Page 1 of Holiday Home 5

Chapter One

The 90s and the 20s

At forty-thousand feet in the sky, Liam Carr found himself surrounded by cutting-edge technology and comfort. Sitting inside a fifty-million-dollar private jet, in just about the cleanest environment he’d ever inhabited, every direction promoted a “no expenses spared” attitude. Nevertheless, surrounded by all this technological advancement and progress, he spent the first hour and a half of a very long flight to Fiji watching one of the 90’s most quotable movies on a 4k television.

So, while Smalls earned a blackeye byliterallykeeping his eye on the ball, Liam needed to work through the difficulty of keepinghiseyes on the movie. Classic or not, he was too surrounded by stunningly beautiful women to stay completely focused on the movie—his on-the-ride homework, as it were.

To his left, sharing one space on the comfortable, plush couch in the jet’s private suite, sat a cocktail of a woman poured from pure deviousness, intoxicating beauty, and, as he’d onlyrecently found out, a nearly unfathomable amount of family wealth. Rather than stirred,shewas stirring. Rather than being shaken, she did the shaking—especially of his preconceptions about her. She’d been doing it from the day he’d met her, on a day he hadn’t even known hewouldbe meeting her. Whenever he thought he’d captured her flavor, come to understand all her ingredients, she grinned and gleefully exposed another facet of herself.

A week ago, he’d known she was wealthy, though he’d stopped far short of comprehending just how wealthy. Because he had, somehow, against all odds, failed to connect the dots—and in retrospect, there were so many hints that it was almost embarrassing that he’d needed to have the reveal slammed directly into his face—between her and the major league baseball team she seemed unusually dedicated to. It was no longer unusual. Her grandfather owned the thing. The Bandits belonged to Rory Knight, and Avril Knight was his one and only granddaughter. Liam had thought that Anna was the heiress to a throne. If she was, it was a barony. Avril was potentially set to inherit an empire.

However, mere seconds after dropping the anvil on his head, the gorgeous redhead had warned him about acting differently around her. No changes in their relationship, no changes in how he treated her—that was what she demanded. She didn’t want a sycophant around. She didn’t want the mind-boggling amount of money her family possessed to warp how he viewed her, their relationship, anything.

Based on every horror story involving someone winning the lottery, then having their friends and family crawl out of the woodwork to try and claw away their pound of flesh, he understood why she’d brought the issue up. And she didn’t have a lottery’s worth of capital. More like thirty or forty times what a Mega Millions lottery jackpot could get you.

Now that he’d finally sank his teeth into this particular Apple of Eden, he knew he’d need some time to acclimate to this new information. He was currently flying to a tropical paradise aboard an enormous private jet, for God’s sake. It was understandably a little staggering.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do his absolute best to meet and exceed her hopes for him. Their relationship was far more valuable to him than whatever rewards might be had from becoming a leech upon her generous nature. At their destination, he intended to prove it. He’d show her how important their relationship was to him.

Avril glanced toward him. Without even realizing it, Liam had fully shifted his attention from one of two wall-mounted TVs on the jet to the woman who’d invited him onto it. As was always the case, what he saw, he adored and desired.

If the other unraveling beauty sharing the couch with him championed ice, not just because of the absurdly sharp hue of her blue eyes but because of her poise and calm, like that of an untouched winter wonderland, then Avril was the opposing firestorm. Ever advancing, practically unstoppable once she had the momentum on her side, she was a rush of personality, bold, dazzling, and ready to overwhelm you if you ended up staring into the face of a beautiful inferno for too long.

But it was just so hard to look away. That first sight of her remained burned into his memory, emblazoned onto his very soul. He knew there must be hundreds of others like him, but none nearly as fortunate as him. Because most of them had only gotten to see her once, forced to dream about a second chance. Whereas when she’d been the one to welcome him into her and Anna’s apartment back in December, surprising him with the sight of a stunning redheaded force of nature, not a polite but equally stunning raven-haired woman, she’d already planned to give him much more than just a single passing glance.

A glance was all it took to realize how incomprehensibly attractive she was, but a glance alone could never satisfy the interest that burgeoned in the aftermath. She was tall, she was fit, she was voluptuous. If they ended up playing any watersports or beach volleyball, if he wanted to win, he would probably struggle to pick a better teammate. And yet, enviously fit and beautiful as she was, there was a balance to it. She didn’t overly invest in one part of herself to the detriment of another. She was just stunning. All of her.

In more ways than one, she was a woman who ignored what common sense claimed, that every person had an unflattering angle. She didn’t believe it, and so this truth didn’t seem to have any sway over her. And after months of seeing her from so, so many angles, Liam had to come around to her way of thinking. It’d been inevitable.

Avril had vibrant auburn hair, which she liked to let fall in gentle, framing arcs down the side of her face. She commonly opted for a ponytail in the back, further influencing his belief that she was always prepared for some physical activity. Every visible strand guided the gaze inward, purposeful, as if aware of how stunning her looks were. To bring attention to fair skin and a small enclave of faded freckles surviving on and to either side of the bridge of her nose. To bring attention to eyes that were a riveting emerald green, almost always glittering with a glimmer of planning—a clever ploy or seductive scheme. Liam and Tess, one of the other women currently in the room, knew that very well. And ultimately, it brought attention to a disarmingly flirtatious smile, the kind that would have made a succubus click her tongue in envy. It was easy for her—natural. While others walked, she ran. And she seldom stumbled.

And so, having noticed his attention when it had deviated from the movie he was supposed to be watching intently, Avril met his gaze. With the lights off, the TV was one of the only lightsources in the private suite. It was just after midnight, but Avril had slid down the automatic shutters over this part of the jet before the movie started. For Anna’s sake, as sleep didn’t come easily for the fourth woman on the plane, they’d also shut the door leading to the jet’s largest cabin. Hopefully, she’d be able to rest up. When they arrived in Fiji, with how time zone changes worked, it’d be the very start of the morning—the very start of their first day in paradise. It’d be a terrible thing if any of them were too severely jet-lagged.

In a dark room or not, Liam could still see that telltale shimmer of amusement in Avril’s eyes. It reached down and touched the corners of her mouth, then lifted them slightly. A mouth he adored kissing. He might have leaned in and gone for one such kiss if not for the woman sitting on his other side.

Avril might have been thinking the same thing. However, she lifted a single finger and laid it on his jaw. Gently but firmly, she rotated his attention back toward the movie. From the corner of his eyes, he could see her smile lingering. More than that, though, he could feel the end of her finger. She allowed it to sit on his pulse briefly. Then, she leisurely lowered it down his neck. Then to his shoulder, trailing the end of the bone, then down his arm. She’d just reached his elbow when she finally pulled it back, like a fisherman giving up on reeling in anything substantial.

Except, it was the opposite. Here, the fish yearned for the chance to snag the hook. Here, she left him craving for the return of the touch she’d taken away.

That, too, was part of what made Avril Knight into Avril Knight.

“Look, it’s you,” Avril said a little while later, during the scene when Smalls looked wholly and completely baffled by all the nicknames the other boys gave to Babe Ruth. “Life imitates art.”

Over the past few months, he’d gotten better and better at sparring with Avril’s teasing comments. He’d even go so far as to say he’d come out ahead—not unscathed, but ahead—a handful of times. This was not one of those times. Not too long ago, he had found himself in the exact same situation as Smalls now did. At least heknewwho Babe Ruth was, which was a blunder that would get Smalls into quite a heap of trouble a little bit down the line.

“Be kind,” the woman sitting in the opposite corner of the cabin, the only person not sitting on the couch, said. “You’ll impart a bad memory along with the movie, so he won’t adore it like you do.”

She, Tess, might look like an angel in disguise, but she was far more competitive and carnal than was allowed by heavenly decree. Nevertheless, he still struggled to remove her wings and halo when he thought about her. And he thought about her very often. He’d been doing it for years.

“How’s that going to come about?” Avril asked. “He’s seeing it on a private jet while on his way to a tropical paradise, all while watching it with three breathtaking beauties. I dare him to act like he’s not loving every second.”

Although the light-haired brunette didn’t offer a rebuttal, Liam could swear he saw her roll her eyes—dark blue, alluring to behold up close, but hued black while she sat at her current position in the darkest corner of the room. As Avril had just pointed out, her stance was already pretty faulty. It’d be hard for anyone to feign unhappiness in a circumstance like his.

During one part of the movie that Liam hadnotbeen expecting, the entire team—sans Benny, who seemed to draw life itself from playing baseball—shriveled up due to a scorcher of a summer day. So, upon bending their de facto leader’s will to their wishes, they all headed to the pool.

And they went there for all the typical reasons, of course. Finding relief from the sun’s blazing heat, splashing friends in the face with waves of water, concession with hot dogs and candy. And to ogle and fantasize about the stunner of a lifeguard, Wendy Peffercorn. To the teen kids, especially Squints, the group’s “brain,” there was nothing quite like her.

“Seems familiar,” Avril remarked, aiming her comment at Tess. “But is this foreshadowing what it’ll be like on the islands, or have you seen Liam’s tongue roll out at the local swimming pool back when he was younger?”

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