Page 26 of The Perfect Deception

“My dad doesn’t work that way.”

The sink­ing feel­ing in her stom­ach in­creased. Be­cause while she had started to feel some­thing for Adam, he’d just turned her into a ca­reer as­set for his own am­bi­tion.

“You’ll help me con­vince my fa­ther, right?”

His green-eyed gaze sent shards of heat into her soul, and she did all she could to hide them. He might not care for her in a ro­man­tic way, but even she could see he cared for her as a friend. And she didn’t have a lot of those. Cer­tainly not male ones who were will­ing to take her to a re­union and save her the em­bar­rass­ment of deal­ing with her old high school en­e­mies by her­self.

She could help him with this ruse un­til af­ter the re­union. By then, she’d have got­ten through see­ing her old class­mates, and his fa­ther would see how de­serv­ing he fi­nally was. It was less than two months.

“Yes,” she said.

It was the only thing she could do.

Chap­ter Eight

This was the dumb­est idea on the planet. No, in the gal­axy. Maybe even the en­tire uni­verse.Yay, aliens, I’ve just let you all off the hook!

And now, not only was she talk­ing to her­self, she was talk­ing to imag­i­nary aliens. Ob­vi­ously, she should call Adam and tell him she was sick, too sick to go to his fa­ther’s house for din­ner, too sick to par­tic­i­pate in this cha­rade.

In­stead, she stood in her bath­room, try­ing to force her frizzy, grav­ity-de­fy­ing hair into some­thing chic and so­phis­ti­cated, to go along with her black slacks and pale pink V-neck top. No mat­ter what she did, her hair re­sem­bled a Brillo pad. To­day was the one day it mat­tered, be­cause in ten min­utes Adam was pick­ing her up.

Ob­serv­ing the fu­til­ity of her en­deavor, she pulled her hair back from her face with two combs, added pale pink lip­stick and hoped it would be enough. She walked to her win­dow and stared down at the street be­low. In the dis­tance, she heard a mo­tor rac­ing and a mo­ment later, Adam’s fancy-schmancy sports car pulled up. It was black, ex­pen­sive, and noisy. When her buzzer rang, she grabbed her purse, whis­peredbeh-hahts-lah-khah, He­brew for good luck, and jogged down the steps.

Adam ex­ited the driver’s side and opened the pas­sen­ger door for her. As she started to slide in, he pulled her to­ward him and brushed her lips with his. He tasted minty and be­fore she could an­a­lyze how his kiss made her feel, he pulled away.

“You look great.”

She smiled and slid into the but­tery leather seat as he saun­tered around and started the car.

“Thanks.”

He gripped the steer­ing wheel and Dina watched him, wish­ing for easy ca­ma­raderie, but at a loss for how to get it. The ten­dons in his hands were taut and the mus­cles in his jaw bulged. When they stopped at the next traf­fic light, Dina rested her hand on his. Adam let out a breath and flexed his fin­gers be­neath her hand. His jaw un­clenched and he turned to her. “It’s not you. I’m just not look­ing for­ward to this din­ner.”

“Be­cause of me?”

“No. You’re the only good thing about it. Be­cause of my fa­ther.” He pulled her hand to­ward his mouth and kissed her fin­gers. “I like your hair.”

She laughed. “Se­ri­ously? I mean, I guess I should say, ‘thank you,’ but my hair does not de­serve a com­pli­ment.”

Reach­ing across the cen­ter con­sole, he grabbed a hank of her hair and squeezed and re­leased it. It bounced, like the spring in a pogo stick. “I like it. I will not stop com­pli­ment­ing some­thing I like. And I like you. So get used to it.”

“Yes, sir.”

His cheek twitched and Dina saw the hint of a smile cross his face be­fore he sti­fled it. But the mood in the car light­ened, at least un­til they turned into a drive be­tween two posts topped by mas­sive li­ons. As Adam steered the car around the curve, a huge brick fed­eral style man­sion with beige stone pil­lars came into view.

Dina swal­lowed and peered out the win­dow, half ex­pect­ing a line of ser­vants to stand out­side in greet­ing. This is where Adam’s fa­ther lived, and all she’d been wor­ried about was her hair?

Park­ing in front of the broad stone steps lead­ing up to an elab­o­rately carved dou­ble door, Adam hopped out of the car and came around to Dina’s side.

“Ready?” he asked, as he led her up the stairs.

“Sure.” Fake it ‘til you make it, baby.

He rang the bell and as the mu­si­cal chimes echoed in­side, Dina turned to him in puz­zle­ment.

“Wouldn’t it be eas­ier to just walk in?”

Be­fore Adam could an­swer, an older woman in black dress slacks and a white cot­ton blouse an­swered the door.