Page 86 of Holiday Home 3
All eyes shifted to Tess’s hand as it gathered around the golden-brown cocktail before her. Bringing it to her lips,she sampled Avril’s first attempt at the apparently notoriously difficult-to-make drink.
“It’s good,” Tess said.
Yet, Avril frowned in the face of this uninformative compliment. “Yeah, but how good? You’d order-it-at-a-bar good, or you-don’t-want-to-hurt-my-feelings good?”
“Good for a first attempt and more than passable for sale,” Tess expanded. “It’s not the best one I’ve ever had, but I’m going to drink it all and be glad to do it.”
“Fine, I’ll take it,” Avril grunted. “You all go pick your seats. I’ll be over in a second.”
Avril’s selected drink would end up being a Vesper, which seemed like a fitting homage. However, Victoria and Tess raised their eyebrows once she finished putting away everything and carried herself and her drink to the table.
“What? I said I’m going to sip it.”
“You’d better,” Tess said, chuckling. “Otherwise, our dealer might be spilling cards everywhere whenever she tries to shuffle.”
Avril returned to the seat he’d found her in, on the far side of the table's width. If she was at midnight, then Victora was at three. Next came Anna, him, and Tess, who took the nine o’clock position. Once they’d settled into their seats, setting down drinks and attending to their respective chip stacks, their focus gravitated toward Avril.
“So, the rules?” Tess asked once Avril joined them at the table.
Avril nodded. “The rules.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Round One
My goal is for us to play at least three rounds tonight, all Texas Hold’em,” Avril began. “That’s how my points come into it. Winner gets a hundred points, second gets fifty, third twenty-five, and fourth gets one point. So, that’s a maximum of three hundred points and a minimum of three points, assuming we don’t end up speeding through these too quickly and throw in a fourth or fifth round.”
“And what will these points grant us at the end of the night?” Tess asked, bringing her glass to her lips.
“Well, another room full of prizes is just across the hall. You can use the points you accrue here to get things in there.”
“What kind of prizes?”
“It varies,” Avril said, picking up the practice deck she’d been using when he’d arrived. She forced it into retirement by placing it on the chair directly to her left, then grabbed an unopened deck. “Some are expensive, some are rare and hard to get, some are just things I think each of you would want. So, play your best tonight and reap the rewards.”
Her gaze passed over each of them as she outlined things, though Liam knew better than to take everything at face value—he was sureeveryoneat this table knew better. Each of them suspected there was still more, some subterfuge or sudden twist that would alter the game. Really, therenotbeing a twist would have been the biggest twist of them all. He could almost see Avril going for that, just keeping them on edge all night, waiting for the shoe to drop, only for it to turn out that they’d simply played a few standard rounds of Texas Hold’em.
“What about the game itself?” Liam asked, tapping one of the three pillars of chips in front of him. They all had identical stacks: two black stacks and one red. Since they weren’t playing—thankfully—for real money, which had been one of Liam’s worries at the start of the night, the value of these chips only mattered during the actual game. “How much are these worth?”
“A hundred for black, two hundred for red.”
“And that’ll be our small and big blinds?”
“Correctamundo. And here’s our button. It’s all yours, Victoria.” Picking up a green chip from the same seat she’d set the practice deck, she tossed it over to the beautiful professor.
“What does that do?” Anna asked.
Undoing the seal on the unopened deck of cards, Avril stared at him when she answered. “Tsk, tsk, Liam. Weren’t you the one who filled her in on how Texas Hold’em is played? Forget this part?”
Promptly ignoring her jibe, he looked at Anna. “Since Avril’s our only dealer tonight, it’s just there to denote betting order—the person who has it bets last in every roundafterthe initial round of betting, so having it is actually advantageous. Like the small and big blinds, the button rotates clockwise after each round, so you’ll have it next when I’ll be the small blind and Tess will be the big blind.”
As usual, Anna absorbed the information given to her like a sponge.
“Any other questions before we get started?” Avril asked, sliding the deck out of its stock womb into her hand.
“Yeah, is this a no-limit game?” he asked.
“Yep.”