Page 70 of The Perfect Deception

“This is stupid. I shouldn’t bother go­ing tonight.” She twirled her hair around her fin­ger, smil­ing at Macken­zie.

“Wow, this is re­ally bad.” Tracy handed her a cup of tea.

“Why am I even both­er­ing to go?” The heat from the mug warmed her hands and she wrapped them around it, in­hal­ing the chamomile-scented steam.

“To your re­union? Three rea­sons: Hot dress, hot guy and pay­back.”

Dina choked on her tea. “Se­ri­ously? I’m afraid no one will re­mem­ber me or care whether or not I’m there, and it’s prob­a­bly a sign of some men­tal ill­ness that I’m still even think­ing about my high school hor­rors, and you say ‘pay­back’?”

Hand­ing her a nap­kin, Tracy perched on Dina’s sofa. “Deep breath. Look, the ten-year re­union is all about pay­back. It’s ev­ery­one’s chance to prove them­selves out­side of the clois­tered high school world they grew up in. You’re go­ing to walk in look­ing sexy and fab­u­lous in your dress, with a gor­geous man on your arm, and ev­ery­one is go­ing to come up to you.”

“No one is go­ing to come near me be­cause they’re not go­ing to re­mem­ber me and I’m go­ing to look stupid in front of Adam.”

“No, they’re all go­ing to come up to you, es­pe­cially be­cause they don’t re­mem­ber you, in or­der to fig­ure out who you are and how you got so lucky. Trust me,” Tracy said. “And be­sides, Adam likes you—I’ve seen how he looks at you. He won’t care if the two of you are the only peo­ple in the room. In fact,” she said, ris­ing and head­ing to­ward the door, “I think he’d prob­a­bly pre­fer you two be­ing com­pletely alone so he can un­dress you.”

Chap­ter Nine­teen

Adam’s mouth dropped when Dina opened the door. At least, he was pretty sure the god­dess in white was Dina. She had the same vi­o­let eyes that in­trigued him, but this time they were ac­cen­tu­ated by sub­tle green shim­mery eye shadow. She had the same curves that made him want to bury him­self in­side her, but this time they were em­pha­sized by white fab­ric that some­how man­aged to hug her curves and flow at the same time. His gaze jumped to her head. Her hair. Her crazy, curly, out­ra­geous hair was per­fect. She’d pinned back her curls, but al­lowed enough of them to es­cape that they framed her face and once again, made him want to grab them. In­stead, he clenched his fist at his side. He’d dated enough beau­ti­ful women in his life­time to know bet­ter than to touch their hair when they’d ob­vi­ously spent time get­ting ready for an evening out.

But Dina? Dina was stun­ning.

She was also blush­ing, and he re­al­ized with a start he’d been stand­ing on her doorstep with­out ut­ter­ing a word for far too long.

“Hi,” he said. Bril­liant.

“Hi.”

So maybe she was as af­fected as he was. But by him? She was the last per­son to fall for any of his sup­posed charms, which was one of the things he trea­sured about her.

“You look…beau­ti­ful.”

She dipped her head. “Thank you.”

He held his hand out for her and when she placed her hand in his, the world shifted, like a house set­tling into a storm, and peace en­com­passed him. “Come on, we’re go­ing to have fun.”

She raised an eye­brow at him and they walked to his car in si­lence. Once in­side, he pulled onto the street and be­gan fol­low­ing his GPS.

“Did you know Prince­ton was founded be­fore the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion?” she said. “The Lenni Lenape In­di­ans—”

“Dina?”

She stopped, lips parted, and turned to­ward him.

“Re­lax,” he said, reach­ing across the con­sole and tak­ing her cold hand in his. “It’s go­ing to be fun. I prom­ise.”

Out of the cor­ner of his eye, he watched her chest rise and fall, like she was tak­ing her last breath of fresh air.

As he stopped at a traf­fic light, he turned to look at her. “We are go­ing to have a great time. And you are go­ing to be the star.”

Her body re­laxed, even as her ex­pres­sion told him she thought he was crazy. “We’ll see.”

For the rest of the ride, she blurted out ridicu­lous facts about cloth­ing—the Greeks and Ro­mans thought trousers were worn by bar­bar­ians, traf­fic lights—the first one was in­stalled in 1914, and hair gel—the first type was Bryl­creem, in­vented by the British in 1929. No mat­ter how many times Adam tried to change the sub­ject or en­gage her in what he con­sid­ered “nor­mal con­ver­sa­tion,” she al­ways re­treated to ob­scure facts. So he let her ram­ble and ad­mired the sound of her voice.

An hour later, when they pulled up to the ho­tel in Prince­ton, Dina re­mained seated in his car af­ter he’d turned off the en­gine. She stared out the win­dow at the façade of the build­ing. Or maybe she was watch­ing the peo­ple en­ter. Could be she was plot­ting the per­fect an­gle to make her es­cape. He couldn’t tell be­cause her body had stilled, and her breath­ing had soft­ened.

And she was silent.

“Dina?”

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