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Tess’s expression remained pinched with vehement disdain, but her slew of questions finally abated. “That sounds like him. Ass.”
“Tess,” Victoria said, in that slightly chiding sort of way.
“Is he not?” she fired back.
Victoria deftly dodged answering by returning her attention to him. “So, as far as Trent is concerned, you and Anna don’t have any connection?”
“That should be the case. I can’t think of any reason why it wouldn’t be.”
“All right.” She moved her focus back over to Tess. “There, you see? There is nothing to worry about.”
Tess, however, remained mired in anxiety. “You’re certain, Liam? Avril can let her emotions lead her by the nose when she gets fired up, and nothing I’ve seen is as effective at doing so as when she and Trent are verbally stabbing one another.”
“Ipromise,” he said, enunciating the word as clearly as possible. “Anna only got mentioned at the tail end of things, and it wasn’t in any relation to me. I was already completely forgotten about by then.”
Even before Tess could, Victoria stepped back into the fray. “How was Anna mentioned?”
It didn’t take the gift of prophecy to realize where things were headed, nor that he shouldn’t have tacked on that last part if he’d wanted to end their current topic of conversation. Still, he wasn’t here to downplay things for Trent Alden’s sake, of all people, who it’d taken less than thirty seconds to realize was a complete douchebag. He’d initially wondered if the hatred Avril and Tess felt toward him was slightly overblown. In record time, Trent had ensured that he wouldn’t ever wonder about that again.
“Just that Avril’s a bad influence on her,” he said, wading into things with the tepidness of a freezing man entering a scalding hot spring. Too quick could be disastrous. And Trent wasn’t here. Neither was Avril. The only person around who might collect any burns was him. “And that Anna’s father should have separated them a long time ago.”
Tess’s nostrils flared with blatant outrage, but it was Victoria’s much more restrained response that captured his attention—and imagination. He didn’t know how she felt about Trent, though she’d have left him flabbergasted if she’d ended up championing him.
Though it was vastly more subtle than Tess’s irate response, it was still along the same lines. It was a bit like comparing two injuries. A hand grenade caused one, while the other was the result of a single but still deadly stab wound. Her pale, icy eyes narrowed, and her jaw flexed only once—but once was enough—in anger. This was the only part of his interrogation where she’d shown such emotion.
He’d wondered a few times if Victoria and Avril’s relationship was as strong as the latter had suggested. This was his confirmation. At the very least, Victoria didn’t take kindly to hearing that someone had badmouthed her almost sister-in-law.
“And that is all?” Victoria asked, returning to her usual calm, disaffected stare after that momentary blip. “Avril isn’t usually the type to let someone have the final parting shot.”
“Oh, she definitely didn’t. She ran all three of them off when she promised to make their lives hell if they didn’t scurry away. And they did, even Trent.”
“Never to return is too likely much to hope for,” Tess said under her breath, still wearing her flagrant disdain nearly as openly as Avril had following the actual event.
“But yeah, that was pretty much it. We left immediately afterward, then we went to my house and wrapped up all the presents.”
Decoupling from him and Tess briefly, Victoria peered into the living room. “Those two cannot be it,” she noted, only seeing Avril’s gifts, which he’d brought over a little while ago.
“No, those are, um, my gifts for Avril. All the others are still at my house. Avril texted me this morning and told me to keep them there until she arrived.”
Victoria’s gaze returned to him. “I see. You and I can go and get them.”
He didn’t figure that she’d misheard him, nor that he’d misheard her. Thus, it was simply that Victoria didn’t care what Avril wanted. As far as she was concerned, they were going to get all the presents and move them over well before she arrived.
Liam didn’t argue, and Tess, although wearing a mildly consternated expression as Victoria waited for him to grab his shoes and coat, didn’t try to invite herself along with them. In short order, dressed to make a few trips between houses in the chilly afternoon, he and Victoria began what would undoubtedly be a unique stretch of alone time.
Their very first instance of it. The start of an unusual trend of it, in fact.
Chapter Nineteen
Uptight, Icy Bitch
While Victoria might be dressed for success when it came to rapidly increasing a man’s heart rate, she was not as ready to tromp through a mountain of snow, even if his foot traffic over the past few days had created a semi-suitable pathway between his and Tess’s front doors, which she spent a few moments noticing as they stepped outside. Leather and snow, which would quickly enough become water, did not mesh. And although she didn’t know it yet, they would be making several trips.
After examining the path he’d cleaved through the snow, her eyes shifted toward the actual way that she would be taking. Liam’s did, too. He planned to walk it with her, after all.
Stepping down from the porch, they first—Victoria showing no signs of surprise or displeasure that he’d decided to accompany her on her more roundabout journey—deviated away from his home. Walking along Tess’s walkway, which he, Tess, and Anna had endeavored to clear the day after the blizzard, they soon reached her similarly cleared driveway. After that, they headed to the street, where they let the professional work of the city’s snowplows keep Victoria’s long legs unmolested by any snow. Before long, they’d walked up his driveway and along the path to his door. A few seconds later, Victoria, like Avril had yesterday, entered his home for the first time. There’d be about seven more entries and departures before the day was up.
“They’re all in here,” Liam said, gesturing toward his living room after he and Victoria knocked off the meager amounts of snow that had collected on their shoes. They’d be doing thatfourteenmore times.
