Page 55 of The Hanukkah Hoax
“As much as I’d love to continue making good choices with you, I have to get over to the boys’ warehouse. These treat boxes aren’t going to put themselves together, and Captain reorganized part of the facility’s kitchen space so I could use it for the next few days.”
“How long will you be there until?”
“Late. But if I can get over there now, it shouldn’t be too bad. The ribbon candy will be the trickiest to get right, but once it’s all pulled out and shaped, the hard part’s over, and things can move more quickly from there.”
“Text me once you’re home. And I promise not to be an arse about it this time.” He meant it as a joke, something to pull her smile out, but an unfamiliar expression flitted over her features, one he’d never seen in person but had dared himself to imagine last night.
Marisa pulled away from him. “No.”
Alec’s body revolted, responding to the betrayal on an elemental level. He nearly lunged for her, but Hugh chose that moment to get up and stretch, his elongated barreled body blocking Alec’s way.
A fine fucking time for that beast to be making bloody choices, too.
“No?” A wellspring of hurt began to scratch beneath the delicate hatch he’d only just begun to latch down.
Had the kiss backfired and instead of drawing her closer to him, it’d only succeeded in giving her more time to mull over Phoebe’s antics? Had he fucked this up just like everything else?
He tried to swallow against the torrent of emotions and fear, wracking his brain for how to make her believe that he was more than the venom Phoebe spewed about earlier. “Marisa, I?—”
“I don’t want you to text me, Alec,” she said firmly, freezing him to the spot. “Because I want you to be waiting for me in my apartment when I get home.”
Chapter 22
The fact that Marisa could even turn her doorknob was a miracle in and of itself. God, her fingers were numb, and her swelling knuckles were even worse, gnarled to the point where dunking them in ice wouldn’t help so much as likely freeze them in place.
If it were possible to have one’s ass kicked by a molten-sugar-coated candy thermometer and what surely amounted to miles of pulled ribbons, she’d succeeded. And then there was the monster gut punch of having to scrap her gingerbread concept.
Without it, all she had to offer Monica’s guests was what amounted to a smattering of hard candy found in every grandmother’s foyer candy dish at Christmastime. True, they’d be the best hard candies anyone ever put in their mouths, the kind people would cheerfully snap a tooth on and say worth it, but regardless, it had been hours, and she still hadn’t come up with a gingerbread replacement, let alone a showstopping one.
For some reason, defeat tasted even more bitter when coated in sugar.
After toeing off her shoes and dropping her bag and keys somewhere in the vicinity of her kitchen table, she was met with a soft glow coming from her living room.
Alec.
He was there, lying on her couch, waiting for her, just as he said he would be. And he looked appropriately rumpled.
Once he caught sight of her, he smiled, and memories of her earlier gingerbread trauma faded. God, he looked good on her couch. More than good. Extra good.
And Marisa stared down at herself and winced. She looked like she’d been pulled through a sugar paste extruder.
Alec kicked off his sock-clad feet from her couch cushions, paused whatever he had been watching on her TV, and rose to greet her, not even bothering to smooth down his shirt or pull the hem free from where it had gotten snagged on a belt loop. The overhead lights were off and the curtains closed. The only lights left on to offer any sort of illumination were the dimmed ones from the kitchen and—she gasped—the glowing Hanukkah candles in her shabby menorah, which must have just been lit, judging by how little they had burned down.
“Why are my . . .?” She was about to ask why he’d bothered lighting them at all, let alone close to eleven thirty at night, but her words were swallowed up by the Korean couple frozen with lips centimeters from each other on the screen. “Wait. Were you watching my K-drama?”
Alec’s cheeks reddened, and Marisa got the distinct impression that, had he been wearing a hat, he would have yanked it off his head and mangled the brim nervously in his hands. “It was on your watchlist, and it looked interesting.” Then he cleared his throat. “Um, so, how’d everything go?”
Oh, she’d have to unpack that reaction later. Preferably with Eden present and a few bottles of soju under their belts.
“Good. I made decent headway on all the sugar work. The ribbon candy is all shaped and cut. I just did two flavors. The first is a blackberry cream, and then, to keep it easy, I just repurposed my homemade Red Hots syrup into the second batch but toned down the heat slightly. Eden’s stopping by tomorrow to help me bag those up while I work on the mini chocolate peppermint candy canes.”
“I can help too if you need it.”
Marisa nodded distractedly, her thoughts roadblocked by the lit candles and the glow they cast across Alec’s stubbled face. “That would be great.” And then she asked, “Uh, why did you light the candles?”
Alec shrugged and walked over to the mantle, where a second box of candles sat next to her sad seen-better-days box that still held at least half the candles from last year that she’d meant to light and hadn’t. “It’s Hanukkah. Still the fifth night, right?”
“Yeees,” she said skeptically. “But it’s well past sundown.”
