Page 95 of The Perfect Deception

“At­tend­ing ser­vices.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

He looked over at her and held her gaze for a mo­ment. “Then don’t. It’s rude to talk through ser­vices any­way.”

God, he was in­fu­ri­at­ing. She’d move, but that would call at­ten­tion to her and to him, and she’d al­ready walked in five min­utes late.

For the rest of the ser­vice, Dina couldn’t fo­cus on any­thing but Adam—his prox­im­ity to her, his smell, his deep voice slightly off-key. When theydav­enedin prayer and bowed be­fore the ark, she no­ticed the tips of his shoes, highly pol­ished, like him. When they stood, his shoul­der brushed against hers, as if he knew how hard it was for her to be away from him.

When the ser­vice fi­nally ended, he turned to her.

“Shab­bat Shalom, Dina.”

It was the tra­di­tional thing to say to each other on Shab­bat. It would be rude not to re­spond.

“Shab­bat Shalom, Adam.”

He turned and walked out of the sanc­tu­ary and into the so­cial hall for the oneg. She fol­lowed him, de­spite her de­sire to make a run for it. Un­for­tu­nately, Re­becca and her fam­ily weren’t here tonight and the rabbi had seen her, so if she left, it would be ob­vi­ous. She sighed and took her cup of wine to say the prayers. When they fin­ished, Adam took her empty cup and threw it away for her, even though she hadn’t asked him to. Af­ter the prayer over the chal­lah, the rabbi walked over to her.

“Hello, Dina.”

“Shab­bat Shalom, rabbi.”

Adam leaned for­ward. “Shab­bat Shalom, rabbi. I’m Adam.”

The rabbi looked be­tween the two of them. “Nice to meet you, Adam. I think I’ve seen you here be­fore with Dina?”

Dina’s cheeks heated.

“Yes. She’s an­gry at me right now, and we’re not to­gether, but I’m hop­ing to change that.”

Dina couldn’t pre­vent her jaw from drop­ping.

The rabbi’s eyes twin­kled with amuse­ment. “I like your hon­esty,” she said, with a wink at Dina. “But per­haps you should be talk­ing to her in­stead of me.”

“I in­tend to,” he said, pin­ning Dina with a look that promised he’d get his way. “But in the mean­time, I’m wait­ing.”

“Go­ing to be wait­ing a long time,” Dina mut­tered un­der her breath.

The rabbi chuck­led. “Well, as it says inPirkei Avot, ‘Do not be con­temp­tu­ous of any per­son, and don’t re­move your­self from any­thing, for ev­ery per­son has his mo­ment and ev­ery­thing has its place.’ Good luck, Dina.”

The rabbi walked away, leav­ing Dina and Adam alone.

“I don’t ap­pre­ci­ate your speak­ing about me to my rabbi,” she said to Adam, look­ing straight ahead and count­ing the stripes in the wall­pa­per on the far wall. Any­thing to avoid his gaze.

“You used to not like when I kept our re­la­tion­ship quiet,” he said. She could feel the air around her con­strict as he took a step closer to her, an al­most phys­i­cal charge zing­ing be­tween his chest and her arm.

“I am not get­ting back to­gether with you,” she said, open­ing and clos­ing her hands at her sides as she wished for some­thing to do with them, other than stran­gling him. There were too many wit­nesses.

“I just want to talk to you.”

“You al­ready are. And I’m not in­ter­ested in hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one who doesn’t trust me.”

“Then I’ll wait,” he said and took a step back. A cool­ness wrapped around her like a shawl, and for a brief mo­ment she wanted to pull him closer to her. But that would be ridicu­lous. Be­cause she was still an­gry at him.

A man Dina rec­og­nized as some­one from Broth­er­hood ap­proached.

“Hi, I’m Dave,” he said to Adam and held out his hand as he nod­ded to Dina. “Wel­come to Tem­ple Tik­vah. Are you in­ter­ested in Broth­er­hood events? We have a break­fast com­ing up in a week.”