Page 7 of The Perfect Deception

The door opened for what seemed like the hun­dredth time. It still wasn’t her. He gave a vague smile, the kind that said, “I’m not wait­ing for you,” and shifted from one foot to the other as his im­pa­tience grew. It was cold now that the sun was go­ing down. Maybe she’d got­ten off early. Maybe she’d left through a dif­fer­ent en­trance. Maybe she’d de­cided to stay af­ter the build­ing closed in or­der to avoid him.

Just as he was about to give up, she walked out­side.

“Dina.”

She stiff­ened. He’d swear she was think­ing about go­ing back in­side. A sud­den vi­sion from his child­hood of his mother walk­ing away snaked into his head. He blinked to clear it. Like at lunch, her dark frizzy hair was pulled back in a pony­tail, but it showed off her cheek­bones and the shape of her face. Rais­ing her chin, like she was gear­ing up for bat­tle, she ap­proached.

“Adam.”

“These are for you.” He held out the bou­quet of flow­ers.

Her vi­o­let eyes soft­ened to heather. She reached for the flow­ers and frowned. “Why?”

He tipped his head back. “I’m sorry about be­fore.”

She shrugged and started to walk past him. “Don’t be.”

Heat flushed through his body. He hur­ried to catch up with her, match­ing his stride to hers. “I was rude.”

“It doesn’t mat­ter.”

“Yes it does.”

She spun around to face him. “The flow­ers are lovely, but there’s noth­ing to apol­o­gize for. Give them to your girl­friend.” She held them out to him, but he didn’t take them.

“I don’t have one at the mo­ment.”

She raised an eye­brow as if she didn’t be­lieve him. Frankly, he couldn’t be­lieve it ei­ther. Af­ter two months of be­ing sin­gle, it was his long­est dry spell since he could re­mem­ber. But he wasn’t go­ing to tell her that. “Then give them to your mother.”

He swal­lowed. “Don’t have one of those ei­ther.”

Now her eyes re­ally did soften. He cursed him­self for say­ing any­thing.

Dina stepped closer.

If she in­ter­ro­gated him about his mother, he was go­ing to turn around and leave.

She held out a fin­ger, ran it along the petal of one of the yel­low roses. “They’re pretty.”

“Women like roses. I thought yel­low suited you.”

“Ac­tu­ally, my fa­vorites are daisies.”

He’d seen a bou­quet of those, but he’d thought they looked cheap. Roses made a bet­ter im­pres­sion. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you like daisies?” Why the hell did he care?

“They’re cheer­ful and over­looked, usu­ally, for more ex­pen­sive, pret­tier smelling ones.”

Her re­ac­tion tugged at his heart. “Seems like an odd rea­son to like them then.”

She shrugged. “You asked.”

“If I asked you out, would you say yes?” Whoa, where had that idea come from?

“You’d never ask me.” She started walk­ing again.