Page 31 of The Devil Wears Tartan

She steps closer so she’s right next to the plate. “You’ve been cutting them for like fifteen minutes, and I have to say, they look a little rough.”

She glances between me and the brownies with an exaggerated sympathetic pout.

I curl my fingers around the edge of the sink and squeeze hard.

“What are you getting at here, Moira?” I seethe. “I have this issue to go deal with, so if you want something, you better tell me now.”

I gesture down at my blouse, and I see her eyes drop to follow my hand. I glance down too and realize the fabric is now clinging to my stomach and the cups of my nude bra. I look back up just in time to see her swallow before she meets my eyes.

“I want...” she starts to say before her voice cracks and she has to clear her throat.

The sound makes my thighs twitch, and for a moment, I forget where we are. I forget who we are. All I can think about is how long it’s been since I’ve kissed anyone and how much I suddenly want the next person I kiss to be her.

“I want you to stop avoiding me,” she says, snapping me out of my trance.

I keep my grip on the counter as I lean back a little. I need space. She hasn’t moved, but somehow, she feels so much closer.

“You might not want to work together,” she continues, “but if either of us wants the scholarship, we need to do that interview, and we need it to be good. You can’t just not text me and then come in here and ignore me.”

“You didn’t text me either.” It’s a petty reply, but I still shrug as I say it.

She scoffs and shakes her head. “I wasn’t an asshole in the park. You could just have been, like, a normal person this morning instead of attacking these brownies and making everyone—”

She lifts her hand to smack it down on the counter and emphasize the word ‘brownies,’ but she doesn’t take her eyes off me and ends up overshooting her mark. Her palm lands flat in the middle of the brownie rectangle, squishing the batter beyond salvation and sending a few chunks flying from the force of the smack.

I freeze.

She freezes.

A few droning notes from the bagpipes outside fill the silence.

Moira lifts her hand, brownie bits stuck to her fingers and palm, and looks between me and the platter. I’m not sure what expression my face has shifted to form, but it’s enough to have even Moira looking nervous.

“You did not just wreck my brownies,” I hiss.

“Uh...” She plucks a chunk off the counter and rolls it between her fingers, avoiding my eyes. “I mean, on the bright side, it’s not like they were looking so great anyway.”

I let out a screech that carries the frustrations of the whole day with it: the message from Chris, the worry for him sitting heavy on my chest, the silent knowledge that Moira knows way more about me than I want her to, and the even more silent knowledge that I can’t stop looking at her body—the same way she definitely enjoyed looking at my chest under my soaked shirt.

And of course, there’s the frustration of the fucking brownies.

It all comes bellowing out of me as I watch her smugly play with the smashed batter, and before I realize what I’m doing, I have the sink hose in my hands again.

I pull the trigger and send a jet of water streaming out to splash her feet. I don’t care that the leaky nozzle squirts my shirt again. The fabric is already soaked, and the shocked look on Moira’s face is worth every drop.

She lifts both her hands in disbelief, her right palm still coated in brownie crumbs.

“Oh. My. God,” she says in a choked voice, her eyes wide. “You just sprayed me.”

I shrug. “Well you wrecked my—oh my god!”

I shriek again as she grabs a fistful of brownie fragments off the platter and chucks them at me. They splat against my wet shirt before dropping to the floor, leaving me dusted in brown crumbs.

“You asked for it,” Moira says with a head toss as I blink at her.

As soon as I get over the shock, I tighten my grip on the hose.

“No, no, no,” Moira starts chanting, her eyes wide. “Kenzie, no. We can—”

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