Page 53 of The Perfect Deception

His mind skit­tered back to yes­ter­day and the de­ba­cle with his fa­ther. He shut his eyes tightly, as if that would block the mem­ory from re­turn­ing. He’d much rather think about Dina. But un­for­tu­nately, those ear­lier mem­o­ries were clear and pro­lific.

His fa­ther, his own fa­ther, had fired him.

Even though Ash­ley had lied.

He shook his head as pain sliced through him once again. He looked for a dis­trac­tion. Where was Dina?

Look­ing around his apart­ment, he didn’t find a note or any sign she’d been there. Well, maybe there was. The empty bot­tles were lined up on the counter—he didn’t think he’d had the pres­ence of mind to do that—and his clothes were folded on the re­cliner.

His clothes.

He looked down. Yup, he was naked. He was def­i­nitely hung over if he hadn’t no­ticed he was naked.

Shit. He’d had drunk sex with Dina. The one per­son he cared about and who cared about him. What had he done? What had he said? Had he told her about be­ing fired? Had he even made sure she was en­joy­ing her­self? Come to think of it, how had she got­ten here? And now where had she gone?

He started to pat his leg to feel for his phone and would have laughed at the stu­pid­ity, but there were too many stupid things in his life that weren’t funny. Rif­fling through his stacked clothes, he felt the hard rec­tan­gle of his phone and pulled it out of the pocket. Maybe she’d texted him. He turned it on.

She hadn’t.

He’d had drunk sex with her. She de­served more than a text from him. He di­aled her num­ber. When her voice­mail con­nected, his stom­ach dropped.

“Hey, Dina, it’s Adam. Give me a call.”

He prob­a­bly should have said more. But what was he sup­posed to say when he didn’t know ex­actly what he’d said or done. That con­ver­sa­tion shouldn’t hap­pen on a voice­mail, let alone via text.

Sit­ting in the cof­fee shop, Dina watched Adam’s name ap­pear on her phone screen and let it go to voice mail. This was one awk­ward phone con­ver­sa­tion she was not ready to have. Just as her voice mail dinged, in­di­cat­ing he’d left a mes­sage, Tracy walked up to her ta­ble cradling her cof­fee cup like it was a pot of gold.

“Meet­ing for cof­fee this morn­ing was a fab­u­lous idea,” she said, lean­ing over and kiss­ing Dina’s cheek. “Macken­zie didn’t sleep all night and I needed to get away from the house.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Dina said, stir­ring her tea. She could only imag­ine how dif­fi­cult it had to be be­ing up all night with a baby, and then tak­ing care of the same baby all day. Luck­ily for Tracy, her hus­band was a huge help. Some­day, Dina hoped to be as lucky. A vi­sion of Adam ris­ing over her flashed in her brain and she shook her head.

“Comes with the ter­ri­tory. Now, tell me what’s go­ing on with you. You have a glow.”

Dina reared back. “A glow? What kind of glow?”

Tracy leaned for­ward. “You slept with him, didn’t you?”

“Wha…what are you talk­ing about?” Sweat broke out on Dina’s up­per lip. Could she blame it on the hot tea?

Laugh­ter from her best friend told her the jig was up, and Dina let her head fall into her hands. “I am in so much trou­ble,” she said.

“Why? I’m sur­prised you waited this long.”

“Tracy! We’ve only known each other a few weeks, and he keeps me at arm’s length. Be­sides which, I don’t sleep around.”

“I’m hop­ing there was more than sleep­ing go­ing on,” her friend said with a laugh.

Dina glared at her.

“Was it good?”

Dina shrugged. “Yes and no.”

“De­tails.”

Bossy lady. “It was Adam, he doesn’t do any­thing half­way.” She smiled. “But he was drunk, so it wasn’t as ro­man­tic as…”

“You’d fan­ta­sized it would be?”