Page 30 of Holiday Home 4
God, he hoped she would.
“I need to go, or I’m not going to be able to,” Liam whispered, and it was an admittance to himself as much as it was to Tess.
Beaming, Tess withdrew her mouth from his ear. “If it was just Avril, I might be tempted to give her a taste of her own medicine. But Anna deserves her time with you too. I’ll see you again next weekend, Liam.”
For more.
Nodding, he kissed Tess goodbye, then escaped like Odysseus fleeing Calypso. Probably with far more regret in his heart than Homer’s hero, though.
Avril wasn’t home when he reached her and Anna’s shared apartment in Ashgrove Apartments. As Anna would explain it, they’d decided to vacate the place during the other’s allotted time with him. It was a sensible enough decision, though it further delayed any chance of him figuring out how Avril would respond to the text in the group chat. At this point, he was sure she’d concocted something big for her response. Her reprisal, more like.
“So, do you want to stay here?” he asked, handing over her box of chocolates with a smile. He’d been thinking of giving them their separate boxes at the same time, but Avril’s absence squashed that hope. And he’d already given Victora hers.
The buxom professor had seemed surprised to see him, even though he’d messaged her before getting on the road that he would. She must have missed it or something. Standing in the cold, he’d knocked on her door, then waited, then accepted the slight widening of her eyes as an acceptable payment for the box’s expense.
“Liam?” she’d asked, then noticed the heart-shaped box under his arm. With it apparent that she hadn’t been expecting him, least of all with a gift like that, he’d momentarily fretted that she might appear displeased. Instead of leaping to assumptions, she’d merely lifted her eyes back to his and awaited an explanation.
After he’d given it, Victoria Moreno had been willing to accept a platonic, heart-shaped box of chocolates from the young man who’d fucked her colleague yesterday and who would—hopefully, Avril’s antics notwithstanding—fuck the sister of the man she’d nearly married later that day.
“I’m afraid I didn’t think to get you any gift,” Victoria had said, examining the box’s contents. This one consisted of white and dark chocolate, which he believed she liked. He remembered her indulging in both at last year’s Christmas Eve party.
“It’s okay; I didn’t expect anything in return. Happy belated Valentine’s Day, Victoria.”
“Do you want to come in?”
But he’d shook his head, even though he would have gleefully spent another few hours with Victoria any other day. “I slept in a little too much, so I’m pressed for time.”
“A busy day ahead?”
“Hopefully,” he’d said, smiling.
Victoria had spent a handful of seconds examining him in her inscrutable way, then had ultimately wished him goodbye. The last he’d seen of her, right before she finished shutting her door as he jogged back to his car, which he’d left running, she was staring down at the chocolates he’d given her.
But now he was here, with Anna, so he gave her his full attention. And waited for her answer.
“At least for a little while,” Anna said. “I don’t mind if we go out, but I wanted to cook us lunch.”
“Is that what I’m smelling?” Liam asked, finally focusing on the herbaceous scents wafting from the direction of the kitchen.
Anna blushed. “Erm, no, that was my trial run. I got up early this morning and made sure I had everything correct. Avril ate that portion a little before she left.”
It was a very Annabelle Royce measure, to go through with a trial run like that. And it seemed, assuming all had gone well, that Avril had profited from it.
“Well, the old scents smell delicious, so I’m sure I’m in for a treat when the real deal is in front of me.”
Breaking out into a smile, Anna nodded and guided him to get comfortable in the living room. Unlike Tess had yesterday, she wouldn’t let him into the kitchen while she cooked. It was clear she wanted to make sure that lunch came out perfectly, and he wouldn’t begrudge her for banning him from potentially distracting her—possibly in the way he had Tess yesterday—while she cooked. So, while he waited, Liam lounged about in the living room, listening to a skillet sizzle, smelling the compelling aromas of garlic and smoked paprika as they were added to Anna’s dish.
Again, he checked to see if Avril had replied to him or the group text. She hadn’t. Wherever she was, whatever she was doing, he had no idea. The silence was starting to get to him, he realized. Like the quiet on a battlefield, where you were so used to hearing gunfire and artillery pieces booming in the distance, it seemed to herald that some dangerous tactic was in the works.
Don’t get unnerved; that’s how she’ll get you,he told himself.
Shaking away thoughts of Avril, he focused on relaxing. Soon, he’d receive a homecooked meal from Anna. He had no reason to throw a spoiling spice—worry—into the mix. What was coming would be fantastic. He was sure of it.
And yet he still ended up leaving the couch, pacing an apartment that, while upscale to ninety-nine percent of the population, was in no way the kind of place he would have imagined the daughters of muti-millionaires would elect to live. Of course, he didn’t know all that many children of multi-millionaires, so maybe his sample size was too small.
He knew a few; his upbringing had been anything but middle-class. With a pair of accomplished dentists as parents, he’d rubbed shoulders with the upper crust far more than he’d experienced what it was like to live a median-style American lifestyle. He’d lived his entire life in an affluent neighborhood, not a house in sight likely to go for less than a million dollars on the market. He’d received a nice car at sixteen, had never wanted for much of anything, and was used to winter vacations in lavish ski resorts, overlooking mountain peaks buried in snow when he woke up every morning.
He was hardly capable of claiming that the spoon in his mouth wasn’t a silver one. That wasn’t to say his parents had let him grow up spoiled and pampered, or at least unappreciative of what he had, so he felt fine in avoiding lumping himself in with people like Trent Alden and his ilk. But the living spaces he was used to were like this, where the furniture and amenities were top of the line.