Page 84 of Holiday Home 3
Only then did he realize how pointless his original task had been.
Avril grinned. He frowned.
Chapter Thirty
Priceless
Upon entering the room, he didn’t find Avril and Victoria near the poker table. Instead, he found one of them on each side of the bar counter. Standing on the far side, their grinning dealer raised an empty cocktail glass in his direction. Liam almost considered lobbing one of the cans in his arms at her.
“Youhaddrinks back there the whole time?”
“Alcoholic drinks, yeah.” Avril grinned, and then she noticed Anna entering behind him. “Hellooo, beautiful. Pick your poison. I’ve got a huge stock back here. I just finished making Victoria her margarita.”
The owner of said drink offered him a look of commiseration as he sighed. Sitting on one of the bar stools,still looking utterly stunning, Victoria did indeed have a mildly yellow margarita, complete with a salted rim and lime, in front of her. Nearer to Avril, an entire mixology kit had been rolled out onto the bar while he’d been gone. Beside it sat a glass of chilled limes and two bottles, one of tequila, one of Cointreau.
“But, sir, I’m sorry, but the bar will remain closed to you,” Avril said, batting her eyelashes as she affected a snobbish accent. “One of us has to be the designated driver, so the rest of us can teeter about like spinning tops at the night's end.”
“I don’t intend on drinking myself to such a state,” Victoria said.
“We’ll see if that plan survives the night,” Avril said. She beckoned him and Anna toward them. “But come on over. We’ve got one more beautiful lady to wait for before we can kick things off.”
After dumping all the drinks he’d obtained back when he’d assumed he needed to get five people enough drinks to keep their thirst sated for at least a couple of hours onto the counter, Liam popped open one of the lemonades as Avril prodded Anna until she finally asked for an Aperol Spritz. Avril grumbled under her breath about how boring of a drink it was but went digging behind the bar counter for the appropriate wine glass and ingredients. While that happened, he stuck the drinks—his drinks, he now knew—into one of a few minifridges he could now see behind the bar. They joined an abundance of potential beverages and ingredients meant to be chilled.
“You’ve got enough in here to host a party in every room,” Liam commented while crouched down.
“Yep, and everybody can take home whatever they like after we’re done here.”
“By the way, whereiseveryone else?” Anna asked. She’d sat down beside Victoria while she watched Avril create her drink.
“Isn’t it just Tess we’re missing?” Liam asked before Avril could answer her roommate.
“Yeah, we are,” Avril said. “But Anna’s asking about the whole building, not just here. And it’s only gonna be us; I rented the whole place out for tonight.”
“Avril…” Anna sighed.
The wealthy redhead grinned and finished stirring Anna’s spritz. “I don’t actually have orange slices for garnish; I can’t think ofeverything.Hope that’s okay.”
Anna looked down as Avril slid a creamy red-orange drink in front of her. “I’ll try not to let it affect my review too much.”
“It’s a hard knock life, being both the planner, the dealer,andthe bartender. I hope you can understand.”
“I could help a little if you’d like,” a feminine voice called from the doorway. “I bartended part-time for about two years in college.”
Three heads swiveled toward the voice. Still crouched by the minifridge, Liam needed to rise before he could lay eyes on its owner. He was the last to get a good look at Tess because of it, though he was by far the most enthusiastic.
Tess smiled at all of them, though he knew when their eyes briefly met that she was mostly smiling because of his unraveling response to the mere sight of her. Thanks to the timing of her entrance, he was the furthest back, outside of anyone’s peripherals. That saved them both. Because at that moment, if anyone had looked at him, they would have realized just how in love with her he was. She was the only one with the opportunity to notice, and her smile grew rather than waned as she stepped further into the room.
She’d selected another blue satin dress. However, this one was cerulean, not royal blue. The straps holding it up were barely thicker than the ones on Anna’s dress, and Liam could appreciate all three women for selecting dresses that showed offso much skin. This flowed down Tess’s enviable body, shaping itself around every curve, doing everything in its power to ensure that no one doubted, not from any angle, not for even a second, that Tess didn’t possess an almost divine figure. The dress’s bodice plunged slightly lower than even Anna’s, and its midriff glittered with sequins in the form of blue ivy. And it had one more way of arresting the attention of anyone who dared look her way.
The dress had no slits, eschewing their popularity among her peers. Instead, beginning at the base of her curvaceous hips, the dress’s fabric was sheer along the sides. Only more patterns of ivy sequins, which spread down the sheer part of the dress, mildly obfuscated the ability to stare at her long, toned legs. It also came with a narrow tail just behind her right hip, a long tongue of cerulean that trailed behind her.
“Damn,” Avril said, the first of them to find her voice.
Anna shot a look at her friend, which briefly put him in danger of being noticed. However, she didn’t seem to pick up on his enamored stare. She turned her attention back to Tess.
“You look so beautiful, Tess,” Anna said.
“Thank you,” she said. “You look wonderful too. So do you, Victoria. You look even more gorgeous in it now than the last time you wore it.”