The Perfect Deception (The Perfect Match #3)

Chapter Twenty-One

Chap-ter Twenty-One

F or the third time af-ter hang-ing up with Dina that af-ter-noon, Adam vom-ited. He’d con-vinced Dina it was her fault. He’d bro-ken up with the one girl he loved. And he was a bas-tard. Be-cause none of it was true.

But at least he’d been the one to leave first.

His stom-ach gur-gled and flopped and once again, he hunched over the toi-let. The cold porce-lain did lit-tle to ease his tor-ment. This was worse than be-ing drunk. At least he knew he’d feel bet-ter once the al-co-hol was purged from his sys-tem. But this? There was no way to purge his vile be-hav-ior from his sys-tem.

When his phone buzzed, he groped blindly for it, skit-ter-ing his fin-gers across the tiled floor un-til they bumped against the vi-brat-ing phone.

“Hello,” he rasped.

“Adam, it’s Ja-cob. You sound aw-ful.”

Wip-ing his mouth, he sat back against the wall. “Yeah, I feel like crap.”

“Sorry. I was go-ing to see if you wanted to meet in the city for some pool. Aviva’s out with her mom tonight, but doesn’t sound like you’ll make it.”

Adam roused him-self and ran his hand over his face. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Next time.”

A weight sat on his shoul-ders as he put down his phone. He wasn’t sick. There was no phys-i-cal rea-son why he couldn’t spend the evening with Ja-cob. In fact, it would prob-a-bly be good to keep his mind off of things. Ex-cept Ja-cob would ask what was go-ing on and he’d have to ex-plain why he broke up with Dina.

He didn’t have a good pub-lic rea-son, be-cause Ja-cob would see through the ar-gu-ment he used—that Dina had set him up. And then he’d have to tell Ja-cob the real rea-son—he was afraid Dina would leave him if she knew the truth, so he made sure to leave first. Know-ing Ja-cob, and his sense of right and wrong, he’d back Dina, which meant he’d lose a girl-friend and a best friend. He couldn’t han-dle that. So he’d have to keep his dis-tance from Ja-cob un-til some time passed and he got a new girl-friend.

That thought al-most made him start heav-ing again, but he forced his stom-ach to calm. Keep-ing up ap-pear-ances and never let-ting any-one leave be-fore he did was get-ting old.

“Oh, sweet-heart!” Tracy pulled Dina close, squish-ing the baby be-tween them un-til she started to whim-per. Ca-ress-ing the child’s face, Dina pulled back, wiped her eyes and sat at Tracy’s kitchen ta-ble.

The same one she’d sat at with Adam when they’d babysat. She blinked, try-ing as much to ban-ish the im-age as the tears.

“What are you go-ing to do?” Tracy asked.

Dina glared at her friend and gripped the edge of the ta-ble. “Not a freak-ing thing. I’m done. He hasn’t ex-plained any-thing to me and he thinks I set him up. I wouldn’t know how to fix things even if I wanted to.”

“You don’t want to?”

“The guy who sup-pos-edly cares about me thinks the worst of me as soon as some-thing goes wrong. Why would I want to be with some-one who can’t give me the ben-e-fit of the doubt?” She fid-dled with the baby’s rat-tle and squeezed her chubby fin-gers.

“No, you’re right. Only…maybe there’s some rea-son he jumped to that con-clu-sion. Maybe there’s some-thing you’re miss-ing.”

“Trace, he never even told me his fa-ther fired him. I don’t want to spend any more time on this. I just want to for-get he ever ex-isted.”

Of course, that was go-ing to be as pos-si-ble as switch-ing night with day. Ev-ery-thing re-minded her of Adam.

Tracy pushed a cup of tea to-ward her and she held the hot mug be-tween her hands, try-ing to warm them up. She’d been freez-ing for two days now, ever since Adam had bro-ken up with her. Noth-ing helped.

“I can’t be-lieve he said those things to you,” Tracy said.

“Me nei-ther. I should have stuck with my gut in-stinct with him. I knew he was a phony. I called him Mr. Flashy-pants,” she said with a sob. Clear-ing her voice, she con-tin-ued. “He never was my type.”

But as she left Tracy’s house and re-turned to her own apart-ment, her in-ner voice whis-pered to her.

Yes, he was.

A week later, Adam ad-justed his tie, combed his hair and shot his cuffs. Step-ping out of the re-stroom in the black and grey mar-ble lobby of the third largest law firm in Man-hat-tan, he strode to the el-e-va-tor and punched the but-ton for the fifth floor. When the doors opened, he stepped into a rose and gold car-peted re-cep-tion area and ap-proached the desk. An older woman with per-fectly coiffed white hair looked at him over read-ing glasses perched on an aquiline nose.

“May I help you?”

“I’m Adam Man-del. I have an in-ter-view with Matthew Stevens.”

“I’ll page him.”

She pointed to the buff leather sofa, but Adam paced in-stead. This was his third in-ter-view this week. He should be thrilled the head-hunter had found law firms look-ing to hire, but af-ter the pre-vi-ous two in-ter-views, he wasn’t hold-ing out much hope.

The door opened.

“Adam? I’m Matthew. Come on in.”

Adam fol-lowed the older gen-tle-man down a labyrinth of hall-ways un-til he reached the cor-ner of-fice. Un-like his fa-ther’s, which was dark and stately, this one was airy with floor-to-ceil-ing win-dows and filled with clean lines from a glass ta-ble that served as a desk, sleek mod-ern fur-ni-ture and geo-met-ric rugs. He sat in the black leather mid-cen-tury mod-ern chair Matthew pointed to and rested his right an-kle on his left knee. The pseudo-re-laxed pose was sup-posed to hide his anx-i-ety.

“So, Adam, I took a look at your ré-sumé and you’re in a good po-si-tion to be look-ing for a new job. But I have to say, I’m a lit-tle con-cerned about some-thing.”

Adam’s stom-ach knot-ted. He had his an-swers pre-pared, but he’d hoped to get fur-ther into the in-ter-view process be-fore us-ing them. “What are you con-cerned about?”

“The rea-son you’re leav-ing your fa-ther’s firm. Thomas, your head-hunter, has given me great can-di-dates con-sis-tently, which is why I called you in for an in-ter-view, but I’ve heard the whis-pers about you rid-ing on your fam-ily’s rep-u-ta-tion and miss-ing dead-lines, re-sult-ing in your los-ing cases. I’m not sure I can af-ford to hire some-one like that.”

Adam moved so both feet were on the floor, leaned for-ward in his chair and met Matthew’s gaze square on. “I didn’t do it.” He held up his hands. “Rather, the very first time, months ago, I botched some-thing I was work-ing on. It was my fault. I was care-less. But the other two? I swear that I gave ev-ery-thing to my para-le-gal to file. I have no idea how the fil-ing didn’t hap-pen. I know she says I never gave any-thing to her, and maybe I’d be in-clined to be-lieve her once, but twice? I’ve learned my les-son and in the fu-ture, I’ll ei-ther file the mo-tions my-self or wait around for proof things were ac-tu-ally filed, even if it means stay-ing in the of-fice all night. I know you have no rea-son to be-lieve me, but I’m telling you the truth.”

“Then why did you fa-ther fire you?”

The mil-lion-dol-lar ques-tion. “I can’t say for sure. I know that he has to look out for his firm’s rep-u-ta-tion and he can’t af-ford to lose clients.” He shrugged. “When your name is on the door, the only way to con-vince a client a mis-take won’t hap-pen twice is to fire the lawyer who sup-pos-edly screwed up, even if that lawyer is in-no-cent.” Or your own son.

“You didn’t ask him?”

Adam ran a hand over the top of his head. “My fa-ther and I try to keep our re-la-tion-ship in the of-fice sep-a-rate from that of a fa-ther and son. He had to do what he thought was best for the firm in gen-eral.”

Matthew sat back and twirled a pen-cil be-tween his fin-gers. “But if things hap-pened as you say they did, why would this go where it did?”

“Be-cause the par-ale-gals were start-ing to rebel. They were talk-ing pub-licly that they were be-ing thrown un-der the bus. The firm can’t func-tion with-out them, and if they left, it would be hard to hire oth-ers.”

“And did you? Throw her un-der the bus?”

“No. I never even talked about it pub-licly. If I were go-ing to do that, I would have.”

“Okay. Look, you know that legally I can’t refuse to hire you based on your rep-u-ta-tion. So let’s look at your ex-pe-ri-ence.”

They spoke for the next thirty min-utes about cases he’d tried, goals he had and what the firm was look-ing for. When Matthew rose to shake his hand, Adam got to his feet.

“Thank you for tak-ing a chance and in-ter-view-ing me,” Adam said. “I know it would have been eas-ier to sim-ply pass on the whole thing.”

“You seem like a good guy who made some er-rors in judg-ment. Let me get back to you in a few days.”

Adam left the in-ter-view in a bet-ter mood. Out of all three in-ter-views, this one seemed the most likely to give him a shot. As he walked to Penn Sta-tion to catch the train, he thought once again about Dina. He’d been able to talk about what hap-pened to his po-ten-tial em-ployer. Why couldn’t he talk to her about it?

Be-cause he still was afraid she’d leave. That she’d be-lieve the worst about him. If peo-ple who knew him well could doubt him, Dina would too. And if not im-me-di-ately, even-tu-ally. Es-pe-cially if he couldn’t get a job.

Of course, he’d left that part out of the in-ter-view. And maybe, if he was lucky and got this job, he could go crawl-ing back to Dina and beg her for-give-ness.