Page 79 of Holiday Home 3
A drawn arrow pointed leftward under it, as well. Leaving the note where it was for the other players’ sake, Liam then heeded its guidance. Entering the left hallway, he examined each open door that he passed. The very first door on his left was cracked open, and he deviated toward it and pushed it open. He peered into an area with a pool table, dartboards, and numerous TVs hooked up with gaming consoles, but no gorgeous and depraved redhead. So, he continued on.
The next few doors were all closed, and he would have considered knocking on them, in case Avril had shut hers for some reason, if not for the sound emerging from the upcoming door on his right. This door was wide open, and he could hear what he assumed was a news channel counting down the hours until the ball dropped in Times Square. Fainter but still audible, he listened to the familiar sound of rippling card stock as someone practiced their shuffling.
Progressing quietly, he didn’t announce himself. Instead, he peeked around the doorway.
He confirmed his theory about the news channel; among five TVs hanging from the wall behind a bar area on the left side of the room, the largest central one showed off a pair of news reporters standing amid Times Square. They were dressed like he, Avril, and Anna had been when they went sledding yesterday.
That part of the room didn’t keep his attention for long. Most of the space where they’d be playing belonged to a long oval table with a green felt surface. Upon this table, Liam identified four separate stacks of poker chips, which Avril had divided equally and spread across the table. The table was large enough for more than double the number of players she would have here today, and Avril had spread the stacks out enough that no one would have a competitor in the chair beside them.
That very woman still hadn’t noticed his arrival. Sitting at the midway spot on the table's far side, her head was down as she got some last-minute practice before her players began arriving. She had three unopened decks alongside the one she was currently practicing with, and he could see the concentration creasing her brow. Based on his judgment, she was more than practiced enough to keep things flowing smoothly.
After finishing her shuffle, Avril began tossing the cards out to the chip stacks and their invisible players. As she worked her way from left to right, she noticed him just before she would have flicked the fourth player their first card.
“God!” she exclaimed, starting. The fourth card escaped her grasp mid-flick, and it snapped through the air like a shuriken on its way off the table. “How long have you been there?!”
“Not too long,” Liam assured her. Entering the room, he approached the table and bent down to get the card she’d flung onto the ground. He placed it where it should have gone and smiled. “I told you I’d be coming a little early.”
Avril eyed him momentarily, but then she dropped her gaze and resumed practicing. She tossed out four more cards, giving each stack two. Under Liam’s watchful eye, she then “burned” the next card on the top of the deck, setting it aside for the rest of the hand. Afterward, she turned over the following three cards—the flop—face up.
“Yes, I’d like to raise,” Liam said, smiling.
“Shut up, you,” Avril said, burning another card and adding a fourth card—the turn—beside the first three.
“You’re doing great,” he said, which earned him a dark look.
“I know I am.”
One more burn occurred, and then Avril flipped over the fifth and final card—the river. From there, had she had her four players here, assuming there were still at least two players vying for the pot, it would have been time to reveal hands and see who had won the pot.
“You look great too,” Liam said.
Avril recalled the cards she’d dealt and shuffled the deck. She left it there as she stood up a moment later.
“I know that, too,” she said, walking around the table toward him.
“Just making sure,” he said, looking her up and down as she approached.
Compared to the other three women, who should all be attending in evening gowns suitable for a genuine casino, Avril had on a proper dealer’s uniform. Hair up in a ponytail, she wore black pants, a silver satin long-sleeved shirt, and a patterned gold vest over it. She even had on a black bowtie. It all fit her sublimely, not that he’d expected anything less. If she’d been a dealer in Vegas, just like she’d said once in the past, every man in the casino would have wanted to be a player at her table.
“You look good, too,” Avril said, running a hand down his shirt. “Anna did a good job picking these out.”
“Now that I’ve met her mother, I get how she became so fashion-conscious.”
Avril grinned and pushed herself into him. Their lips soon connected, and he set a hand on her side.
“I know what she’s wearing tonight if you want to try and buy a description out of me,” the seductive redhead purred.
“What about Tess and Victoria? Know what they’re wearing?”
Avril sniffed. “No. They both shut me down when I asked for pictures. But we both know you’ll have an unhinged jaw when they show up.”
“We’ll see,” he said, though they also knew he had little in the way of defense against any of the women who would arrive in the next half-hour. “If you had let me be the dealer, you could have made my jaw hit the floor, too.”
“You don’t want that,” Avril told him. “You really want to be a player tonight. Trust me.”
“I’d trust you more if you gave me a hint or two as to why.”
Smiling, Avril shook her head and ceased any complaints with another kiss. This time, Liam set both his hands on her hips. Her pants fit snugly against her shapely butt, and he confirmed that by wrapping his hands around her waist. Soon enough, his hands sank into her butt, and he propelled her off the floor and onto the table’s thick wooden rim. Their kiss intensified, and Liam almost started unbuttoning her vest.