Page 82 of The Perfect Deception

Damn them both.

Adam sifted through his email and shook his head. Still no word from any of the seven firms he’d in­ter­viewed with. The knot in his stom­ach tight­ened. No call­backs, no ques­tions, noth­ing. He sup­posed it was bet­ter than a re­jec­tion, but there was lit­tle so­lace in that thought, since he still didn’t have a pay­check com­ing in and he was loathe to ask his fa­ther for a loan. Just the thought of ap­proach­ing the man made his shoul­ders ache from ten­sion.

How­ever, if he didn’t get a job soon, he might have to. Bile rose in his throat and he swal­lowed the bit­ter taste.

Switch­ing gears, he looked on his com­puter at his bills com­ing due. He had enough saved in the bank for this month and pos­si­bly next, but sweat gath­ered on his up­per lip as he looked at his list of ex­penses: rent on his “lux­ury” apart­ment, his BMW lease and law school loan. Those were the big­gies. But then there were his ev­ery­day ex­penses: food, phone, ca­ble and clothes. And oth­ers he couldn’t think of right now. His friends ex­pected him to so­cial­ize a cer­tain amount, and while he’d cut back af­ter his breakup with Dina, they wouldn’t let him con­tinue to live the life a her­mit for long. Al­though he didn’t need ex­pen­sive work clothes right now, he still had a look to main­tain, es­pe­cially dur­ing in­ter­views. And a guy had to eat. He might be jump­ing the gun a lit­tle, but he was start­ing to get ner­vous.

Should he look for a dif­fer­ent job to tide him over? It would keep him from hav­ing to ask his fa­ther for money, but what would he do? Bar­tend? He’d seen help-wanted signs at plenty of the bars he fre­quented. The places did great and were al­ways packed, which meant good tips and plenty of work. But it was one thing to be a pa­tron. It was some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent to work there and let his friends and ac­quain­tances see him. What would they think of him? Temp work? He wasn’t qual­i­fied for much, and what if he was placed in the of­fice of a for­mer client? God, the em­bar­rass­ment would be aw­ful.

No, he’d have to wait it out a lit­tle longer. If he didn’t get a job of­fer in two more weeks, he’d eval­u­ate his other op­tions. In the mean­time, he’d wait.

His ring­ing phone pulled him out of his wor­ries about the fu­ture, un­til he saw his caller ID. His fa­ther. Crap. He was tempted to let it go to voice­mail, but the slight, but im­prob­a­ble, chance that he was call­ing to of­fer him his old job back made him an­swer the phone.

“Adam, we need to meet.”

Should have let it go to voice mail. “About what?”

“Things I’d rather not dis­cuss on the phone.”

Great. A crick formed in his neck. “I’m busy, Dad. I’ll give you a call when my cal­en­dar clears up.”

“No, we’ll set some­thing up now. Your cal­en­dar can’t be that full, you’re not work­ing for me and I haven’t heard of any­one else hir­ing you yet.”

Score one for good ole dad. “Okay, when?”

“Sun­day, eleven o’clock. The house. And don’t bring any of your women.”

Adam hung up the phone and banged his head against the wall. Just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse.

Dina bur­rowed un­der the quilt as she sat on the hearth in front of the lit fire­place, hands wrapped around her steam­ing teacup, and still she couldn’t warm up.

“Deen, come back over here,” Tracy said, jug­gling the baby on the sofa. “You’re go­ing to catch on fire.”

She shook her head and stared into the flames. The yel­low edges re­minded her of Adam’s hair, and tears leaked from her eyes. Dammit, she should be done cry­ing over that jerk.

“Why did Adam’s dad up­set you so much?” Tracy asked.

Dina had dragged her­self back to work af­ter her lunch break and hid­den her­self in one of the stor­age rooms for most of the rest of the day. When Tracy had found her, she’d pulled her up and brought her to her house. Joe had taken one look at Dina, grabbed his jacket and left the house, with just a quick kiss for Tracy. Dina didn’t want to talk about it, had given Tracy only the barest of de­tails, but she was her best friend and de­served to have her ques­tions an­swered. With a sigh, she turned to­ward Tracy.

“Be­cause he made me feel sorry for Adam and I don’t want to feel sorry for him. I want to hate him, and I do…mostly.”

“I still can’t be­lieve he thinks you set him up.”

“I know. He was the one who forced me to take him to the stupid re­union. Why would I have re­sisted so hard if I wanted to set him up?”

“You know,” Tracy said, “for a lawyer, he’s not be­ing log­i­cal.”

Dina shrugged and brought the tea to her lips. The liq­uid burned her throat, but she didn’t care.

“And for a guy, he’s be­ing a dick.”

She sput­tered and choked on the tea that was al­ready half-swal­lowed. Her eyes wa­tered fur­ther and Tracy rushed for­ward to pat her back.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you choke.”

Dina rested her head on Tracy’s shoul­der and stroked the baby. “That’s ac­tu­ally the best thing any­one has said to me since he broke up with me.” She played with the baby’s feet in their footy pa­ja­mas. “I’m an­gry, I’m hurt, and I want to be al­lowed to feel those things. But run­ning into his fa­ther made me feel bad for him, and why the hell does he get my sym­pa­thy? I’m the one who was wronged. I shouldn’t care at all what his fa­ther thinks of him.”

“Would be nice if we could just turn a switch in our brains,” Tracy said. “But you’re a good per­son, so of course you care. Plus, you love him.”