Page 53 of Holiday Home

“Because there are so many attractive traits to choose from?” Avril asked, leading him to the promised land bit by bit.

He hurriedly nodded, and the flush on Tess’s cheeks subtly shifted toward a redder hue.

“Well, don’t keep us waiting too long. Anna has to be back soon, and we wouldn’t want to see you having to explain why you just told Tess about how amazing her breasts look when she wears tight sweaters when she does.”

“Avril!” Tess hissed, tucking those rightfully titled amazing breasts behind folded arms.

But she’d given him the last bit of help he needed, providing an example of how far she suggested he could go with his compliment. It might have been delivered with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but she’d delivered it, nonetheless.

His heart raced in his chest, anxiety swelling within him as the words he would say finally formed in his mind. The idea of saying something like what he was about to say to Tess nearly paralyzed him, kept the words clogged within his throat. Cowardice would have surely won out if it’d just been him and Tess.

He’d already let Avril lead him this far. Doubting her now, forcing her to keep holding his hand so blatantly, would get him nowhere.

Liam shut his eyes and took a deep breath, which he knew must have looked ridiculous. He could already envision Avril grinning at him, holding back outright laughter. It wasn’t as if he was about to leap out of a plane and skydive.

He opened his eyes. Every cowardly part of him wanted him to look at Avril, to give his answer to her, to refer to Tess as if she wasn’t there. With extreme prejudice, he forced those parts of himself down, if only for a few moments.

His gaze met Tess’s, and he finally revealed a portion of his desire for her with his following words.

“I like the sweaters too, but it was your leggings that I really liked. They really show off how great a body you have.”

Avril leaned back far enough to disappear from Tess’s peripherals. She tossed him a thumbs-up and a grin.

Tess, on the other hand, just blinked. “Oh.”

Chapter Twenty

Lost and Found

Among the myriad of responses Liam had imagined his bold—well, for him—compliment might receive, her simple response left him listing in the wind. “Oh,” could mean a million things. “Oh, I’m happy to hear that!” “Oh, that’s a bit much, don’t you think?” “Oh, I, erm, thank you.”

From ecstatic to uncomfortable, from pleased to distressed, from merrily accepted to reluctantly done so, “oh” could mean about anything.

Sitting there as he did, staring at the beautiful woman he’d dreamed of for years as he did, he couldn’t make heads nor tails about which version of “oh” hers was. He couldn’t tell if Avril could either, though she continued to exude amusement at the scene unfolding before her. Unless she’d been ushering him toward a cliff this entire time, intending to see if she could actually convince him to leap off it and plummet to his death, that was a good thing… right?

And then, before Tess could follow up on her one-word response, the most damnable reappearance of the politest woman he’d ever met occurred.

Anna entered the kitchen, shivering a little, blissfully unaware of the events that had transpired in her absence. Rubbing her hands together, she did him and Tess both a favor and a slight with her forthcoming words.

“It’s started to snow already,” she said, bits of quickly melting snowflakes dusting her head and shoulders. “It’s coming down quicker and quicker. You might want to think about heading home before the roads become too dangerous.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

“Yes, that’d probably be a good idea,” Tess said, and Liam knew he had no possible delaying tactic that he could summon forth.

He, Tess, and Avril all got up from the table. The goodbyes were quick, truncated because of the weather, though paranoia whispered cruel suggestions into his ear that there was another reason Tess wanted to get out of there so quickly. He struggled to shake them off as he and his beautiful next-door neighbor grabbed their shoes and coats.

Avril hung back, unusually silent as well. As Anna opened the door for them, a burst of cold wind slapped him in the face. She hadn’t been exaggerating about the snowfall, which was falling swift and fat, already adding a white sheen to the roofs of their cars.

He and Tess both wrapped themselves up, then offered their final goodbyes before plunging into the frigid winter night.

“Ah, L-Liam,” a voice called out to him.

Anna’s voice. Of all three he might have expected to hear, hers was the least expected. A pace ahead of him, Tess had heard her call his name too, and she turned around quicker than he did. Their eyes met, then decoupled in the same moment. Tess looked at Anna, and Liam knew he needed to as well.

Turning around to face the beautiful woman, he found her cheeks slightly rosy as she stood in her doorway.

Oh!

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