The Perfect Deception (The Perfect Match #3)

Chapter Three

Chap-ter Three

O n Mon-day, Adam walked straight to the par-ale-gals. “Hey, Kim, I brought in my old study guides for the bar.” He’d spent all day Sun-day putting them in or-der for her. A sin-gle mom whose hus-band had walked out on her and her two chil-dren, she’d told him about her de-sire to be-come a lawyer, and he’d en-cour-aged her, help-ing her out the last two years, en-ter-tain-ing her kids, and smooth-ing 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 awk-ward smile. “Thanks, Adam.”

Oth-ers in the area stopped what they were do-ing and watched the ex-change. It was weird. He held out a binder and af-ter swal-low-ing, Kim reached for it.

“Ev-ery-thing okay?” he asked. “I know the exam can be stress-ful, but with all the real-world ex-pe-ri-ence you’re get-ting here, and how hard you’re study-ing, you’re go-ing to do great.”

Her cheeks col-ored. “Yeah.”

She was usu-ally a lot more talk-a-tive. “If you want, I can give up my lunch hour to-day and help you study. I still re-mem-ber the tricks and tech-niques 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 par-ale-gals, who shot him a glance be-fore whis-per-ing to Kim.

He stood there, feel-ing awk-ward, be-fore re-turn-ing to his of-fice.

On Tues-day, he passed Kim at the copy ma-chine. “Did you take a look at the stuff I gave you yes-ter-day? If you need any-thing—”

“Adam, re-ally, 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.”

“I’m sure. Look, when you ac-cuse one para-le-gal, you ac-cuse all of us, and I don’t think it’s a good idea…” She looked around be-fore re-turn-ing her fo-cus to him. “for us to be to-gether, at least not right now. I need to work with these peo-ple, at least un-til I be-come a lawyer…”

He stiff-ened, gave her a nod and walked back to his of-fice. Sink-ing into his chair, he buried his face in his hand. Kim and he were friends. Did she re-ally be-lieve Ash-ley over him? They had spent hours to-gether and never once had he ever blamed any-one else for his screw ups. She knew him. Or she should.

By Wednes-day, any doubts about whether or not Kim be-lieved him dis-ap-peared. His his-tory with her was ir-rel-e-vant, be-cause Ash-ley had con-vinced all the par-ale-gals he had it out for her, and if they weren’t care-ful, he’d go af-ter them too. He’d tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t budge. Most wor-ri-some of all was that he couldn’t find the pa-per trail on his com-puter he’d left him-self for just such a thing as this hap-pen-ing. He’d searched ev-ery-where for it and it was gone.

This was three marks against him. One of which had lost them the case and un-less some-thing hap-pened quickly, might re-sult in los-ing the client. His fa-ther was pissed. Ash-ley was un-shake-able. The other par-ale-gals were avoid-ing him. Not only was it go-ing to be im-pos-si-ble for him to work if he had to do ev-ery-thing him-self, he was never go-ing to make ju-nior part-ner if this kept up.

He wracked his brain, try-ing to fig-ure out why Ash-ley would do some-thing like this. Other than one time where he’d given her an as-sign-ment and she’d messed it up, their in-ter-ac-tions had been fine. Pro-fes-sional. Sure, she didn’t like hav-ing to stay late, but that came with the job. He was al-ways friendly and re-spect-ful to her. He’d greet her in the morn-ing, just like he did ev-ery-one else. He asked her about her week-end, just like he did ev-ery-one else. He couldn’t think of any-thing out of the or-di-nary. Could he have pos-si-bly said some-thing that an-gered her? And if so, why hadn’t she said some-thing to him, ei-ther at the time, or now? He would have apol-o-gized im-me-di-ately.

In the mean-time, the par-ale-gals gave him wary looks, Kim no longer wanted his help, and his fa-ther gave him grunt work. Putting aside the aban-don-ment by his friends and fa-ther, how the hell was he sup-posed to prove him-self ready for the pro-mo-tion to ju-nior part-ner if he’d been rel-e-gated to han-dling things even a first year could do with their eyes closed? He started to sweat. Why did ev-ery-one as-sume the worst of him?

He stared out the win-dow down to the street be-low. A woman with curly hair walked by, re-mind-ing him of Dina and he smiled for the first time in days.

Dina was sweet. She was funny. Im-ages of Dina smil-ing at him, lean-ing for-ward to ask ques-tions, flit-ted through is head. Her face was round, with clear, pale skin, long lashes and full lips. Her eyes—he still couldn’t be-lieve they were vi-o-let—were beau-ti-ful. Maybe she wore con-tacts? Her hair fas-ci-nated him. It was dif-fer-ent from the smooth, straight tresses he was used to see-ing ev-ery-where. Hers was a deep brown, al-most black, with thick, frizzy waves. He won-dered what it would feel like against his cheek. Would it be soft or springy or some-thing he hadn’t con-sid-ered?

There was some-thing about hav-ing all those curves to him-self—to ex-plore, ad-mire and dis-cover—that made him think about her more than he’d like. She was curvier than the women he typ-i-cally dated, but then those women were model thin and com-plained about ev-ery calo-rie they put in their mouth. Half of his din-ner con-ver-sa-tions with them in-volved food, and not in any way he found fas-ci-nat-ing. His con-ver-sa-tions with Dina, on the other hand. They made him think.

He ex-pelled a breath. It didn’t mat-ter. No mat-ter how much he might have en-joyed din-ner with her, he couldn’t date a woman like her, a woman who could see through him as eas-ily as Dina. A woman who would leave him if she dis-cov-ered the real him—just like his mother, and now, ap-par-ently, Kim.

He shook his head. Dina was more re-li-giously ob-ser-vant than he was if she went to tem-ple ev-ery Fri-day night. Ex-cept last Fri-day night they’d had din-ner at the diner. Was tem-ple just an ex-cuse to avoid him?

No, some-how, he thought Dina would be more di-rect than that. And now, de-spite his con-cerns, he was tak-ing Dina out to a bar to-mor-row night. He didn’t do com-mit-ment, and his dat-ing record showed that. Dina, on the other hand, was prob-a-bly fo-cused on com-mit-ment, which should make him ner-vous. Ex-cept she didn’t seem to want to go out with him in the first place.

So why the hell was he tak-ing her out?

Adam was pick-ing her up in forty-five min-utes. She’d al-ready been stand-ing in front of her closet for close to fif-teen. Who did that? She had work clothes. She had week-end clothes. She had tem-ple clothes. She even had clothes to go on a date. But this was Adam, Mr. Flashy-pants .

He was prob-a-bly used to women show-ing lots of cleav-age and leg. Her boobs were too big for her to be com-fort-able show-ing cleav-age. She wasn’t a mini-skirt kind of per-son. Which left…not too many op-tions.

Ten min-utes later, she set-tled on black boot-cut jeans and a drape-necked green cash-mere sweater that ac-cen-tu-ated her eyes. Black boots, chunky sil-ver ear-rings, her sil-ver Jew-ish star neck-lace, min-i-mal makeup and she was done. Why she was try-ing to im-press him, she had no idea.

When her apart-ment in-ter-com buzzed, she grabbed her purse and jacket and met Adam on the porch of her con-verted Vic-to-rian.

Once again, he greeted her with his slow, small smile. A fris-son of ex-cite-ment went through her. He wore a black but-ton-down, open at the neck and grey slacks. The dark col-ors set off his lighter hair and made his green eyes pop. He leaned over and kissed her cheek, sur-pris-ing her. His lips were soft against her skin. She in-haled his spicy clean scent.

“You look pretty. I like what you did to your hair.”

All she’d done was pull it back off her face in a low half-knot. He prob-a-bly said this to all his dates. She fisted her hand at her side to keep from touch-ing it. “Thanks.”

She was not go-ing to think about her cheek that he’d kissed.

He led her down the walk-way and held open the car door for her. Up close, and in the day-light, she re-al-ized his car was a con-vert-ible. Of course it was. Luck-ily for her hair, the top was up.

“Nice car. Did you know Ger-many started mak-ing BMWs be-cause af-ter the Treaty of Ver-sailles they were pro-hib-ited from mak-ing war-planes or war-plane en-gines?” She gulped af-ter the fact slipped out. She re-ally needed to stop do-ing that.

He looked at her, chuck-led, and eased onto the street. Jazz played through the car’s sound sys-tem. Dina stared out the win-dow as they drove down the high-way and even-tu-ally onto the streets of Newark. She had no idea what to say, but the si-lence didn’t seem to bother him. Adam pulled into a park-ing garage.

He opened the door for her, pock-et-ing the ticket. “Come on, the bar’s this way.”

The area near the bar was busy with young pro-fes-sion-als un-wind-ing af-ter a long day at work and older peo-ple grab-bing a quick bite be-fore the show at the per-form-ing arts cen-ter down the street. As they walked, Adam chat-ted about the types of bands he liked. Most of the names were un-known to her—her mu-si-cal tastes ran more to clas-sic rock. Once there, he gave his name and they were seated down-stairs in a cozy booth in sight of the stage, but not too close. The room was dark, with sil-ver up-light-ing and multi-col-ored wall sconces that pro-vided flair.

Ev-ery-thing about this place screamed, “What are you do-ing here?”

Sit-ting across the sil-very speck-led-gran-ite topped ta-ble from each other, Dina stud-ied Adam’s face while he opened the wine menu. He was even more hand-some than she’d re-mem-bered. Her stom-ach knot-ted.

“What’s wrong?” Adam put the wine menu down.

“This is all just for-eign to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Noth-ing. Never mind.”

He fixed his at-ten-tion on her, as if wait-ing for her to con-tinue, but she wasn’t about to pour out her dis-com-fort to some-one she was never go-ing to see again. So she nod-ded to-ward the menu. “Is there a par-tic-u-lar wine you were think-ing of?”

“I was go-ing to ask what you like.”

“Any-thing but Man-is-che-witz.”

He laughed. “Hey, we have the same taste in wine!”

Dina couldn’t help the laugh that es-caped. Maybe he rec-og-nized how in-con-gru-ous they were too. “Good to know. Be-cause that might have been a deal breaker.”

“You re-ally have no pref-er-ence for red or white even?”

“I’m open to try-ing some-thing new.”

The slow smile spread. Mo-tion-ing for the wait-ress, he gave their wine or-der. Turn-ing his at-ten-tion back to her, he leaned for-ward. “So, do you get first dibs on the books that come in?”

She laughed again. “Not ex-actly. I mean, I get to see what’s in stock so I know what to add to my list, but we usu-ally have a wait-ing list of peo-ple who want the books, and I don’t get to jump ahead in line.”

“The peo-ple seem pretty nice. What’s your friend like, the one you were talk-ing to the other day?”

Wait. Why was he ask-ing about Tracy? “What do you want to know about her?”

“How’d you two meet?”

That was in-nocu-ous. The knot in her stom-ach loos-ened. “We work to-gether. She started a few years be-fore I did. She took me un-der her wing. I filled in for her when she took ma-ter-nity leave.”

“Are there a lot of peo-ple our age work-ing there or just you and Tracy?”

It was a good ques-tion, and an easy one. “There’s a pretty de-cent mix, ac-tu-ally.”

They paused to study their menus and or-der, and when the waiter left, Adam con-tin-ued with his ques-tions. “Do you two so-cial-ize out-side of work much?”

Dina re-laxed as she thought about her friend. “She’s pretty busy with her fam-ily, but we go to lunch. Oc-ca-sion-ally we’ll go shop-ping or see a movie on a week-end.”

“Oh, the Mor-ris-town movie the-ater is great—their seats are re-ally com-fort-able.”

“Yeah, al-though I wish they’d get more clas-sic movies, but I guess those don’t ap-peal to as many peo-ple.”

“The black and white ones? There are a few I’ve seen that are re-ally great. Cit-i-zen Kane was one of my fa-vorites. What’s yours?”

“Or-son Welles was ter-rific in that,” she said.

“‘I don’t think there’s one word that can de-scribe a man’s life.’ I love that line.”

“Why?”

Just then, the waiter brought their din-ners, a steak for Adam and filet of sole for Dina. The meat siz-zled. Its gar-licky scent mixed with the smell of the fish and the fruity salsa, mak-ing Dina’s stom-ach growl. Once they’d each tasted their food, she prompted him. “The movie line?”

“Oh. I like how it’s such a sim-ple way to de-scribe the com-plex-ity of a per-son. It’s not dra-matic, it doesn’t ex-ag-ger-ate things, but it shows there can be more to some-one or some sit-u-a-tion than meets the eye.”

Her heart thud-ded. Mr. Flashy-pants had a soul. A fairly deep one at that. “Dis-cov-er-ing those hid-den facets can be the most re-ward-ing part of get-ting to know some-one.”

A flicker of un-cer-tainty passed over his face. He sat back in his chair, ad-just-ing his nap-kin on his lap. “Un-less there’s noth-ing there.”

“What do you mean?” The sole was melt-in-your-mouth de-li-cious. She hadn’t stopped eat-ing since the waiter set the plate in front of her. Now, how-ever, she put down her fork.

His gaze shifted from the food in front of him, to the wall be-hind her ear, to the cen-ter of the room and he shrugged. “Some of us are ex-actly what we seem.”

“I don’t be-lieve that. I think we all hide pieces of our-selves. No one walks around with a sign around their neck pro-claim-ing this is the real me.”

He sliced an-other piece of steak, fin-ished chew-ing be-fore he spoke again. “And you? Who are you?”

Like she would tell him. “I’m a vam-pire,” she whis-pered.

“Ah, I guess see-ing you out in the day-light and shar-ing this gar-lic bread with you re-ally fooled me,” he said with a wink. His shoul-ders loos-ened and once again, he re-laxed.

They fin-ished their meal to-gether just as the band took the stage. In-trigued, Dina watched as they tuned their in-stru-ments be-fore be-gin-ning their set. The mu-sic was a mix of new age rock with a lit-tle jazz and funk thrown in. She was sur-prised at how much she en-joyed it. Be-fore she knew it, she was tap-ping her hands on the ta-ble to the beat. The other sur-pris-ing thing? Adam knew the mu-sic, even singing along at times. She never would have pegged him as some-one who liked this mu-sic style—it wasn’t flashy or trendy enough. At least, she didn’t think it was.

Her nos-trils filled with his spicy clean af-ter-shave. Some-thing about his scent made her want to move closer to him, which was in-sane. She barely knew him, they were in pub-lic and there was a ta-ble of food sep-a-rat-ing them.

“How do you like the band?” he asked.

She nod-ded her head. “They’re great. I’ve never heard of them be-fore.” Of course, she wasn’t up on mu-sic, so that didn’t mean any-thing.

“They’re in-die and fairly new. They’re orig-i-nally from Chicago. Glad you’re en-joy-ing your-self.” He shifted his chair closer and placed his hand on the ta-ble close to hers. Their fin-gers brushed against each other. The con-tact sent jolts of elec-tric-ity up Dina’s arm.

He twined his fin-gers through hers and she stilled. Did he feel it too? Or was this how he acted with ev-ery-one? When the set ended and the lights came back on, she ex-pected him and his sup-ple fin-gers to move back to his side of the ta-ble. But he stayed where he was and took a dessert menu from the waiter. “We can share,” he said. The waiter walked away. “See any-thing you like?”

She had an in-sane de-sire to say, “Yes, you.” But he was talk-ing about dessert. Her face heated as her mind wan-dered down a path it re-ally shouldn’t go on a first-slash-sec-ond-date-that-didn’t-mean-any-thing-and-would-never-go-any-where. She shook her head to clear it and tried to dis-tract her-self with thoughts of food.

Glanc-ing over at him, she re-al-ized he was still wait-ing for an an-swer. De-spite the fact she’d been star-ing at the menu, she had no idea what was writ-ten there. “I’ll just have some ice cream.”

He nod-ded, or-dered for the two of them and fid-dled with the sil-ver-ware on the ta-ble.

“I never would have pegged you for some-one who liked in-die bands,” she said.

He gave a wry grin. “Me nei-ther. It showed up on my Pan-dora one day while I was run-ning.”

“You run?”

Nod-ding, he flipped the fork first one way then the other.

The mo-tion of his hands mes-mer-ized her—watch-ing the play of the ten-dons as he spun the fork, see-ing his fin-gers stretch as he strove not to drop the fork on the ta-ble, catch-ing the light glint-ing off the sil-ver-ware and the gold chain around his wrist.

“Five miles a day,” he said.

She started. Five miles…oh, yeah. Run-ning. “Great ex-er-cise.”

“Do you run?”

“Only if some-one’s chas-ing me. Even then, I’d prob-a-bly sur-ren-der. I pre-fer walk-ing, prefer-ably in the woods.”

“Have you walked any of the county trails?”

She started to nod, but the lights dimmed. The band re-turned for their fi-nal set. This time, his near-ness dis-tracted her—the touch of his shoul-der as he rocked in his seat in time to the beat, the thrum of his voice as he sang a pri-vate con-cert just for her. She re-mem-bered the first set for the mu-sic, but this sec-ond set was all about Adam. Spot-lights from the stage glinted off his hair, cre-at-ing streaks of white gold and cop-per. His sil-hou-ette re-minded her of Greek sculp-tures in the mu-seum—proud nose, firm chin, prom-i-nent cheek-bones, wide fore-head. Mus-cles in his fore-arms flexed be-neath his black sleeve as he played air gui-tar or im-i-tated the drum-mer.

When it was over, a breath-less feel-ing con-stricted the breath in her chest. She took a hasty sip of wa-ter.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

When she nod-ded, he held out her chair and walked with her to-ward the door, his hand against the small of her back.

“Adam Man-del?”

He dropped his hand from her back. “Hey, Seth, how ya doin’?”

Like a flick of a switch, Mr. Flashy-pants was back.

“I didn’t know you were into this band,” Seth said.

The sound of Adam’s laugh sent a chill down her spine. “You know me, al-ways will-ing to try some-thing new.” But the tone of his voice in-di-cated oth-er-wise. “See you around, Seth.”

Whereas be-fore, Adam’s hand on her back had warmed her, this time, when he put it there again, she felt as if he were steer-ing her away from pub-lic view. She stayed silent on their walk back to the car, Adam’s non-cha-lant whis-tle grat-ing on her ears.

Once in-side his car, she looked out the win-dow at the city lights. There was noth-ing to see, but she didn’t want to look at Adam.

“I’m glad we did this,” he said, as he pulled onto the high-way.

Her mother had taught her man-ners. No mat-ter how un-com-fort-able she felt, she would live up to them. “The band was great. The food was de-li-cious.”

“Sorry about back there,” he said. “I should have in-tro-duced you.”

“It can be shock-ing to run into peo-ple in odd places.” Ex-cept that didn’t fully ex-plain his change in de-meanor.

She half lis-tened to his small talk in the car as they drove the rest of the way home, try-ing to fig-ure out why he demon-strated two such dif-fer-ent sides of his per-son-al-ity.

He walked her to her door, paused out-side of it, look-ing around as if to see if any-one was watch-ing. “I had a lot of fun with you tonight,” he said. “Thanks for giv-ing me an-other chance.”

“You’re wel-come.”

He reached a hand out and traced a line down the side of her face. Prick-les of goose bumps fol-lowed his fin-ger. She shiv-ered. Did she want him to kiss her? Be-fore they ran into Seth, she would have said yes. Now she wasn’t sure. Laugh-ter from an-other build-ing in-truded.

He dropped his hand to his side. “I’ll call you to-mor-row?”

Nod-ding, she fished her keys out of her purse. He waited for her to get in-side be-fore rais-ing his hand in a wave and jog-ging back to his car.

Adam let him-self into his high-rise apart-ment af-ter drop-ping off Dina at hers. She was a sur-prise he was en-joy-ing dis-cov-er-ing. When their hands had touched over din-ner, he’d felt…some-thing. “Sparks” was stupid, but he didn’t know what else to call it. From the way she’d jumped, he’d bet she’d felt some-thing too, es-pe-cially when she didn’t pull her hand away as he wound his fin-gers around hers. Stand-ing at her door, he hadn’t wanted to let her go so quickly.

He’d wanted to taste her lips. Her skin had been soft. If only Seth hadn’t in-truded and those peo-ple’s laugh-ter hadn’t in-ter-rupted them. Next time. He’d have to make sure there was a next time, even if he was sup-posed to be cool-ing off his so-cial life for the time be-ing.

The red light of his an-swer-ing ma-chine glowed. His body tensed. Only one per-son called him on his home phone—his fa-ther. Toss-ing his keys onto the black gran-ite counter, he hit play.

“Adam, it’s Dad. Where the hell are you? It’s a Thurs-day night. Please tell me you’re not out par-ty-ing. You’re sup-posed to be im-prov-ing your work ethic, not aban-don-ing it. Call me.”

Jab-bing the Erase but-ton, he stalked out onto his bal-cony. He gripped the rail-ing as he stared into the night, no longer pic-tur-ing Dina’s face. His apart-ment com-plex was next to the train sta-tion, but if he looked out in-stead of down, he could see sil-hou-ettes of the trees on the Green in the dis-tance.

When had his life turned to shit? Out of all the con-clu-sions his fa-ther jumped to, he im-me-di-ately leapt to par-ty-ing? Maybe he was work-ing. Or at the li-brary. Or help-ing Kim study for the bar exam. He shook his head. With the types of as-sign-ments his fa-ther had foisted on him, there was no need to work late. The li-brary? Hadn’t been there since law school—stop-ping out-side to talk to Dina the other day prob-a-bly didn’t count. Help-ing Kim? His fa-ther didn’t know about that.

He shifted from one foot to the other. No won-der his fa-ther was sus-pi-cious. Al-though would it kill him to have a lit-tle faith in his son? He laughed to him-self. His fa-ther’s faith in any-one had dis-ap-peared when his wife left twenty-two years ago. Adam pushed away from the rail-ing.

Head-ing back in-side, he looked around. He wasn’t in the mood to go to bed. He didn’t feel like be-ing alone. But there weren’t any friends he could call. His gaze fell onto his law school grad-u-a-tion photo perched on the mar-ble-topped cof-fee ta-ble. He stood next to his best law school friend, Ja-cob Black. They hadn’t talked in a few months. Ja-cob knew his fa-ther. He knew Adam. Maybe he’d be able to give him ca-reer ad-vice.

Pulling the name from his con-tacts, he di-aled.

“Ja-cob! It’s Adam.”

“Hey, it’s been a while.”

Just the sound of his buddy’s voice made him feel bet-ter. “Yeah, how are you?”

“Great. Busy with work, as I’m sure you are.”

Adam swal-lowed. “Any chance you’re free to catch up?”

“Ab-so-lutely. To-mor-row night?”

Dina might go to tem-ple ev-ery Fri-day, but he didn’t. “Sure.”