Page 59 of The Perfect Deception

Adam bent to line up the ball on the tee. “My dad fired me.” Even ut­ter­ing the words brought a bit­ter taste to his mouth. He swung his club, watch­ing the ball skip over the ground and travel nowhere. Just like his ca­reer.

“What the hell did the bas­tard do that for?”

It was sat­is­fy­ing lis­ten­ing to an­other per­son speak about his dad that way, even though Dina had a bet­ter vo­cab­u­lary.

“I lost us a case be­cause some­thing that was sup­posed to get filed, didn’t. It’s my word against the para­le­gal’s, and well, my word doesn’t carry much weight. Un­for­tu­nately, hav­ing me in the of­fice made oth­ers think I was get­ting spe­cial treat­ment. Es­pe­cially be­cause all the par­ale­gals think I threw mine un­der the bus and am re­ly­ing too much on my name.”

He hit an­other ball. This time it sailed back­wards, hit­ting the roof be­fore rolling back down and land­ing two feet in front of him.

“Ass­hole,” Ja­cob said, watch­ing the golf ball.

“Ex­actly.”

He swung his club again. Fi­nally, it sailed straight and true, no more than one hun­dred yards, but at least it went in the right di­rec­tion.

“Nice swing.”

Adam nod­ded. He hit an­other seven balls be­fore switch­ing places with Ja­cob.

He took a deep breath. “So, I was won­der­ing if you might have any con­tacts I could speak to,” he said, as Ja­cob pulled out some balls with his club.

“New Jer­sey or New York?”

The Car­ib­bean. “New York prefer­ably, but I sus­pect I’m not go­ing to get to be too choosey.” He should have known his friend wouldn’t make an is­sue out of help­ing him.

“Don’t panic yet. Your dad’s known as a ball­buster,” Ja­cob said. “If you get a job in New York, are you go­ing to com­mute?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve al­ways wanted to live in the city, but lately…”

“What about Dina?”

He was fi­nally in a re­la­tion­ship that might last. Sud­denly, the city was less ap­peal­ing. “We can still see each other if I’m in the city, can’t we?”

“So, you’re see­ing each other now?”

Adam filled him in as Ja­cob con­tin­ued his flaw­less swing. He left out “love.” No one would hear that be­fore Dina.

“What’s she think about your get­ting fired?”

“She doesn’t know about all of it.”

Ja­cob sliced his ball far to the right. He swung around. “What part doesn’t she know about?”

“The be­ing fired part.”

“Why not? She knows you well enough not to care.”

Adam shrugged.

“Adz, you can’t do that to her. You have to tell her.”

A jolt of fear ran through him and his mouth dried. He did have to tell her, and based on what she knew al­ready about him and his fa­ther, she’d be on his side, not his fa­ther’s. But what if he couldn’t find an­other job? What­ever re­spect she had for him would be lost. An un­em­ployed guy wasn’t boyfriend ma­te­rial. The thought of her leav­ing made his palms damp. He had to tell her he loved her first. Then maybe she’d stay. “It’s a mis­un­der­stand­ing. I’ll straighten it out with her when the time is right. First I need a new job.”

“That’s a hel­luva se­cret to keep from some­one you care about.”

That was ex­actly why he couldn’t tell her. Not un­til he told her he loved her, and she loved him back. And even then…“I’ve got it un­der con­trol.” As long as she didn’t press too hard about last night.

They fin­ished each of their buck­ets. Be­fore they left, Ja­cob clapped Adam on the shoul­der. “I’ll email you some con­tacts, so don’t worry about that. But Adam, you need to tell her.”