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“Hi, Victoria, come on in,” Tess said, smiling at her friend. “There’s not too much left to do, but we can knock out the final bits of preparation.”
“Okay,” Victoria said, stepping inside so that Tess could shut the door. As she removed and hung her coat, which diminished the coverage between his eyes and her gorgeous body, she glanced toward him. “Good afternoon, Liam.”
If she’d been surprised or annoyed to see him already here, she didn’t show it. Compared to the last time that they’d encountered one another—the first time that they’d met—inside Tess’s home, where he’d spotted something akin to severe displeasure in her expression. He now knew it wasn’t that she hated him for some unknown reason but that she’d known about—and objected to—Tess and Avril’s plan to push him and Anna together.
Since then, they’d only encountered one another once more, at Anna and Avril’s place when they’d all played cards. If not quite cordial with one another, things had at least been courteous. He’d learned a bit more about her, including the details of her once-engagement to Avril’s brother and her career as the other of Bellmore’s unfairly beautiful faculty members.
“Hi,” he said. “Good to see you again.”
Finishing hanging her coat, her attention subtly shifted toward him for the second time since her entry. It wasn’t an idle gesture but one carrying a spark of specific intent. It was difficult to parse due to the ever-present severity of her expression, but he could just make it out. For a moment, a streak of anxiety danced along his spine, and he wondered if she’d somehow realized what he and Tess had been doing a few moments before her knock.
Victoria had eyes as pure and poignant as glittering ice. She could paralyze with a single skewering look, which her natural expression leaned toward. He couldn’t envision what she would look like if she smiled or grinned. He’d seen when she spoke that her teeth were sparkling white, accentuated by her exotic complexion and raven hair, but he just couldn’t form an image of her without her acute, cool expression in place.
“I heard that you went shopping with Avril yesterday,” Victoria said, providing the necessary context for relief to soothe his trepidation. “Did she purchase anything designed to annoy any of us?”
Glancing at Tess, she shook her head, which most likely meant that it was Avril herself who had revealed their outing yesterday to Victoria. Knowing her, it was a form of psychological warfare.
“Ah, no, I don’t think so. I mean, no, she didn’t.” He hurriedly followed up with his second response upon noticing Victoria’s full lips curve downward into the beginnings of a frown after his initial statement. “We were together pretty much the whole time, and there wasn’t anything risqué or, um, strange that she bought.”
His words did little to diminish Victoria’s apparent worry. “But youweren’ttogether the entire time,” she said, highlighting that part of his statement.
Geez, Avril, just how long have you been torturing people with your gifts?
He saw her face cackling unapologetically in his mind’s eye.
“Well… no. I split off from her for a little bit when I went to buy her gifts. But I wasn’t gone very long, and she was right where I’d left her when I returned. Busy glaring daggers at Trent Alden, too.”
Why did you just say that?a voice in his head sighed.
The response from Tess was immediate and glowering. She’d watched the two of them converse with mild amusement etched upon her face, perhaps waiting for the right time to rescue him from Victoria’s stern focus. However, his potential rescuer vanished the very microsecond he uttered Trent’s name.
Scowling, she thrust herself into their conversation. “YoumetTrent Alden yesterday?!”
“Uh… yeah, briefly.”Idiot,he told himself.
“Why didn’t you bring that up last night?!”
“Last night?”
Victoria’s query washed over them like ice water trickling down their napes. Tess’s eyes widened as she realized her folly, which Victoria’s acute focus must have surely noticed. However, she was quick to sew up her defenses.
“Yes, last night. He and Avril decided to use his house to wrap and store all her presents, and I invited them over for dinner after they got done. But it ended up just being me and Liam because Avril went home after they finished gift-wrapping everything.”
She didn’t elaborate any further, and the two women locked gazes for a few of the tensest seconds that Liam had ever experienced. Blessedly, it was Victoria who broke the deadlock.
“So, you ran across Trent at the mall yesterday?” she asked, reorienting her attention toward him.
“More… he happened upon Avril while she was waiting for me to get back from getting her present,” he explained. “I saw him and two of his friends standing around Avril when I got back. It wasn’t a very long conversation.”
To little avail, he hoped that he’d downplayed events enough to avoid further interrogation. Unfortunately, nothing short of a miracle could have saved him from that fate.
“What exactly transpired, Liam?” Tess asked, though it was closer to a demand.
“Nothing much, really.” He shrugged. “He and Avril hurled insults back and forth briefly, and then both sides went their separate ways.”
“What about with you? Avril didn’t mention you and Anna to taunt Trent in any way, did she?”
“What, no. Really, it wasn’t anything like that,” he said, holding his hands up. “Once they realized that I went to Perrymont, I basically stopped being a person in their eyes. As far as they were concerned, I was just Avril’s pack mule or something.”
