Page 4

Thawing

W henever Liam returned home during the first half of his spring semester, he rarely spent much time at home. Realistically, what man in his situation would have? Even with it once again empty of his parents, this time due to a backpacking trip from Sweden to Italy that they’d started just a few days ago, he’d much rather be just one house over. If not there, enraptured in bliss with Tess Williams, he’d much rather visit his “girlfriend”… or his girlfriend’s roommate.

It was more than a little dizzying, that. The gluttony of options available to him. Three jaw-droppingly stunning women were always happy when he came into their sights. A feeling that was assuredly mutual.

Yet today, he wasn’t with any of them. He wasn’t snuggling on a couch with the woman of his dreams, sharing breathier and breathier kisses with a dark-haired heiress, or experiencing the most profound form of carnal bliss imaginable with a devilishly seductive redhead. Today, unbeknownst to any of them, he was making further work on a rather momentous life decision—a change. There’d been a lot of changes in his life these past couple of months.

And unfortunately, this one’s taking the longest to accomplish, Liam thought, rubbing his eyes. He’d seen enough small print for today, and thankfully, the woman sitting at the same kitchen island as him recognized how he was feeling.

“That should be enough for today,” said a woman with an undisputedly calm and collected voice. It was her natural disposition, as immutable as the cold void of space. Okay, it wasn’t that emotionless. She wasn’t that emotionless. More and more, Liam was starting to detect the very subtle cues that Victoria Moreno commonly used.

This wasn’t necessarily because he’d become more perceptive, absorbing some of Anna’s perceptiveness through osmosis, but solely because of the amount of time he’d spent with Victoria lately. Alone, even. However, it was certainly nothing like his time alone with her fellow professor. Not for lack of desire for such a parallel, though he also hadn’t tried to make anything happen between them.

How could he? It’d be like expecting an astronaut to fly to the moon in a sailboat. An impossible miracle.

But then… what do you call your situations with Tess, Anna, and Avril? a particularly bold part of him asked. It’d become a recent tenant within his mind, and it spoke up more and more often. Often, he let it have its way. But not now, not here. Victoria Moreno wasn’t someone to trifle with.

Trifle with? that same voice snorted. She’s not a goddess. You won’t end up incurring divine wrath if you flirt with her a little.

Well… he might, and well, she might be.

Victoria Moreno possessed all the requirements necessary to be worshipped by ancient civilizations, revered both as a goddess of beauty and rulership. She was tall, curvaceous—oh, but she was curvaceous—and carried herself with the poise of such a deity. Constantly in control of her emotions, nothing seemed able to disrupt her mood. Outside of some subtle cues that he’d—with the occasional insight from Avril, who knew her better than just about anyone—started noticing, she really was statuesque.

Formed by a sculptor who loved women with height, severe intensity, and unraveling voluptuousness.

She had smooth olive skin, and he believed she had Spanish or Portuguese roots based on her last name. But Liam wasn’t certain; in fact, he didn’t know much about her past. Other than the eyebrow-raising fact that she’d been engaged to Avril’s older brother for a time, only to break it off after recognizing that he was in no hurry to mature. Surprisingly, even Avril praised Victoria for making that choice, basically calling her older brother unworthy of such a woman. But who was?

Alongside her height, luscious figure, and unflappable calm, she had a pair of eyes so startingly blue that they seemed formed from the same stuff as the wintry sky hovering above her roof. Piercing, intimidating, shiver-inducing—Liam could go on. When it came to her many, many weapons, those eyes of hers, always so unfalteringly intense, were the best at stealing his breath.

So long as his gaze could reach those eyes.

That, in and of itself, was a challenge, akin to summiting a mountain. And there were mountains to climb to reach her eyes. Right now, they were snug and comfortable beneath a sweater that a less busty woman might have worn loosely. Realistically, that was probably how it was sold: a loose sweater.

It wasn’t when Victoria wore it.

The sweater had only a single sleeve, and Liam silently thanked whoever had designed it for this omission. The khaki-colored top bared her right shoulder and arm but then decided it should also bare Victoria’s midriff. Everywhere else, it clung to her without remorse, shaping itself around her stunning figure.

She’s as fit as you are, Tess, Liam thought, though that was hardly surprising. It was Victoria who had pulled Tess into being a workout partner following the latter’s divorce. No, before that, he reminded himself. The divorce had only gone through a little over two months ago. But Tess and her unpleasant—and unworthy, as Liam saw it—husband had been separated for far longer.

Victoria didn’t seem to realize that he wasn’t helping put away some of the papers she’d pulled out of a fashionable beige briefcase a little while ago—more of a handbag than a 1950s-style briefcase. Fashionable. He’d left out that word when thinking of her a few moments ago. There were just so many to keep track of when it came to Victoria. As if she wouldn’t settle with just being incredibly attractive, composed, intelligent, and diligent. She also had to have a killer fashion sense.

“Would you like something to drink?”

“Huh?”

For a moment, Liam couldn’t comprehend the question. So, he replied with the dullness of a rusted knife trying to saw open a coconut. Something that he’d never done but which he might end up getting to try his hand at in a couple of months.

“Would you like something to drink?” Victoria asked again, patient with him.

“Oh! Yeah, sure. Thank you.”

After finishing putting away the papers, she stood and headed toward the nearby refrigerator. Liam’s eyes greedily pursued. Instead of questioning where he should look at Victoria to avoid feeling a surge of desire, the questions should be about where he could look. Did an option even exist?

From behind, she was no less attractive than from the front. She had dark brown hair, only a few shades lighter than Anna’s black hair, and it gathered in a spiraling crown behind her head today. A couple lengths were allowed to go free, and one landed on the shoulder of her sweater. Another was allowed to caress her uncovered shoulder, which was the luckiest of the lot.

Down his eyes went. Her hourglass figure, which the sweater still clung to so merrily. Her shapely butt, hugged by a pair of tight jeans. Her long legs, which strode with a sure gait toward her destination.

Where. Should. He. Look?

Anywhere, everywhere, that bolder voice of his announced gleefully. For as long as you can.

Again, Liam didn’t let it have his way. He turned his eyes upward, admiring the ceiling. When that failed to keep him excited for even a second, he swept his gaze around the rest of her kitchen. It was enormous, as was the island he sat at. Lazily swiveling in his stool, he tried to focus on the décor.

Being a professor at Bellmore, one of the most prestigious colleges in the country, paid well. Tess could support that idea. Both women, unmarried, possessed beautiful homes. And among his handful of secrets about Victoria, he knew she enjoyed gardening. Once spring finally bloomed, he suspected that her home would flourish with color.

For now, it had to make do with indoor plants, including the bonsai tree he’d gotten for her at Christmas time, pretty much solely because Avril had suggested it to him. At the time, he’d been worried that it’d be some sort of insider joke, him the butt of it. However, no, Victoria had accepted the gift graciously.

But there it is, Liam thought as he glanced toward the end of the L-hook that her kitchen counters made around the room. Tended and taken care of by an expert hand.

“I’ve got all the regular brands of soda, water, lemonade, wine.”

Liam blinked, then slowly turned his gaze back to the stunningly beautiful woman he shared the room with. Everything but the final word had been expected. Was that… a joke? From Victoria?

“Sure, I’ll take a glass of wine,” Liam said, daring himself to call her bluff.

Victoria’s expression didn’t budge one way or the other. And then, moving from the refrigerator to one of her cabinets, she dug out a tall bottle and two wine glasses. Not long after, she’d filled them both.

Liam just sat where he was, blinking like someone who’d just had a flashbang go off in front of his face. A short time later, carrying over two glasses of swaying red liquid, Victoria returned to her seat. After that, she placed one of the filled glasses before him.

It was like looking directly at a dare. Was she testing him? Was it related to what they’d spent the past forty-five minutes doing? Surely, not… right?

Victoria eyed him, fingers pinching the stem of her wine glass. But not lifting it. She seemed to be waiting for him. Expectantly, anticipatorily? He didn’t know. But he did know this: it was his move.

Yet… it didn’t feel that way. She was the exact type of woman to make any man second guess his courage, his actions, even his very thoughts. To make them back down.

The old Liam would have shrunk from the challenge—if that was what it actually was, strange as this all was—immediately. He would have hemmed and hawed, then looked the other way, shrugged, and probably found Victoria smirking—if she had such a smirk in her repertoire—when he looked back at her.

But he wasn’t that Liam any longer. Some old vestiges might still stick to him, bits of muck that weren’t so easily scrubbed away, but that was all they were—vestiges. The effect they could have on him grew less and less with each passing day, each wonderful new experience.

And well, perhaps this was his chance to experience another one. He vividly remembered the short but thrilling embrace they’d shared on New Year’s Eve and the conversation that had enabled him to get her phone number. Without that moment, he might not have worked up the courage to ask for it. Without having asked for it, he couldn’t be here right now, enjoying the sight of her in that snug, shoulder-less sweater.

So, a choice was made. Consequences be damned.

Liam lifted the glass, stared briefly into the swirling red liquid filling it, then took a sizeable drink. He tried to savor it in his mouth before swallowing. It had a ripe taste of blackberry or plum, and… he didn’t really know. Like women had been for him a few months ago, he didn’t know much about wine.

“It’s good,” he said after finishing his drink.

“It’s quite expensive,” Victoria said, raising her glass. The rim touched her lush lips, and she took a slightly deeper drink than he did. Liam’s eyes watched her throat expand, then constrict as she swallowed two full gulps. The unfairly beautiful woman set the glass back down on her kitchen island.

“Non-alcoholic, too.”

Liam pulled his mouth to the side. Of course. He should have known better. The last person to break a rule would be Victoria. He set down his glass, then flicked the glass stem. It made a pinging noise.

“Were you considering letting me drink a couple of glasses, then see if I acted like I was tipsy?”

“The thought did cross my mind,” Victoria said, smiling softly, “but I changed tact after seeing how hesitant you looked.”

He just grunted and took another drink. “Well, now that I know, I don’t have to pace myself. I’ll down the whole bottle, expensive or not.”

Victoria raised a delicate eyebrow. “And just how long were you intending to stay here and drink with me?”

He shrugged. “Until you kick me out, I guess. There’s nowhere else I’m in a hurry to get to.”

Aware as she was of Avril’s interest in him, Victoria’s eyebrow stayed raised. “ Nowhere? ”

“Nowhere,” he repeated. “Here seems like the perfect place to spend an afternoon.”

As Victoria didn’t weigh in on his statement in either direction, Liam elected to take her silence as permission to linger. He picked up his glass and took another drink. This time, he waited for her to make the next move.

Sipping her wine, the gorgeous woman examined him with an inscrutable expression. She let the silence go on longer than he had, clearly comfortable in it. He’d have expected nothing less; she was a professor, after all. Control and poise were part of the job, though he was sure she’d have had them both in spades, even if she’d been a garbage collector.

Probably wouldn’t have this house, though, Liam thought idly, waiting for Victoria to disrupt the silence settling in her kitchen.

“We’re coming ever closer to our trip,” she eventually said.

“Yeah, we are,” he agreed. “Have you thrown any more points toward where we ought to go?”

Fiji, Tahiti, Maldives, Bora Bora, the Bahamas—all five were dream destinations. Liam had never visited any of them. His parents had always been bigger on winter vacations than summers spent on a beach. But with spring break approaching and a scheming woman with far too much money to burn enabling them to visit one of those places, he’d soon turn a dream experience into reality. However, that was the cherry on top, not the actual dessert. The four women he’d be going on this vacation with were the real reason he couldn’t wait for spring break.

“I’ve placed pretty much all the points I had left on Fiji,” Victoria said. “It’s been that way since last week.”

“You want to go there that badly?”

“It’s the only place of the five that I’ve never visited.”

It was Liam’s turn to arch an eyebrow. “All while you were dating or engaged to Avril’s brother?”

The second he blurted out the question, he winced. That wasn’t a topic he expected she wanted to talk about.

“That’s right,” Victoria said, seeming unaffected by the reminder of her former fiancé. “I enjoyed all four, and going back wouldn’t be so bad, but I’m in favor of a new location, a new experience.”

Liam nodded, relieved that he hadn’t accidentally landed on a sore spot with his blundering tongue. “That makes sense.”

“Though the choice is ultimately going to be yours,” the composed woman said. “You have enough points to pick where we go.”

“Do I?” he asked, shrugging.

Victoria looked at him flatly, so he shrugged a second time. They both knew she was right; this was just a repeat of his conversation with Anna. Having performed far better than anyone else at Avril’s “casino” on New Year’s Eve, he’d come away with nearly as many points as the other three players combined. Even after spending almost half of them on gifts, with a hundred and thirty points remaining, he remained far ahead of anyone else.

He really wasn’t sure where he wanted to go, so he’d deliberately dragged his feet when it came to spending those points. That way, he could see where everyone else wanted to go and vote with the majority.

But so far, there wasn’t a majority. Victoria wanted to visit Fiji, while Tess and Anna had stuck a smattering of points to pretty much every location. For whatever reason, the Bahamas was the only one without a point to its name yet. With thirty-five points—all of Victoria’s remaining points plus some from Tess and Anna—behind it, Fiji was currently in the lead, though Maldives and Bora Bora weren’t far behind. If he was so inclined, twenty points here, twenty points there, and Fiji would suddenly find itself struggling to keep up.

And Victoria didn’t have any points left to spend.

“I still haven’t put too much thought into it, but I probably should, shouldn’t I?” he said.

“You probably should,” Victoria agreed. “Avril said she’d end voting at the end of February. That doesn’t leave you much time left.”

“Good point. I’ll definitely give it a little thought.”

It was precisely what he was doing right now, in fact. Most notably, a potentially risky idea flapped like a flag in a storm inside his head. It was impossible to avoid noticing. And the more he looked at it, the more fascinated he became.

“Care to convince me why I should pick Fiji over the rest?” he added. “Seems like the perfect time to sway my opinion, no? While I drink this non-alcoholic wine.”

He made a show of taking a long drink, which left only a little red in his glass. Victoria shook her head but smiled slightly as she stood up, returned to the counter, and collected the wine bottle. As soon as she sat back down, she leaned in and refilled his glass. All the while, her sharp blue eyes remained on him. They were still totally unreadable.

“While it’s not quite the ideal time to visit, Fiji has numerous islands to pick from. I’m sure Avril would pick only the very best for us, once she knows if that’s where we’ll be heading. There’s sun, crystalline waters, as many activities as you can imagine. Shows like Survivor have been filmed on one set of islands, and there’s bound to be a lot of days spent on the various beaches.”

Victoria finished refilling his glass, but she didn’t lean all the way back to where she’d been before. Liam appreciated her for that, and for her guile. The gorgeous woman knew what she was doing, mentioning something as mundane as beachgoing as her final point. It summoned images—several of them. Liam’s blood warmed.

“All the places are beaches, though, aren’t they? Kind of what they’re all famous for. Some of the world's most famous and well-regarded beaches, the whole lot.”

“That’s true.” Victoria paused, expression seeming to waver in a way he’d never seen from her. Before he could consider what that meant, she continued. “But the excitement to be on those beaches plays a large role in what outfits a woman will bring along.”

His blood warmed? No, it was practically sweltering.

Liam needed another drink to cool himself down, but he didn’t dare break eye contact with the busty—fuck, she was so busty—woman sitting across from him. Like a pitcher on a hot streak, he didn’t dare change a single thing.

Really, a baseball metaphor? he thought. You have been spending too much time with Avril.

“You’d pick something subpar to bring along if we went somewhere other than Fiji?” Liam asked, though he had his doubts that she could look anything other than phenomenal—or that she had any subpar outfits in her closet. She was far too fashionable for that.

Victoria merely shrugged. “Not necessarily. But I might not be as certain to go out and pick up some new ones if we went somewhere else.”

Liam swallowed, noticing how close their knees had come. No, not sweltering. Boiling. How was it so hot in this kitchen all of a sudden?

That dangerous idea churned inside his head, a storm ready to become a full-fledged tempest. He couldn’t keep hold of it for much longer; it was going to shatter the prison of self-control he’d wrapped it up in, then batter at his insides until he relented to its wishes.

“By comparison, what do your old outfits look like?” he asked.

“I suppose you’d find out if we end up going to Tahiti or one of the other places.”

After answering him, Victoria’s discerning eyes remained locked with his. She didn’t seem annoyed or bothered by his question, however. As good a sign as any… he hoped.

A little more. A little further. Just like on New Year’s Eve.

New Year’s Day, actually. That had been when he’d obtained her number. The new year. So far, it’d been as wonderful as anything he could imagine. Was it wrong of him to consider if he could make it even more so?

“If I found out before then, maybe I’d be more interested in seeing some new outfits. That might make me put some points to us going to Fiji.”

“ What might make you put some points to going to Fiji?” Victoria asked calmly.

How far was too far? He wasn’t in a relationship with her, not even close. And… he wasn’t sure how Tess or Avril would take learning that he’d gone and asked Victoria to model for him in some of her bikinis. In person. Perhaps that was the critical part. The way to convince Victoria to give him something of what he wanted, yet not push the envelope too far too fast.

And oh, he wanted this. Badly enough that he could feel his heart in his throat, sweat gathering on his palms.

“You said you’ve been to all these other places, right?” he said, speaking with a form of confidence—restrained but steady—that surprised him. “So, you probably have lots of pictures. Anything you’d be wearing in them would count as old outfits, wouldn’t they? So, you could show me all of those.”

“ All of those?” Victoria said.

“Or as many as you want…” Liam trailed off, daring to breathe in a little more of the tempest whirling through his veins. “We could go even further, attach a way for you to guarantee we go to Fiji. I could rate each outfit on how much I like it, from one to five. And that’ll be the same number of points I put into us going to Fiji. So, the more pictures you send, and the more I like them, the more likely we end up on its beaches.”

Silence. Yet not an unpleasant silence. One of the most attractive women on the planet continued to hold his gaze. Very little changed in that regard. Victoria blinked, long eyelashes coming down. When she opened her eyes, she leaned back, picked up her wine, and brought it to her lips. She continued looking at him over the rim of the glass, throat constricting as she drank it deeply— more than deeply. The entire glass’s contents vanished.

Non-alcoholic or not, Liam sensed that this meant something.

After setting down her glass, Victoria thrilled him with a subtle nod. Immediately afterward, he had to hold himself down to the stool he sat on. An urge to pump a fist in the air nearly overcame his self-control.

“What kind of criteria are you looking for in these pictures… that I may send your way?”

Not “may,” Liam thought, heart pounding like an uproarious amphitheater amid an unending shower of applause. They both knew better than that.

“The normal kind,” he said, deciding that he could occasionally benefit from being a little coy. “It sounds like you vacationed a lot in your past. So, I’m sure you have plenty of pictures, right?”

“I have a few albums,” the stunning woman said.

“Great. Pick from them. Whenever you text me one, I’ll rate it, and that’s how many points toward Fiji I’ll add.”

“When will you add them?”

“As soon as is reasonably possible. So, probably at the end of each week.”

“And you’ll add them all at once?”

“I will.”

Contractual specifics set, Liam and Victoria continued staring into one another’s eyes. Instead of feeling nervous and anxious, he felt the exact opposite. Rather than wilting under her gaze, he bloomed with excitement and confidence. Winter faded before the sudden and spontaneous arrival of spring.

The arm that she’d leaned against her island countertop shifted back. It didn’t go to refill either wine glass. Instead, Victoria’s hand moved purposefully toward a slim rectangular shape that stood out against her right thigh. Liam’s breath stilled within his lungs, and he didn’t dare blink as Victoria pulled out her phone.

Her kitchen was well-lit, both by embedded bulbs and natural light, but he saw when its screen popped with illumination. That was all he could see. Victoria kept him from being able to see a thing as her thumb began swiping through what he assumed was a photo album.

Get your phone out, idiot, a voice snapped at him.

Liam hastened to do so, which caused Victoria to glance up from her phone. Her smile was slight enough to have tricked a leveling tool into believing nothing about her mouth had changed. Yet Liam was certain it had moved a little, and he swallowed dryly.

Victoria’s piercing blue eyes returned to her phone, and she spent minutes lazily swiping through her phone. If he’d had the choice, he’d have picked being waterboarded over this torturous waiting. He knew she was subjecting him to it purposefully. She hardly needed to find the perfect picture ; any picture of her was guaranteed to take his breath away.

He almost started to wonder if she was just swiping through a single album repeatedly so that she could see if he could become so tense with anticipation that his head popped like an Airhead commercial. If she kept him waiting any longer, he felt certain that he might start rattling, at the very least. His blood was sprinting like the devil was on its heels through his veins.

At long last, Victoria showed a change in her expression. A glint of approval?

She tapped her phone’s screen a handful of times. Mere microseconds after the final tap, his phone buzzed in his hand.

Avoiding looking at the message on his phone immediately required a degree of willpower that he hadn’t known he had. Like a strongman grunting under the sheer exertion of hefting a boulder and placing it on its stand at an event, Liam practically felt himself come undone. A handful of seconds passed by. He managed to stay still.

He waited until Victoria raised an eyebrow—she’d been doing that a lot today, though she’d yet to seem annoyed by his curious decisions—at him. And then, breathing in with the expectation of losing his breath shortly thereafter, he opened the message on his phone.

He didn’t try to date the picture, figure out which beach she was on, or anything like that. He just looked at her, in all her stunning sexiness.

In this picture, Victoria, with toes in the sand while waves lapped at the beach behind her, wore a black bikini with a high waist. Two straps crisscrossed across her lower stomach, coveting the right to squeeze tightly around her sides as they wrapped around to the back. Her top had similar straps, these crossing just below the base of her neck. And a black, transparent mesh covered the plentiful degree of cleavage on display.

Her hair was shorter than he’d seen before, barely reaching her shoulders. She was also smiling, though it was still reserved in her typical fashion. Mere seconds before the photo, one hand had reached up to move a pair of wide sunglasses down to the end of her nose, revealing marvelous blue eyes.

The words sounded off in his mind like machine gun fire. Beautiful, stunning, sexy, captivating, gorgeous…

“Delicious,” Liam said. Said without meaning to! He froze like a deer in headlights, feeling a surge of panic. How had that word, among all the options, slipped out of his thoughts and became a word spoken aloud? Whispered, yes, but Victoria was barely two feet away from him.

He winced visibly, cursed his stupidity—things had been going so well!—then slowly lifted his gaze from a picture of Victoria to the real deal.

Yep, her eyebrow was still raised. So, however, were the corners of her lips.

“Delicious?” she said, smiling as if wondering if she’d heard him right. “I can’t say I’ve heard that one before.”

Liam felt heat scour his face. “Erm…”

“Any other words you’d like to toss out? Scrumptious, delectable?”

She was teasing him. She was teasing him. Victoria Moreno, smiling, teasing… flirting.

Maybe that was a leap too far, but her amusement wasn’t a momentary blip between emotionless stares. It remained on her face, stayed around long enough for Liam to identify it and then enjoy the sight of it.

He didn’t backtrack, not by apologizing or saying he’d misspoke. The old him would have. The old him wouldn’t have a picture of Victoria in a bikini on his phone. And a hope to get even more.

“Delectable is an okay one,” he said, trying to play things off coolly. Less like his stiff self, more like he was comfortable with making such compliments. Among all the skills he’d been developing with help from Avril and Tess, confident flirting was the one he still struggled with from time to time.

“Mouthwatering, then?” Victoria asked, picking up the bottle of wine. She refilled her glass, then brought it back to her lips.

“Luscious,” he said, then returned to her picture. His heart was racing. “Elegant would work too. Maybe bewitching?”

“I’d hardly try to convince you that I’m not all of those things,” Victoria said with a smile.

Liam nodded, then remembered that there was at least one word he was supposed to share with her. He chewed on the inside of his cheek. He wanted to be honest, but he also wanted to suggest there was room for improvement. Not in her—she was pretty much perfect all the time—but she’d been to a lot of beaches back in the day. So, there had to be more revealing pictures. There had to be bikinis that showed off more of her delicious figure.

“I’ll give it a three out of five,” he declared.

“Middling? That’s the best I can get for that… delicious picture? What happened to all those compliments you were just heaping upon my shoulders?”

“They’re still there,” he said, nodding at each of her shoulders. The bared one again enflamed his desires. Where was he supposed to look?!

“But…” Victoria said, setting him up to continue.

“But those descriptions belong to you no matter what you’re wearing. If you sent me a picture of you wearing a trash bag on the beach, that’d still be the case.”

“Then what am I being judged on, exactly? I’m afraid I don’t quite understand the criteria.”

Yes, you do, Liam thought, heart pounding excitedly in his chest.

“The outfits themselves,” he said, shrugging as if it were obvious. “That’s what we were talking about, wasn’t it? How you’ve been there, done that, worn this. And since this was the first picture you’ve sent me, I figured you’d throw me one you thought was average. If I gave it a five, you’d know you could get a five for almost anything.”

Victoria’s smile remained. She sipped more wine. “Perhaps.”

“Oh, it’s a certainty,” he said, smiling back at her. Was her heart going anywhere nearly as quickly as his? It was impossible to tell. She was so unflappably composed.

“Perhaps,” Victoria repeated, adding some emphasis. “And I won’t be sending you another picture just yet, so who knows if your theory is correct.”

“It’ll be proven right soon enough,” he said, confident.

A momentary lull in the conversation followed, and they both filled the silence by drinking more wine. Liam was starting to get used to the taste, maybe even like it. Or perhaps he was just in such a good mood that he wouldn’t have minded sewer water.

“So, what should we do next?” Liam eventually asked after an appropriate amount of silence had gone by.

“What should we do next?”

He nodded. “Like I said, I’ve got nowhere else to be. Want to watch a movie together? I know you’re into them. You and Tess get together every week to watch something.”

Victoria stayed silent for a few seconds. Her discerning eyes seemed to bore into him, though he had no such talent when it came to reading her body language. He could only try and look relaxed—which he wasn’t—and confident—which he sort of was—about her ensuing answer.

“You remember that?” she asked, which felt to Liam like a pivot. Or a time waster, so she could keep trying to piece together his intentions.

“How couldn’t I? I’d just made the long drive home, and then I met you—the woman who hated me immediately.”

“I didn’t hate you. I strongly disliked what Tess and Avril hoped to use you for.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know about any of that then, so I just thought you really, really hated me. I spent the rest of the night wondering what I’d done.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. You ended up doing something very right.”

By “something right,” she was, strangely, referring to his choice to join Anna in deceiving Tess and Avril about the nature of their relationship. In doing so, when everything came out following an unpleasant encounter with one of the worst people Liam had ever met, Victoria’s opinion of him greatly improved.

“I just did what I thought was right at the time,” he admitted.

Another short stint of silence followed. Victoria’s eyes drifted by him, heading toward her living room. He’d only seen it in passing, never spent any time in it. They always came here, though “always” was a bit of a stretch. This was only the third time he’d visited her home. However, this was the longest he’d stayed over at her house. And he was pushing to stay a little longer. A lot longer.

“Alright, we can watch a movie or two,” Victoria said, collecting her wine glass and the bottle. “But I’m selecting them, so you might regret having ‘nowhere else to be.’”

Picking up his glass, following Victoria as she led him toward a leather couch shaped like an L, he knew there’d be no room for regret anywhere within his body.