Page 91 of The Perfect Deception

I have my ways. do you

want me to come over?

no, I’m okay now

call me if you need any­thing

Now that he was gone and her anger had sub­sided, Dina started to shake. She was tired, hun­gry, sad and a host of other emo­tions she couldn’t name. She paced the con­fines of her small apart­ment, over­come with a de­sire to leave, which warred with her fear of run­ning into Adam. He’d come to her apart­ment and man­aged to get in­side. Tracy had some­how con­vinced him to leave, but what if he were out­side wait­ing for her?

She raced to the win­dow and peeked out­side. Nei­ther he nor his car was in view, and she backed away. She had no idea how Tracy had con­vinced him to leave, but he was gone, and it was time to go back to her own life.

And some­how find­ing a way to get over Adam.

Chap­ter Twenty-Five

Get­ting over Adam was go­ing to be a lot harder than Dina ex­pected. The fol­low­ing morn­ing, Dina woke up to four text mes­sages from him.

Dina, it’s Adam. can we talk?

please, I re­ally need to talk to you

I know you’re an­gry and

I’d like to make it right

Dina, I’m sorry

She turned off her phone and got ready for work.

Tracy took her out to lunch and while they waited in line at the bagel store for their sand­wiches, Dina turned her phone back on. An­other three mes­sages from him, which she deleted with­out read­ing.

“Do you want me to tell him to stop tex­ting you?” Tracy asked.

“I’m just go­ing to ig­nore them. He’ll get tired and stop even­tu­ally.”

“And you’re sure you don’t want to hear what he has to say?”

She lev­eled a glare at Tracy. “Do you have any rea­son why I should?”

“Nope, just check­ing.”

“Then no. And I still need you to tell me how you got him to leave my apart­ment.”

“I just told him that if he wanted his rep­u­ta­tion fixed, get­ting a com­plaint filed with the cops wasn’t the way to do it.”

Dina stared at Tracy for a few sec­onds. She sus­pected there was more to it than that, but she didn’t have the en­ergy to push. And this was Adam. He was al­ways con­cerned about his rep­u­ta­tion. Be­sides, she was tired of fo­cus­ing all her at­ten­tion on him. She wanted a dis­trac­tion.

“I want to go to the movies,” she said af­ter plac­ing her or­der. “Want to go with me?”

“Sure, what are we see­ing? And when? Be­cause I need to make sure Joe is around for the baby.”

“Some­thing funny. I need to be en­ter­tained.”

“Okay,” Tracy said. “I’ll have tuna on a blue­berry bagel,” she said to the guy be­hind the counter. “Look at what’s play­ing and let me know.”

“I can’t be­lieve you or­dered that,” Dina said. “Blue­berry with tuna?”

“Don’t knock it til you try it. It’s re­ally good.”