Chapter 13
Nicolas Holm-Bozic was carrying what might have been a small Lego model pirate ship full of candy. He was dressed in Nordic furs and a cloak, with his dark blue linen shirt open at his chest. Where the fuck did he get a costume that looked worthy of an HBO television wardrobe budget?
Nic strutted over to his booth, the splendor of which stunned Felicity speechless.
He had fried macaroni and cheese made of specialty macaroni shaped like sea creatures.
The breadcrumbs acted as sand, and tiny tiki umbrellas stuck out of each small plate.
He’d also covered the C’est la Vache signature cow logo with …
were those manatees? Sea cows. Cute. The cow statue out front was decked out in what looked like a sea dragon costume with a long green serpentine tail.
The bread was shaped like seashells. The desserts were small treasure chests.
The man knew how to execute a theme.
Felicity swore under her breath at her half-assed costume and empty booth table.
The restaurant and plant shop booths were set up next to each other on the patio in front of the split entrance, and there was already a crowd of kids gathered around watching.
At the edge of the courtyard, there were also some local college girls Felicity guessed were filming thirst traps. She couldn’t blame them.
Nic was dressed in a way that made her mouth dry and other parts of her wetter than they had been in weeks, ever since those naughty fantasies in the city council auditorium.
Nic went back around the corner of the restaurant side of the church, and he came back hauling a model Viking boat on casters the size of an actual small Zodiac.
What the hell was this man’s deal? The college girls were no longer bothering to be subtle in their filming.
Even beneath his ludicrously weather-inappropriate Viking cloak, Felicity could practically see his muscles bunch.
Once he hauled the boat in front of the church onto the patio, he wiped dust onto his thighs.
He took off his cloak and hung it over the prow …
stern? She always got those mixed up. His forehead was glistening with sweat.
He grabbed some wood out of the boat that Felicity recognized as oars.
He glanced across the patio and looked back down before his head snapped back up.
His focus fixed on Felicity. For a second, something almost like fear angled his features.
He took a step away from the boat and then that smile that always struck Felicity nearly speechless lit his face.
He gestured to his impressive setup with a small, swaggering bow, like a skateboarding teenager who’d landed a trick or a rapier-wielding rapscallion about to run away with the all-too-willing princess.
“Where did you get all this?” Felicity asked, walking over for a closer look at the child-sized Viking boat.
“I had the costume lying around.”
“Sure.”
He laughed. “The boat belongs to a buddy of mine who builds this kind of thing for themed events. Ain’t she pretty?”
“Dude, this is real wood.” She ran her hand across the smooth, weathered grain.
“It’s a hobby for him, but he likes to use high-quality materials. Salvaged wood.” Nic’s grin was infectious. “I’ve rented from him for a lot of events back in Texas. He owed me a favor. Figure we could let the kids climb in for some photo ops with the building. For press and just for fun.”
“Wow, that’s—”
“So, what are you?”
“I’m a brilliant and beautiful plant shop owner.” Her face wrinkled in confusion.
“For Halloween, Felicity. Did you know about the theme? Samantha sent out that reminder email a few weeks ago.”
“I missed the email, okay? I’ve been a little busy.”
“I thought you liked themes.”
“I do like themes.”
“Then why are you dressed like a barmaid?”
“Midsommar cult member.” She pointed to the old, bent flower crown.
He reached up and touched the crumpled flowers. “What does that have to do with the ocean theme?”
“For the last time, Leif Eriksson, I didn’t know about the theme.”
Before he could retort, a tiny hand tugged on his belt. A little girl dressed like a black cat looked up at him with enormous eyes. “My mommy said I could take a photo with you and the pirate boat. She said I should ask the pirate wench if she’d take it.”
Nic’s eyes glittered with mischief. “I’m sure the pirate wench would be delighted to take our picture, kiddo.”
“I’m not a—” Felicity’s arguments stopped when she saw how adorable Nic was when he boosted the child into the boat. He left off his cloak, but he reached inside to find a Viking hat that seemed shockingly realistic and a sword. Of course the man had a sword.
After a cheesy photo, the little girl hopped down and ran back to her mother, meowing gleefully the whole way.
A line had formed, but Nic checked his watch.
“Not quite yet, kids. I misread the time before. No more photos until the festival starts. I need to take the pirate wench and show her something real quick.” He pointed the fake sword around.
“If I see any of you hooligans on that boat before I come back, you’ll be walking the plank. ”
The kids who had been inching toward the boat hopped backward.
“Come here,” Nic said, leading Felicity over to the small straw pumpkin patch she’d put together. Her aunt had done this every October for the past twenty years, ever since the St. Clare Circle Halloween Festival’s inception.
A wheelbarrow had appeared at the edge of the patch. “What’s—”
“I had an idea. I wasn’t sure if you were planning anything else, but I went ahead and grabbed the stuff just in case.”
“What stuff?” Felicity tried to read it in his eyes.
“I’ll show you in a second. But first we need to talk about why you’re hiding again. I thought we had a deal.”
“I-I…” Felicity scanned the festival. The children running. The twinkle lights sparkling. The people laughing. She was so tired.
“You were amazing with the council. Then it was like you disappeared again. Honestly, it was kind of impressive how you created a cleanup schedule where most of your work had to be done at times you knew the rest of us would be busy.”
She’d been exhausted after that meeting.
The full weight of her presentation had hit her all at once, and it’d sent her back over that overwhelmed ledge.
The enormity of what she’d told Cynthia Dale she would do over the next nine months was an impossibly heavy weight on her shoulders.
She hadn’t even remembered the festival theme.
She felt delusional for believing in herself during the meeting, and she couldn’t bear the idea of seeing that disbelief reflected back from anyone else.
Manual labor outside? Sure. As long as her chronic pain from her injuries allowed her to do it.
Actual human interaction or connection? A bridge too far.
And not a normal bridge. The kind with a billy goat–eating troll living beneath it.
Inertia kept taking her back into that grayness.
She blinked back to the present and realized that at some point while she was lost in thought Nic’s hands had cradled hers. They were warm.
She shivered.
“I know that look.”
Her eyes met his. “What look?”
He halved the distance between them, bending to meet her eyes. “I’m your friend, Felicity Gallagher, and I’m not going to let you.”
“Let me what?”
“Let you think you can slowly fade out when you’re stressed. Samantha says you’ve been doing it since you came back, and I’ve decided I’m done.”
“You’re done? Done with what?”
“Done with letting you fade away when you think no one’s watching. I’m done. End of story.”
“Well, you’re not the boss of me.” She stomped her foot for good measure.
After a single beat, they both burst out laughing so hard that tears squeezed out of her eyes.
He slung an arm over her shoulders, pulling her close. “You better get used to me, Felicity. We’re going to kick Bruce’s ass.”
Felicity frowned but leaned her head into his chest where his heart thumped beneath. “I don’t want anyone to treat me like I’m made of glass.”
“You may feel like you’re made of glass, but you’re actually a diamond,” he said in an affected, growly voice.
“Is that from—”
“A fortune cookie.” He tweaked her chin. “But you remember that anyway. I don’t think you’re breakable, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you—uh—shatter? I guess?”
“Really lost the thread of that metaphor, didn’t ya?”
“Silence, pirate wench.” He grabbed a giant bag and tossed it at her. “Time to create the first-ever pumpkin sea in the history of the St. Clare Circle Halloween Festival.”
She tore open the enormous bag and found colorful fish on sticks. They almost looked like balloons, but they were made of paper.
“I called in a favor with a friend who owns a sustainable decoration company.” He shrugged.
“You’re the got-a-guy guy, aren’t you?”
Nic’s face crinkled in confusion.
“The ‘I got a guy’ guy. Oh, you need a thousand yellow daisies for a grand gesture proposal to sweep a woman off her feet on short notice? You got a guy. You need a motorboat, a burner phone, and a leather bag the perfect size for a corpse? You got a guy. You need two hundred gorgeous paper fish for a neighborhood festival, you got a g-guy.” Her voice broke on the last word, but Nic was nice enough to pretend he didn’t notice. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“I could’ve asked first, but I didn’t want to be the asshole who assumed you didn’t have a plan, when you did have a plan.
I figured worst comes to worst, I could put the fish around the Viking boat.
” He shrugged again, like he was trying to minimize it.
“There’s a couple sandbags too and these giant trough-style planters.
I had this idea we could let the kids sift to look for shells. I know this guy—” He stopped himself.
Felicity smirked.
“If you want to keep with the classic pumpkin patch, we can—”
She silenced him with a hug so fierce, he stumbled back, but he squeezed her tightly. His hands tangled in the ends of her loose hair. “Thank you.”
“I’m going to have to ask how you got from a yellow daisies marriage proposal to murdered body disposal at some point.”
She pulled away from him. “It’s like you don’t even know that Mary Anne and Wanda were the—”
“Hey.” He snorted. “I do live in Texas, darlin’. I know the Chicks.”
When they finished assembling the undersea pumpkin patch, that enigmatic expression appeared and disappeared as quickly as it had before.
Before Felicity could ask about it, the music started, signaling that the final countdown to the festival had officially begun.
“Monster Mash” blared from the speakers at the center of the courtyard.
He jogged a few feet back toward the doors.
“Come, wench,” he called. Nic crouched to offer her his back. “We must take a photo together on the boat before you return to your underwater gourdal reef.”
“That was terrible.” Nevertheless, she snorted as she jumped onto his back, wrapping her arms around his neck as he carried her to his absurdly realistic Viking vessel.