Page 46 of The Perfect Deception

“No, she’s just laugh­ing at your face.”

“My…you…!” He tried to frown but couldn’t pull it off and Dina laughed. Jok­ing around, she could han­dle. See­ing Adam with a baby, that was more dif­fi­cult to deal with.

“Se­ri­ously, why are you ner­vous?” he asked. His green eyes dark­ened with con­cern and fo­cused on her, send­ing mid­night-col­ored lasers di­rect to her heart, which started thump­ing.

“I’m not sure what to do with her,” she said. Or you.

“She’s easy.”

Had she imag­ined a stres­sor on “she?” “She’s a baby who doesn’t talk,” she said.

“With a mother who pro­vides in­struc­tions that ri­val IKEA’s.”

True.

He pulled the in­struc­tion list to­ward him while rat­tling one of the toys on the bouncy thing. It re­ally needed a name.

“We change her di­a­per in twenty min­utes. Af­ter that, we have time un­til she needs to eat again. Want to go for a walk?”

“Does it say we should?”

He smiled. “It doesn’t say we shouldn’t. And Tracy left us the stroller all set up by the door. In fact, we could prob­a­bly change her now and leave early.”

“No! She said a half hour af­ter eat­ing. We should wait.”

“Boy, you re­ally are a rule fol­lower.”

“Well, nei­ther of us seems to know any­thing about ba­bies,” said Dina. “We prob­a­bly shouldn’t de­vi­ate from the sched­ule too much.”

He squeezed her hand and she tried to join in play­ing with Macken­zie. When her phone alarm buzzed, she took the baby and went to change her di­a­per.

“Want help?” Adam asked.

“No, I think I’ve got this.”

She laid her on the chang­ing ta­ble. “We can do this, right?” she whis­pered.

Open­ing the di­a­per, she cringed. Macken­zie was filthy and it was ev­ery­where. She thought about call­ing Adam for re­in­force­ments, but doubted he’d be much help. Screw­ing up her face, which caused the baby to gig­gle again, and breath­ing through her mouth, she cleaned her as best she could be­fore di­a­per­ing and re­dress­ing her.

“Oh, that was nasty,” she said, as she re­turned to Adam. “You should be very glad you didn’t do this one.”

She handed Macken­zie over to Adam who took her and pointed at Dina’s shirt. “Um…”

“What?”

Look­ing down, she frowned, pulled her shirt to her nose and sniffed. “Oh no!” she said as her face heated.

Adam did a worse job at re­strain­ing his laugh­ter than she had done when Macken­zie spit up. “Guess it’s a good thing you wore brown.”

“I have to go clean this.”

Dina ran into the bath­room, thank­ful there was a door she could shut. It was a good thing she and Adam were only friends, be­cause she’d be mor­ti­fied if this hap­pened oth­er­wise. And that flush on her cheeks? Must be from the heat. It was go­ing to be scorch­ing hot sum­mer—even if it was only March.

“All fixed?” Adam asked, as she emerged from the bath­room.

Nod­ding, she fo­cused on Macken­zie, who was seated in the stroller. “Don’t you think she needs a jacket?” Her cheeks might still be burn­ing, but she didn’t think it was con­ta­gious.

Adam dropped his head to his chest. “Oh, yeah.”