Playing It Close (6 page)

Going into the cloud forest twice hadn’t been part of her plan, but miss the opportunity to spend the day with Liam Callaghan, who turned out to be not just a sporting legend but also funny and flirtatious? Not a chance. If she did, she’d be ignoring the number one item on her most cherished list—her Ways To Change My Life list:
Grab hold of the good times
.

That list only had a couple of items ticked so far.
Travel somewhere exotic at least once a year.
Okay, she shouldn’t have ticked that one off because hopefully she had a lot of years left. But she’d done it this year. She was here now.

Dye my hair blue.
She’d done that, hoping for a classy dark blue, the kind that women with jet-black hair sometimes go for, which made alabaster skin look amazing. Sadly, she hadn’t started out with jet-black hair, and putting blue on brown had looked a mess. So she’d gone to a funky student salon in Soho and told them she wanted to try a different color. A drastic change. Now she had a separate list: Mistakes I’ll Never Make Again. Number one:
Tell a student hairdresser you want a drastic change.

So her hair had been bleached and turned bright pink, which did nothing for her skin, especially when she’d been spending time in the sun building up an English tan: medium pink all over. Her skin would soon match her hair if she weren’t careful.

Hence the SPF 50 sunscreen.

Ready to go, she swung the pack onto her back and was nearly out the door when the phone rang. The hotel phone, next to her bed. She’d kept her mobile off and hadn’t booted up her laptop since she’d arrived. Only three people knew her room number: Liam, the receptionist, and her cousin Charlie, who owned an eco-travel company and had booked her onto this trip.

Please be Liam.

She closed her door and rushed to the phone, sitting on the edge of the mattress as she picked it up.

“Hey, Tessy. I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

Damn. Charlie. “Not at all. I was just on my way out, in fact.”

“Oh? What’re you doing today?”

“Going up into the cloud forest.”

“Ah, it’s brilliant. You’ll love it.”

She didn’t reveal she’d been there the other day.

“That was one of the things that sold me on having a contract with Casa del Sol in the first place. Let me know what you think. In fact, I want to know all about how they’re treating you. Obviously they knew who I was when I went there, so they kissed my arse for a week.”

“You want me to spy for you?”

“No, not at all!” He paused. “Okay, maybe a little. Think of it more like a secret shopper situation. Aaand...can you keep an eye out for a special guest?”

Tess braced herself. “Special guest?”

“Apparently Liam Callaghan booked a holiday through us. He should be at the hotel now, but he’s traveling incognito so you might not recognize him.”

Right. Like a man with Liam’s charisma and build could blend in among mortals. “What do you want me to do with him if I see him?”

“For God’s sake,
nothing.
Leave the man alone and let him have a peaceful holiday. But if you happen to notice him having a good time, let me know. I might approach his agent later about doing some low-level promo for us—you know, give us a quote or something.”

Tess’s hand tightened around the phone. Poor man probably couldn’t go anywhere without people wanting a piece of him. She would’ve felt guilty about inserting herself into his holiday, except
he’d
been the one to seek her out for dinner yesterday, and he’d invited her on his excursion today. She understood Charlie had a business to run, and what he asked of her was hardly unethical. Still, passing on information about Liam didn’t sit right with her. “Is that why you called, Charlie?”

His silence stretched over the line until a headache burrowed behind her eyes. “It’s not, is it?”

“’Fraid not. Aunt Jean’s trying to get hold of you. She’s sent you a few emails and you haven’t responded.”

“I’m on holiday.”

“I know that, Tessy. But you really need to talk to her.”

“Did she tell you why? Does she just need me to check in, or...?”

“I think it’s an
or
situation. I’m really sorry.”

She groaned and collapsed back into the fluffy pillows. “All right. I’ll check my email. Thanks for the heads-up.”

“No worries. I know this’ll sound daft, but try to relax. Enjoy yourself while you’re there.”

His statement didn’t need to be finished.
Enjoy yourself while you’re there because you’ll come back to the same shit storm you left behind.

She hung up and booted up her computer. Glancing at the bedside clock, she willed the browser to open quickly. She was supposed to meet Liam in the lobby in two minutes and despised being late. Her email finally opened to reveal she’d received over a hundred new messages since she’d arrived. She probably should’ve checked her email at least once, but she’d wanted to completely escape. Most of them were from journalists who’d somehow found out her personal email address, but around a dozen were from her aunt Jean, who’d been acting as her legal counsel since her blog had sparked the biggest-ever inquiry into working practices in London’s financial services industry. Tess had spent weeks giving testimony in front of a law lord, Lord Justice Tarrington, and his team of experts about the things she’d experienced while working for one of the country’s largest investment banks.

Jean’s last few emails had been marked
Urgent
. Tess’s breath caught in her throat when she saw Jean’s latest email, sent thirty minutes ago. The subject line had clearly been written to get her attention, and fucking hell, did it ever.

Come home now.
You’ve been counter-accused of sexual harassment.

Chapter Four

Patience was a virtue Liam was well familiar with. The young pups on his team often thanked him for it when they fucked up during their debut match and he merely patted them on the back and said, “Stay 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 felt light since he’d started hitting the gym when he was fourteen.

Suddenly, she turned and called back to him. “Resources, eh? What are you, a detective?”

Shite. He shouldn’t have taken them down that conversational rabbit hole. “Not a detective.”

She gave him a thoughtful look. “A billionaire playboy tycoon?”

He laughed. “What?”

“Hey, you’re not the only one who likes a little fantasy in life. Mine just comes in the form of novels instead of films. Too bad you’re not Greek. They make the best tycoons.”

“Right. The Greeks are doing really well, financially.”

“Fantasy, remember?” She reached the van before he did and slid open the side door. Tony the driver rushed around from the driver’s side to help, but she’d already climbed in and settled on the bench seat in the middle, leaving Liam with a quandary. He could sit in the front seat, so Tony didn’t feel like a taxi driver. He could sit in the far back row, so he could stretch out. Or he could squeeze into the seat next to Tess, making it obvious that he didn’t want to separate from her.

Fuck it. He didn’t want to separate from her, so why not sit next to her?

He stepped into the vehicle and tossed both of their day packs into the back, making room for himself. She gave him a look of surprise when he sat down, taking up most of the two-seater space. His shoulders brushed against hers. She didn’t have much room with him next to her, so he tried to give her more by resting his arm across the back of the seat, right behind her.

“Are you going to pretend to yawn and grope me next?”

“Pinkie, you need to start seeing some real men if that’s what you think I’m doing here.”

“I won’t argue with that,” she grumbled as she clipped her seat belt. “Except for the
Pinkie
part.”

“How about Pixie? That any better?”

“Hell no!”

Her vehemence made him pull back. “All right. Jesus, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

A thunder cloud passed over her face and he started pulling together the threads of their conversations. Last night she’d been annoyed when he’d asked whether she was eating okay. Pixie was apparently an insult, though he certainly hadn’t meant it as one. Was she sensitive about her size? She was small, but as far as he could tell perfectly formed. Quite appealingly formed, as a matter of fact. “No Pinkie and no Pixie. Just Tess.”

“Yes, just Tess,” she agreed.

Tony climbed into the driver’s seat and twisted around to see them. “Nice to see you again, Señorita Tess. You enjoyed our trip to the forest so much you wanted to go again?”

A slow smile spread over Liam’s face as a blush colonized hers.

“Mmm.” Her lips were pressed together so tightly it was a wonder any noise made it out at all.

“So you’ve been up there before, have you?”

The old van sputtered to life, and the seats vibrated as Tony shifted into reverse and backed out. She leaned over to whisper conspiratorially beneath the van’s loud rumblings, but she wouldn’t look him in the eyes. “Don’t say anything, but I think he’s got me confused with someone else.”

“Uh huh. With that other pink-haired woman who’s staying at the hotel?”

“Exactly. Wait—are we the only ones going on this excursion?”

“We are.”

She finally looked at him, clearly bemused—and he didn’t blame her. The hotel had originally told him they kept excursions to a minimum of five people in order to save on fuel emissions. He’d managed to convince them otherwise by donating an obscene sum to a carbon offsetting scheme. His turn to whisper a confession, only—unlike Tess’s—his admission was true. “Hope you don’t mind. I asked for a private trip.”

“Just...just the two of us?”

“Uh-huh. I heard there’s a waterfall and a small natural pool just off one of the trails. Since Maria said she didn’t know of any private coves around the lagoon, I thought you might like to explore the waterfall with me.”

Her throat flexed in an audible swallow, and she stayed silent for several seconds. The longer she stared out the window, the more he feared he might’ve crossed the line from playful flirting to creepy stranger. He was just about to apologize when she leveled him with a determined look.