Page 48 of The Perfect Deception

“No, let’s keep go­ing.”

She looked at him like she didn’t be­lieve him. “They’re prob­a­bly go­ing to be home soon.”

With­out wait­ing for his re­sponse, she swung the stroller around and headed in the op­po­site di­rec­tion. At home, by the time they’d taken off their coats, un­wrapped Macken­zie from the lay­ers of clothes they’d bun­dled her in, and stored the stroller, Tracy and Joe walked in.

“Did you guys sur­vive?” Tracy asked, as she un­wound her scarf and put her bags down.

Dina walked to­ward her, car­ry­ing Macken­zie, while Adam limped be­hind. He watched Tracy’s gaze flicker from one to the other. Tracy’s mouth twitched. She turned to her hus­band. As one, they laughed.

“Oh my, you two look like you’ve been through the ringer.”

Adam limped over and put his arm around Dina. She stiff­ened. He stroked her shoul­der with his thumb. “Nah, we’re good. A lit­tle spit up, a lit­tle poop, a lit­tle bruise. No big deal.”

She didn’t re­lax into his em­brace, as he’d hoped, but she didn’t move away ei­ther. “He’s right. It was fun.”

Later, af­ter they’d left, Adam turned to her in the car. “Want to go out tonight?”

She looked down at her shirt. “I’m pretty sure I smell.”

Her brown shirt was stained. Her hair was wild. Her lip was caught be­tween her teeth. She’d never looked more beau­ti­ful.

He sniffed the air. “I don’t smell any­thing.” Then he turned and sniffed his shoul­der. “Well, maybe some spit up.”

Her smile made her eyes sparkle. Had he never no­ticed that?

“If you don’t mind, I think I’m go­ing to pass tonight. I’m ex­hausted. An­other time?” She grabbed her coat and opened the door as he pulled up in front of her apart­ment. “But thanks for the of­fer. And for com­ing with me to­day. You were a huge help.”

He nod­ded, won­der­ing what she’d do if he kissed her. Be­fore he could test it out, she climbed out of the car. As he watched her go into her build­ing, he won­dered how much longer it would take to per­suade her into the idea of a re­la­tion­ship with him.

Be­cause he wasn’t sure he could wait.

Chap­ter Thir­teen

Wait­ing was hard. Dina picked up her phone and put it down on the ta­ble next to her bed three times, be­fore grab­bing a book and march­ing into the liv­ing room to read. But her mind wouldn’t fo­cus on the words. It was fo­cused on sharp green eyes, tawny hair, and warm skin that smelled like cloves.

She couldn’t stop think­ing of Adam, which was an­noy­ing re­ally, since she shouldn’t be think­ing of him at all. They were only friends, at her in­sis­tence. And even if she did think of him—and friends thought about each other—she most cer­tainly wasn’t sup­posed to think about pud­dles of goo. Be­cause that’s how he made her in­sides feel, in a de­li­cious, warm, tingly kind of way.

And that couldn’t hap­pen.

So she left her phone—her life­line en­abling her to hear his voice once more—where it lay in her bed­room and once again tried to fo­cus on the cozy mys­tery she was read­ing. She couldn’t re­mem­ber the plot. She could barely re­mem­ber the mys­tery. She did know there was a cat, be­cause the de­scrip­tion of it in the book re­minded her of Adam’s soft cash­mere sweater, the one he’d worn the last time they’d eaten to­gether.

Ugh!

It had only been a day since she’d last spo­ken to him. She’d come to de­pend on his daily calls. Usu­ally, he called around seven-thirty. Seven forty-five if he was busy. But it was eight-thirty and he hadn’t called her yet.

Would he?

Maybe she should call him. Friends did that. She and Tracy were friends and they called each other all the time.

Ex­cept Adam was a guy. Would he look at her phone call as an ad­mis­sion of her at­trac­tion to him? Be­cause even she was hard put to deny her at­trac­tion to him any longer, even if she didn’t want to an­nounce it.

They had an ar­range­ment, and act­ing on her at­trac­tion would com­pli­cate things and make her seem pa­thetic.

She flung her book across the room, and then raced to get it. Pick­ing it up off the floor, she brushed it off and ex­am­ined it to make sure it wasn’t dam­aged. Li­brar­i­ans didn’t throw books. It was against their code of con­duct. The only thing worse than throw­ing a book would be to dog-ear the pages. She was pretty sure they’d re­voke her mas­ters in li­brary sci­ence for that.

Plac­ing the cozy mys­tery on the end ta­ble, she walked back into her bed­room and picked up her phone. This was crazy. She’d call him. She could al­ways plead a wrong num­ber.

She di­aled his num­ber and held her breath while she waited for him to pick up.