Holiday Home (A Harem Fantasy #5)

Chapter Eight

Honeymooners

T he Indian restaurant’s food was superb, filling, and, well, free. Avril paid for everything, sweeping away any suggestions to the contrary. Since she hadn’t rushed around paying for everyone’s items at Nadi Market, Liam and the others didn’t put up much of a fight. Doing so would simply be silly—pride alone behind the struggle. It’d be like asking your neighbor to grab a cup of water for your burning house at the exact moment that the firefighters arrived.

After lunch came a couple hours of shopping in Nadi, during which Liam picked up a few things he figured his parents might like to find waiting on the kitchen table the next time they came home. Weeks or months from now. At a certain point, it felt like they ought to simply get a house in central Europe, then use it as their base of operations for planning their next trip.

Unsurprisingly, Avril led the way. She wasn’t worried about the expense, so she simply purchased whatever she thought looked interesting or nice. That included some tropical flowers, which she handed to each of the three women—and then a fourth one appeared from behind her back when she came to him.

“I would never forget about you,” she said, batting her eyelashes.

So, among the souvenirs he trotted around with, he also carried a bright purple and yellow flower. He wasn’t as brave as the women, who placed them by their ears—what Avril had definitely been aiming for.

They split up a bit, reconnected a couple of times, and slowly accrued a bag or two or three each. They also took plenty of pictures. There were sights all around, and phones enough to capture them. That had been a constant throughout the day, headed mainly by Avril and Anna. That included a group picture or two, and the specific one he wanted to see sent his way was the one they’d taken after their dip in the hot spring, right before they’d showered, dried off, and changed clothes. Avril had gotten one of the employees at the hot springs to snap it for them.

By around three-thirty, they’d hit every local place they could think of. Gathering back together, they all readily agreed to Avril’s silent but inquisitive smile. They were ready to see where she intended for them to stay tonight.

Dropping back to the resort that they wouldn’t be staying at, they pilfered their suitcases and fresh produce from their rooms, then returned to where the day had started: Nadi International Airport. Soon after, they crowded into a seaplane, buckled in, and worked to combat the booming noise of the engines with the provided headsets, which also allowed their pilot to chat intermittently with them as they made their short trip. This was as much a part of the experience as the destination, after all.

Glancing to his left just before they left the runway, he saw Anna with a particularly clenched jaw. Extending his hand toward her, she gratefully took it. An amusingly tight death grip persisted right up until they landed.

Compared to what they’d flown in on this morning, their current mode of transportation lacked some of—read: all—the refinement of its more expensive predecessor. The flight wasn’t too choppy, but Liam noticed some turbulence once they were in the air. However, it was mostly smooth, and their pilot made sure to give them a scenic flight. At just over thirty minutes long, they each enjoyed the chance to see the distant gardens of nature both near and far. Some had a sign or two of civilization, but many more appeared wholly untouched.

When their plane hit lower altitudes, including one time when Avril egged the pilot on enough for him to buzz the ocean surface, they could see every hue of blue in existence. Shimmering, dancing, transforming. At the spots where small islands or shores just sat beneath the ocean, its vibrant color shifted along a gradient from sparkling blue to mesmerizing cyan—or maybe mint green. It was breathtaking, though the one among them with eyes to match those waters missed out on a few sights.

Annabelle Royce spent more time with eyes clenched shut than wide from the spectacle.

Most of the time, the water was an unfathomable blue, hiding beneath it a tropical ecosystem that was rare to find in this world. Liam knew about Fiji’s famous coral reefs; he was still expecting to eventually get an even closer look than the ones they got on this flight.

Around halfway through the trip, only about a minute before the pilot accidentally gave it away, he figured out where they were heading. He had to expect that every passenger aboard could see the sun on their left, then extrapolate which direction they were heading.

“Now, you can finally see the Yasawas,” their pilot said over the comms, pointing out the window toward a long, narrow chain of islands. “We’ll be going up almost the whole way before we come back down for landing.”

The Yasawa Island Group. From beginning to end, it consisted of luscious green interiors and pearly white sands. It was pretty much the most romantic getaway imaginable, world-famous as a honeymoon destination. It’d been one of the places he’d expected Avril to consider. Now, he no longer needed to guess. Now, he needed to start planning.

The rugged mountains rising at the center of the typically long and narrow island group looked as untouched today as the day they’d been formed. Really, there were only a handful of signs of civilization dotting the islands they passed. Most of these sat near the beach. A smattering of bures here, a tiny village there. He wondered if even a thousand people might have called the chain home.

For at least a day or two, that number would increase by five.

They didn’t need to come down in the water, which Liam had assumed would occur. But they didn’t exactly come down on a runway. Not a typical one, anyway.

When their plane’s wheels impacted the ground, it hit grass. They came down toward a narrow strip of smooth land, probably manmade, sitting between hills and forest. As far as private airstrips went, this one sufficed. They’d survived the trip. Anna finally let go of his hand, though he kept the marks her tight grip had left.

A few employees from the resort they’d be staying at were already waiting for them as they thanked the pilot and stepped off. Sharing a look with Tess, they allowed their luggage to be loaded into a van. Meanwhile, Avril took the lead in chatting with the resort workers, clearly in her element. Once everything was packed, it was their turn to hop on for a short bit of transport along a dirt road to one of the most isolated resorts in the world.

Sitting between Victoria and Tess, the latter pulled out her phone and, now aware of the resort’s name, started her investigation. According to the resort’s website, which Liam peeked at over her shoulder, there were only eighteen bures in the resort. It promised an all-inclusive experience, room service, gourmet food and drink, and numerous desirable activities. Around the time they began to see some of those bures, thatched roof structures nestled among the palm trees, Tess glanced toward him. Their eyes met, and the woman of his dreams, here on an island fit for anyone’s dreams, smiled.

Upon reaching the resort, they went through the proper check-in. Again, Avril handled things. Liam and the others spent their time looking out at a crystalline pool, curiously flattened into the same plane as the ground on the side toward the side facing the ocean, which looked maybe twenty-five to thirty paces away from the incoming tide. The resort’s restaurant sat directly by the pool; everything was left open so that the smell of salt water and sights of the vast, endless blue were never forgotten.

Having finished checking in, Avril was in the process of receiving directions. Only then, after completely blanking on it when he’d first seen the style of bures, thatch rooves, Fijian architecture, but modern and clean on the inside, that they’d be staying in, did Liam wonder aloud.

“Where am I staying?”

The others looked at him, so at least he knew he hadn’t been alone in missing this glaring oversight: all but Avril Knight, eternally shameless schemer.

“Come on along, and I’ll show you.”

What else could any of them do? Well, they could have asked the check-in desk employees, but everyone forgot everything about that when Avril started marching toward the beach. She was the ship knifing through the ocean, and they were her wake.

After hitting the sand, Avril turned north. Moving with purpose, her suitcase left two small streaks with its wheels. Theirs did the same as they followed.

She led them to a bure, the second-to-last of them all, and stopped. Emerald eyes gleamed as she spun about.

“Would the following passengers please disembark? Annabelle Royce. Tess Williams. Annabelle Royce. And Tess Williams.”

They did not comply with Air Knight.

“So, it’ll be you and Victoria together, then Liam in his own bure?” Tess asked.

“Incorrect,” Avril immediately said.

When she didn’t specify, Tess pressed for more. “Who will be sleeping in the other bures, Avril?”

“Bure,” the redhead, having far too much fun at their expense.

Anna and Tess immediately narrowed their eyes.

“If you think Liam will be staying with you—”

“Not me,” Avril announced proudly, chin tilted high.

All eyes shifted to the tallest, most buxom woman in sight.

“You’re pairing me and Liam together?” she asked, voice as disaffected by the younger woman’s antics as ever.

“And I’ll be bunking with my bestie and favorite professor.”

Victoria rolled her eyes. The others stayed silent. Liam was stunned.

“Are you alright with that, Liam?” Victoria asked.

Alright? He was inwardly popping champagne and party poppers. Outwardly, he trusted himself only to nod.

“See? No problem here.” Anna swiped a dismissive hand through the air. “Obviously, I need to put the most responsible woman in the group with the only man in the group. That just makes sense. I mean, these are the honeymoon suites, so each bure only has a single bed, and—”

“ What?! ” Anna asked, jaw dropping open. “These are for honeymooners?!”

“These two are,” Avril said, pointing at the nearby bure, then the one—the last one in the collection—a thirty or forty paces farther north. It was just visible through the palm trees and other dense foliage on its southern side. Privacy. There’d be so much privacy.

“That’s why I picked them,” Avril continued. “They’re the best available bures.”

Anna’s face turned bright crimson as she jerked her head back toward the resort area. Her eyes dashed from Tess to Avril, then back to Tess. “T-The staff, they’re going to think we’re a… a throuple!”

“Who knows?” Avril said, shrugging. “I got them because they’re the nicest ones. They’ve got the most space and the best views, and they’re right here on the beach! We’re basically ten steps from bed to sand under our toes. Look at ‘em. They’re also isolated from the rest of the resort, so we’re unlikely to ever see another guest unless we want to. It’s the perfect place for the perfect relaxing getaway.” She stared directly at her best friend. “So, relax, Anna. I stuck Liam and Victoria together. It’ll be as chaste as a nunnery in there, and our bures are a minute away from each other.”

Well… Liam thought. Some others might have experienced the same thought.

For once, Avril wasn’t in the know. For once, she’d tried to relieve everyone’s worries. Yet, like an immutable law of the universe, even when intending the opposite, she amped things up. And in doing so, he could have gotten down on a knee on this endlessly romantic beach, looked her in the eye, and asked her to marry him.