Page 58 of Holiday Home 3
So, letting Anna more or less have her way during their visit here, he’d ended up with a navy blue silk button-down, a pair of fine black slacks, and a suitable pair of dress shoes. Other than for his brother’s wedding, he’d never gotten clothes fitted, so he’d initially wondered if visiting a tailor was worth it.
He changed his tune as he changed his casual attire for the fitted clothes, eventually standing on a squat platform that allowed him to look into a nearby standing mirror. In terms of comfort, even with the final alterations not yet made, the clothes fit him better than anything he’d worn before. He even allowed himself a little bit of hubris as he admired the fine garments on his body. At the very least, he supposed he wouldn’t stand out like a sore thumb in a few days when he was inevitably surrounded by some of the most beautiful women in the world in their evening dresses.
“I think here, here, and here,” the tailor said once he looked him over, carrying a few pins between one corner of the mouth as he circled Liam. He deftly demarcated each area he believed could be slightly altered with one. Liam let him make those decisions, at least trusting the man’s tailoring expertise. He highly doubted the store’s usual clientele, men like Arnold Royce, would suffer incompetence.
Soon enough, it was time for him to return the clothes and await the final alterations. And then he could be on his way, ready to indulge in whatever marvelous pleasures awaited him once he returned to Tess’s side.
“I shall not be gone very long,” the tailor told him once he’d returned the shirt and pants.
Keeping his new shoes with him, Liam returned to his regular clothes. Then he spent another thirty minutes lounging about—and texting Tess, Avril, and Anna, naturally—within the room before he heard footsteps in the entryway. His eyesdeviated from his phone, expecting to find the tailor marching toward him with his clothes.
It wasn’t.
It was a different man who entered the room, and Liam knew who he was well before he introduced himself. He also now knew which of his suspects he should revile.
This manwasdressed in a suit, which the sycophantic tailor who had contacted him might have fitted for him sometime in the past. Relatively tall, he looked to be somewhere in his early fifties, and the black in his thick hair had mostly lost the war against its gray adversary. The same was true for the medium amount of stubble on his chin and cheeks.
Liam didn’t recognize him because of those things. No, he recognized him because of one aspect of himself, which he’d only ever seen in one other person.
The man’s eyes were a strikingly unique type of green, bright among his relatively pale complexion. But they weren’t polite and inviting like his daughter’s, but rather hawkish, even hostile. The man wasn’t frowning, but his eyes were.
They said everything they needed about how their owner felt about him before he spoke a single word.
“Hello,” he said to Anna’s father, deciding not to play dumb. After slipping his phone into his pocket, he stood up, preparing himself for whatever unpleasantries were in his near future.
“Hello,” the man replied, practically boring holes into Liam’s head with his unpleasant stare. “I am Arnold Royce, Annabelle’s father.”
Refusing to be cowed by that stare, Liam simply nodded, “I’m Liam Carr, Anna’s boyfriend. It’s nice to meet you.”
The man responded subtly—a tightening of the already severely straight line of his lips and a slight nod.
“I just arrived for a fitting for a New Year’s Eve function,” Arnold said. “It seems my timing was fortuitous. When Claudeinformed me that you’d returned to do the same, I wanted to come and introduce myself.”
What a load of bullshit,Liam thought, clamping down on any outward showing irritation or disbelief. Today wasnotgoing to be the day he caused further trouble for Anna. No matter what Arnold Royce had concocted, he’d suffer it without giving him any ammunition to use against him or his daughter.
“I’m glad to finally meet you, even if I’d thought we’d meet while Anna was around,” Liam said.
“As did I,” the main again lied, seemingly unbothered by the rancid taste of bullshit coating his tongue. “But I am glad we could bump into one another like this. I’ve heard a fair bit about you.”
“I’ve heard about you too,” he replied, battling to hold back any outward presentation of his disdain.
Whether or not he picked up on Liam’s disdain, Arnold’s expression didn’t waver. The man was of a different order than Trent Alden; that much was abundantly clear. This was also a man used to having things go his way, yes, but when he came across a roadblock, he didn’t throw a temper tantrum about it. Instead, he examined the structure, searching for weaknesses he might exploit later.
That was what this was, Liam realized—this first meeting. Arnold Royce was sizing him up for when he inevitably sought to tear him down.
“You and my Annabelle, the two of you have been dating since the summer?” Arnold asked, beginning his probing efforts.
“No, we haven’t,” Liam corrected, grateful that he and Anna had ironed things out on their date yesterday. “Wemetin the summer. We’ve only started dating this winter break.”
“How did you meet?”
Why don’t you ask your daughter, not me?Liam wanted to reply, but he swallowed that irritable response with all the others.
“We met through her best friend—”
“Avril, yes,” Arnold interrupted, nodding. “And how did the two of you meet? From what I’ve heard, you attend… Perrymont? That’s quite some distance from here.”
“It is,” Liam agreed, failing to resist lashing out with a small barb in his explanation. “But in the summer, when there’s no school, I live here, so I’m around. I met Avril through a professor at Bellmore we both know. We met while they were jogging together in the neighborhood we both live in and eventually, Avril introduced me to Anna. We became friends.”