Page 61 of The Perfect Deception

He took a mo­ment to ex­am­ine the ac­tress. Dina was right. The A-list ac­tress was su­per skinny and al­though tra­di­tion­ally at­trac­tive, not par­tic­u­larly ap­peal­ing. He frowned. Be­fore to­day, he’d al­ways thought she was hot. In fact, a lot of the women he’d dated be­fore Dina re­sem­bled that body type. Her neck looked stringy, the veins in her arms ropey. When he held Dina against him, her curves had made him feel she was melt­ing into him, like the two of them were be­com­ing one per­son, even with­out sex.

When the ac­tress and ac­tor lit­er­ally bumped into each other on the street cor­ner, he leaned to­ward Dina. Her hair tick­led his face and he pushed it out of the way, more to give him­self an ex­cuse to touch it than be­cause it both­ered him.

“He’s prob­a­bly got bruises from her ribs.”

Dina buried her head in his shoul­der and trem­bled with laugh­ter. He squeezed her hand, his cheek twitch­ing from try­ing not to dis­turb any­one. The smell of co­conuts wafted from her hair and he fo­cused on trop­i­cal is­lands, sandy beaches, any­thing but her silent laugh­ter. Be­cause if he thought about that he’d laugh out loud, and they’d get kicked out of the movie the­ater. Fi­nally, she took a deep breath and pulled away, and while he was grate­ful for the ab­sence of her con­ta­gious laugh­ter, his body missed her close­ness.

They con­tin­ued to make quiet com­ments through­out the movie—she point­ing out “too stupid to live” mo­ments, he point­ing out how the male lead was equally treated as eye candy—un­til in­evitably, the cred­its rolled and the lights went on.

Some­how, dur­ing the length of the movie, their hands had be­come in­ter­twined and their legs, ex­tended in the red leather re­clin­ers, rested against each other. He didn’t want to move. Ever.

“That was a pretty ridicu­lous movie,” he said, as they fi­nally rose and filed out of the movie the­ater.

“Oh, but I loved it,” Dina said. “It was so ridicu­lous that it was en­ter­tain­ing. What I love about movies like that is you know ex­actly what you’re go­ing to get. There are no sur­prises, be­cause there isn’t much depth to the story or the char­ac­ters, but it’s ex­actly what you need at the time you’re watch­ing.”

“I’ll keep that in mind for next time.” He gave her a side­ways glance, in­trigued by this amaz­ing, in­tel­li­gent woman who could find mean­ing and joy in any­thing she did.

“Good. Al­though we might need to dis­cuss the genre next time. There are only so many skinny bim­bos I can han­dle at one time.”

He took her hand in his. “True. And that’s just the guys.”

She laughed, and it was the sweet­est sound. On their way home, they stopped for frozen yo­gurt, get­ting cups to go and eat­ing while walk­ing.

Dina looked over at Adam’s cup of yo­gurt, which was pineap­ple and co­conut. “Um, we may have a prob­lem.”

Adam stopped dead. “What’s wrong?”

Dina’s lips twitched and the pres­sure in his chest eased. “You don’t eat choco­late. That could be a deal breaker.”

Adam pulled her to­ward him and handed her his yo­gurt.

“My not eat­ing choco­late is a deal breaker?” He drew him­self up so he was as large as pos­si­ble and looked down at her, fo­cus­ing on her lips. There was a spot of choco­late, and he took his fin­ger, drag­ging it across her mouth to wipe the choco­late away.

She nod­ded her head.

With the back of his hand, he ca­ressed her cheek. Her skin was so soft and warmth pooled in his belly. “I would have thought that would be a good thing.”

“Wh…” She cleared her throat. “Why?”

He licked his fin­ger, slowly, watch­ing her mouth drop. “Be­cause you don’t need to share.”

He bent his head to­ward her and kissed her cold lips that tasted of choco­late. In the back­ground he heard a “plunk,” but to in­ves­ti­gate would mean pulling away from her and he wouldn’t do that. The co­conut scent of her hair mixed with the co­conut fla­vor of his yo­gurt and he couldn’t get enough of her. Af­ter what could have been hours or sec­onds, she pushed against his chest and he took a step back, his breath in short gasps.

“I dropped the yo­gurt.”

Chap­ter Six­teen

Adam called her ev­ery day over the next two weeks. They went out on dates dur­ing the week and spent at least one day a week­end to­gether.

And they didn’t have sex.

Prior to meet­ing Adam, Dina would never have char­ac­ter­ized her­self as sex-starved. She never would have char­ac­ter­ized her­self as “sex” any­thing, if she were be­ing com­pletely hon­est.

She’d had boyfriends—mostly sev­eral years older than her, since she used to re­late bet­ter to older men who ap­pre­ci­ated a woman with a brain. She kept a box of con­doms un­der her bed. The box had been opened and sev­eral con­doms had been used. But sex had never been some­thing she thought about very of­ten.

Af­ter meet­ing Adam?

She thought about sex con­stantly.

---