Beauty In Her Madness (Winterland Tale #3) - Stacey Marie Brown Page 0,7
door. I unlocked it, wanting to rush to get to safety. I ran inside, jogging up the four flights, not stopping until I burst through our apartment door, my breathing heavy. I bolted every lock before falling against it.
“Hey, babe,” Scott called from the sofa without even looking up, his fingers moving knobs as zombies died on the screen. “You’re home early.”
The only expensive thing we had in the place was the flat-screen TV and the latest PlayStation. Everything else had been given to us or bought used. The dated apartment still had the original beige rug throughout the small one-bedroom, which was stained and faded. Laminate floors in the kitchen and bathroom were peeling and cracked. The cupboards were made of cheap pine wood, all the old appliances were white, and the faucets took centuries to get hot water. It was the type of place no matter how much you cleaned, it still looked and felt dirty. But it was home.
“Yeah.” I nodded, pushing off the door. I kicked off my shoes, cringing at my torn bloody tights, trying to keep my voice normal. “It got slow.”
“Oh, cool.” His eyes on the screen, sounds of explosions and death blared from the TV. “There’s some leftover Chinese in the fridge, and your sister sent us another package… Oh, come on! I totally killed you. That’s bullshit,” he yelled at the game.
Peeling off my coat, I strolled to the box on top of the tiny dining table. Using a chair as my coat rack, I tossed down my stuff. Alice sent us a box weekly filled with treats from her new thriving café. No one, including me, knew who she hired to bake these delicious treats. Newspapers and magazines were hounding for an exclusive interview with him. All I knew about the baker…it was a him. Whenever Scott or I would ask, she would laugh, a naughty glint in her eyes. “He’s someone you have to see to believe. Plus, he doesn’t want anyone knowing who he is. Just wants to be left alone in his kitchen and bake.”
It made no sense to me. Didn’t most chefs live to be renowned and to be claimed the best in the world? In New York, this chef had to be expensive to hire. Alice and Matt were doing well, but not that level of well. I didn’t even understand how they could get a space in Greenwich for both their hat shop and the bakery. The rent alone had to be astronomical.
But my sister seemed to keep a lot to herself lately. Mysterious and cryptic. We had yet to meet Matt’s family or any of their friends in the city.
“Scott…” I growled, lifting off the top, noticing the box was almost empty. “You ate them all?”
“No, I left you one of the cinnamon-roasted chestnut cookies and a lemon poppyseed cupcake with the vanilla-honey butter drizzle.” His attention was still focused on the game.
I knew Alice filled the box with more than a dozen items to keep us going until the next shipment. Scott didn’t have an off button when it came to the delicacies here. He would eat the entire week’s worth, plus mine, in one sitting. And it was starting to show. He was young and ran with me, but his love of the baked goods was turning his average build into a dad bod.
Annoyed, I flipped the top back down with a huff, Alice’s logo scrolling across the light blue box. I usually didn’t pay much attention to artsy stuff. That was her domain. I could appreciate art, but my brain had no understanding of how she could come up with her designs. Her hat shop was similar to walking into a crazy fantasy world.
My finger traced over the design, something about it tugging at me this time. Alice and the Hatter poured out of a teapot into an upturned top hat with a red scarf. Even on a box, the scarf appeared like it was blowing in the wind. My gaze drifted to the scarf. Subtle drawings of a penguin, a boy and girl elf, a reindeer, white rabbit, and other Christmas icons were hidden throughout the scarf. Alice loved the holidays as I had, but she had taken her love to another level. My analytical side thought she might be diving into it to forget the awful time two years ago, hiding behind the innocence and joy of Christmas, while I turned against it.