Page 43 of The Perfect Deception

“No. I told Tracy I’d watch the baby for part of the af­ter­noon so she and Joe could get some er­rands done. I’m not sure how late they’ll be.” She also wasn’t sure she could han­dle see­ing him two days in a row.

“I think you need some adult com­pany.”

Adult com­pany sounded slightly ob­scene when ut­tered by Adam. “Um, you want to hang out with a baby? Don’t you have other things you’d rather do?”

“I’m not do­ing it for the baby, I’m do­ing it to see you.”

She pressed her hand against her stom­ach and tried to stop the smile that threat­ened. Some­how, she didn’t think say­ing no was go­ing to be so easy. And come to think of it, she’d never watched a baby be­fore and she’d been try­ing to calm her nerves all morn­ing. “Have you spent time with any ba­bies be­fore?”

“I’m a baby ex­pert.”

Once again, he was com­ing to her res­cue. “That’s great. Be­cause I’ve never done this be­fore. Why don’t you come to Tracy’s at two?”

“I’ll pick you up in­stead and we can drive over to­gether.”

She gob­bled down a tuna and tomato sand­wich, and thought and rethought her babysit­ting out­fit—hav­ing Adam see her meant her “re­lax with a baby” out­fit needed se­ri­ous re­think­ing—sev­eral times be­fore Adam buzzed her apart­ment in­ter­com.

When she climbed into his car, she did a dou­ble take. “You do know we’re watch­ing a baby, right?”

“I didn’t for­get,” he said, as he pulled away from the curb. “Hello, by the way.”

“You ob­vi­ously weren’t pay­ing at­ten­tion, since you’re wear­ing a white shirt.” She pulled her brown turtle­neck to­ward him. “Brown hides stains best. And hi.”

He shook his head. “Bleach, my friend. There won’t be any prob­lem bleach can’t han­dle.” His gaze pierced hers. “You look pretty,” he said.

“No I don’t. I look like an over­grown choco­late bar.”

“There is never any­thing wrong with choco­late,” he said.

She hated when he was right. Dina bit her lip and looked out the win­dow. He ap­par­ently was good at laun­dry. If she were in­ter­ested in him as a po­ten­tial boyfriend, that would be a huge plus.

“Dina!” Tracy said as she opened the door, look­ing like a pris­oner about to be sprung from jail. “You brought re­in­force­ments.”

Re­in­force­ments? How much trou­ble could one minia­ture per­son be? “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” she said, pulling her in­side and kiss­ing Adam’s cheek. “Thank you both so much for this. Here’s where we’ll be.” She handed Dina a piece of pa­per with the name and ad­dress of three stores and a restau­rant. “And here’s her sched­ule.”

That list was longer. So long, in fact, Dina’s eyes widened as she turned the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven pa­per over.

“Macken­zie is sleep­ing, but I’ll show you where ev­ery­thing is.”

Silently, they got a tour of the apart­ment and af­ter an­other ten min­utes, Tracy and Joe left. Dina looked at Adam, who smiled.

Flus­tered, she looked at the list. “It says feed her at one-thirty.” She turned and headed to­ward the baby’s room.

“Wait,” Adam grabbed her arm. “She’s sleep­ing.”

“But the in­struc­tions say to feed her now.”

“Haven’t you ever heard the ad­vice to not wake a sleep­ing baby?”

“Yes, but I know Tracy. And she wouldn’t give us in­struc­tions if she didn’t want us to fol­low them.”

Adam leaned against the kitchen counter and folded his arms across his chest. “Do you al­ways fol­low the rules?”

Hav­ing shucked his jacket, all that stood be­tween her and his skin—aside from a few feet of air, of course—was a white cot­ton long-sleeved polo. His stance em­pha­sized his chest and arm mus­cles, and her throat went dry. She shook her head to clear her mind.

“You don’t?” he asked. “Some­how I didn’t pic­ture you as a rule breaker.”