Page 42 of The Perfect Deception

So much for Shab­bat peace. She pasted a smile on her face and walked over to him.

“Shab­bat Shalom,” she said. “I didn’t ex­pect to see you here.”

His face lit up in a smile and her heart stut­tered in her chest. He leaned over and placed a kiss on her cheek. It shouldn’t have af­fected her—ev­ery­one did it—but her knees wob­bled.

“I thought it would be a nice place to be tonight.”

Her lips trem­bled and she eyed him askance. “Re­ally?”

He shrugged. “Well, you come ev­ery week. There must be some­thing you like about it. I thought I’d try it.”

He tried to hide his un­cer­tainty, but she saw it peek­ing out, like a child sneak­ing out of bed to spy on the grownups, and her heart melted. “I’m glad you’re here. Let’s go sit down.”

Adam took her el­bow as they en­tered the sanc­tu­ary, greeted the ush­ers, and found a seat half­way down the cen­ter aisle. They sat to­gether, Adam’s arm across the back of her chair.

“Hi, Dina,” Re­becca said. “Can we join you?”

Re­becca, her hus­band Aaron, and their kids scooted into the row while Dina made in­tro­duc­tions. “Adam, this is my friend Re­becca and her fam­ily.” Adam leaned for­ward and shook ev­ery­one’s hand. “Re­becca, this is my friend, Adam.”

Dina bus­ied her­self in pick­ing up the cor­rect prayer book, but not be­fore she saw Re­becca’s ap­prais­ing glance. The rabbi walked to thebimaand nod­ded to the Can­tor, who be­gan hum­ming anig­gun, and Dina was saved from hav­ing to say any­thing fur­ther to Re­becca as the word­less melody washed over her.

Through­out the ser­vice, Dina kept watch over Adam out of the cor­ner of her eye. He was fa­mil­iar enough with the prayer book and most of the prayers, and joined in singing many of the songs. His singing voice was beau­ti­ful—deep and husky—and made her feel as if he were whis­per­ing words of love only to her. He’d moved his arm from the back of her chair, but it now rested next to her. Ev­ery fiber of her be­ing told her to move so her arm could touch his, even if it was only through cloth. But they were in tem­ple and they were friends, so she dragged her gaze for­ward and fo­cused on the ser­vice.

When it was over, they joined the en­tire con­gre­ga­tion in the so­cial hall for theoneg. Usu­ally, talk­ing to peo­ple over re­fresh­ments was one of Dina’s fa­vorite parts of the ser­vice, but this time, Adam was stand­ing too close and she couldn’t con­cen­trate.

“Would you like some­thing to drink,” he asked, af­ter they’d said the prayers over the wine and thechal­lah.

“Wa­ter would be great,” she said, as much to put some dis­tance be­tween them as to soothe her parched throat. Adam left to find her a drink and Re­becca moved closer.

“So, just ‘friends,’ huh?” Re­becca asked, her brown eyes al­most golden with laugh­ter.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure about that? Be­cause he doesn’t look at you like a friend, and you don’t re­spond to him like one.”

“None of that mat­ters. We can’t be any­thing more.”

“So does that mean you’re in­ter­ested in Zach?”

Dina sighed. “I should be. He was great.”

“But?”

She shrugged. “But…I don’t know.”

“I think you do,” Re­becca said, as Adam re­turned with a glass of wa­ter.

Chap­ter Twelve

“Come to din­ner with me tonight?” Adam asked Dina, dur­ing what she was be­gin­ning to think of as her daily phone call.

It be­ing Sat­ur­day, he’d called in the morn­ing. Eleven to be pre­cise. Af­ter spend­ing time to­gether last night at tem­ple. What was left to talk about? Ap­par­ently eat­ing.

“I’m not sure I can.”

“Some­one else tak­ing you out?”

His tone was light, but she could hear an un­der­ly­ing edge to it, be­tray­ing nerves that he cov­ered with a laugh. It could have been in­ter­preted as mean, but she didn’t in­ter­pret it that way. Adam was many things, in­clud­ing Mr. Flashy­pants, but “mean” wasn’t one of them.