Page 6 of The Perfect Deception

He walked down the path to­ward where they were sit­ting, all pressed pants and shiny wingtips, and stopped in front of their bench. He stood with his back to the sun, mak­ing her squint.

“I needed to get out of the of­fice for a lit­tle while,” he said with a shrug, mov­ing so he wasn’t back­lit. “I thought I’d stop by and say hello.”

“I was think­ing of you ear­lier.” Why had she said that?

He smiled and his eyes lit up. “Is there a prob­lem with your car?”

“My car? Oh, no, my car is fine. But we just got this book in that I thought you’d be in­ter­ested in. Or not, since it’s a re­search book. But it made me think of you.”Way to bab­ble, Dina.

His face tight­ened in wari­ness. “Oh?”

“The His­tory of Su­per­heroes.” She turned to her friend. “You know the book I’m talk­ing about, right? He loves that stuff and it would be per­fect for him, don’t you think?”

He swal­lowed and stuffed his hands in his coat while eye­ing Tracy. “Uh, okay. Most peo­ple think of me be­cause of my charm­ing per­son­al­ity.” He winked and Tracy started to laugh.

Dina stiff­ened. “It’s not on the shelves yet, but give it a week or so and it should be avail­able if you want to take a look at it.”

Adam shrugged. “I don’t get to the li­brary very of­ten, and like you said, I prob­a­bly won’t have time to read for plea­sure, es­pe­cially such a child­ish sub­ject.” He flashed his per­fect teeth in a wide grin at Tracy. “Hi, Adam Man­del.”

“Tracy Bat­ton. How do you two know each other?”

“Damsel in dis­tress on the side of the road with a flat on Fri­day. No big deal.”

Dina flinched. Some­thing was off. She barely knew him, but the Adam talk­ing to her friend was the guy shethoughthe was when she first met him—not the po­ten­tial se­rial killer part, but the shal­low guy she’d dis­missed.

“Re­ally? You didn’t tell me about your knight in shin­ing ar­mor,” Tracy said, turn­ing to her.

Two could play this game. She shrugged.

He blinked. Be­fore he looked away, she thought she saw re­morse in his ex­pres­sion, but she couldn’t be sure.

Tracy looked be­tween the two of them and cleared her throat. “I guess I’ll be go­ing in­side, now. Nice to meet you, Adam. See you later, Dina.”

Dina rose. “No, I’ll go in­side with you. Bye, Adam.”

With barely a back­ward glance, she fol­lowed Tracy in­side. Once the door closed be­hind them, Tracy spun around. “What was that about?”

Boy, had she been wrong about him. Bet­ter to find out early though. Next time, she’d lis­ten to her first thoughts. “No idea.”

Adam ad­justed the starched sleeve of his shirt be­neath his wool suit jacket and pulled on his silk tie. Even he rec­og­nized he’d been an ass.

In what seemed to be be­com­ing a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence, his morn­ing had sucked. His fa­ther was giv­ing him busy work, the par­ale­gals in the of­fice were whis­per­ing about him, and James, his main com­pe­ti­tion for a pro­mo­tion was walk­ing around like he’d just won the lot­tery.

Ap­par­ently, some­one had spread the news and had im­plied he was try­ing to throw Ash­ley un­der the bus.

He’d needed a break, so he’d taken a walk, en­joy­ing the early spring day. As his steps led him to­ward the li­brary, he’d de­cided to stop by to see if Dina was there. Some­thing about her had piqued his in­ter­est. In fact, her face popped into his head at the odd­est times—once while he was at the gym, Sat­ur­day night at a bar with the guys, and to­day while he was driv­ing to the of­fice.

When he saw her sit­ting out­side, he’d stopped to watch her for a few min­utes, try­ing to fig­ure out what about her in­trigued him. She wasn’t his type phys­i­cally—she was short, rounder than he was used to and her clothes and hair would never be fea­tured in a mag­a­zine, un­less it was a “Tame Your Frizz,” ar­ti­cle. But her smile when she was talk­ing to Tracy had warmed him. He’d wished the smile were di­rected at him. So he’d walked up to her.

And ev­ery­thing had fallen apart.

Be­cause she’d talked about his love of su­per­heroes. No one knew that about him. It was some­thing he and his mom had shared. And then she’d left. He wasn’t stupid enough to think she’d left be­cause of his love for Cap­tain Amer­ica, but she’d known him bet­ter than any­one. She’d sup­pos­edly loved him. Yet she’d left any­way. His dad was an ass, so if he thought about it, he could un­der­stand why maybe she’d wanted to leave him, but her son? She must have seen some­thing ter­ri­ble in him if she’d left with­out tak­ing him with her. Ob­vi­ously there was noth­ing su­per­hero-like in him. So he buried what was in­side and worked hard to main­tain his im­age—that of a fast-ris­ing, über-suc­cess­ful lawyer. Noth­ing was go­ing to get in the way of his mak­ing the right con­nec­tions, climb­ing the lad­der of suc­cess, and draw­ing the right peo­ple to­ward him. Those were the peo­ple who would en­sure his hap­pi­ness. If his im­age caused peo­ple to draw false con­clu­sions about him, that was a risk he was will­ing to take.

Dina had acted like it wasn’t weird. Maybe it wasn’t, but it wouldn’t help his im­age, any more than his love of sci­ence fic­tion or in­die bands. Im­age was the only thing that kept peo­ple from walk­ing away. Hear­ing Dina men­tion su­per­heroes in front of Tracy had thrown him, so he’d re­acted with­out think­ing.

He owed her an apol­ogy for his at­ti­tude.

Which was why right now, at the end of the day, he was wait­ing out­side the li­brary for her. With flow­ers.