Page 56 of The Perfect Deception

Dina. She had an in­ner glow that made her cheeks rosy and her in­tel­li­gent eyes soft. She looked at him like he mat­tered. She was beau­ti­ful, de­spite the mis­ery giv­ing her eyes a sil­very amethyst tint. Her curly hair framed her face, her pale skin was al­most translu­cent, but her shoul­ders were hunched.

He wanted to take her in his arms and never let her go. He wanted to get on his knees and ask for for­give­ness. He wanted to beg her never to leave. He wanted to tell her he might love her.

His body went cold. Love her? He rolled the word in his head and his body tem­per­a­ture re­turned to nor­mal. The word didn’t scare him as much as he ex­pected it to.

But she was look­ing at him with dread in her eyes, like she was afraid of him.

“Did I hurt you?” His voice sounded like a bull­frog. He cleared it. “Dina?” He mo­tioned her in­side.

Con­fu­sion crossed her fea­tures as she walked in. “Hurt me? When?”

“Last night.” His body was frozen in place. If he’d hurt her, he’d never for­give him­self.

“No, you didn’t.”

Grip­ping the door­jamb to pre­vent him­self from fall­ing to the ground as his knees buck­led, he in­haled. Thank God.

She didn’t want to be here, with him. She was go­ing to leave him. He’d never get to tell her.

Back­ing up, he walked into the kitchen. He wanted to lock the front door, but that would be creepy. “Can I get you any­thing to drink?”

She blinked. “Wa­ter would be good.”

Some­one who wanted wa­ter wasn’t walk­ing away. Yet. Still, he kept watch on her as he grabbed a glass from the cherry cab­i­net and the fil­tered wa­ter from the sub-zero re­frig­er­a­tor. Hand­ing it to her, their fin­gers touched. He felt a charge run up his arm, straight to his heart. He wanted to be the one to get her wa­ter, food, what­ever she needed, al­ways. He watched her take a sip. He wished he were the glass, be­cause her hands wrapped around it as if she would never let it go. Point­ing to the liv­ing room, he fol­lowed her in. He watched her pause at the sofa be­fore sit­ting in the re­cliner.

He swal­lowed. “About last night…”

“It’s fine. I know ev­ery­thing is dif­fer­ent now and that’s okay.”

“Ex­cuse me?”

“Our ar­range­ment. It’s ir­rel­e­vant now.”

He must have had way more to drink than he thought.

Run­ning a hand over his hair, he rose and paced the room. “Okay, let’s back up. Last night, I was drunk, you came over, we had sex. Does that about cover it?”

She nod­ded with­out mak­ing eye con­tact.

“What ar­range­ment are you talk­ing about?”

“The one where I help you with your rep­u­ta­tion and you go with me to my re­union.”

“Yeah, that’s the one I thought you were talk­ing about. Only I have no idea what you’re ac­tu­ally say­ing. Why does one thing have to do with an­other?”

“Be­cause I’m do­ing a ter­ri­ble job im­prov­ing your rep­u­ta­tion and your clod­pate of a fa­ther isn’t chang­ing his mind.” She cov­ered her mouth. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Do I want to know what a ‘clod­pate’ is?”

Her face heated. “It’s an old-fash­ioned term for id­iot. I don’t know why it popped out like that.”

Adam couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face. Leave it to Dina to pick that word. He loved that quirk of hers. Hell, if he was right, he loved ev­ery­thing about her. “That’s quite al­right. What I don’t un­der­stand is why you think that has any­thing to do with our hav­ing sex.”

“Be­cause you don’t need me to help your rep­u­ta­tion. So we have no rea­son to keep see­ing each other.”

She had the most ex­pres­sive face he’d ever seen. Ev­ery emo­tion showed in her lovely vi­o­let eyes. What shade would they turn if he told her he loved her?

“Why do you think we had sex last night?” he asked.