Page 83 of The Perfect Deception

She swung around to face Tracy. “What? I don’t love him.” She had thought she did. She’d been try­ing to fig­ure out the right time to tell him. And then he’d ac­cused her of trap­ping him and those feel­ings had died. It proved she hadn’t re­ally loved him, didn’t it?

Tracy tilted her head and gave her a look like she didn’t be­lieve her.

“I don’t. I might have thought I did, or could, but if those feel­ings can dis­ap­pear when he makes an ac­cu­sa­tion at me, how true could they re­ally have been?”

“Or, it’s be­cause you re­ally do love him that you feel sorry for him. I don’t think you’d feel so emo­tional over a guy you didn’t love.”

Dina turned back to the fire. It wasn’t fair. She’d fi­nally fallen in love—head-over-heels, ev­ery cliché ever writ­ten about, in love—and it was with Adam. Golden-haired, way above her ev­ery­thing, Adam. And what was more amaz­ing? He loved her back. In fact, since she hadn’t had a chance to tell him her feel­ings, he loved her “first.” She should have been giddy. She should have swooned. She should have at least got­ten to hug her­self. In­stead, she’d missed out on ev­ery­thing be­cause of Ash­ley.

And this was what Tracy chose to fo­cus on?

“You’re not mak­ing me feel bet­ter. So I loved him. Big deal. I didn’t even get a chance to tell him or to spend time think­ing about how he loved me. It’s moot at this point, be­cause he hates me. I’m an­gry, and he and I are fin­ished.”

Tracy put the baby down in her playpen and gave Dina a hug. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. What­ever you’re feel­ing for him is jus­ti­fied. And you’re right, he’s the one who’s in the wrong here, not you. Also, he has no idea what he’s miss­ing. His dad is an even big­ger ass than he is, so don’t let his be­hav­ior make you ques­tion yours.”

Dina’s phone rang and Tracy reached for it. “Want to an­swer it?”

She shook her head no. There was no one, other than Tracy, whom she wanted to talk to.

“I think we need a girls night out,” Tracy said.

Dina shook her head. “No, I don’t want to go any­where right now.”

“I know that, and I can’t with Peanut, here, any­way. But Sat­ur­day night you and I are go­ing out. There’s a film fes­ti­val at the uni­ver­sity. We’ll go and for­get all about Adam and his dad.”

“Okay.” Dina gave Tracy a hug and kissed the baby. Her smell car­ried her back to the day she and Adam had babysat and she blinked. She was not go­ing to cry. Not again. She would think of some­thing else—any­thing else—and some­how get over Mr. Flashy­pants.

Ex­cept as she made her way home, some­thing Tracy had said ear­lier stuck with her. “For a lawyer, he wasn’t be­ing log­i­cal.” She re­played the sen­tence in her mind, as she got ready for bed. Once un­der the cov­ers, star­ing out the win­dow into the dark­ness, she tried to fig­ure it out. He wasn’t be­ing log­i­cal, like his pro­fes­sion re­quired him to be. There­fore, his re­ac­tion was more per­sonal. She bolted up­right. From a per­sonal per­spec­tive, Adam was al­ways con­cerned about his rep­u­ta­tion and afraid of what oth­ers would think of him.

He’d ac­cused her of set­ting him up, which aside from be­ing wrong wasn’t log­i­cal. And he’d know that. So what was he afraid of her find­ing out?

Chap­ter Twenty-Three

By the next morn­ing, Dina still hadn’t fig­ured out what Adam was afraid of, but she’d re­ceived two more phone calls from the un­known num­ber that had called her while she was with Tracy. Who­ever it was hadn’t left a mes­sage, which meant it was a tele­mar­keter. A very an­noy­ing one.

When the phone rang a third time, Dina grabbed it and barked, “What?” as she walked from her park­ing spot to­ward the li­brary.

“Dina? Oh I’m so glad I caught you,” the fe­male voice on the other end said.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Cheryl McAdams. From high school. We were at the re­union to­gether.”

“How did you get my num­ber?”

“I asked the re­union chair. Lis­ten, I re­ally need to talk to you and Adam.”

Fat chance. “I’m sorry, I’m on my way into work.”

“Are you free tonight? We could meet for din­ner.”

“I re­ally don’t think…”

“Please, it’s su­per im­por­tant. It’s about Ash­ley.”

No way. “I have no de­sire to waste any­more time on her, Cheryl. Please stop call­ing me.”

“Even if she lied?”