Page 76 of The Perfect Deception

“I be­long here,” she snapped, get­ting up close in his face. “The ques­tion is, why are you here?”

“I’m here with my date.” The last thing he wanted to do was em­bar­rass Dina. For once in his life, his main con­cern was some­one else. He held his hands up and she glared at him, be­fore look­ing around at the gath­ered crowd.

“Pfft. I bet you tried to im­press her with your po­si­tion at your daddy’s law firm. Maybe I should tell her about the real you. About how your fa­ther—”

He reached for her arm. “Ash—”

“Don’t touch me!” Her drink sloshed over the side of the glass and splat­tered on the floor.

A buzz started in the crowd, or was it in his head? He blinked. A sea of faces stared at him, while two guys walked over and flanked Ash­ley. A third ap­proached him.

“Lis­ten, buddy, you need to leave her alone,” guy num­ber three said. He had the beer belly of a for­mer frat boy/foot­ball player and a buzz cut, with a thick neck and beady eyes. He’d lost his suit jacket—or maybe he’d never had one to be­gin with—but his tie was worth less than Adam’s silk socks.

“I’m not do­ing any­thing to her,” he said. “Never have.”

“Never does any­thingforme, ei­ther. He leaves work to go party, giv­ing me all his busy­work and then blames me when he for­gets to do some­thing,” she said.

The crowd should have got­ten bored by now, re­turned to their food, drink and danc­ing. But it looked like he was the lat­est en­ter­tain­ment of the evening. Where the hell was Dina?

Shit. Dina. He needed her in or­der to leave, but he didn’t want her any­where near this. She’d never un­der­stand and she’d be mor­ti­fied. He was sup­posed to have helped her deal with tonight and in­stead, he was caus­ing a scene. Beads of sweat popped on his brow and he reached for the nap­kin he’d slipped into his breast pocket.

The crowd parted again and two women ap­proached, their arms around Dina. As they got closer, he rec­og­nized Cheryl and Ann, the two women who’d asked her to join them in the bath­room in the first place. It was a woman thing he’d never un­der­stand, but at the time, he’d been glad they’d in­cluded her. But now, Dina looked green. Was she sick or had the two women said some­thing to bother her? He pushed away from Ash­ley and rushed over to Dina.

“You okay?” he asked, his hand cup­ping her cheek.

“Stay away from her,” Cheryl said. “You’re just mak­ing things worse.”

Ash­ley joined them, as well as the var­i­ous men as­so­ci­ated with them. With Dina sur­rounded by so many peo­ple, it was hard to fig­ure out what was go­ing on. All he knew was that she was up­set and he wanted to back up time by about fif­teen min­utes. He didn’t want her know­ing about Ash­ley.

Un­less she al­ready did.

He didn’t want to think about that, but once the idea en­tered his brain, it took up res­i­dence. He didn’t want Ash­ley any­where near Dina, but the four women looked as if they were best friends. He didn’t want to face Dina if she knew about Ash­ley’s ac­cu­sa­tions, but she was star­ing at him.

If only he could read her ex­pres­sion. Or her mind. That would be help­ful. But he couldn’t. And un­for­tu­nately, ev­ery­one around them had gone silent, so what­ever he said to Dina would be heard by the crowd. And more im­por­tantly, they would hear Dina’s re­ply.

“Dina, would you like to go?” His voice sounded raspy to his ears, as if he’d dragged it over an ar­ti­fi­cial turf. All he wanted was to get the two of them out of here, or at least away from these peo­ple.

She shook her head no and his world stopped. He reached back for the bar he’d been lean­ing against, for­get­ting mo­men­tar­ily that he’d stepped for­ward when the guys had come up to him. He stum­bled, and righted him­self. She didn’t want to go with him. She was choos­ing them over him. Like his mother. Roar­ing sounded in his ears and his breath came in gasps. He tossed a quick look over his shoul­der, try­ing to find a clear path to the door, but peo­ple had sur­rounded them and there was no way out.

Cool pres­sure on his hand star­tled him and he looked down.

Dina.

“I don’t want to leave. I want to dance with you.”

Chap­ter Twenty

The DJ started the mu­sic as soon as she walked out onto the dance floor with Adam. “I Gotta Feel­ing” drowned out the voices, but it couldn’t elim­i­nate the im­ages flash­ing through her mind—Cheryl’s and Ann’s con­cern, Ash­ley’s anger, Adam’s des­o­la­tion.

It was his des­o­la­tion, the hol­low look in his eyes that re­played more of­ten than the other im­ages. And made her push down her own fears and ask him to dance, rather than find out what the heck ev­ery­one was talk­ing about.

Pos­si­bly be­cause they were the only peo­ple on the dance floor, the DJ switched to a slow song. Now they had a rea­son to look as if they were hold­ing each other up. She’d never felt Adam so stiff, not even when they were at din­ner with his fa­ther. It was like danc­ing with a stone statue. His hands were on her waist and al­though it wasn’t painful, he gripped her like he thought she would run away. She wouldn’t. Against his chest, she could feel his heart pound­ing. And look­ing up at his face, his blank ex­pres­sion was set. She ran her fin­gers along his nape, try­ing to ease some of the ten­sion. When he glanced down at her, she spoke.

“Re­lax. We’re danc­ing. Don’t let them get to you.”

“Dina, I—”

“It’s okay. I don’t know what hap­pened back there, but they ru­ined my en­tire high school ex­pe­ri­ence. I’m not let­ting them ruin tonight.”