Page 58 of The Perfect Deception

Her body filled with warmth. She didn’t have to rel­e­gate him to “friends only.” She could be her­self. “Well, it’s not as if you planned on your fa­ther scream­ing at you in pub­lic. He did scream at you, right?”

He gave her a hu­mor­less smile. “Yeah. So, what ques­tions did you want me to an­swer?”

Dina fid­geted. He was will­ing to an­swer her ques­tions. It was time to trust him and ac­tu­ally get an­swers. “So, about your dad…”

All the ten­sion re­turned to his shoul­ders. “What else is left to say about him? He’s a clod­pate, as you so aptly put it, and I’m done.”

“Why do I feel like there’s some­thing you’re not telling me?”

Adam flexed and un­flexed his fin­gers. “Some­one lied about whether or not I gave my para­le­gal some­thing to file. It didn’t get filed and I lost the case. The sit­u­a­tion took on a life of its own and is hurt­ing the firm’s rep­u­ta­tion. And it’s not the first time a case I’ve worked on got screwed up. But no mat­ter how much I beg him to be­lieve that I’ve changed and that it wasn’t me who screwed up,” Adam swal­lowed in dis­taste, “good old ‘clod­pate’ doesn’t be­lieve me.”

“But he seemed okay at din­ner.” Not any­one she’d want as a fa­ther, but not some­one who’d dis­be­lieve his own son.

“He’s great at putting on a show.”

“Why is he so set on not be­liev­ing you?”

Adam sighed. “Hon­estly, I’m cocky, and I prob­a­bly cre­ated part of the prob­lem. I was care­less in the past. But I’ve changed, only he doesn’t see it—isn’t will­ing to see it—es­pe­cially now. Speak­ing of now, do we have to con­tinue talk­ing about him?”

She wasn’t fin­ished. “What are you go­ing to do about your pro­mo­tion?”

Adam nar­rowed his gaze. “I’ll fig­ure it out. I don’t re­ally know. What I do know is I want to kiss you.”

He leaned over and pressed his lips against hers, mov­ing his mouth against hers as if he was draw­ing the kiss out of her in slow, deep pulls. This time she didn’t stop him. This time, his mouth didn’t taste of whiskey. This time, his lips were gen­tle. He ran his hands through her hair, mas­sag­ing the back of her scalp. When she opened her mouth to moan at the de­li­cious chills run­ning through her body, he licked his way into her mouth, ex­plor­ing her and get­ting to know her by taste.

It was glo­ri­ous and she wanted him.

And then he pulled away, pant­ing.

“That was more like it,” he whis­pered, run­ning his thumb along her lower lip.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and reached to kiss him again, but as soon as her lips touched his, he pulled back.

“I can’t be­lieve I’m say­ing this, but no,” he said, adding space be­tween them. “We’re do­ing this the right way this time. Nice and slow.”

“I can kiss you slowly,” she said, shock­ing her­self at her own au­dac­ity. She must have shocked Adam too, be­cause he flinched and let out a low laugh.

“Yes, you def­i­nitely can.” He leaned for­ward and nipped her up­per lip be­fore once again pulling away. “But if we keep kiss­ing, it will lead to more. Right here, right away. I don’t want to rush any­thing. I want to dis­cover ev­ery­thing about you that I missed last night.”

Heat pooled low in her belly just lis­ten­ing to him. “So what does that mean?” she asked, her voice trem­bling with de­sire. She rose and rested her fore­head against his shoul­der.

“As crazy as it sounds, it means no more sex un­til we know each other in other ways. Much. Much. Bet­ter.”

Adam closed the door of his build­ing be­hind Dina af­ter promis­ing he’d call her tonight, re­turned to his apart­ment and took the first of what he sus­pected was go­ing to be many long, cold show­ers. Never be­fore had he de­nied him­self sex as he was do­ing with Dina. But Dina was spe­cial and he wanted to do the right thing with her.

He di­aled Ja­cob’s num­ber.

“Hey, want to meet me at the driv­ing range?”

“Sure, when?” Ja­cob asked.

“One o’clock?”

“See you then.”

He pulled into the park­ing spot, grabbed his golf clubs and walked into the driv­ing range of­fice. Ja­cob was al­ready there. They walked to their cage, each car­ry­ing a bucket of balls. To their right was a teenage girl and her coach; to their left were sev­eral boys, each in their own cage. Adam waved at Ja­cob to go first. His friend ad­justed his stance, shifted his hips, and swung his club. The ball soared through the air, com­ing close to the two hun­dred yard mark. Af­ter ten swings, Ja­cob stepped aside.

“So, what’s go­ing on?” Ja­cob ad­justed his golf glove.