Page 1 of Holiday Home 4

Chapter One

In the Interim

By all accounts, Liam Carr returned to Perrymont as something of a local hero, at least as far as his roommate Grant and a few other friends were concerned. After all, he came bearing gifts. And not your ordinary, anticipated, “here are some belated Christmas gifts” gifts. He didn’t return to his dormitory in early January with anything at all like that, though Grant surely would have been over the moon if he’d shown up with one of those boxes of mystery-flavored ramen he was always getting. His roommate had an insatiable urge to try every flavor known to man before he turned twenty-one.

Instead of some cheap ramen, done away with in a few afternoons by Grant’s voracious appetite, he came with gifts that would stay memorable and meaningful for years to come. He came with brand new laptops, capable of going the distance to their graduations. He came with four front-row tickets to a Lakers game, which nearly caused Grant to start foaming at the mouth. He didn’t blame him.

For the woman behind these lavish gifts, they were nothing out of the ordinary, but tonormalpeople, which he and his roommates were, you didn’t expect to come back from winter break and receive such crazy gifts from a friend you’d known for only six months. And so, they stared in open perplexment at the stack of high-end laptops he set down in front of them. It didn’t get any better when he told each of them to take one: they were theirs.

He received the expected response. It was as if he’d become an oil baron overnight. Naturally, even while their eyes shone as he doled out lavish gifts in his and Grant’s dorm, the demand was immediate and expected: spill the details.

He spoke the truth… mostly. He told them about making friends with a pair of women who attended Bellmore, the premier school for the children of magnates and moguls. He told themhowhe came to meet the duo, that it involved his next-door neighbor, who herself was a professor at the prestigious college. However, he lied a little here, claiming the meeting was just by chance, that they’d simply been visiting her when he’d made it home, and that polite introductions had followed—and nothing more.

Lastly, he told them about the New Year’s Eve party he’d attended, which the gift-giver had put together, and the insane prize room from which he’d obtained these laptops and tickets. When grilled on the topic, he passed out info on the other expensive prizes that had been up for grabs. However, he didn’t mention how the evening’s hostess, Avril Knight, had gotten him to spend some of the “points” he’d accrued over the night via his excellence at Texas Hold’em on a Rolex.

A Rolex he’d later discovered was worth ahundred grand. It was still at his house; he didn’t dare bring it with him to school. Hell, he hadn’t even taken it out of its glass container yet,all because he hoped Avril would let him return the gift. She’d continuously refused.

What the hell am I supposed to do with this?he remembered thinking, holding the container in his hands while sitting on his bed. He now owned a watch that cost multiple times more than his car. Avril didn’t seem to appreciate how stunned that left him.

And there were other things he left out, of course.

There was the fact that he was more than just a friend tobothBellmore women. After being worn down a bit by his friends’ barrage of questions, he did admit that he was now dating one of them, Annabelle Royce. Sharing that truth would make the future easier, given that theywereoutwardly dating, if only to keep a repulsive individual known as Trent Alden, who Anna’s father was attempting to match her with, far away from her. It was likely that Anna would eventually visit him here, so better to share that tidbit now than then.

“As in RoyceRailroads?” one of his friends asked, eyebrows to the moon.

“The one and only,” Liam admitted.

“So, you go back home for a few weeks, and now you’re kicking it with heiresses, getting laptops and Lakers’ tickets like they’re candy corn on Halloween?” Grant said. “How’sthatfair?”

“I could take them back and return them if you think it’s too much.”

A collective “Hell no!” followed. At their behest, Liam shared a few more details about his winter break. Given the circumstances of his return, it made sense that the focus sat wholly on him. He tried to spread it around a little, checking with everyone how their breaks had gone.

“I got a matching sweater from my girlfriend,” one of his friends grunted wryly. “So, definitely in the same ballpark as what you’ve been getting from yours.”

“Hey, it wasn’t Anna who got all this,” he said, forgetting that she’d insisted on paying for a tailored outfit for Avril’s New Year’s Eve party. “It’s her roommate who’s the big spender.”

“And isshesingle?” Grant butted in, tearing away his gaze from the Lakers’ tickets, which had immediately drawn his attention away from the laptops. He’d traced his thumb over them as if they were made of pure gold, eyes wide like the moon.

“Dunno,” Liam said, which was sort of a lie but sort of the truth. How exactly did Avril view their relationship? Officially, what were they to one another? It was a question he hadn’t yet properly asked.

Grant clicked his teeth together. “Well, find out for us, why don’t you?”

Liam jokingly promised he would, but he then redirected the conversation to the gifts themselves, not the givers.

Nodding at the laptops, one of which was his, he said, “Let’s get them all up and running.”

During that time, Grant, who’d gotten a new laptop the past summer, had floated the idea of selling the new one. Liam had simply shrugged and let his friends know that the gifts were theirs to do with as they wished. A couple of weeks later, Grant had a nice little boost to his bank account, which he used to splurge on merchandise when he, Liam, and two others sat courtside at that Lakers’ game.

That was the only weekend where he didn’t make plans with at least one of the three stunning women in his life. And honestly, it was a trade he made reluctantly.

Your dick can survive one week without getting sucked,Avril had texted him when he’d complained to her while in the car driving to the game.

I’ll expect it to be extra sucked the next time I see you,he’d fired back.

We’ll see, big boy.

At the time, he hadn’t realized it’d be at least one week more before he saw the fiery, flirtatious redhead. For just a day later, he’d received a request from his girlfriend—the official one.

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