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“No, I’m still going to wait until they require an explanation.”
Attempting to discern her thoughts with a long stare, a stone wall of polite “you’ll see when you see” rebuffed his efforts. She didn’t give away anything as he began to place one card after the other in front of them. One to her, one to him. Twenty-six for each player. War was a simple game. It also tended to be a verylonggame.
Because of that simplicity, Liam knew there were likely only two junctures where her “stakes” would become relevant. When they encountered the game’s moniker, where the two of them turned over the same card and entered a war, or at the end of the game, once one of them had won.
For the sake of his sanity, he hoped it would be the former.
“Ready?” Tess asked, reaching for the first facedown card of her deck once he’d distributed all fifty-two cards.
“As I’ll ever be,” he replied.
She turned over a nine. He turned over a king.
As the victor, Liam collected both and placed them on the bottom of his deck. They’d keep doing just that—and only that, eschewing when a war happened—until one of them had all fifty-two cards in their deck.
Liam’s next card was a three, which Tess took with an ace. She grumbled about wasting her ace for such a small prize as she scooped them both up and added them to her deck.
“Are you excited for tomorrow?” she asked, looking up from their game. Liam did the same; it wasn’t as if War required an excess of attention to play. There was a reason it was most popular with children, who could sit around chatting while mindlessly flipping over cards.
Pretty much what they were doing now.
“Yeah, I guess,” he said, shrugging. “I’m not much of a shopper, usually.”
“I’m sure Avril will pick up any slack you leave.”
“I can imagine.”
Tess smiled, removed one of his sevens with a jack, and sipped more coffee. “The good news for you is that she isn’t the type to window shop for a whole afternoon. The bad news is that she has no patience for torpor or indecision while shopping, so it’d be best to know what you want to get—and where you could find it—before you arrive.”
“I’ve got some solid ideas about what I plan to get already,” he disclosed.
“Ideas, plural?” Tess noted questioningly.
He nodded. “I’m going to get something for everybody I know who’ll be here on Christmas Eve, at least. You, Anna, Avril.”
“You needn’t go to that trouble,” Tess said. “When I first set this up, I hadn’t intended for there to be gift-giving.Ihaven’t purchased gifts for anyone.”
“Yeah, but you’re the one hosting everything,” he said. “Besides, if not now, then when? It’s Christmas. I want to get presents for people. I don’t mind.”
Tess pursed her lips, staring at him for a short time and pausing their game. “Well, all right. Though, if youreallyintend to get a present for everyone who will be here, you need to get one more present than three, just so no one is left out.”
Liam knew who she was referring to immediately. “Victoria?”
Tess nodded and smiled. “Victoria.”
“I feel like she’d glare at me even harder if I brought her a present.”
“Oh, she absolutely would,” Tess said, making no defense for her colleague and close friend. “I admit to thinking it would be somewhat amusing if that transpired, so I’m a little biased toward the idea.”
“Now, you’re sounding like Avril.”
It was Tess’s turn to shrug, and she flipped over her card, resuming the game. “It’ll just be the five of us, just like at Anna and Avril’s the other night. As I said, I didn’t really intend for there to be any gift-giving, but I’m realizing a bit too late that this was a foolish assumption on my part. With those of you coming over who are, I should have expected differently.”
“For radically different reasons,” he pointed out.
“Indeed. I do hope Avril will show some… restraint this year. She can tend to be rather… shameless with her gifts, especially toward Victoria. I hope she’ll spare her, and Anna too, from too much embarrassment because of your presence.”
“I’ll try and keep her from getting anything too, uh, shameless,” Liam said, imagination already brimming with ideas about the kinds of embarrassing gifts Avril could pull out of her hat on Christmas Eve if left to her own devices. No one would be safe, least of all him.
