Chapter 3
CROSS EXAMINE
Jack
I’m not as grumpy as I was yesterday.
A good thing, considering I’m currently standing on the outskirts of a large crowd gathered in the town square, waiting for Amanda to light the Christmas tree.
The enormous, real Christmas tree. Already partially lit by spotlights, like it’s just waiting for its close-up.
I actually smile as children zigzag across the cobblestones in woolen hats with felt reindeer antlers stitched to the tops, while adults sip spiced cider and try to stop their toddlers from eating snow.
It might be the spiked hot chocolate Amanda left me with before heading toward the stage. But more than likely, my grinchlessness stems from a full night’s sleep—and having recently consumed my weight in whoopie pies that could probably be FDA-approved to replace Xanax.
The moist cake sandwiches stuffed with icing, cream, and candy are the only explanation for how I survived both the townspeople’s horrified expressions when they discovered what I did for a living and trailing Amanda through her Black Friday spending spree—which I’m pretty sure boosted Hideaway Harbor’s economy by fifty percent.
Full and no longer sleep-deprived, I crashed at The Haven—a resort that feels like the love child of California hippies and Norwegian lumberjacks—and woke to find the town’s Christmas décor decidedly less aggressively festive and more… tastefully magical.
There are twinkling white lights strung from every building. Red and green ribbons wrap the lampposts like peppermint sticks.
And in the center of it all stands the tree—an honest-to-God, thirty-foot Fraser fir crowned with a star that could rival the searchlights at a movie premiere.
There’s nothing fake about the greenery or the cascade of snowflakes falling from the sky like a live-action Christmas card.
No plastic cheer to roll my eyes at. No glitter bomb of commercialism to mock.
Just actual trees, actual lights, and actual joy—all of it so sincere it short-circuits my ability to be a jackass about it.
Which, frankly, is unsettling.
Because if I can’t pick it apart, I’m left with the other very real thing I’ve been avoiding since we landed in this sneakily charming snow globe: my feelings.
The over-the-top holiday spirit that silenced yesterday’s inner Grinch has apparently made room for something worse—the dull, unspoken ache Amanda called out before I was eviscerated by the town’s morally superior pastry goddess.
Only now it’s not dull. And it has a voice.
It sounds like a feisty elf in a flour-dusted apron, slapping down trays of emotionally jarring whoopie pies and whispering, “You’re lonely, Jack. And maybe it’s time to expand your emotional vocabulary beyond ‘annoyed’ and ‘contractually obligated.’”
And I can’t seem to quiet this new and audacious inner voice.
Maybe because it sounds suspiciously like the woman who, just a few yards away, has set up a stall between one booth selling knit Santa hats and another hawking lobster claw ornaments that say Merry Kiss-mas from Maine.
Making Whoopie’s town square pop-up booth looks like a wooden gingerbread cutout, accented in the bakery’s signature cranberry red and sky blue.
The owner is wearing a logo-matching red puffer coat, her hair pulled into a low braided ponytail under a sky-blue knit hat topped with an oversized white pompom.
Her cheeks are pink from the cold, and she’s bracing one foot against a cooler as she tries to tape a sign to the front of her table for what appears to be the twelfth time.
Each time she leans forward, her braid slips over her shoulder. Each time, she huffs and tosses it back.
If possible, she looks even more stressed than she did at the shop.
I take a sip of hot chocolate and look away.
Immediately look back.
“What are you staring at?”
I turn toward the familiar deep voice and nearly drop my thermos. “Jesus.”
Felix Jones, Hollywood A-list action star and my best friend, is grinning at me, looking annoyingly down-to-earth in jeans and a buttoned-up navy peacoat.
Then again, his go-to celebrity look was always casual. I was the sidekick suit.
“Felix!” I pull him in for a quick one-armed hug, thump his back, and take note of what feels like a dad-bod situation under all that wool. “What the hell are you doing here, man?”
“I told you he’d be brooding on the edges of the crowd.” Elizabeth Moore, his fiancée, bounces in her snow boots beside him, her wavy blond hair peeking out from under a white beret that matches her mittens. “You should’ve texted him.”
Felix kisses her forehead, the gesture oddly more intimate than if he’d full-on made out with her. “I was afraid I’d let the surprise slip.” He drops an arm around her shoulders, their feet shuffling closer in the snow.
The two of them together on one side, me on the other.
At least that’s how it feels.
Stupid feelings.
“Surprise!” Felix jazz hands with his free arm, the move ridiculous enough to shake off my moment of selfish brooding.
Elizabeth tilts her head to one side, assessing me. “Good surprise?”
Moving past the physical and metaphorical separation between us, I wrap both arms around them, group hug style. “Great surprise.”
And it is. Really.
When I step back, Felix’s early smile is replaced with concern. “You okay, man?”
It’s only then that I realize I held on a second longer than I probably should have, considering I’m not the most effusive guy to begin with.
“Uh, yeah. It’s just, you know—” I gesture around us. “’Tis the season and all.”
He chuckles, and the knot inside me loosens.
My eyes track back toward the whoopie pie booth.
Felix follows, turning back to me with a smirk that’s graced more movie posters than I have fingers. “That the woman you pissed off?” He points.
“Don’t.” I grab his hand and lower it before anyone can notice. Before she can notice.
Elizabeth giggles.
I sigh. “Amanda told you, didn’t she?”
“In great detail.” Felix looks far too delighted for my supposed best friend. “Complete with hand gestures and character voices. It played like a one-woman Broadway show.”
“Don’t worry.” Elizabeth relieves me of my thermos and takes a sip. “Amanda only made you sound mildly insufferable.”
Before I can reply—or get my hot chocolate back—Felix’s hands disappear into his coat. “Here. Hold this.”
Something warm and horrifying is unlatched from the carrier strapped to his chest and deposited into my arms.
Mike Hunt, the hairless cat, blinks up at me from his fleece-lined vest and rubber-footed knit booties. He makes a sound that falls somewhere between a hiccup and a death threat.
“Oh no.” I try to shove the feline back into Felix’s arms. “Nope.”
I would’ve rather the dad-bod situation I’d felt under his coat mean that I was now representing an action star with a beer gut than deal with the follically challenged demon now dangling from my outstretched arms.
Because where Mike Hunt goes, mayhem follows. A fact I learned far too well when Felix and Elizabeth got together.
“Why the hell would you bring this”—I shake my arms, his naked limbs flailing in the cold—“with you from New York?”
Elizabeth strokes Mike’s chin but doesn’t relieve me of him. “It’s the busiest shopping week of the season, so I’m babysitting while my brothers and sisters-in-law are all hands on deck at the store.”
The store being Moore’s—a nearly one-million-square-foot luxury behemoth set in some of the priciest real estate in Manhattan. Think Harrods in London, only bigger.
While Elizabeth is one of the three heirs to the empire, she walked away, leaving her brothers to expand the brand—with the help of their brilliant wives—while she forged her own path.
Mike Hunt does a full-body shiver, and against my better judgment, I gather his dense, wrinkled little body against my chest.
He rewards me by stabbing one paw directly into my jugular.
Felix laughs as I cough.
The music from the speakers fades as the mayor takes the stage, Amanda beside him. She’s glowing with that movie star wattage, waving at the crowd like she was born here, like she didn’t just arrive yesterday in a rented SUV.
“Amanda looks good.” Elizabeth gazes fondly at the stage as the mayor launches into a rambling speech about holiday fundraisers and a cat sanctuary.
She and Felix were the other two people in Amanda’s corner during her coming-out drama.
Mike Hunt—perhaps finally bored of attempting murder—retracts his claws, allowing me to tuck him deeper into my coat. “Yeah.” I nod. “She’s been pretty upbeat since deciding to produce her own films.”
The mayor finally hands Amanda the mic.
She beams, pure star power wrapped in plaid. “This place is magic.” Her breath curls into the cold air. “Thank you for such a warm welcome to your lovely town.”
“Thank you for the purchases!” someone yells.
The crowd laughs.
“You’re very welcome.” Amanda winks. “Hideaway is such a special place. And while I came here because I heard about the amazing lineup of Christmas-themed events, all starting with this one right here”—she points to the tree—“after only twenty-four hours, I can tell it isn’t the decorations that make this place special”—she finds me in the crowd and smirks—“no matter how aggressively festive—”
I snort.
“—but rather it’s the people”—she gestures to the crowd, which seems to warm at her words despite the frigid temperatures—“all of you, who make this town truly one of a kind.”
A collective aww rolls through the square, followed by mitten-muffled clapping.
She lifts her hand as if sharing a secret, but her voice carries clearly through the microphone. “The kind of special I very much hope to immortalize in film soon.”
People gasp, clap, and nudge each other in excitement.
“But for now”—Amanda lifts her arms theatrically—“let’s light this thing!”
A beat. Then—bam.
The star at the top of the tree flares to life, followed by a cascade of twinkling lights that ripple down the branches like a North Pole glitter bomb.