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“Alright, now please close this fucking door,” Avril announced, shivering as another gust of malevolent wind barged into the house. She finally let go of his arm so she could wrap her arms around herself. “I’m dressed to look hot, not to explore the Arctic with Robert Peary.”
“What do you think?” Liam asked Anna, not even bothering to whisper. “Should we make her suffer? Payback sounds okay to me.”
“Ass,” Avril harumphed, elbowing him in the arm.
“No, I don’t want to affect Tess’s heating bill any,” Anna said.
“Oh, yeah? That’s what’s important here?” Avril grumbled.
“That’s fair,” Liam said, finally stepping back. Both ladies aligned themselves to the movement, and there was finally enough space for him to shut the door.
“But you do have to come see the igloo we built,” Anna said moments after the door thudded shut.
Before Avril could vehemently deny any such excursion back into the cold, Tess and Victoria finally departed the kitchen and stepped into the hallway. Greetings followed. The five of them were now all here.
The party could begin.
Chapter Twenty-One
Making Merry
As soon as Anna spotted the three separate mountains of presents sitting around—there certainly wasn’t enough room for them to beunder—Tess’s Christmas tree, she sighed. In response, Liam hid a smile. Apparently, she’d been the last to know about the vast quantity of wrapping paper that she, Tess, and Victoria would be required to shred through in a couple of hours.
Beside him, Avril didn’t seem in the least bit annoyed that he and Victoria had transported her presents from his house to Tess’s before she’d arrived. If anything, she was probably thrilled by it, as it freed her of any responsibility to brave the cold while transporting them herself.
If it wouldn’t have just ended up being me who did it,he inwardly noted. A glance toward Victoria caused a new idea to gleam within his mind. Perhaps the woman who knew Avril best had surmised that and gone out of her way to help him for that very reason.
“You got metwopresents?” Avril said, nudging him with her elbow while Anna placed three of the four presents she’d brought with her among the three gift mountains. The last one, which was probably his, didn’t have a designated area, seeing as he didn’t have any other gifts currently in the house. Eventually, Anna placed it slightly to the right of Avril’s pile, which now numbered three gifts.
“That’s right,” Liam said, glancing at the gorgeous redhead. He could still feel the echo of warmth that her kiss had left on his cheek. “You’ll have to open them in the order I say, though.”
“Interesting.” She grinned and nodded at the smaller of the two presents, which sat atop the larger one like a plover resting on a crocodile’s back. “One of them sure is tiny. What, did you get me a wallet?”
“You’ll find out when you find out. And no touching until then.”
She harumphed but kept grinning. “Fine. Then I guess I won’t be in any hurry to go back to my car and get your gift.”
Liam resisted an urge to roll his eyes. “Oh, that? I’d just assumed you’d forgotten about me.”
A look of hurt and a gasp ensued. “Wow. And after I worked so hard to handmake your present.”
“Is that what you did?” Anna said, glancing over her shoulder as she finished dividing her presents. “I didn’t realize that you knew how to handmake a cin—”
“Hush!” Avril threw a finger to her lips, and the two women locked eyes, an unheard dialogue flurrying between them. “You’ll ruin it.”
Anna sighed again, but Avril got her way. Liam would remain in the dark about whatever it was that Avril had made for him until the time came when she hauled it out of her car and set it on the ground in front of him.
“Well,” Tess said, drawing the attention of her four guests, “until we spend half our evening wading through all the gifts that Avril has brought, there are snacks and drinks in the kitchen. Dinner will be at six.”
“Sounds good; I’m famished,” Avril said, grinning as she marched immediately toward the scents of cinnamon, cardamom, and nutmeg wafting in from the kitchen.
What followed was the usual Yuletide party small talk, with a bit more. Surprising no one, Avril made sure to add a bit of her brand of spice whenever the opportunity arose. No one was quite safe. If it wasn’t a comment asking if Victoria had “some kind of date” after the party due to her sharp outfit, then it was an attempt to drag him into proclaiming whose sweater he preferred, hers or Tess’s. She had a relentless energy about her, but she also knew when to steer the conversation toward something mundane or less provocative. In a series of ebbs and flows, she guided the party along, keeping things lively and jubilant.
She’d also recommended that they throw on a Christmas movie on the TV for background noise, which was why Ralphie’s friend Flick was currently having his tongue pried away from the schoolyard flagpole by a crew of firefighters.
“Yo!” Avril said, finding him leaning against the threshold between the kitchen and living room. He’d recently grabbed a cinnamon gingerbread star, and he munched on it while waiting for the inevitable call for dinner.
“Hey,” he said, shifting his focus from the holiday classic to the gorgeous redhead. It wasn’t a hard trade-off to make.
