Page 69 of Holiday Home 3
Before he learned anything else about Evelyn Royce, he learned this: if he were still with Anna twenty years from now, he’d be even luckier than he was right now.
The woman who emerged from her luxury car was undeniably stunning, which was hardly surprising given who her daughter was. However, when it came to fashion, Evelyn and Victoria were kindred spirits.
She’d come to Zeke’s quite overdressed for the occasion, wearing a beige cashmere dress that her heavy breasts strainedagainst. A belt as wide as the length of his hand circled her lower stomach, drawing in tightly around her curvaceous body, and she carried with her a Louis Vuitton handbag that was probably expensive enough to make him queasy if he learned the cost. As he finished escaping her car, her finely manicured hand reached past the original set of pouty, alluring lips and removed her sunglasses. In one difference to her daughter, her eyes were soft blue, almost gray in the pale winter sunlight.
After depositing her sunglasses into her handbag, those eyes began at Anna, then moved to him, then dropped to where their hands were linked. Silently, Liam prepared to see a disapproving glare alter her astonishingly beautiful features.
Instead, giving credence to what Anna had said about her mother in the past, her full lips moved in the opposite direction. A soft smile, polite but warm, appeared as she brought her eyes back to him.
“Hello, Liam; I’ve heard quite a bit about you.”
That was a loaded statement, and they all knew it. But he took it optimistically and smiled back.
“I’ve heard a lot of great things about you,” he said. “I’m Liam Carr; it’s nice to meet you finally.”
The initial meeting, which lasted barely a minute in the parking lot, passed without catastrophe. As the three of them walked toward Zeke’s, he felt Anna’s grip, which had been almost crushing before her mother’s first words, relax. Yet, some tightness returned as they reached the restaurant’s doors and headed inside.
The meeting was over. Now, they would spend the next ninety minutes in a booth together. A lot could go wrong. However, in his earnest attempt to be as optimistic about today as possible, he also knew that a lot could go right.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Parallels
If the staff had been stirred into a frenzy the last time Anna had appeared at Zeke’s Scratch Kitchen, they were barely holding it together now that her mother joined her. Not one but two stunning women gripped their attention, and they must have hated him and their server, a different woman than last time, for monopolizing their time. The glares he noticed were more poignant and unsubtle than they’d been two days ago.
By comparison, Liam was holding his emotions together a little better, though he recognized how crucial it was that things go well. While he didn’t know just how much authority Evelyn had in her household, she was the only Royce they had even the slightest chance of winning over. He didn’t want to see Annabombarded from both sides by her parents. He needed to put his best foot forward.
After they were shown to their booth, he slid into his side while Evelyn gestured for her daughter to sit across from him. Once her daughter obeyed, Evelyn slid in next to her. That put him in the envious but uncertain crosshairs of both attractive women. Of the two pairs, the greener set was far more stricken with unease.
Meanwhile, the owner of the blue pair seemed friendly but inquisitive. Shortly after ordering drinks and a couple of appetizers and putting in their main orders, Evelyn cracked open the silence hovering over their table.
“So, Liam, I’ve heard you and Anna met this past summer. Through Avril, of all people.”
For some reason, lying to her felt far more dangerous than lying to Anna’s father. Nevertheless, he buried his anxiety, straightened his spine, and met her gaze.
“That’s right. She met me through one of her professors, who I live next to and who she jogs with sometimes. It kind of led us to bumping into one another and then getting introduced.”
“Pressor Levine, right?” Evelyn said.
“Professor Williams, now,” Anna corrected. “She and her husband finally separated just a few weeks ago.”
“Right, Professor Williams,” Evelyn said, nodding at her daughter before returning her attention to him. “I imagine you also have met Professor Moreno, then?”
Avril, I hope you did what you said and got Victoria on our side,Liam thought, realizing what Evelyn was doing. She'd begun her interrogation in a much subtler and softer fashion than her husband. Any cracks in the vase might prove disastrous if she managed to peer through them and spot the sand they’d claimed was spice.
“Yes, I’ve met Victoria,” Liam confirmed. “I ended up running into her at Costco just the other day, in fact.”
“So, you know her well enough to call her Victoria?” Evelyn noted, pausing long enough to thank their server when she returned with their appetizers.
“Well, I’m not in one of her classes,” Liam said when it was just the three of them again. “So, I don’t know her in a professional setting, only in a casual one. As casual as onecanknow her.”
Evelyn smiled as she stole a sip from a very colorful sangria. “I think Avril is the only person in your age range whoreallyknows her in such a fashion. Her ‘casual’ is most people’s formal.”
Liam nodded agreeably, though any smile he might have used to agree with her spot-on statement died in the crib as she shifted them toward a sticking point that had routinely come up.
“And it’s Perrymont you attend, yes? You’re a freshman there?”
Beside her mother, who asked the question entirely innocently, Anna stiffened. She’d barely touched the appetizers or her drink since they’d sat down, far too busy worrying about how this meeting would go. And now, as they reached the second potential pothole in their smooth drive, her face grew stark and pale.