Cocoa and Clauses (Cozy Christmas Collective)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Sylvie

Ihad always prided myself on three things: my ability to argue my way out of any legal predicament, my collection of power suits that could intimidate opposing counsel at fifty paces, and my talent for avoiding Vermont during the holidays.

Yet here I was, white-knuckling my BMW through a snowstorm that looked like Mother Nature had gotten into the powdered sugar, heading straight into the heart of everything I’d spent the last decade trying to avoid.

“This is what I get for having a conscience. I thought I paid to get rid of that in law school,” I muttered, squinting through the windshield as fat snowflakes splattered against the glass.

My wipers squeaked in protest—a sound that perfectly matched my mood.

I should be in my Manhattan apartment right now, drinking overpriced wine and pretending Christmas didn’t exist. Instead, I was driving through what looked like a Hallmark movie’s fever dream because my mother had guilted me with the classic “It might be Grandma Rose’s last Christmas” line.

Spoiler alert: Grandma Rose had been having “last Christmases” for the past five years and was currently more spry than most people half her age.

She still kicked my ass at Pilates every time I visited.

The woman probably had a pact with the devil—though knowing Rose Hartwell, Esquire, she’d negotiated better terms than he had.

The GPS cheerfully announced I had another hour to go, which meant I’d arrive in Pinewood Falls just in time for the Christmas market to be closed. Perfect. I’d driven four hours through increasingly hostile weather to miss the one thing that might have made this trip bearable—mulled wine.

I rounded a curve where the pine trees pressed close to the road, their branches heavy with snow. My headlights cut through the swirling white when my phone, attached to the dashboard, lit up. Grandma Rose. I pressed the speaker button with a slight grimace.

“Sylvie.” Her voice was crisp and authoritative, even through the car speakers. “I assume you’re actually coming this year and not making excuses at the last minute.”

“I’m on my way up to Vermont right now, Grandma,” I said, trying to keep my eyes on the road while navigating both the snow and Rose Hartwell’s particular brand of conversation.

“Good. Your mother was starting to get hysterical about it. Though I told her you’d show up eventually—you never could resist the guilt trip, even as a child.”

Classic Grandma Rose. Straight to the point, with a side of gentle emotional manipulation.

“You still working at that ramshackle firm?” she asked.

“It’s not ramshackle. It’s the number one employment firm in Manhattan, and I’m about to make partner.”

She huffed. “I told you if you were going to waste your talents in employment law, at least work for one of those Fortune 500 companies. Then you could really be building a future for yourself.”

“Grandma, I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but I would rather snort glass than work for those assholes.”

She sighed again. “Soft, just like your mother.”

At thirty-two years old, I no longer felt any sting when she said that.

I’d blocked it out a long time ago—at least for myself.

I still winced for my mother. She was nothing like Grandma Rose.

Much more like my dearly departed grandpa, soft and artistic.

How he’d ever ended up with my ice-queen of a grandmother, I’d never understand.

I guess that’s why he was husband number two of three.

“Well, hopefully with your low-stress nonprofit job, you’re at least out there finding a man.”

Low stress, indeed—like my phone wasn’t already one hundred emails deep in the few hours I’d been driving. “I’ve told you, it’s not nonprofit—”

She cut me off. “What happened to that finance boy you were seeing?”

“Kurt?” Had I told her about him?

“No, Steven was his name.” She laughed. “Maybe you are more like me than I thought. Dating multiple men, Sylvie?”

“Grandma!” Gods, I did not want to think about that. Even if it was true. But dating was a strong term. Fuck buddies was more accurate.

“Don’t ‘Grandma’ me. You’re thirty-two, Sylvie. Even I managed to get married and have a child, despite being a workaholic.”

“If I recall correctly, you’d had three husbands by my age,” I retorted, the snark she always managed to pull out me surfacing far earlier in this conversation than I wanted. “And my personal life is fine.”

“Not my fault one man wasn’t enough to satisfy me.”

“Grandma!” Oh my god, I really did not need to think about that.

She ignored my protest. “Fine isn’t an answer. Fine is what you say when there’s nothing to report.” I could practically hear her raising that perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “When was the last time you went on a date that wasn’t a networking dinner disguised as romance?”

“I don’t have time for—”

“Bullshit. You don’t make time. There’s a difference.” Her voice took on the tone she’d used when I was twelve and trying to get out of piano lessons. “Your mother’s been making me watch those ridiculous Hallmark movies with her, and you know what? Maybe they’re onto something.”

“Oh god, not you too.”

“I’m serious! Some successful city woman goes back to her small hometown for the holidays, meets a burly Christmas tree farmer or whatever, and suddenly remembers there’s more to life than spreadsheets and conference calls.

” I could hear the slight smile in her voice.

“Though knowing you, you’d probably try to negotiate his tree prices and end up reorganizing his entire business model. ”

“Grandma, the chances of me meeting someone in Pinewood Falls are basically zero. Everyone my age is married with kids, and the rest are either eighteen or eighty.”

“You never know, dear. Sometimes the universe has a sense of humor about these things.” There was something almost nostalgic in her voice now.

“Besides, a little romance might be good for you. And if some flannel-wearing local does manage to sweep you off your feet, just…try not to over-analyze it to death.”

“Who are you, and what have you done to my grandma? I seriously doubt—”

I was about to tell her exactly how unlikely a Christmas romance was when I rounded a bend in the road and saw something large and pale directly in my path.

“Shit!” I yanked the wheel hard to the right, my car sliding sideways on the slick asphalt.

For a heart-stopping moment, I was certain I was about to become intimately acquainted with the nearest pine tree.

The BMW fishtailed, tires spinning uselessly, before finally coming to rest in a snowbank on the side of the road.

“What happened?” Grandma’s voice was frantic in a way I rarely heard.

I sat there for a moment, gripping the steering wheel and breathing hard. My heart was doing its best impression of a jackhammer. I looked around, expecting to see deer carnage on my windshield—or worse—but there was nothing except snow and the sound of my engine idling.

“Please tell me I didn’t just commit vehicular deerslaughter,” I said. The thought of explaining to a Vermont state trooper why I’d taken out Bambi’s cousin was almost worse than the prospect of family dinner.

“That’s not funny.” Ah, the Rose I knew was back.

I put the car in park and grabbed my phone, using its flashlight to peer out the passenger window. There, maybe twenty feet away in the beam of my headlights, was the largest deer I’d ever seen. And it was completely, impossibly white.

“I’ll see you soon, Grandma.” I hung up before she could respond.

I shoved open the car door, pushing snow out of the way. The cold evening air hit me like a slap. I shivered and slowly approached the creature, barely keeping myself upright in my stilettos on the icy road. Note to self: next time, wear flats for mid-snowstorm animal husbandry.

The deer wasn’t moving, but I saw a small rise and fall in its chest. It was beautiful—pure white.

Not the kind of white you got from albinism, which I’d seen once at a petting zoo and found sickly and strange.

This was pristine, snow-bright white that seemed to glow in the darkness.

The deer was also massive—easily the size of a horse—with an impressive rack of antlers that caught the light, the frost on them glittering like crystal.

More importantly, he was lying on his side in the snow, clearly hurt.

“Oh, come on,” I groaned. “This is not happening.”

But it was happening, because apparently the universe had decided my day needed to get worse.

I scrambled back to my car, grabbed the emergency first aid-kit from the trunk—thank god for my paranoid tendencies—and trudged through the ankle-deep snow toward the injured animal.

My shoes were definitely ruined, and my toes were already turning to ice.

What are you doing? You’re a lawyer, not a doctor. Or a vet. But I couldn’t just leave him there.

The deer’s head lifted as I approached, and I found myself looking into the most unusual eyes I’d ever seen.

They were pale blue, almost silver, and held an intelligence that made me pause midstep.

Most deer looked at humans with blank, startled incomprehension.

This one studied me with what could only be described as wariness mixed with… resignation?

“Hey there, big guy,” I said softly, crouching a few feet away. “I’m not going to hurt you, okay? I just want to see how badly you’re injured.”

The deer didn’t bolt, which was strange enough.

Instead, he continued to watch me with those unsettling pale eyes.

Up close, I could see a long, partially healed scar running across his muzzle and what looked like older injuries along his flanks.

This was clearly an animal that had seen some rough times.

“Geez, what happened to you?” I murmured, noting fresh blood on his left hind leg. “You look like you’ve been through a blender. Multiple times.”

I unzipped the first-aid kit, moving slowly and talking in what I hoped was a soothing voice. “I’ve got antiseptic here and some bandages. I know it’s not exactly veterinary care, but it’s better than just leaving it, right?”

The deer’s ears flicked, and I could’ve sworn I saw something like curiosity cross his expression. Which was ridiculous, because deer didn’t have expressions. They had two settings: grazing and panic.

I settled down beside his rear leg, and the size of him suddenly sank in. He could kick me to smithereens if he really wanted to. I looked back at his pale eyes, which were watching me, unblinking. I slowly unscrewed the cap on the antiseptic and held it over his leg, ready to dump it and run.

He let out a pained whine but didn’t move. Maybe he was more injured than I thought. I kept my voice low and calm.

“You know,” I continued, carefully cleaning the wound on his leg, “with that white coat and those antlers, you look like you should be pulling Santa’s sleigh.

Are you Rudolph having an off night? Did you get into a fight with the other reindeer because they wouldn’t let you join in any reindeer games? ”

The deer’s entire body went rigid, and he lifted his head to stare at me with what could only be described as offended dignity. His nostrils flared as he snorted.

“Okay, okay, sorry,” I said, holding up my hands. “Didn’t mean to wound your pride.”

I finished bandaging his leg as best I could, noting that he held perfectly still through the entire process. Either he was in shock, or he was the most well-behaved wild animal in the history of the East Coast. The bandaged drooped, and there was no tape in the kit to secure it.

“Great planning, guys,” I muttered to no one in particular. The deer cocked his head, as if in question.

“Guess I’ll just have to MacGyver this.” I pulled loose the red ribbon I’d use to tie back my blonde hair.

“I put this in to be festive—guess it wasn’t a bad idea.

” If a deer could give me an unamused look, he was.

I ignored it and tied the ribbon around the bandage, holding it in place.

The pressure had slowed the bleeding, and I could be happy about that.

“There,” I said, sitting back on my heels. “That should hold until…well, until you can manage on your own.”

The deer struggled to his feet, favoring his uninjured leg but clearly mobile. He stood there for a moment, those strange pale eyes fixed on my face, and I had the weirdest feeling he was trying to memorize my features.

“Well,” I blurted, suddenly feeling awkward under that intense stare, “I guess this is where we part ways. Try to stay out of traffic, okay? And maybe avoid whatever gave you that scar—it looks like it had anger management issues.”

I started to turn back toward my car, then paused.

“Oh, and if you really are one of Santa’s reindeer, could you put in a good word for me?

I’ve been mostly nice this year. The mostly part involves some creative interpretations of billable hours, but I think that falls under professional necessity rather than actual naughtiness. ”

The deer made a sound that might’ve been a snort—or maybe deer laughter, if such a thing existed. Then he turned and bounded into the forest, moving with surprising grace despite his injury.

I watched him disappear into the trees, feeling oddly melancholy. There had been something almost human about the way he’d looked at me, something that made me think of old fairy tales where magical creatures rewarded kind humans.

“God, I really do need to get laid,” I said to myself, trudging back to my car. “Because that’s exactly what my life needs right now—magical thinking.”

I got back in the BMW, turned the heater up to max, and spent ten minutes coaxing it out of the snowbank, all while trying not to think about how those pale-blue eyes had seemed to see right through me.

By the time I got back on the road, the snow was falling harder, and I’d missed any chance of making it to the Christmas market before it closed.

Which meant I was going to face my family stone-cold sober.

“Definitely should’ve stayed in Manhattan,” I muttered—but for some reason, I kept glancing in my rearview mirror, half-expecting to see those silver eyes watching me from the darkness.