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Responding to his sudden closeness, Tess neither balked nor backed away. It really did kind of suck that Avril was always right. Well, if that was the price that he had to pay for an opportunity like this, then he supposed he’d just have to deal with it.
“Don’t take too long,” Tess whispered, staring at his lips in the same way he did hers. “We have to be quick.”
It was quick, too damn quick. The soft bliss of Tess’s lips was his sustenance, but he didn’t get to feel their warmth for nearly as long as he’d have liked. They probably could have bought another five or six seconds at least, but Tess Williams wasn’t as bold as Avril Knight—and to be frank, neither was he. So, when their fleeting kiss ended, their eyes glowing as they absorbed the desire left crackling in the space between their faces, neither pressed ahead and stole a second kiss.
Not yet, anyway. There was still a lot of partying left on this finest of Christmas Eves.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Gift Giving
Dinner was pleasant, delicious, and relatively swift. Balmy conversation topics carried them through the forty-five minutes that they spent at the table, with Avril only tossing in a handful of disruptions throughout. Liam figured it was because she was biding her time until they grouped up in the living room to open presents, which they’d all decided was next on the agenda. So, once Anna finished her final bite of succulent ham casserole, placing her silverware neatly on the edge of her plate, Avril grinned and expedited the cleanup process.
“If only she had this motivation in the classroom,” Victoria remarked to Tess while watching her student speedily transport dishes from the dining room table to the kitchen sink.
“It’s justyourclass that drains all vigor from my body, Auntie,” Avril sang from the kitchen.
While Avril attempted to incite an actual glare from Victoria, Liam also helped clear the table. Anna and Tess, the latter commiserating with her fellow professor by patting her on the shoulder, headed into the kitchen and began cleaning the deposited dishes and silverware.
Just ten minutes later, everything was spick and span in the dining room and kitchen. Rinsed dishes sat in the dishwasher, awaiting a more dogged effort to remove any vestiges of food clinging to them. Not far away, the cooking pans had been thoroughly scrubbed clean, and they were now drying on a towel on Tess’s counter. With every post-dinner goal accomplished, there was only one location for all five of them to head.
“Oh, almost forgot!” Avril said, skidding to a stop in front of all of them. A second later, she pivoted, snatched her car keys, and hurried outside.
The three remaining women all glanced at him, aware of the reason behind Avril’s sudden departure.
The gorgeous redhead, now shivering, returned less than a minute later. By that time, they were in the process of pushing the three large hillsides of presents to where their owners had decided to sit. Tess and Anna had selected the couch, and Victoria had claimed the armchair near it. With the coffee table in the way, there wasn’t much room to pile up the veritable trove of presents that Avril had gotten for all three women, so Tess and Anna each claimed a corner cushion on the couch.
However,hedidn’t have so many presents to worry about—just one from Anna and, presumably, one from Avril. Once they’d divvied up the presents to where they needed to be, Liam, sole present in hand, saw Tess beckoning him to join her and Anna on the couch, nestled between them.
He wasn’t the only one to notice the invitation. Having zoomed back inside before the cold nipped at her heels any longer, the scheming redhead slammed the brakes on his chance of getting a comfortable spot between the two gorgeous women.
“Nope, you’ve got to sit on the floor,” she said. Furthermore, she had her arms behind her back, using her body as a shield for whatever she’d gotten from her car.
“Why?”
“Because. You’ve got to.”
Resisting an urge to sigh or roll his eyes, Liam accepted his fate. Flumping onto the ground near the TV and electric fireplace beneath it, the latter of which simmered at low heat, he waited for Avril to reveal the present behind her back. Meanwhile, Tess dropped the TV’s volume by over half, letting it linger as minor background noise. Afterward, they all waited on Avril to decide where she’d sit—and for the inevitable reveal of the gift behind her back.
She also chose the ground. Only a few feet away from him, in fact. Purely because it seemed like she didn’t want to move her presents away from Tess’s tree. However, her path to them was exaggeratedly roundabout.
She wentbehindthe couch, keeping the object behind her concealed from all of them as she sidled to her right, slowly looping around the room like a satellite in orbit. Shereallydidn’t want any of them to see the gift that she was hiding behind her back before she was ready to place it in front of him, which she finally did after almost thirty seconds of sidling.
The suspense was not worth the wait. Or the confusion.
Because the item that Avril placed on the ground in front of him, setting it on the edge of Tess’s living room rug, couldonlybe a single thing. He knew it, and a quick glance up from the item sitting on the ground in front of him showed that Tess and Victoria, sharing the same befuddled expressions, also knew it. Only Anna, who had implied earlier that she’d known what Avril had gotten him, didn’t look surprised. Instead, she sighed softly and shook her head.
Liam’s attention dropped from the three women to the object before him.
It was a hammer. Messily wrapped as it was, the outlined object within was impossible to dispute. Ithadto be a hammer.
“Hey, no touching! I’ll let you know when you can open it!”
Avril’s orders snapped him out of a bizarre fugue state, during which he’d stretched his hand toward the hammer, intending to check that his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. Withdrawing his extended limb, he’d half-expected his vision to clear up, revealing that he’d somehow mistakenly seen the outline hammer underneath the bright blue and white wrapping paper clinging to it.
That didn’t happen. He was just as sure of what was in front of him as he’d been a moment ago.
Avril had gotten him a hammer. What the hell?
