Page 47 of The Perfect Deception

To­gether, they un­strapped her, zipped her into her fuch­sia jacket, and strapped her back into the stroller.

“Hat?” Adam asked.

“Prob­a­bly.” She looked around and found one on the half wall by the front door. “Okay, I think we’re set.”

“Yeah, ex­cept forourjack­ets.”

Right.

As Macken­zie started to fuss, they hur­ried into their jack­ets and fi­nally ma­neu­vered the stroller out­side, locked the door and be­gan walk­ing down the side­walk. They set­tled into a rhythm, the fuss­ing stopped, and Dina breathed a sigh of re­lief.

“Made it,” she said.

“Did you doubt it?”

She glanced at Adam askance. “Hon­estly? Yes.”

“Ye of lit­tle faith.” He el­bowed her gen­tly in the ribs, and she huffed.

Dina pushed the stroller down the side­walk and Adam rested his hand on the bar next to hers. Their si­lence was com­pan­ion­able, and for the first time in at least an hour, Dina took in a deep breath.

“Feel bet­ter?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talk­ing about.”

He el­bowed her again with­out re­mov­ing his hand from the stroller. They ap­proached an older woman walk­ing to­ward them who glanced from the baby to them.

“Your daugh­ter is adorable,” the woman said as she ap­proached.

Dina knew she should protest. Adam was just her friend. They weren’t even a cou­ple, much less the par­ents of a baby. She re­ally should say some­thing. But in­stead, she smiled at the woman and con­tin­ued walk­ing.

He would have bet money Dina would have cor­rected the woman. Dina was the one hung up on their just be­ing friends.

Friends.

The more he thought of that word, the more lu­di­crous it be­came.

A friend didn’t look at a woman with lust in his eyes. A friend didn’t ache to touch the other’s skin. A friend didn’t hunger for the sound of the other’s voice.

He had no idea how she felt, be­cause she’d stuck him squarely in the “friend zone,” a for­eign land with its own lan­guage, man­ners, and rules. He should ob­ject to it—he’d heard enough scorn about it from other guys, even if he’d never been rel­e­gated there him­self. But there was some­thing re­fresh­ing about get­ting to know a woman, re­ally know her, with­out hav­ing to deal with the sex­ual side of things. Still, he was do­ing his best to break out of it. Inch by in­fu­ri­at­ingly sexy inch. Be­cause the more he got to know her, the more con­nected he felt to her.

The old woman had drawn at­ten­tion to their un-friend-like sta­tus. He’d ex­pected Dina to draw back in hor­ror be­fore bab­bling on about some ob­scure fact about friends, ba­bies or friends with ba­bies.

In­stead, she’d smiled.

His heart was still melt­ing.

He wanted to go kiss that old woman, ex­cept that prob­a­bly wouldn’t win him any points with Dina. It might draw at­ten­tion to the idea that they looked like a fam­ily, rather than friends. She didn’t need any help keep­ing that in mind. So he forced his feet to con­tinue walk­ing on the cold, hard pave­ment.

And walked right into a fire hy­drant.

“Ow!” He hopped on one foot, grip­ping his knee with the other, mut­ter­ing curses un­der his breath.

“Are you al­right?” Dina placed a hand on his arm. Even though he couldn’t ac­tu­ally feel her skin through his coat, he imag­ined he could. He started to speak, cleared his throat, and tried again.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He limped along next to her.

“Maybe we should head back.”