Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

A SUGAR BOMB SPIT TAKE

Holly

I join the line of caffeine seekers snaking through the Snowflake Cafe and pull out my phone to check the time. I started my morning early and set the tone for the day with a long run, some yoga, and a short meditation. As a result, I am centered, I am calm, I am … absolutely, positively going to freaking scream if this line doesn’t start moving faster.

Breathe.

I breathe. My irritation continues to rise as the line inches forward in slow motion. How can I be this irritated at seven in the morning? The day hasn’t even really begun yet. This doesn’t bode well for me. I tap through my emails on my phone—more to distract me from the Christmas music blaring from the cafe’s speakers than out of any need to get work done.

It’s going to be a slow work day, as the day after Thanksgiving should be. I have no court appearances, and most of my coworkers plan to work from home or take the entire day off. The office will be quiet. It’s the perfect opportunity to dig out from under the mountain of paperwork on my desk and ease into the weekend feeling accomplished and organized. Assuming I don’t snap from the music and lack of coffee first.

I’m not surprised Delphina’s playing holiday music. When you live in a town named Mistletoe Mountain, it’s a given that Christmas is a big deal. The festivities are out of control all year round, to be fair. But Mistletoe Mountain really ramps it up the moment folks prepare to flip their calendars from November to December. It’s as if someone has let a racehorse out of a pen—or released the contestants in a timed grocery store cart-filling game show. Wild abandon.

I remind myself of the Dhamma talk I recently heard about sitting with your pain. Acknowledge it, don’t resist it—that was the gist. Would the same principle work with extreme, bordering on murderous, aggravation? No time like the present to give it a try.

I close my eyes and acknowledge Mariah Carey’s incredible vocal range and undisputed lyrical economy while pretending my skin doesn’t itch. Or am I supposed to be one with the itching? Maybe I’m doing this all wrong.

I open my eyes as the song switches over. While George Michael is giving me his heart, I finally reach the front of the line.

“Holly!” Delphina smiles broadly, bouncing along to the music, which makes her metallic Christmas ornament earrings jangle.

“Hi, Delph. Nice earrings,” I say gamely.

Either my barely hidden disdain sails over my best friend’s head or, more likely, she chooses to ignore it.

“Thanks. What can I get you?”

I raise an eyebrow. “The same as always. A large black coffee to go, two suspended coffees, and two suspended meals.”

I hand over my reusable Snowflake Cafe stainless steel tumbler, which I use to help the environment (and get my fifty-cent discount) despite the cutesy pastel snowflake design that graces the thing. Humming a Christmas song— not the one streaming through the speakers, mind you— she takes an inordinately long time to pour coffee into a travel mug.

At last, she returns and slides it across the counter. “Busy day?”

“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know,” I mumble as I tap my card against the reader.

She rests her elbows on the counter and peers at me. I know what’s coming, and I should have planned for it, should have had a ready excuse to deflect it. But I didn’t, so I’m going to have to wing it. Think on my feet, as my new boss likes to say.

“Are you going to the Christmas tree lighting tonight?”

“I can’t. I have to work.”

“On Black Friday?”

“You’re working,” I point out.

She purses her lips.

“What?” I demand, even though I know better.

“Your dad sponsors the lighting.”

“Right, so the family is well represented. Besides, my sisters and Noelle will be there. They wouldn’t dream of missing it.” I flash her my brightest, fakest smile.

“Yeesh, don’t grimace like that,” she orders. “You look like you’re about to go on a killing spree. Don’t you want to see the tree light up? It’s so pretty.”

“It is pretty, and I’ll get to see it all lit up when I’m on my way home from work.”

“Well, I’m going to save you a spot under the gazebo, just in case you change your mind.”

In response to this promise (or is it a threat?), I give my best friend since second grade a genuinely warm smile—hopefully one that doesn’t make me look homicidal. “Don’t hold your breath.”

She sighs, shakes her head, and starts wiping down the counter with more vigor than is strictly necessary.

As I head for the door, two things happen. One, I take a sip of my black coffee, and my taste buds are assaulted as a sugar bomb explodes in my mouth. Two, the doors of the coffee shop open with a loud jingle of bells and someone steps inside. I react instinctively to the taste in my mouth and spew the offending liquid. The alleged ‘coffee’ splashes all over an argyle sweater stretched across an impressively broad male chest.

“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry!” I yelp.

The man just inside the doorway laughs huskily and futilely tries to brush away the coffee with his hands.

Delphina rushes around from behind the counter with a damp rag and starts dabbing at him.

“What’s in here?” I shake the tumbler accusatorially. “This is not my coffee order.”

She’s still fussing over the guy when she eyes me cautiously from under her elf hat and confesses, “It’s a gingerbread latte with candy cane foam. I thought you could use a little holiday spirit.”

“You thought I could use a little tooth decay? Black coffee, Delph. Black. Coffee. You know that’s my order.”

She waves a dismissive hand at me and returns to blotting the liquid dessert out of the sweater.

I turn back to the stranger, who stands there with a bemused expression, watching this play out. “I’m so sorry. Let me buy you a coffee.”

He smiles a crooked smile. “No need. I’ll just go to the men’s room and take care of this.”

“It’s that way.” Delphina points down the hall to the bathrooms, and he heads off.

He can’t possibly be out of earshot, when she grabs my arm and squeals, “He’s hot!”

I scrunch up my forehead. “I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Yeah, I guess. I was distracted by the insulin shock. I didn’t really check him out,” I lie.

She starts listing his attributes. “Shaggy sandy blond hair. Big, soulful blue eyes. Broad shoulders. Sexy scruff. A toe-tingling smile.”

“He does have a good smile,” I agree. “You should ask him out.”

She gives me a blank look. “No, dummy. You should ask him out.”

“Me? You’re the one salivating over him.”

“First of all, he’s not my type.”

I’ll give her that. Delphina likes bad boys—tattoos, motorcycles, piercings. Argyle sweater man is not her jam. He’s also not my type. From the glimpse I caught, he struck me as outdoorsy. I’ll bet he tent camps and works for a nonprofit, not that any of that’s bad, mind you. But I’m drawn to clean-cut men in well-cut suits.

She’s still talking, “Second of all, you’re the one who had the meet cute.”

“The meet cute?” I echo, bewildered.

“The amusing first meeting that you can tell your grandchildren about someday.”

“I spat on him,” I remind her.

“Exactly!”

“Third, you haven’t dated since you called off your engagement with?—”

I hold up my hand to stave her off. “Don’t say his name. You already tried to poison me. I don’t think I can take a dagger to the heart, too.”

For a moment, she’s silent, and I think I have her.

But she knows me too well. She shakes her head. “You’re not pining for Anderson. You’re just wallowing. What I can’t figure out is why.”

I ignore this and sigh. “I have to go to work. Don’t let that guy pay for his coffee, okay? Just let me know how much he spends, and I’ll transfer it to you.”

“Or you could just give it to me at the tree lighting,” she calls after me.

I pretend not to hear her as I hurry out of the cafe. Once I round the corner and am sure I’m out of eyesight from the cafe, I take the lid off my mug and pour the sugary concoction down the sewer grate. Just as the last drops of the vile liquid vanish into the opening, one of the county sheriff’s cruisers comes into view. I freeze, holding my breath. Is it illegal dumping to pour coffee—or whatever this stuff is—into the sewer system?

As I search my memory for an applicable law or regulation—and more importantly, a defense thereto—the black and white hits its lights and siren and speeds past me. I exhale and return the lid to my mug. Then I pick up my pace as I head for my car because now I need to make another stop to find a cup of actual coffee before I start my workday.