Page 74 of The Perfect Deception

“Most boyfriends don’t de­clare their love at a re­union.”Sur­rounded by women so much more beau­ti­ful than I am. She took a quick glance around, sur­prised by the num­ber of women star­ing at her. Was it so hard for them to be­lieve a guy like him could like—or love—a woman like her?

He let go of her arm and ca­ressed her jaw with his fin­ger, mak­ing her for­get about ev­ery­one else, be­fore tip­ping her face to meet his gaze. “Most boyfriends are not in love with a woman who calls sex ‘the ser­vice of Venus’.”

She melted a lit­tle. “You keep say­ing that word.”

“I’ve said a lot of words. Can you be more spe­cific?”

“The ‘love’ one.”

“Is there a prob­lem with it? Is there some ar­chaic vo­cab­u­lary you’d pre­fer me to use in­stead?”

“No, I just don’t un­der­stand why.”

He hugged her to him and she in­haled his clove scent. The mu­sic, flash­ing lights, laugh­ter, con­ver­sa­tions and point­ing melted into the back­ground.

“That is a longer con­ver­sa­tion for a dif­fer­ent time,” he said. “But know this. I do love you, and I don’t say that of­ten.”

Her heart flut­tered in her chest. He loved her. She loved him too. Should she tell him now? Would he think she was just say­ing it be­cause he said it to her? It was too im­por­tant for it to be han­dled triv­ially.

He leaned down and brushed his lips against hers, stop­ping all thought of con­ver­sa­tion. In fact, all thoughts flew from her head as he deep­ened the kiss, send­ing trails of heat down to her belly and mak­ing her breasts tin­gle where they pressed against him. Be­fore she could do more than kiss him back, he pulled away, his eyes dark, his nos­trils flared.

“That’s an­other thing we’ll con­tinue at an­other time,” he said.

Tak­ing her hand in his, he turned to­ward the buf­fet ta­ble and grabbed two plates.

She blinked, try­ing to fo­cus on some­thing other than his lips. Or his butt, which faced her as he spooned a va­ri­ety of foods and sauces onto her plate. Sauce. Most of the food had sauce and she was wear­ing white. Lovely. With a sigh, she took the plate and held it gin­gerly, scan­ning the room for an empty ta­ble.

“Let’s sit there,” she said, point­ing to a ta­ble next to the dance floor. He joined her and they ate with fin­gers en­twined, as if he were loathe to let her go. She didn’t taste the food, had no idea what she was eat­ing, but fo­cused on Adam and how to tell him she loved him.

Just when she’d de­cided to come out with it, two more cou­ples joined their ta­ble. She sighed, not in the mood to be friendly to peo­ple who had no rec­ol­lec­tion of her. But these four peo­ple stared at her and at Adam, their gazes track­ing the two of them like spec­ta­tors at a ten­nis match. Did she have some­thing on her face? Was see­ing two peo­ple in love that strange?

Adam squeezed her hand and leaned for­ward. “Hi, I’m Adam Man­del and this is my girl­friend, Dina Ja­cobs. Great re­union, isn’t it?”

The women shrugged and the guys raised their glasses to their mouths and looked at each other be­fore an­swer­ing.

“I guess it de­pends on what you’re look­ing to get out of it,” the large guy with a square head said.

The skinny guy put his arm around his date and Dina frowned.

“So, did you all grad­u­ate from here?” Adam asked. An­other rea­son she loved him—he was try­ing so hard for her.

The women ig­nored him and turned to Dina. “We both did,” the date of the block­head an­swered. “I’m Cheryl and this is Ann. We’re friends with Sta­cie. You were in mar­ket­ing with us, right?”

Dina nod­ded, re­al­iz­ing Cheryl had spo­ken more to her with that sen­tence than she ever had in four years of high school. It was weird. It was even weirder that she wasn’t look­ing at Adam, the per­son who had asked the ques­tion in the first place.

“What are you do­ing now?” Dina asked. If Cheryl was be­ing friendly, she might as well re­spond. Next to her, Adam put his arm around her shoul­ders and Ann stiff­ened.

“I’m an of­fice as­sis­tant at an in­vest­ment firm,” Cheryl said. “You?”

“I’m a li­brar­ian.”

Cheryl nod­ded. “You al­ways were re­ally smart.” There was no scorn on her face. In­stead, Dina de­tected ad­mi­ra­tion. She looked at Ann, who looked…sym­pa­thetic?

“And you?” she asked Ann. “What are you do­ing?”

“I’m a teacher, can you be­lieve it?”

Dina smiled. “We all change.”