Page 25 of My Irresistible Enemy

Nora swung by a few minutes later, along with Em and his camera, and asked me to describe what I was making for the viewers. I was at the sugar-work stage, creating a delicate dome of pink and green to enclose the cake like a birdcage. She gave me a sympathetic smile before moving up to Aiden’s workstation to ask him the same question.

“Well, it was supposed to be a three-tiered cake, obviously. But this bottom tier didn’t quite turn out the way I’d hoped. It’s curved the wrong way.” Aiden grinned. “Still, it’s got a nice jiggle. And it would be perfect for filling with cream. Bottoms love that.”

Nora snorted, and the camera shook on Em’s shoulders.

There were only five minutes to go, and I needed to transfer my birdcage over to my cake board before adding the finishing touches. It was finicky work, so even when Aiden opened his oven and began having a meltdown about his eggless final cake, I was determined to ignore him.

He rushed past me to the back of the tent, where the extra ingredients were kept. I didn’t bother to look at what he was doing. I didn’tcarewhat he was doing. I had my own cake to worry about.

I should have paid more attention.

Maybe it was karma. Maybe it was just bad luck. Whatever you wanted to call it, it was a disaster.

I placed my sugar birdcage over my cake and exhaled. I picked the whole board up and walked it slowly to the edge of my workstation. I set it back on the counter delicately, then frowned, wondering if the cage was a little off-center

I’d just leaned in, my hands extending to tweak it, when something crashed into me from behind. I fell forward, then to the side, and then to the floor. And I brought my whole cake down with me.

It took me a second to realize what had happened. All I could see at first was an explosion of colors, an abstract kaleidoscope of shapes. And stars, because the wind had been knocked out of me.

Slowly, the colors and shapes resolved into smears of frosting and globs of cake, broken up in front of me like wreckage from a bomb. Little bits of sugar sculpture studded the scene like shrapnel.

And behind me, Aiden whispered, “Oh my God, I amsosorry.”

5

Aiden

Nolan glared up at me from the ground, and I swallowed.

“I am so fucking sorry,” I told him. “Really. It was a total accident, I didn’t even realize you were—”

“Just—don’t.” Nolan pushed onto his hands and knees, then bent over to inspect his cake, which looked sort of like if the Leaning Tower of Pisa had finally collapsed, its tiers sliding across the floor in a flood of frosting and sugar bits.

I’d completely ruined it.

“But I—”

“Don’t,” Nolan snapped. The anger in his voice was enough to make me step back.

I wasn’t afraid of Nolan doing something to me physically—he put way too much of a premium on being prim and proper, from what I could tell, and we were on camera anyway. But still, it seemed prudent to put some space between us.

I’d thought I’d made him mad before, but I’d had no idea. That was a candle. The ire rolling off him now was a bonfire.

“I’m just trying to apologize,” I said, words spilling out of my mouth. “To explain. I was just in the back, trying to see if there was anything I could use to salvage my cake—if it’s any consolation, mine looks even worse than yours and it didn’t even fall on the floor—and I just didn’t see you when I was walking past and I—”

“I saidstop it,” Nolan hissed. “Goddammit, you can’t even do that right, can you?”

“I didn’t mean to…” I trailed off. It was hard to talk with Nolan’s eyes pinning me down. I swallowed again.

He looked back at the remains of his cake. He’d really done a number on it when he fell. Or, well, I had. Because it was definitely my fault. There was no way around that.

“Well, you got what you wanted.” His voice was bitter.

“What?” The question was out of my mouth before I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be talking.

“You found a way to make sure I ended up in the bottom three again. Maybe I should say congratulations. You managed to exceed my already extremely low expectations. Kind of impressive.”

“But it wasn’t on purpose!”

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