Page 81 of The Perfect Deception

“And did you? Throw her un­der the bus?”

“No. I never even talked about it pub­licly. If I were go­ing to do that, I would have.”

“Okay. Look, you know that legally I can’t refuse to hire you based on your rep­u­ta­tion. So let’s look at your ex­pe­ri­ence.”

They spoke for the next thirty min­utes about cases he’d tried, goals he had and what the firm was look­ing for. When Matthew rose to shake his hand, Adam got to his feet.

“Thank you for tak­ing a chance and in­ter­view­ing me,” Adam said. “I know it would have been eas­ier to sim­ply pass on the whole thing.”

“You seem like a good guy who made some er­rors in judg­ment. Let me get back to you in a few days.”

Adam left the in­ter­view in a bet­ter mood. Out of all three in­ter­views, this one seemed the most likely to give him a shot. As he walked to Penn Sta­tion to catch the train, he thought once again about Dina. He’d been able to talk about what hap­pened to his po­ten­tial em­ployer. Why couldn’t he talk to her about it?

Be­cause he still was afraid she’d leave. That she’d be­lieve the worst about him. If peo­ple who knew him well could doubt him, Dina would too. And if not im­me­di­ately, even­tu­ally. Es­pe­cially if he couldn’t get a job.

Of course, he’d left that part out of the in­ter­view. And maybe, if he was lucky and got this job, he could go crawl­ing back to Dina and beg her for­give­ness.

Chap­ter Twenty-Two

For the four­teenth con­sec­u­tive day since she and Adam had bro­ken up, Dina took a walk through Mor­ris­town. Un­able to stay still for long, lunch breaks were the worst. She’d spend the en­tire hour star­ing at the door of the li­brary, ex­pect­ing Adam to walk in and beg her for­give­ness. So she walked, try­ing to fo­cus on any­thing—items in store win­dows, how cold it was when the wind blew, pity for the home­less woman sit­ting in the green—any­thing other than Adam.

But to­day, she couldn’t stop her mind from pic­tur­ing a re­union. She’d be com­ing out of a store and bump into some­one. That some­one would be Adam and he’d grovel un­til she for­gave him. Not that she would, but it was nice to imag­ine. A pass­ing car honked and she jumped, star­tled out of her reverie. Her stom­ach dropped—she’d walked up to Adam’s of­fice. Or rather, his for­mer of­fice. Spin­ning around to head the other way, she banged into some­one.

“Watch where you’re go­ing,” a deep voice said.

When she looked up at his face, she blanched. It wasn’t Adam. But it was worse. She’d bumped into his dad.

“S…sorry.” The smell of his cologne trans­ported her back to din­ner at his house, when Adam had been so­lic­i­tous of her even as he was be­ing hu­mil­i­ated by his dad. Her throat tight­ened.

He stepped back and frowned. “You’re Dina, right? My son’s girl­friend.”

Oh God, he re­mem­bered her. “Sorry for bump­ing into you.”

“That’s al­right. How are you?”

She nod­ded, hop­ing he’d take the ac­tion for an an­swer. “How are you?”

“Very well. I’m on my way back from a client meet­ing. How’s Adam? I haven’t spo­ken to him in a while.”

She swal­lowed, ig­nor­ing for the mo­ment the sad fact fa­ther and son didn’t speak. She wasn’t sure she could have this con­ver­sa­tion, not with­out dis­solv­ing into a pud­dle on the side­walk.

“We’re not to­gether any­more.”

He ush­ered her into the lobby of the build­ing and the warm air slammed into her, mak­ing her gasp.

“Oh, that’s too bad. You were a great in­flu­ence on him.”

She bit her lip. “I have to get back to work.”

“You’re too good for him,” he said. “I knew it from the mo­ment I saw you. I hoped it would work out, that he could change, but I had my doubts.”

The con­ver­sa­tion would have been awk­ward if she had still been dat­ing Adam—what kind of fa­ther spoke ill of his son to the girl­friend—but now that they were bro­ken up, it was even worse. The phys­i­cal re­sem­blance she’d noted vaguely at din­ner was high­lighted now in the harsh win­ter sun­light. The space their bod­ies took up was sim­i­lar and their tone of voice, while not ex­act, was close enough to make her ache. All she wanted to do was for­get Adam, and his fa­ther was mak­ing her want to de­fend him.

Her blood pres­sure rose and her head be­gan to pound. Adam did not de­serve de­fend­ing. Not af­ter the way he’d treated her. How dare his fa­ther make her feel this way?

“Adam is a grown man. He’s ca­pa­ble of what­ever he wants on his own. He doesn’t now, nor has he ever, needed me.”

With that, she turned and walked back into the cold, but not be­fore see­ing a glim­mer of ad­mi­ra­tion in his fa­ther’s eyes.