she said, “Thank you again for the flow­ers.” Turn­ing her fo­cus to his fa­ther, she added, “He gave me the most beau­ti­ful flow­ers I’ve ever seen. You taught him well.”

A hint of a frown crossed Noah’s fea­tures be­fore he in­clined his head. With­out an­other word, he turned and headed back into the of­fice. When the door closed, si­lence stretched. Dina stayed in Adam’s em­brace, afraid to break the spell. Fi­nally, when even Lit­tle Miss Botox had gone back to work, Dina glanced up at Adam.

He was smil­ing.

He pulled her out of the re­cep­tion area, into the build­ing’s hall­way out­side his fa­ther’s of­fice. “You’re a ge­nius.”

She was, but it wasn’t some­thing she men­tioned dur­ing the first week of a re­la­tion­ship, so she doubted he was re­fer­ring to her IQ. “What are you talk­ing about?”

“My dad’s been on my case about be­ing more re­spon­si­ble, im­prov­ing my im­age, etc. When he saw you with me, he backed down. This is the so­lu­tion to all our prob­lems.”

This time she stiff­ened. He couldn’t be…

“You need me to take you to the re­union. I need you to help my dad see I’m ma­ture enough, at­ten­tive enough, for the pro­mo­tion.”

He was. Had she mis­read his in­ten­tions so badly af­ter he sent her those flow­ers?

“We were al­ready go­ing to the re­union to­gether,” she said. “And shouldn’t your per­for­mance at work de­ter­mine whether or not you get a pro­mo­tion?”

“I need a hid­den weapon out­side of work. And you, my dear,” he planted a kiss on her fore­head, “are it.”

No, no, no. “You don’t need a weapon. You need to have a con­ver­sa­tion with your dad to fix things.”