Free Playing It Close by Kat Latham Page B

mermaids,” she’d teased.
    He’d looped the necklace over her head and let it slide through his hands. It was long and could’ve been looped twice, but instead he let it fall between her breasts and hang nearly to her belly button. “No, I haven’t. Mermaids cover themselves up and have fish tails. Vastly overrated. I much prefer nymphs.”
    She’d worn the necklace and nothing else when she’d put those womanly legs to good use and ridden him hard later in the night.
    The solar-powered clock next to the bed said it was ten, so he shouldn’t have been too surprised to wake up alone. In fact, part of him was grateful for it, since it would give him time to think. He should confess to her today, tell her who he really was. He had nearly a week left in Venezuela, but she was leaving in a few days and the thought of sticking around without her lost its shine. He wanted more time with her, and those days would only pass quickly if he knew he could see her again when he got back to London.
    He had no idea what the hell had happened, but a gut feeling told him that this wasn’t a short-term affair. He wanted to explore whether they could have something more significant, something that lasted beyond their time in paradise.
    He picked up the hotel phone and dialed her room number, ready to insert himself into whatever plans she had for the day.
    Ring...ring...ring... Nothing.
    Shoving himself upright, he hung up and took another look around the room. A folded piece of paper on the desk caught his eye. He kicked the sheet off, unmindful of the fact he was naked and walking in front of the open balcony door, and picked up the note. A woman’s writing stared up at him before his vision went blurry with disbelief.
    I have to go back to London. It was a pleasure getting to know you , Liam Jones. I’ll remember our time here always. —T
    What the fuck? She’d left him? Really left him, not just gone back to her room for a shower and a change of clothes? His jaw went slack with shock.
    Maybe he could still catch her. He bolted across the room to the phone and waited impatiently for the receptionist to pick up. “Can you tell me if Tess Crawley has checked out?”
    There was a pause and the light clack of computer keys before the receptionist said, “I’m sorry, señor , but we don’t have a guest named Tess Crawley.”
    An empty place opened in his chest, the same bleak powerlessness he’d been punched with when he’d realized how badly his mum had lied to him. Tess had lied too? About something as simple as her name? Why?
    Unable to take time to examine his own hypocrisy in feeling angry over that, he asked the receptionist, “Are you sure? The guest in Room 317?”
    More clacking keys. “Oh, yes. Countess Chambers. Yes, she checked out very early this morning, and Tony drove her to the airport.”
    He hung up and collapsed onto the bed, countless questions attacking him at once. Had she known about this all day yesterday? She’d had to—she’d been with him all day and night and couldn’t have rebooked her flight without him knowing it. She’d lied about her name? Why? He understood his own reasons, of course, but why would a woman who wasn’t in the public eye take on a new identity?
    Jesus—had she recognized him? Had she known who he was all along? She’d written Liam Jones on her Dear John letter. Was that a joke? Was she laughing at him? Using him the way other women had but, worse, pretending she wasn’t?
    Then her name hit him. She was a bloody countess?

Chapter Five
Tonight I was at my desk, getting my things together to go home, when P. perched his scrawny arse on the edge of my desk and smirked down at me. “So, you fucked the boss, huh?”
I felt sick—with myself, with him, with M. for blabbing about it. I thought I could ignore P. and leave, but he touched my neck with his clammy fingers. I jerked away from him, and my bag fell to the floor. When I bent over to pick it up, he said in this