Page 9 of The Perfect Deception

“Threat­ened by the smart girl?” She held her breath as the words es­caped her mouth. She meant it as a joke, but some jokes weren’t funny. Then again, he’d been dis­mis­sive of her the other day.

“If I say yes, will you take pity and go out with me?” A smile played about his mouth.

He was per­sis­tent, she had to give him that. The last time a “pretty boy” had pur­sued her this hard was when she was a fresh­man in high school, tak­ing a se­nior-level chem­istry class. One of the se­nior boys wanted to cheat off her lab re­port. She hadn’t let him cheat then, be­cause she was morally op­posed to it. He’d con­tin­ued to bother her about it for the rest of the year, as if the nag­ging would change her mind. It hadn’t worked back then, but it was start­ing to work now. And that would never do. Maybe the best way to get rid of Adam was to agree to go out with him.

“Fine.”

She’d ex­pected him to grin some plas­tic, car sales­man-y grin. In­stead, his eyes light­ened to emer­ald, back­lit with a warm glow. Her heart lurched.

“How’s Fri­day night?”

Blink­ing, she tried to fo­cus on his words. “Um, ac­tu­ally, I go to tem­ple on Fri­day nights.”

He nod­ded. “Okay, how about Thurs­day night? There’s a bar in Newark that has live bands Thurs­days. They’re usu­ally pretty good.”

A bar? He wanted to take her to a bar? In Newark? Vi­sions of a quiet din­ner or a show popped her bub­ble. She re­signed her­self to an­other night where she didn’t fit in. High school all over again. It was too late to back out now. “Okay.”

He con­firmed her phone num­ber and gave her his, promis­ing to call later in the week to ar­range specifics. He’d prob­a­bly change his mind. But she wouldn’t tell him that. Fi­nally, he left and she re­turned to her desk.

“You have a date, how won­der­ful!” Rose, an older woman who worked with Dina, clapped her hands in glee.

“I wouldn’t get too ex­cited. He’s to­tally not my type.”

Rose winked. “Some­times, those are the best kind, sweetie. Shave your legs and bring pro­tec­tion.”

“What?” Dina couldn’t be­lieve Rose was say­ing this to her. In a li­brary of all places. “I would never sleep with him on the first date.”

The salt-and-pep­per-haired woman gave a know­ing smile. “You do know you don’t need pro­tec­tion for sleep­ing, right?”

“You mean you weren’t talk­ing about ear plugs for noise?” Dina asked, eye­brow raised.

“He’s hand­some and likes you. Just be pre­pared.”

As Dina re­turned to her desk and thought se­ri­ously about bleach­ing her ears, she dis­counted Rose’s as­sess­ment. Adam didn’t “like” her. He felt guilty, sure. He was con­cerned about what she thought of him, okay. But like her? Please.

Chap­ter Three

On Mon­day, Adam walked straight to the par­ale­gals. “Hey, Kim, I brought in my old study guides for the bar.” He’d spent all day Sun­day putting them in or­der for her. A sin­gle mom whose hus­band had walked out on her and her two chil­dren, she’d told him about her de­sire to be­come a lawyer, and he’d en­cour­aged her, help­ing her out the last two years, en­ter­tain­ing her kids, and smooth­ing the way for her to leave early to study. She was in the home stretch and he was proud of his friend.

She jumped, looked around and gave him an awk­ward smile. “Thanks, Adam.”

Oth­ers in the area stopped what they were do­ing and watched the ex­change. It was weird. He held out a binder and af­ter swal­low­ing, Kim reached for it.

“Ev­ery­thing okay?” he asked. “I know the exam can be stress­ful, but with all the real-world ex­pe­ri­ence you’re get­ting here, and how hard you’re study­ing, you’re go­ing to do great.”

Her cheeks col­ored. “Yeah.”

She was usu­ally a lot more talk­a­tive. “If you want, I can give up my lunch hour to­day and help you study. I still re­mem­ber the tricks and tech­niques I used.”

“No, that’s okay. But thanks.” She got up from her desk, skirted around him and walked over to one of the other par­ale­gals, who shot him a glance be­fore whis­per­ing to Kim.

He stood there, feel­ing awk­ward, be­fore re­turn­ing to his of­fice.

On Tues­day, he passed Kim at the copy ma­chine. “Did you take a look at the stuff I gave you yes­ter­day? If you need any­thing—”

“Adam, re­ally, I’m fine. Thanks. I’ve got this on my own now.”

“Are you sure? I can take Oliver and Jared out for ice cream again, or a movie, like last time, if you need time alone to study.”