If Chad is reticent to drop in on Dr. Fortescue's big annual holiday bash without a date, imagine his horror when he arrives to discover the party revolves around a city-wide scavenger hunt with a two-to-a-team policy stricter than Noah’s. Worse, his efforts to pair up with his hunky doctor crush are thwarted, and he winds up being assigned the doofus with an elbow in the punch bowl as a partner.<br><br>It turns out scavenger hunts are hard -- were they really supposed to dognap the doctor's neighbor's dachshund and carry it around the mall all night? But running around with Jarek is easy. And kinda fun.<br><br>Even with help from an unsuspecting celebrity and Santa’s sexiest elf, it’s starting to look like a participation trophy might be the best they can hope for prize-wise, but Chad starts to wonder if losing alongside Jarek might not be its own kind of win.

Chad vs. the Holiday Hoopla

“Here’s a picture of Bob Newhart,” she said. “You want that? I think I saw one of Princess Di in here not too long ago. Bless her heart.”


“Thanks anyway,” I said. “We kind of had our hearts set on Cora Faye.”


We left her to her rummaging and wandered off down the mall. Past a three-story Christmas tree decorated in a pineapple and flamingo theme, past the sunken atrium where a few straggling families waited to get their picture taken with Santa (by a ridiculously adorable twink dressed as an elf in striped stockings), around a corner where we had to push through the surprising throngs of people apparently dying for the chance to spend ten dollars a package to get stuff wrapped.


“What should we do?” Jarek wondered.


Chapter 9