Page 89 of The Perfect Deception

“I need to…who the hell gives you the right to butt into my busi­ness?”

His fa­ther loomed over his desk, fists planted on ei­ther side of the leather blot­ter, a frown twist­ing his face. “I am your fa­ther and you are roy­ally screw­ing up your life. It’s high time you set­tled down and made some­thing out of your­self.”

“I wasmak­ingsome­thingof my­self just fine un­til you fired me on a whim.”

For the first time since Adam had ar­rived at the house, a look of dis­com­fort passed across his fa­ther’s face. He’d learned from years of ex­pe­ri­ence, the best way to best his fa­ther was in­di­rectly.

“The ac­cu­sa­tions were hurt­ing the firm.”

“The ac­cu­sa­tions were false, as Dina just proved.” He glow­ered at his fa­ther and watched his face suf­fuse with color.

“I had no way of know­ing that.”

“Yet some­how, Dina was able to find out?” Adam stag­gered back. Were his ac­cu­sa­tions true? Had she re­ally been work­ing with Ash­ley? “How could she have known, Dad? Un­less she was work­ing with Ash­ley all along.” The last sen­tence came out in a hoarse whis­per and he sank into the chair across from his fa­ther’s desk.

“If you be­lieve that, you’re dumber than I ever thought you were,” his fa­ther said.

Adam re­mained silent.

“You’re kid­ding me.” His fa­ther rose from be­hind his desk, came around and leaned against it, mere inches away from him. “Adam, think about it. Can you re­ally pic­ture her and Ash­ley work­ing to­gether? This is Dina we’re talk­ing about. The girl who spouts ob­scure facts Ash­ley wouldn’t rec­og­nize in an en­cy­clo­pe­dia and cov­ers more skin than Ash­ley ever has in her life. Come on!”

“They went to high school to­gether. Ash­ley used Dina to get good grades. Who knows what else they’ve done?” But even Adam rec­og­nized the ab­sur­dity of his state­ment. He dropped his head to his chest. “Okay, scratch that. Dina’s not that type of woman.”

“Damn right. And you owe her an apol­ogy for think­ing that way.”

He was right. “What about what you owe me?”

“I owe you one as well. I’m sorry. I couldn’t face the idea of the firm suf­fer­ing and I let it blind me to how I was hurt­ing you.”

His fa­ther had never shown this side of him­self and Adam rose, stick­ing his hands in his pocket and shrug­ging off the un­ex­pected emo­tion. “It’s fine. I’m used to it.”

“Adz.”

Adam stiff­ened at the un­used child­hood nick­name. He hadn’t heard it since be­fore his mother left.

“Don’t let my mis­takes ruin your life, son.”

“It’s a lit­tle late for that, when your own fa­ther fires you.”

His fa­ther’s gaze bore into him. “I’ll take care of re­in­stat­ing you and mak­ing things right at the of­fice. But I’m not talk­ing about your job.”

“What gives you the right to think you have a say in any­thing else?”

A brief flicker in his fa­ther’s eyes was the only in­di­ca­tion he’d scored a hit. “She did come to me with the in­for­ma­tion.”

And that was the mil­lion-dol­lar ques­tion. Why hadn’t Dina come to him?

“Don’t push Dina away, Adam. Not for me, but for you. She’s the best thing that ever hap­pened to you. Find a way to make it work.”

He couldn’t lis­ten to his fa­ther any­more. There were too many things zoom­ing around in his head—Ash­ley and her ac­cu­sa­tion, Dina, how the hell Dina knew the truth, why she’d gone to his fa­ther in­stead of him, his mother, his fa­ther call­ing him ‘Adz.’ He needed to get out of this house, where mem­o­ries threat­ened to over­whelm him.

Strid­ing out of his fa­ther’s of­fice, he raced to the front door, but his fa­ther stopped him in front of his mother’s par­lor.

“I miss her too, you know.”

The raw emo­tion in his fa­ther’s voice struck him like a phys­i­cal blow. Dar­ing a glance at him, he looked in awe at his fa­ther’s moist eyes. He couldn’t han­dle his fa­ther or the im­pli­ca­tions of his state­ment. He had to es­cape. Throw­ing the front door open, he ran to his car, gunned the en­gine and sped down the drive­way. The thrum of the en­gine echoed the rac­ing of his pulse. He hugged the curves in the road, watch­ing trees pass in a blur, know­ing he was go­ing too fast but not car­ing. When he reached the straight­away, he slowed, tak­ing deep breaths as if to calm his car as well as his heart.

He had to talk to Dina.