“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 itfeels.
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. Beforeshecan 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 soundmildlyinsufferable.”
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 makesa 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 thehellwould 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 beingMoore’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.
