Page 3 of The Perfect Deception

She climbed into his BMW and turned the ig­ni­tion key. The mo­tor purred. Heat blasted from the vents and she sighed in de­light as she sank into the but­ter-soft leather seat. The dash­board gleamed, look­ing like some­thing you’d see in a fighter jet. She had no idea where the con­trols were even if she wanted to turn on the ra­dio. Five min­utes later, he be­gan walk­ing to­ward her, so she got out of the car.

“All fixed,” he said.

“I re­ally ap­pre­ci­ate your help­ing me out. Can I buy you a cup of cof­fee?”

He hes­i­tated. “Nah,” he said, “I’m good.”

“Are you sure? You look pretty cold…and wet. It’s the least I can do.”

He rolled his shoul­ders, the wool of his over­coat glis­ten­ing from the mois­ture. “Fol­low me to the diner?”

She nod­ded and waved to the cop, who pulled out onto the road be­hind them. As she drove, she re­al­ized she’d never be home in time for Shab­bat ser­vices. Oh well. She was thank­ing him for amitz­vah. There were worse rea­sons to miss tem­ple.

He pulled his Beamer into an empty spot, leav­ing the one clos­est to the door and the light, for…dammit, he didn’t re­mem­ber her name. Un­like his lack of mem­ory about Ash­ley, this mem­ory lapse could be fixed. He shook his head, try­ing to dis­pel the thought. Well, what­ever her name was, she seemed sweet enough and she shouldn’t have to walk through a dark park­ing lot alone. He took the stairs two at a time and waited for her in the foyer, star­ing at the team pic­tures on the walls and the mul­ti­col­ored stacks of busi­ness cards in the rack. A mo­ment later, her non­de­script-look­ing car pulled into the spot he’d left for her and she joined him.

“Hey, I just re­al­ized, I don’t re­mem­ber your name,” he said. He hid his em­bar­rass­ment with a smile.

Her round face red­dened, but she laughed. It was a beau­ti­ful laugh. “It’s Dina Ja­cobs.” She held her hand out and he clasped it, find­ing it softer and smaller than he’d ex­pected.

“Hello, Dina Ja­cobs. I’m Adam Man­del.”

She pulled her hand away and clasped both of them to­gether in front of her. “I know. Shall we sit down?”

She was ner­vous, he thought, as he fol­lowed her and the host­ess to their booth next to the win­dow. His neck heated. Was she al­ways like this or was it in re­ac­tion to him? Did his anger at his fa­ther spill over to his ac­tions with her? As he slid into the booth, he made a con­certed ef­fort to re­lax his mus­cles and to for­get about the ac­cu­sa­tion—at least for now.

Their booth over­looked the park­ing lot and the high­way, so it didn’t pro­vide much of a view. The faux-leather menus were huge with page af­ter vinyl page of ev­ery­thing you could imag­ine. It was an in­de­ci­sive per­son’s hell. Luck­ily he was just hav­ing cof­fee.

“You know what you’re or­der­ing al­ready?” Her menu was open, and she was scan­ning each page, as if she’d never seen such a plethora of food be­fore.

“You in­vited me for cof­fee.”

She snorted, which he some­how found re­fresh­ing and adorable. “Oh, please. It’s din­ner­time. You can’t pos­si­bly tell me you’re not hun­gry.”

Well, when she put it that way. He stud­ied the burger sec­tion.

“So, other than res­cu­ing women on the side of the road, and al­most be­ing ar­rested by a cop, what do you do?”

“I’m a cor­po­rate at­tor­ney, work­ing in Mor­ris­town.”

“I’m a li­brar­ian at the main li­brary in town.”

If any­one fit the stereo­type, it was Dina. Match­ing pink sweater set, frizzy black hair pulled back with combs—all she needed were read­ing glasses hang­ing around her neck. But she wasn’t old enough for those. She looked around his age.

“Did you al­ways want to be a li­brar­ian?”

“I’ve al­ways been more com­fort­able in the imag­i­nary worlds cre­ated by books, so yes, I did. I sup­pose you don’t get to read books much.”

“Why would you as­sume that?” He worked hard to main­tain his im­age. Be­tween his de­signer suits, well-groomed ap­pear­ance, and his JD de­gree, the last thing any­one would ever mis­take him for was an id­iot.

Her eyes widened. “Be­cause cor­po­rate law prac­tice re­quires tons of hours, and I’d as­sume a lot of read­ing of law ma­te­ri­als. You prob­a­bly don’t want to spend what lit­tle down time you have read­ing for plea­sure.”

He leaned to­ward her, arms on the ta­ble. “You’re around books all day, right?”

She nod­ded.

“Do you read when you go home?”

She nod­ded again.