Playing It Safe Read Online Free PDF

tailor-made black suit, but no tie, and the top button is undone on his crisp white dress shirt.
    He flashes me his dimples when he steps right in front of me, crowding my personal space. “Were you really not going to say hello to me?”
    “Alex! Oh my God, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that was you,” I say, doing my best at feigning ignorance.
    “Bullshit.”
    “Like I would ignore you? Please, what kind of person do you think I am?”
    “The kind of person who was ignoring me,” he quickly answers.
    “Did I hurt your feelings?”
    His crystal-blue eyes light up in amusement, and he leans in an inch so that he’s a little closer while putting one hand over his heart. “I’m crushed.”
    With him being so close, I take in the wonderful smell that is Alex: a cocktail of perfectly blended amounts of sandalwood and the beach and something else that eludes me. Whatever it is, it’s heavenly. Then it hits me—I’m sure the stink emanating from me is infiltrating his nostrils, so I take a small step backward just as I hear a woman’s annoyed voice coming from somewhere behind him.
    “Alex, what are you doing?”
    His smile vanishes, and he smoothly pulls back to stand up straight and turns around to face the direction of the woman he arrived with. She’s far too young to be with him, and yes that might be jealousy rearing its ugly head, which when added to the stress of facing my ex again makes me more testy than usual.
    “Do you know her?” she asks, clearly bothered by his actions. Can’t say that I blame her. If I were her and my date was all up in some other woman’s grill, I’d be a little peeved too.
    “Marisa, this is Julia, a very good friend of mine,” Alex clarifies for her. Then he turns his attention back to me and says, “Julia, this is my friend Marisa.”
    Oh, Alex, you have no idea the mess you’ve just made. If Miss Teen USA has any sense, she would have picked up on the fact that he said “good friend” when he spoke about me and “friend” when he described his relationship with her. Although, I have to admit, I find it to be rather intriguing that he would identify us like that for her benefit—or maybe he did it for mine? See what I mean? He’s totally an enigma.
    “Alex,” she coos while wrapping herself around his arm, “I thought I was your good friend.”
    Yup, she picked up on it without missing a beat.
    She giggles, and I swear the sound makes me want to vomit. Alex, in turn, has a tight smile on his face and looks uncomfortable while shifting his weight from foot to foot. Me? I just want to get the hell out of Dodge.
    “It’s nice to meet you,” she says with a bright smile and way too enthusiastically before extending her hand to me.
    I grab it and give it a firm shake. “Hi, Marisa, it’s nice to meet you too.”
    Her eyes scan me from head to toe and back again dismissively as if she were Joan Rivers from Fashion Police . With that move, she’s officially made it onto my shit list.
    “So,” she says, “how exactly do you know the Grandersons?”
    “I don’t.”
    “Then why are you here?”
    “Because.”
    I know I’m being purposely evasive, but now I’m having too much fun making Alex more uncomfortable by the minute. Plus, I don’t like her knowing too much about me. Call it women’s intuition, but something about her just rubs me the wrong way.
    Marisa lets out a dry laugh. “My, my, aren’t we mysterious?”
    “I could say the same about you. Alex has never mentioned you before. Have you, Alex?” Turning my gaze back to him, he tries to hide the smirk that is threatening to crack the corners of his mouth.
    He clears his throat before saying, “Marisa is an old friend of the family.”
    “An old friend? Well, now you’re just being silly, Alex,” she says, trying to play it off like he didn’t just diss her right in front of me again.
    “Alrighty then, you two kids have a great night and try not to be too silly with each other. I’ve