Page 36 of The Perfect Deception

“That was my only one. My fa­ther was so an­gry, I don’t think I was able to sit for a week. How about you?”

“Did I get into any fights?” Dina laughed.

He laughed with her. “What were you like as a kid?”

“You wouldn’t have no­ticed me,” she said. “I al­ways had my head in a book. The teacher would have to call my name re­peat­edly for me to even hear her.”

His face took on a dreamy qual­ity, as if he were pic­tur­ing her lost in her book.

“And now?”

“I still keep my nose in books. The worlds they cre­ate are won­der­ful. I can live any­where I want, be any­one I want, with­out con­se­quence.”

Adam huffed. “That has a cer­tain ap­peal.” His fin­gers tight­ened around her hand, not enough to hurt, but enough to tell her he’d tensed up and she strug­gled for a way to change the sub­ject. Not know­ing what up­set him, she didn’t want to ruin their walk.

“I bought a dress for the re­union,” she said.

“What’s it look like?”

She grap­pled with a way to de­scribe it—fash­ion wasn’t her strong suit. “It’s cream, with a ruf­fle and…” No way was she men­tion­ing the Sticky Boobs.

“And?”

Her face heated as she tried to fig­ure out how to fill in the “and.” “Tracy helped me and she says it’s per­fect, but I’m not sure.”

He slanted his gaze to­ward her and squeezed her hand again. This time, the squeeze wasn’t filled with ten­sion. “I can’t wait to see it.”

His con­fi­dence in her ap­pear­ance should have made her happy. In­stead, it only gave her anx­i­ety. She sus­pected he was used to fash­ion model-types, not girls with frizzy hair and hips. And even if she passed in­spec­tion when he first saw her, once he saw the rest of her class­mates, she was sure he’d find her lack­ing.

Well, she could spend the next few weeks wor­ry­ing about it, or she could suck it up and ac­cept her­self for the way she was.

She just hoped Adam could do the same.

“Adam, your fa­ther wants to see you,” Di­ane, his fa­ther’s sec­re­tary, an­nounced as Adam walked into the of­fice Mon­day morn­ing.

Adam con­tin­ued walk­ing to his desk, his stom­ach clenched.

“I think he’d like to see you right away,” she said, fol­low­ing Adam.

The woman would have re­minded him of a puppy, with the way she fol­lowed his fa­ther around do­ing his bid­ding, if she wasn’t so sharp and fe­ro­cious. Maybe a rat ter­rier? With her hair pulled back in a tight bun, small pointy glasses and bright red nail pol­ish, he could see the re­sem­blance. He nod­ded to her and changed his di­rec­tion.

Adam knocked on his fa­ther’s door, not both­er­ing to wait for his fa­ther to an­swer. There had to be some perk to be­ing the boss’s son. These days he was hard pressed to come up with any oth­ers.

“When are you bring­ing Dina to the of­fice?” His fa­ther spoke with­out look­ing up from his desk, his at­ten­tion still on what­ever was on his com­puter screen.

Two can play this game. Adam sat, crossed his leg over his knee. He waited for his fa­ther to look at him.

Af­ter a mo­ment, his fa­ther met his gaze.

“Why would I bring her here?”

An ex­pres­sion ap­peared on his fa­ther’s face that Adam could only de­scribe as pa­tron­iz­ing, the kind you give a small child who doesn’t un­der­stand the sim­plest of com­mands. “I thought we went over this, Adam. You need to change your im­age. Com­pletely. Bring­ing Dina here, in­tro­duc­ing her as your steady girl­friend, would help you do that. It would make you seem more sta­ble and thought­ful.”

Bile rose in Adam’s throat at his fa­ther’s bla­tant use of Dina. And his. Be­cause wasn’t that why he was dat­ing her?

“Seems to me that would only prove I slack off, since I wouldn’t be work­ing when she was here.”

“I don’t re­call your work­ing on any­thing so im­por­tant you couldn’t have a small break to show your girl­friend around.”