Page 56 of Holiday Home 4
“You have no idea,” Avril groaned. “But whatever, I’m gonna be on a beach soon enough, sipping something fruity, looking absolutely stunning.”
“Cheers to that,” Evelyn said, raising an invisible champagne glass.
The upcoming vacation remained the primary topic of conversation for the remainder of Evelyn’s time there. Promises to share pictures to decide which idyllic destination was more idyllic were established, clad in the smiles shared between Avril and Evelyn. Throughout things, Liam couldn’t help but feel that there was something he was failing to recognize. It itched at his brain for a good twenty minutes, keeping him as a partiallistener as everyone else chatted, before it finally dawned on him.
Did Anna’s father know he was going on this trip with his daughter?
The question dropped on his head like an anvil, causing him to lose what little focus to the conversation he had left. Did he? Surely… not. With how against their relationship he was, if he knew that precisely one man—the ill-desired boyfriend of his daughter—was going to one of the most romantic places in the world with her, her best friend, and some other women, there’d have beensomeconsequence. He wouldn’t just sit idly by and let such a thing happen, right?
Glancing about, no one seemed to have noticed how withdrawn he’d suddenly become from the conversation. And they all kept chatting about the beach, the sun, and their plans—the ones safe to mention in front of Anna’s mother—like nothing was the matter.
Gotta be,Liam told himself.There’s no way.
But it couldn’t hurt to ask.
About an hour and a half after her arrival, Evelyn checked her phone and realized she’d tarried a bit longer than she’d perhaps meant to. Showering the apartment’s inhabitants with one final warm smile before she headed back into a brisk, pale afternoon, Anna’s wonderful mother departed. Then, at long last, Liam could finally ask the question that had been weighing down his thoughts for over an hour.
“No, hell no,” Avril said, chuckling. “We don’t need to deal with that ugly nonsense.”
Near her, Anna nodded. “Only my mother knows that you’ll be coming. I’m completely fine with it staying that way.”
Finally, Liam could bend his neck, sending that anvil crashing onto the floor. At least this time, he wouldn’t have to deal with Arnold Royce.
Chapter Nineteen
Anything
What a word: anything. By its very nature, it encompassed everything in existence. But most of the time, it still came with restrictions. You can do anything, be anything you want to be,haveanything. Before most kids left grade school, they understood the limitations of that word, that “anything” didn’t really meananything.Because they, like everyone else, lived in a world filled with restrictions. Gravity, time, responsibilities, and, for more people than not, wealth.
Nevertheless, the word anything was still capable of eliciting excitement—some anticipation, some hope, at the very least. There might always be an unspoken qualifier or two in there, but it was still a word that was used for a purpose. Toremove a lot ofotherrestrictions. You can have anything you want. In a store filled with candy, when you usually could only get one or two things, six or seven might now be allowed. At a county fair, all the cotton candy you could stomach, all the face paint that could fit onto your skin, and all rides you could think of riding—and that was when all that cotton candy you’d scarfed down might impose one ofitsrestrictions on you. Hopefully, not while you were stuck to a wall on the spinning gravity ride.
In Tess William’s living room, “anything” still had restrictions and limitations. Regardless of all that, Liam’s heart raced like whitewater rapids after she offered it to him.
“If you can beat me at chess, you can have anything you want.”
He’d done what Avril had suggested; he’d worked up his courage and brought up the topic of a potential future threeway. Not out of the blue, not right the second he’d embraced her inside her home, but he’d still eventually done it.
And now he knew the way to get it. Rather, he knew oftwoways.
He imagined that the first would be a little easier to accomplish.
“I’m not against it,” she’d said, wearing a slight smile after he’d finally brought it up. “So long as it’s treated like a special thing, not a beck and call sort of event. I’d been wondering when you’d finally bring it up. I knew it’d have to happen eventually.”
“Special, like visiting a romantic island chain in a month?”
Her smile had almost imperceptibly grown. “Perhaps.” A pause, then the part about chess. “But if you want to seize destiny in your own hands, there’s another way. You can haveanythingyou want if you can beat me at chess. One free voucher, to be expended at your leisure.”
That was when his heart turned into the Lava Falls. But Tess wasn’t even done yet.
“Each time you beat me.”
That was the part that left him mentally unsteady, wobbling as if he’d gotten drunk off just five additional words.
“I guess I’m going to have to start watching a bunch of chess videos in my free time,” he said.
“If you want to beat me, you’ll need to do more than that,” Tess said, smiling carnivorously. “It’s the only way you’ll be able to claim your prize. If I’m honest, you’ve got a lot of work to do if you want this prize. And I promise you this: I won’t ever throw a match.”
He didn’t doubt it. Indeed, he was more and more confident that Tess had a competitive streak a mile wide. But assuming Liam could eventually take a handful of wins off her, he was happy she was the way she was.