Page 57 of Holiday Home 3
Anna began to inform her that it wasn’t like that, only for Avril to shut her down with a hard stare.
“I know I did,” she said. “I won’t do it again, though. Promise.”
“Thank you, Avril,” Anna said.
A few minutes later, she went to wash her hands in the kitchen sink. Avril locked eyes with him as soon as she escaped earshot, primarily due to the sink's running water.
“And you keep doing whatever you’ve been doing,” Avril said.
“I will,” he promised.
In the silence that followed, he knew they must both be considering how they might best support Anna in the days andweeks to come—and still ensure their burgeoning relationship could progress. With how things had gone between him and Anna, another hurdle would eventually need to be addressed and overcome. Eventually, the truth would need to come out. Eventually.
With the situation involving her father still looming over them, he knew now wasn’t the time to add another stressor to Anna. Hopefully, he’d get through his first meeting with Arnold Royce without too much disaster. If not for his sake, then Anna’s sake.
He was far too hopeful for his own good.
Chapter Twenty
The Informant
As December 28throlled around, he had a place to be at noon. Today had kept hold of yesterday’s relative warmth, and some of the snow was finally beginning to melt. Not quickly enough that the neighborhood would look any different once he got back from his outing, though, but it was a start. He didn’t intend to be gone for long, not knowing what awaited him once he returned to the house beside his.
“We’ll have lunch, and then we can digest while we watch a movie. And then maybe I’ll do something for you we haven’t done yet, just so we can tick its box.”
Tess’s sultry whisper had urged haste upon him in a way neither whip nor fire could have. When he’d made it back to her late last night, she’d smiled and welcomed him with a warmhug. Still holding him in her arms, she’d asked one very simple question.
“How many times?”
And he’d answered truthfully. She hadn’t requested any further details. Instead, she’d grabbed his hand and taken him back to her bedroom, where they’d ensured that her lead over Avril remained at the same place it’d been when he’d left her home earlier that day.
She might have elongated her lead, but his exhaustion finally caught up to him at the end of their second round together. So, patting him softly, aware that he’d be all hers tomorrow, she’d let things sit at just two.
Her lead was destined to grow today; she just needed to wait a little longer.
Driving quicker than he should have, he made it to Mercer’s Gentleman Shoppe a handful of minutes before midday. On his last visit, he’d let Anna take charge as she helped him find a suitable outfit for Avril’s approaching New Year’s Eve party. At her stubborn behest, citing a considerable family discount she could use, he’d allowed her to get it for him as a gift. It ought to be ready for him; he just needed one final fitting to ensure the quality was up to the tailor’s standards before taking it home.
The tailor he saw standing on the other side of the whitewashed building’s massive windows was the same one he’d encountered the other day. As Liam entered the store, passing under the golden imprinted letters naming the store and its year of creation, 1874, the man glanced in his direction.
Liam knew someone had tipped Trent off about his and Anna’s plans to go ice skating the other day, and there were only two viable suspects. One had been another customer who’d arrived a little after him and Anna. A friend of the family or a work associate with her father, he and Anna had briefly chatted.Afterward, he’d been close enough to eavesdrop on him and Anna as they made their ice-skating plans.
But then, so had been the man who now smiled politely as Liam entered the store.
The middle-aged tailor waited for Liam rather than coming to meet him midway. He was neatly dressed, reedy, and had a pencil mustache. And he might also be a complete bastard, the sycophant responsible for all the trouble he and Anna were now going through.
Without any mind-reading abilities, or at least Anna’s perceptiveness, Liam couldn’t be sure. So, he tamped down his initial disdain of the thin tailor as he reached him.
“Hello, I’m here to pick up an outfit I got the other day.”
“Yes, I recall,” the tailor said, maintaining his professional smile. He beckoned him toward a familiar room attached to the store’s central area. “If you’d like to wait for me there, I shall fetch it for the final fitting and adjustments.”
Nodding, Liam’s feet carried him into the familiar changing room. It was decked out with chairs and even a couch for customers to relax on while they waited, and Liam took advantage of one of the former while he waited. After a few minutes, he yawned in his chair and dug out his phone.
He texted a few beautiful women while three minutes became ten, and he marveled at that fact once it dawned on him. By the time the tailor returned with his outfit, having certainly taken his sweet time, Liam needed to rush a skewed smile off his face, caused by Tess’s flirtatious reminder of what awaited him once he next saw her.
“Here we are,” the tailor said, carrying Liam’s outfit over one crooked forearm.
Avril had put a stipulation on his dress code when she announced her New Year’s Eve plans at Tess’s Christmas Eve party. Namely, she didn’t want to see him show up in a suit.