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“I‘m not sure what I did wrong, but…” Moira said no more. Instead, she raised her hand and motioned to the simmering mess that she’d made of her spellwork.

“Oh no, no, no, no, no, and hell’s fire, no!” I thought I would make myself perfectly clear. I knew her game, and she wasn’t getting away with it. I’d followed Gran’s rather detailed instructions and my love pot was bubbling away with a nice scent of roses and cinnamon. “You messed that up on purpose.”

“Why would I do that?” Moira looked the picture of innocence.

Pah and double Pah!

“So that Gran won’t work with you again,” I offered my sweetest, yet most accusing sing-song tone.

Gran eyed the mess from a distance, and I didn’t blame her. Heaven knows what Broom Hilder had put in that pot. She snorted her contempt for the potion.

“It looks like something from that new restaurant shop that just opened up in Broadford…” Gran said.

“The one near the art gallery?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s Indian food, Gran, very nice…”

“But it looks like something that came out of the back end of a coo.” Gran snorted her contempt for that too. She had a habit of that.

“And thus ends my craving for a Chicken Tikka Masala,” Moira said with a look of repulsion on her face that matched how I felt for her spellwork.

My sister was devious in ways that you couldn’t imagine. This was just the tip of a very large iceberg.

  “She did that on purpose, Gran,” I protested. I wasn’t letting the conversation get derailed by talk about curry and cows.

“Was I born yesterday? Do you think I can’t tell the difference between what comes out of the back end of a Coo and Moira’s attempt to sabotage her spell?”

I loved Gran at times like these. She might have been directing her hyperbole at me, but it was a warning shot at my sneaky little sister.

“I think I can hear someone calling,” Moira lied.

“Oh, well, Maggie had better go see to it then as you have more practicing to do,” Gran berated her, and better still, she had a twinkle in her eye for me when she did it.

Yea! I was home and dry and could escape her evil clutches. I rushed from the room as though the hounds of hell were chasing hard at my heels … and right into the broad chest of a man-wall that was standing in my way when I rounded the corner towards the living room.

“Who in blazes erected a stupid wall there?” I grumbled as I was repelled back off his chest, and I would have landed on my pride had his hands not latched on around my upper arms, and he yanked me back against that broad chest.

I was playing yo-yo with an idiot of epic proportions, but he did smell good. Not like some of the locals that always seemed to smell like lavender drawer sheets and an overpowering body spray that they used to mask the not-so-sweet scent of their sheep.

Honestly, sometimes I had to wonder if our community was still stuck back in the day when the animals lived inside the house during the harsh weather.

“Just the lass I was looking for,” he said, and I cringed inwardly as I shook off his hands like a wet dog shaking off the rain.

“Why? Did you nae get a good enough inspection of my goodies the last time I ran into you?” I sounded shrew-like, and that was alright with me.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jack grumbled.

His eyebrows tried to meet over his nose like a couple of furry caterpillars trying to headbutt each other in a Glaswegian kiss, and he grumbled something deep within his chest that I couldn’t understand – man-speak – just before my mother made an appearance at the doorway to the kitchen.

“Detective, isn’t it?” she asked. She already knew – deviousness ran in our very blood.

I took the opportunity to grumble back. Perfect when he couldn’t interrogate me as to what I’d said, but he got the gist of it alright. I could tell by the way that his eyebrows did the dance of two caterpillars mating.

“Aye, that’s right. Detective Jack Mackie,” he offered back.

I know it was childish, but I repeated it on a hiss of a whisper, sneering at him, as his eyes flicked down to look at me along that perfect nose, and he managed to look me in the eye and not at my chest that time.

“Can I get you something? Tea, coffee, a wee nip? It’s cold tonight,” Mother asked, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at her while the girlies-stalker wasn’t looking at me.

“That’s kind of you to ask, but no, thanks.”

Hmm, Detective boobie-watcher was being professional and nice to my mother. He must have wanted something.

I craned my head on my neck to see where his eyes were aimed at my mother – her chest was practically heaving and spilling out of her shirt. She’d never dressed conservatively in her life.

Jack shot me a look, and I drew up sharply, snapping to attention and looking him right in the eyes, and I was determined to hold his questioning gaze with a hard glare. He frowned, little furrows stretched out across his forehead, and I had the urge to zap him … and to run my fingertips over those lines to see just how they felt.

“What brings you out on a night like this?” My mother took his attention back to her, and I practically slouched into a coma position against the wall.

If my stupid heart wasn’t racing so much, then I might have even fallen asleep where I stood. It had been a long day, made longer by Gran’s insistence that we started training as matchmakers the moment that we’d come in from the pub.

She’d been waiting for us like a troll under a bridge. Moira certainly had a lot to answer for.

“I came to see Maggie for a quick…”

“Shag it!” Moira yelled from the open door to the basement where she was working with Gran, and I almost choked on my tongue as Jack stood open-mouthed with a nice bright red aura to his cheeks, not to mention all around his body.

“Well, far be it from me to get in the way of that then,” Mother said with a chuckle and a smirk.

She promptly turned on her heels and disappeared into the kitchen – devious, very devious – as Jack started to reach out a hand of explanation toward her. His mouth was still hanging open – it was kind of cute, and kind of funny, but, I still wanted to kill Moira for her inopportune outburst, not to mention stomp on his big feet.

“Would you close your mouth, someone else might want to catch a fly or two,” I said, turning and walking off into the living room on a snigger.

I heard his big feet thudding on the wooden floorboards behind me. He was following me like a stray puppy.

“I wanted to have a word with you about what happened earlier,” he rushed out, finding his deep manly tones once more.

“About your ogling my girlies?”

“About speaking out of turn.” We’d both spoken together.

“What?” he demanded, and I turned to find him looking more than shocked – more like … busted.

“My girlies,” I said, folding my arms and inadvertently pushing them up like they had scaffolding beneath them. His eyes flicked down, and he swallowed hard. “Aye, just like that, you numptie.”

Jack’s eyes snapped back to mine, and he swallowed again. “You sort of did just shove them right in my face, Maggie.” He gave a snort of a chuckle, and his nice eyes sparkled with laughter.

I hated that – that was irresistible, like chocolate cake.

“I did no such thing you, Muppet, and you’d do well to not smile at me with those eyes of yours, Detective,” I grumbled something else but kept it low in case Gran was about.

I didn’t need a stinging reminded of her magic against my backside to know that we didn’t swear inside the house. Outside was fine, for some strange reason, but inside – no.

“I have smiling eyes, do I now, Maggie?”

He looked smug, and sort of comfortable, almost like he belonged in my living room, in my house, or he thought he did. Well…

“That’s Miss McFae to you, Detective.”

I sounded just like Gran – heaven forbid. But it certainly pulled him up short. Jack snapped to attention, and he didn’t look quite so comfortable anymore.

“Miss McFae. Aye, you’re right,” he said with another frown, and I felt a pang of guilt shoot through me. “I came to ask you not to repeat what I said earlier about the case…”   

“Me? I’m not in the gossip mill around here. You should be saying that to my cousin, Isla.”

“Which one was she?”

“The one who practically screeched Eureka from the rooftops when you confirmed her suspicions of something dastardly going on with old Mr. Croon’s case.”

I watched his whole body snap to attention like someone had shoved a cattle prod up his behind. Tempting.

“I did no such thing, and I’ll thank you not to repeat that,” he looked at me with accusing eyes – like I was the idiot that had got caught up in my girlies and let the big fat cat out of the bag.

“Trust me, you just confirmed what the gossips have been saying, and by opening time at my bistro tomorrow, it’ll have done the rounds and will get back to me.”

“That’s the trouble with these small Isle’s,” he grumbled.

“Small, is it?” I tossed my hands on my hips and eyed him like a snake about to strike. “Outlander.”

“I…” Jack’s mouth opened and closed, but for someone who appeared to have so much to say – he said nothing.

“I think it’s time you took your leave. Go to bed, detective, and…”

“Shag it!” Moira yelled out once more, and I wanted to collapse in on myself, but I held it together somehow. I did groan, inwardly.

“I’ll see myself out,” Jack grumbled, looking like a naughty schoolboy who had been caught up to no good. Which he had, but was I going to rub salt into those wounds?

Every chance I got.

I waited for the front door to bang shut, and then I stomped towards the stairs. I had to pull up short because there was Moira – with a gleam in her eye and a grin on her lips … it took everything I had within me not to push her down the damn staircase into our basement.

To make matters worse; she lowered her chin and growled like a snappy little Highland Terrier. “Woof, Deputy Dog.” She chuckled – I zapped – she squealed, and I felt much better.