Playing It Close by Kat Latham Read Free Book Online Page B

calm, mate. You’ll get it next time.” The women he dated usually appreciated it—particularly in bed—until they began to picture his ring on their finger and realized his patience extended far beyond theirs.
    But waiting twenty minutes for a woman to get ready had always been a surefire way of burning the wick of his patience down to nothing. He glanced at his watch again and leaned back in the lobby armchair, his foot swinging back and forth in annoyance. He wasn’t good at sitting around and waiting for something to happen. A teeny tiny part of him was guiltily relieved he’d been spared the experience parking himself next to his mum’s deathbed while she passed away. What torture it would’ve been to know what was going to happen, yet be unable to do anything to help and have no fucking clue when it would all be over.
    What an arsehole he was.
    He jumped up and stalked across the lobby for a third time. The receptionist saw him coming and picked up the phone, already knowing he would ask her to dial Room 317 again. A few seconds later she hung up. “Her phone’s still busy, señor. ”
    He pressed his lips together to bite back his curse. Tess’s phone had been bloody engaged for the past ten minutes. If she wasn’t down here in another five, he was jumping into the van without her.
    And spending the day alone. Again.
    Jesus, he was sick of his own company. The past two days, she’d been the only person he’d talked to—really talked to—and those few hours had soothed the beast inside that’d been snarling at him for six months.
    One last glance at his watch. Two more minutes, then—
    The squeak of hiking boots against Spanish tile made him spin around.
    “Liam, I’m so sorry I’m late.”
    She looked harried and more than a little worried. Shite, he hadn’t considered that maybe she’d had an emergency. “Everything okay?”
    “Yeah. Fine. I just...slept through my alarm.”
    His brows drew together. Who’d she been on the phone with for so long? She’d said she wasn’t in a relationship. Was that true?
    “Thanks for waiting. I’ve wanted to see the cloud forest ever since I got here. Shall we go?”
    He nodded slowly, still trying to work her out. She was hiding something—but, then again, so was he, so why push it? “I’m ready. The driver’s waiting in the car park.”
    She beamed, and he was struck in the gut with an invisible fist. She hadn’t smiled like that since he’d met her. With her pink hair falling in soft layers around her face and a glimmer in her eye, she really did look like a pixie. He couldn’t hold back his chuckle. “Let’s go, Pinkie.”
    “I ignored the first time you said it, since we were stuck in a lift together and I thought it was easier than having a go at you, but I really don’t like that nickname,” she admonished as they crossed the lobby toward the door, each carrying a small day pack.
    “No? What would you prefer?”
    “Tess.”
    “That’s not a nickname. That’s your name.”
    “Actually, it’s not, but I’m not telling you my full name.”
    “Why not?”
    “Too embarrassing.”
    He cocked his brow. “Really? You know you’ve just encouraged me to dig now, right?”
    “Go ahead. You’ll never figure it out. It’s too strange.”
    He laughed as he held the door open for her. “So I couldn’t just look at your passport?”
    “You could, but you’d have to figure out the combination to my hotel safe in order to find it.”
    “Hmm...I have resources at my disposal, you know. Shouldn’t be too hard for me to figure out.”
    She skipped down the veranda steps in front of him and started down the path toward the car park, drawing his gaze to her tight little body hidden under khaki hiking trousers and the way she moved. As if she were lighter than air or walking on bubbles. He’d often been written up in the sports press for his ability to dance around the opposition, but at five-eleven and nearly fifteen stone, he hadn’t