Page 75 of The Perfect Deception

In fact, Dina was hav­ing a hard time de­tect­ing the va­pid, nasty girls in these two women and her judg­ment soft­ened. Be­cause she’d changed, too.

The mu­sic changed to a slow song and Adam leaned to­ward her. “Want to dance?”

Yes. She rose and the other women leaned down to their dates. She as­sumed they were go­ing to join them on the dance floor, but in­stead, Cheryl and Ann called her name.

“Dina, we’re go­ing to the ladies’ room. Want to join us?”

There was an in­ten­sity in their ex­pres­sion that Dina didn’t un­der­stand. She turned to Adam, who shrugged. “Go ahead.”

“But I’d rather dance with you.”

He touched her cheek. “We can dance to the next song. It’s good for you to so­cial­ize.” He sat back down and took a drink, and Dina nod­ded and fol­lowed the women to the ladies’ room, if only for cu­rios­ity’s sake.

The door had barely swung shut when they pulled her into the room and off to the side.

“The guy you’re with,” Cheryl said. “How long have you two been dat­ing?”

Dina pulled back. In the mir­ror, her shock at the ques­tion re­flected back at her, but it wasn’t nearly as strong as her feel­ings. This woman barely knew her. How could she ask her such a ques­tion?

“About six weeks or so.” She turned to go, but a man­i­cured hand on her arm stopped her.

“Does he work at some law firm named Man­del and some­thing?”

This time it was Ann who spoke. Nei­ther one of them had given two thoughts for her in high school. Why the heck was she both­er­ing now?

“I don’t think it’s any of your busi­ness.”

Women were open­ing the stalls and star­ing at them as they ap­proached the sink and Dina’s face heated. Cheryl and Ann drew her over to the side.

“Lis­ten,” Cheryl said. “I know you don’t know us. But we should prob­a­bly warn you about Adam. You’re reach­ing his ex­pi­ra­tion date.”

“What are you talk­ing about? How do you know him?”

“He works at the same firm as Ash­ley Pe­ters,” Ann said. “ She was part of our group in high school.”

“So what?”

“Ac­cord­ing to her, he goes through women like wa­ter,” Cheryl said.

“How do you know that?”

“Be­cause we’re still friends.”

“Okay, so what?” Dina asked. The whir of the air dryer was be­gin­ning to give her a headache. Or maybe it was the mix­ture of per­fume, hair­spray and scented lo­tion. She rubbed her tem­ples, wish­ing she could rub the women away in­stead. She had a man to tell she loved him.

“He’s never dated any­one longer than six weeks.”

The shriek filled his eardrums, caus­ing the DJ to stop the mu­sic mid-spin. Con­ver­sa­tions halted mid-word and as one, peo­ple’s heads turned to­ward the per­son guilty of re­leas­ing the glass-shat­ter­ing racket.

“It’s you!”

Adam watched the crowd part and a model-thin woman in a slinky black dress and sky-high heels stalked to­ward him. His stom­ach dropped.

“What are you do­ing here? Don’t you tor­ment me enough at work?” she asked, stop­ping close enough to him he could see her trem­ble. Her skin was pale, her ruby lips out­lined in a thin white line of anger, and her brown eyes crack­led in fury. And that anger was di­rected at him.

Adam’s foot hit the floor and he gripped his drink so hard he was cer­tain the glass would shat­ter. Forc­ing him­self to act calm, he placed his glass down and wiped his lips with a nap­kin be­fore fold­ing it and stick­ing it in his breast pocket.

“Ash­ley,” he said. “What are you do­ing here?”