Page 28 of The Perfect Deception

With a tip of her head, Dina switched her at­ten­tion to the meal in front of her—ac­cord­ing to the per­son who’d served her, it was grilled filet mignon with a brandy pep­per­corn sauce, roasted fin­ger­ling pota­toes, and fresh spinach. It was de­li­cious and she was glad of the break to fo­cus on her food.

“Would you like more wine?” Adam held up the bot­tle and she shook her head.

“No, thank you. I’m good.”

“Tem­per­ance,” The Gen­eral said. “An­other good qual­ity. Adam, you could learn a lot from her.”

Adam’s jaw clenched and Dina had had enough. “Ac­tu­ally, I’ve learned a lot from Adam as well.”

Adam low­ered the wine bot­tle to the ta­ble, but kept his hand clenched around it. She wanted to reach out, cover his hand and soothe him, but the ta­ble was too wide and climb­ing across it? Well, she wasn’t that type of woman. Hop­ing he’d take her run­ning her foot up his calf as a sign of com­fort rather than fore­play, she con­tin­ued her con­ver­sa­tion with The Gen­eral.

“His knowl­edge of he­roes and mythol­ogy is fas­ci­nat­ing. In fact,” she turned back to­ward Adam, “I put aside some new ref­er­ence ma­te­ri­als and mag­a­zines that you might be in­ter­ested in.”

His hand re­laxed and rested on the ta­ble. “Thanks. I’ll stop by to look at them.”

“Since when are you in­ter­ested in that?” The Gen­eral didn’t bother look­ing up from his plate.

“I’ve al­ways been in­ter­ested in it. Don’t you re­mem­ber that class I took in col­lege?”

“At Emory? No, I don’t.”

Dina came from a fam­ily that paid at­ten­tion to ev­ery de­tail of her life. A par­tic­u­lar class in col­lege? Her par­ents could re­call the day and time of the class, as well as the pro­fes­sor and her fi­nal grade.

She wiped her mouth and put down her fork. “What class was it?”

“Mythol­ogy and su­per­heroes.”

“I’ll bet that was fas­ci­nat­ing.”

“Al­most made me want to get a PhD.”

His fa­ther snorted.

Dina turned to The Gen­eral. “Have you al­ways loved the law, or was there some­thing else that piqued your in­ter­est?”

A look passed over his face with a dreamy qual­ity that had she not seen, she would never have be­lieved.

“I took a the­ater class once.”

Adam paused mid bite. “Re­ally? What kind?”

“Mu­si­cal. I was told it was help­ful for pub­lic speak­ing.” He smiled as if lost in a mem­ory. “That was a lot of fun.”

“I didn’t know you could sing,” Adam said.

“I’m more of the shower va­ri­ety.” He hummed a few bars and af­ter a cou­ple of sec­onds, The Gen­eral turned to his son. “I like this one. I don’t know how you found her or what she sees in you, but if you’re as smart as some­one with my DNA is sup­posed to be, you’ll keep her.”

Chap­ter Nine

“Adam, be­fore you go, can I speak with you a mo­ment?”

They’d been just about to leave this mau­soleum filled to the brim with mem­o­ries of his mother, and Adam stepped away from Dina with a sigh. She smelled so good. Turn­ing his back on his fa­ther, he brought Dina into the liv­ing room and made sure she was com­fort­ably en­sconced in a chair by the win­dow. He placed a hand on her shoul­der. Be­neath the pale pink cash­mere sweater, he could feel her del­i­cate bones. The con­trast be­tween soft and sharp al­most made him groan. He wanted to let him­self be over­whelmed by her tex­tures, not by his fa­ther’s com­mands or by whis­pers of his mother’s un­hap­pi­ness. “I won’t be long,” he whis­pered, be­fore re­turn­ing to the foyer and his fa­ther. “Sure, Dad.” He fol­lowed his fa­ther down the hall.

Click­ing the heavy door shut be­hind him, he stood in his fa­ther’s home of­fice, the man’s in­ner sanc­tum. He waited for the other shoe to drop. Be­cause there was al­ways an­other shoe.

“I’ve con­vinced Bradley to stay with us, but you’re not al­lowed to work with them.”

“Ever? They’re on re­tainer.”

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