Page 5 of The Perfect Deception

Her smile light­ened her words, but as he watched her drive away, he couldn’t help but won­der. Could there be a next time?

Chap­ter Two

Dina walked into the li­brary Mon­day car­ry­ing a stack of books. As planned, she’d spent the week­end read­ing, com­ing up for air oc­ca­sion­ally to eat. It had been ages since she’d had the time to do that, and it had been just what she’d needed. Her smile was huge as she ap­proached the cir­cu­la­tion desk.

“Whoa, those are all yours, Dina?” Her friend, Tracy Bat­ton, laughed as she reached out to steady the pile on the desk. “How in the world can you read so many?”

“Speed read­ing. And they were great. Well, most of them. This one,” she pulled one from the mid­dle of the pile and then jumped to pre­vent the pile from top­pling, “wasn’t fab­u­lous.”

“Not a bad ra­tio. Guess I know what you did this week­end.”

“In its en­tirety.” Well, ex­cept for Fri­day night.

“I envy you. Joe and I spent the whole week­end home with a sick baby.”

Dina’s smile faded. “Oh, poor thing. But I ac­tu­ally envy you, Tracy. Be­cause you’ve got your life to­gether and you have some­thing to show for it.” She’d give any­thing to have a life like Tracy’s.

“Come on, Dina. You do too. You’ve got a job you love, great friends…what’s wrong?”

“I’m prob­a­bly just dread­ing my high school re­union. I just got the in­vi­ta­tion to my tenth.”

“So don’t go.”

“I’m tempted. I’m pretty sure I at­tended high school with ev­ery mean girl on the planet. And they all grew up into scary PTA moms, nasty soc­cer moms, and bitchy ex­ec­u­tives. But they all have some­one to take with them and as usual, I’ll be go­ing alone.”

“Want to bor­row Joe?”

Dina burst out laugh­ing. “That would be hi­lar­i­ous. But no. I’m prob­a­bly not go­ing, any­way. Only about twenty to thirty per­cent of alums ac­tu­ally go. Don’t mind me, I’ll fig­ure it out.”

She went to her cu­bi­cle in the of­fice on the sec­ond floor and spent the rest of the morn­ing up­dat­ing files, and cat­a­logu­ing. Usu­ally she loved her job, but to­day she found her mind wan­der­ing. What was she go­ing to do about her ten-year re­union? There was no point in go­ing if she was go­ing to be mis­er­able, but a part of her wanted to see how peo­ple had turned out. It was kind of a big mile­stone, and prob­a­bly the last one she’d go to.

Would her high school class­mates re­sem­ble the women she of­ten saw in the li­brary pe­rus­ing mag­a­zines—long straight hair, slip dresses, phones out? Would the guys she re­mem­bered still have their hair, or would they be like the man sit­ting at the com­puter this morn­ing, sport­ing a bald spot and a ring of hair like a monk? How many of the women would al­ready have chil­dren? She thought about the woman she passed in the chil­dren’s sec­tion, preg­nant, with four chil­dren at­tached to her like ac­ces­sories, hang­ing from her arms and her skirt and grab­bing her leg, drag­ging her to­ward the stuffed chairs, and won­dered when it would be her turn. Would her class­mates even re­mem­ber her? Her shoul­ders slumped.

Jim from In­ven­tory knocked on her cu­bi­cle and she jumped. “Just got a new ship­ment of books and I was told to ask if you had time to start on them?”

“Sure.” She loved the new books. Get­ting them ready to be shelved and even­tu­ally bor­rowed was sure to im­prove her mood. Not to men­tion, give her a pre­view of what to add to her TBR list. She fol­lowed Jim to the ac­qui­si­tions room and set­tled in among the boxes. The first box she opened was ro­mances and as she as­signed them their own Dewey dec­i­mal num­ber, she made note of which ones she wanted to read. The next box was full of ref­er­ence books. She was al­most fin­ished en­ter­ing them into the com­puter when she came across one about the his­tory of comic books. Her heart rate in­creased as she re­mem­bered what Adam had said about lik­ing su­per­heroes. He’d prob­a­bly find this fas­ci­nat­ing. Pag­ing through it, she won­dered if she should let him know about it.He prob­a­bly has no use for ref­er­ence books. He’s not a re­searcher.

How­ever, once Adam en­tered her mind, she had a hard time let­ting him go. She’d had a sur­pris­ingly good time with him at the diner. When she’d first seen him, af­ter she got over the idea that he might be a se­rial killer, she’d pegged him for a play­boy—fancy car, nice clothes, plat­inum credit card. Over­all, not some­one she’d choose to spend time with.

She wasn’t usu­ally at­tracted to good-look­ing men. Not as good look­ing as Adam, any­way. From her ex­pe­ri­ence with them in high school and col­lege, they tended to be shal­low and looked for women as gor­geous as them. She’d ex­am­ined her­self too many times in the mir­ror to be­lieve that a guy like Adam would fall for her. Red­dish blond hair, green eyes, lanky, and as her mother would say, good bone struc­ture. When he smiled, she’d spot­ted a dim­ple in his left cheek and he had an in­trigu­ing divot in his chin. His voice was like aged whiskey and even now, she could re­mem­ber its tim­bre.

But some­thing about Adam was dif­fer­ent than how he ap­peared. Be­yond his looks, he was smart. Dur­ing their con­ver­sa­tion in the diner, his in­tel­li­gence had come through, turn­ing her ini­tial con­clu­sion about him on its ear. That made him even more at­trac­tive to her. He’d ob­vi­ously stud­ied hard if he was a lawyer and he was in­ter­ested in top­ics other than just law. And de­spite their rep­u­ta­tion, su­per­heroes were a fairly com­plex sub­ject, tack­ling is­sues like race re­la­tions, women’s rights and gov­ern­ment, among oth­ers. Which brought her back to the box of books.

Should she con­tact him to tell him about the new book?

Shak­ing her head, she moved onto the next box. She was never go­ing to see him again. And if he wanted to do re­search, he knew where to start. He didn’t need her giv­ing him use­less in­for­ma­tion.

Her shoul­ders cramped. She stretched. Grab­bing her lunch, she took it out­side, and sat on a bench to watch passersby as she ate. A few mo­ments later, Tracy joined her.

“Per­fect day for this,” her friend said.

Dina nod­ded. “Af­ter un­pack­ing books all day, this is ex­actly what I need.”

“Feel­ing bet­ter now?”

“Dina?” A husky bass voice vi­brated through the air.

She looked up. Her stom­ach flut­tered. “Adam? What are you do­ing here?”