Page 71 of Holiday Home 2
“I’ll text you once she’s gone,” Tess whispered, warming him before his departure with a smile.
“I’ll have my phone in my hands the whole time,” he replied, staring at her soft lips.
Tess’s smile shifted. So did the distance between their mouths.
The kiss was quicker than either one of them would have liked, though a second followed before he managed to get a hand on her door handle and let himself out.
Okay, so maybe not theirbestbehavior.
“Have a wonderful rest of your Christmas Eve, Liam,” Tess said, loudly enough that Victoria should be able to overhear her easily. What her friend couldn’t see was the simmering desire within her eyes. “Thanks for coming.”
“Thanks for the invite,” he said, beaming at the woman of his adoration. “It was a great party.”
He barely noticed the frigid nighttime temperatures that battered him the moment he stepped outside. If need be, he could have survived on her doorstep until she sent him that promised text. The heat swelling inside of him, of lust, affection, and excitement, could have staved off another blizzard.
But barring wearing the shell of a snowman, it’d be difficult to avoid Victoria’s detection if he remained here. So, indulging in a few more moments trading excited looks with one of the most beautiful women alive, he eventually tore his gaze away and set it upon the house one over. He just needed to bear his impatience a little longer. If Tess could do it, then so could he.
It helped that he found a surprise sitting just a few steps behind his front door.
He knew who’d put it there and when she’d found the time to. If he’d remembered to lock his door after his and Victoria’s final visit to his home earlier that afternoon, he wondered if he would have found it sitting on his porch instead.
Shutting the door behind him, he approached the solitary object standing before him. In fitting with the theme of the day, this, too, was a container.
A glass one. A glass jar. A pretty large glass jar. Rife with brightly colored fortune cookies—red, green, or blue—inside it.
So, even more containers,Liam thought, sighing.
And one outside, resting with obvious intent upon the jar’s black lid.
What are you up to, Avril?Liam wondered, approaching the jar of fortune cookies sitting on his entry rug. Squatting down next to it, he picked up the lonely fortune cookie that had been separated from his friends. Looking it over, other than the fact that it’d been precluded from possessing one of the three colors its siblings had, he didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary. It looked like a fortune cookie, just like the last one he’d opened.
He didn’t crack it open just yet. Scooping up the jar, he hugged it to his body and headed into his living room. He and the jar shared his couch, though he’d much rather have had its creator here, if only so he could grill her on her final Christmas Eve scheme. Without any way to recall her that wouldn’t bring Anna along with her, he focused on the jar.
He’d never been all that good at the “guess how many jellybeans there are inside” game, but he guessed that there were at least a hundred fortune cookies inside of the jar. During his casual observation, he spied far more red ones than blue or green, enough so that maybe more than half the jar was made up of red ones. For the blue and green cookies, their numbers seemed relatively equal.
Of course, not that he understood what any of the colors meant. They might not mean anything at all. Far be it for him to assume that this was all as it seemed, which was already filled with odd circumstances. It’d be just like Avril to plop this down on him, knowing that he’d feel obligated to search through the jar, and have it end up that only a single fortune cookie had her true purpose within.
And that one will send me to a locker at the post office, where there’ll be a note and a key. And that’ll send me to an airport parking lot, where I have to find which abandoned junker’s trunk the key opens.
Liam paused his internal monologue before it kept going and going. Not because he thought he was going too far down the rabbit hole, but because he couldtotallysee the devious woman pulling all of that off and more.
But with one obvious fortune cookie designed to be opened before the rest still sitting in his palm, he decided to follow Avril’s wishes at least one step further.
Cracking it open, he freed its fortune and spread it for a quick read. His mouth worked its way from side to side as he read and then reread its contents.
Tonight, you can open one of the red fortune cookies. Text me what it says, as well as its number. Do NOT open another fortune cookie!
At least the instructions were clear, even if he still had no idea what this was all about. Not knowing just how many of these Avril planned for him to crack open tonight, he didn’t think he’d eat any of them just yet. After setting the note and the broken halves of the cookie on his coffee table, he clutched the jar’s lid. Twisting it open, he dropped the lid onto the couch beside him.
Sticking his hand into the crowd of crescent-bent cookies, he rooted around for a little while, electing to delve toward the bottom of the jar for the one that he’d open. The fortune that he’d just read hadn’t specified anything about picking up one of the ones on the top, so he assumed thatanyof the red ones were free game. In just a few seconds, his hand emerged from the jar, a single red fortune cookie in tow.
Popping it open as quickly as the last, he removed its fortune and set its colored remains next to its blander sibling. Next, though he wasn’t aware of it just yet, he read his final fortune cookie of the night.
You get a picture of me in my favorite sports bra and runner’s shorts.
#018
Liam blinked once, then repeated the action. He turned the fortune over just to ensure there weren’t words scribbled on the back. There were not. Just fourteen words and a single number beneath them.