Catch Me If You Can

by Donna Kauffman

  He’d grab a shower and then find out where that cafe was that Helen had spoken about. While he was at it, he supposed he’d have to find out how he was going to go about getting his car out of that snowbank. Worst case was he’d buy a few shovels, and pay someone to drive him back and help him dig out. Maybe a few hours of hard physical labor would get his mind off of how he’d have preferred to spend his morning.

  He pointedly didn’t look at the bed, or the wall where he’d taken her so fiercely mere hours ago. Instead he pulled on his pants and scooped up the rest of his clothes and shoes before heading resolutely down the hall to the mercifully empty bathroom. It wasn’t until he was standing under a mostly hot spray of water that he thought to wonder what she’d done about her truck. His heart gave a little start when he realized she could still be up there, digging out herself. If he hurried, he immediately thought, already rinsing himself off, then abruptly stopping. “Don’t be an idiot,” he counseled himself. “She left you with no note, no nothing.” Her fantasy is complete. Let her have it and be thankful she chose you to share it with. “Yeah,” he groused as he pulled a fresh towel out of the cabinet and scrubbed himself dry. “Be thankful.” And he was. “Probably better you’ll never see her again.”

  Believing that was going to take him a bit longer.

  He pulled on his clothes, caught off guard by the lingering scent of her on his sweater as he pulled it over his head. “Great,” he thought morosely, even as he was secretly delighted that he got to keep a hint of her about for a little while longer. He hoped that didn’t make him too pathetic a figure. But what the hell did it matter if it did?

  When he descended the stairs to the lobby, only pausing slightly on the second-floor landing, then shaking his head and going the rest of the way down, he found a tall, slender man hunched over the desk tucked beneath the stairs. He hadn’t noticed it the night before, but it had been pretty dark. And he’d been a little distracted. “Morning,” he said, by way of introduction.

  “Afternoon, is more like,” the man responded, scribbling something down before finally glancing up.

  Tag hadn’t even bothered to look at the clock this morning. “Really? Well, I guess I’m still on Virginia time.” The older gentleman, who Tag could only presume was Mr. Helen, smiled easily. “Best to let your body adjust on its own,” he said, quite congenially. A case of opposites attracting, was all Tag could think, trying and failing to picture a romance between this amiable gent and the crotchety woman who welcomed them last night.

  He had a shock of white hair that sort of erupted all about his narrow head. But his face was a soft, smooth pink, belying his age. His eyes were a watery shade of blue, but sharp for all they were faded. “Checking out?”

  Tag smiled and pulled his wallet out. “Yes, I am.” He handed him the key. “Room four. How much do I owe you?”

  The man’s smile faded as he took the key and looked at the room number. “Thought ye was one of the skiers,” he grumbled. He glanced back up, studying Tag as if seeing him in a new way.

  Tag knew he wasn’t the most conventional-looking man, but the innkeeper wasn’t looking at his choker, tanned skin, or unruly hair. He was studying his face, as if sizing him up. Clearly, Tag had been found wanting.

  Bemused, he allowed the man the less-than-polite silent inquiry.

  “Ye owe nothing,” the man said abruptly, before looking back down to what Tag now saw was a crossword puzzle.

  “I beg your pardon?” Tag asked him, surprised.

  He flicked him a glance, then put the tip of his pencil to his tongue before filling in another row of letters. “Bill’s been paid. Early this morning. By the young lass.”

  Tag could have simply nodded, thanked the man and walked out. But it was obvious the innkeeper was upset about something. “Is there a problem?”

  “No. What people do is their own business.”

  Tag’s mouth quirked. Clearly the old man believed otherwise. “Very true. And we both very much appreciated your hospitality.”

  Still working on his puzzle, he said, “We Scots are a hospitable lot.” He glanced up, caught his gaze from the corner of his eye. “But then I gather you’ve already discovered that.”

  Tag had wondered if one of the other boarders, the man on the second floor perhaps, had complained about them. But now he realized it was something else entirely. They’d let Angus believe they were a couple, married even, and apparently Angus had said as much to Helen when he’d found them a room. So when his “wife” had checked out without him this morning, and paid the tab, it had apparently raised a few eyebrows. And lowered their opinion of him. Fair enough, he supposed.

  So, how to explain to the old man that no one had been taken advantage of? Tag knew she didn’t live in Calyth from what she’d said about passing through the town, but she could live nearby. He had no idea if she knew people in this area or not, much less cared what they thought of her, but he didn’t want to unintentionally leave her reputation in tatters if he could help it. He understood the mentality of small villages. No matter the progress of man, he knew at their core, the societal dynamics hadn’t changed much in the last millennium.

  Still, it surprised him that two adults, obviously well past the age of consent, who’d agreed to spend time together behind closed doors, could raise the eyebrows of anyone in this day and age. Not without due cause anyway. He frowned. “Did she say anything, or leave any message?”

  Now the innkeeper abandoned any premise of working on his puzzle and straightened, holding his gaze directly. “She was pleasant enough. Charming lass, actually.” He slid his glasses off and leaned against the desk. “I may need these to see beyond the end of my own nose,” he said, waggling the eyeglasses, “but no matter her smiles, any fool could see she’d been crying.”

  Tag took that news like someone had poked him in the heart with a sharp stick. “Crying? Are you sure?”

  The old man studied him for a moment, then relented a bit, apparently believing Tag’s concern was sincere. “She wasn’t sniffling or the like. But… well, a man doesn’t raise five daughters without knowing when a woman’s been shedding a few tears.”

  Shit. He’d only just made peace with losing her by telling himself he’d at least given her what she wanted, her anonymous fantasy fling. But now? Now he didn’t know what to think. “Did she say where she was headed?” he asked, before he could question the wisdom of the decision. “Our cars were stuck up on the mountain and—”

  “She did say something about that. I directed her to Robey, down the end of the lane. I imagine they’ve long since dug the car out. It’s been hours ago now.”

  Tag’s spirits flagged again, but he smiled and stuck his hand out. “Thank you,” he said, sincerely. “I appreciate your concern for her. And I’m sure she’d appreciate that you were looking out after her.”

  After a brief shake, the innkeeper slid his glasses back on, picked up his pencil and went back to his puzzle. “If you’re interested in doing the same,” he said, as Tag turned away, “I imagine Robey is back in his shop by now. Pearson’s is the name of the place.”

  Tag flashed him a smile. “I was already on the way. But thanks for the additional information.”

  The older man’s lips were still pursed, but his eyes were a bit more friendly now. “None of my business of course. But glad I could help.”

  Tag tipped an imaginary hat and let himself out the door, resolute now in this impulsive decision to track her down. He wanted to embrace the concept of playing more anyway, right? Well, why not start with a rousing game of Catch Me If You Can?

  He didn’t stop to ask himself if she wanted to be caught. Or what he’d do, or say, if he did catch up to her. But he couldn’t shake the image of her leaving his bed with tear-stained cheeks. He had to at least make certain she was okay.

  The snow had been cleared from the street, but the cobbled sidewalks had more snow than bare patches. It hadn’t stormed as heavy here as it had further up t
he mountain. And with the wind whipping, it was likely both their vehicles had been completely buried.

  Depending on what equipment this Robey had at his disposal, it wasn’t entirely out of the question that they could still be at it. Regardless, the mechanic might know something more about her.

  Her name would be a good starting-off point.

  “And isn’t that going to be an interesting conversation,” he muttered.

  Chapter 10

  She had to stop thinking about him. At least until she could do so and not have her eyes well with tears at the thought of never ever seeing him again. Navigating the winding road down into the valley was difficult enough. The constant winds had drifted the snow across the peaks, making the remainder of her trip home a slow, tedious one. Giving her plenty of time to think. To remember.

  Of course, it had only been seven hours or so since she’d crawled from their bed, from the toasty warm shelter of his deliciously perfect body. Seven hours since she’d watched him sleep, memorizing every last detail of him. The way his eyelashes fanned out darkly against his sun-burnished skin, the strong line of his jaw, the firm, deliberate curve to his lips, even in sleep. The way the muscles bunched in his arms, those wide palms, the long, clean line of his fingers. As if there was a chance she’d ever forget.

  Seven hours since she’d discovered the pale brown tribal tattoo marking his bicep, and warred with herself over whether to wake him, and find out where else on his body he might have been branded. Seven hours since she’d debated the wisdom of allowing herself the luxury of feeling those hands on her again, that mouth, one last time… or if, for once, she’d do the smart thing and simply steal away.

  If she had roused him, she knew she’d have told him anything he wanted to know about her. Would have begged him for every last detail of his life. Right before she pried his itinerary out of him, and worked out some way to spend more time with him. Any amount of time.

  Somehow she’d found the strength to steal away instead, leaving her fantasy night intact. Any other path would have been beyond foolhardy. As if a wild night spent with a stranger hadn’t been foolhardy enough. Besides, a few more days would not have been enough to work him through her system and back out again. She’d have only have gotten more attached, making their inevitable parting that much more difficult. And her heart had taken enough of a beating of late, hadn’t it?

  Okay, so maybe it had been more about pride and ego with Jory, rather than her heart. But forming an attachment to anyone new right now was probably not wise. She had a mountain of problems facing her at Ballantrae. Namely how she was going to keep it in Sinclair hands. She sighed as she drove along the low, crumbling walls that marked the property boundaries, not for the first time feeling as if every stone that had fallen from the stacked walls lay heavily on her shoulders, each one another mark of her failure to her ancestors, to her heritage.

  She fought against giving in to the useless resentment of her fated position as the sole remaining Sinclair, burdening her with a responsibility more suited to a team of engineers and a raft of well-fed investors, than a thirty-year-old writer with no other prospects and nothing more to lean on than her rapidly dwindling resources.

  Then she rounded that last mountain curve, where a clearing in the pine provided a stunning drop-away view of the valley below. Her valley. And she paused, as she always did, unable not to. No matter the season, whether it be the bleak and barren brown of winter, or the dazzling green and purple heather carpet of spring, the land that sprawled out before her was breath takingly magnificent. And knowing that more often than not over the past seven hundred years, it had been a Sinclair standing on this very spot, looking out over that very dramatic landscape, intimately aware of how it had survived a long and oftentimes brutal history, yet still belonged to him… or her…

  Her hands tightened on the steering wheel even as her heart tightened inside her chest. As it always did, with pride, with fear… and with determination.

  Though it was true she’d oftentimes wished her parents had borne a son or six before bearing her, their only child and heir, she understood that the obligation she felt to Ballantrae went far deeper than a heritage handed down by the whims of birth order or chain of law. The responsibility was often daunting to the point of being crushing, and yes, on occasion she railed and ranted against the burden put upon her by the untimely deaths of both her parents just past her sixth birthday, and again, almost two decades later, when her adored Uncle Niall had passed.

  But she always knew, deep down, that her heart would be here even if she had been able to stay in Inverness after graduating, pursue a career away from the castle, knowing a throng of family was still there to take up the financial and emotional slack. She loved Ballantrae with every fiber of her being. This land, the people who made their living from it, the castle, the crofts, and every last sheep that grazed here, were, together, the soul of who she was. Ballantrae wasn’t just about her bloodlines, it was the very beat of her heart. And because it was, she’d never give up, never give in. And most definitely never walk away.

  She drove on, her purpose renewed, and her faith, though still shaky in herself, was resolved in its purpose. She was going to have to write to Taggart’s children in the States. It was the only angle left for her to pursue. As Mr. Wentworth had so gently pointed out, selling off a parcel, even a large one, of the property would only provide a temporary stopgap to the steady drain on the Ballantrae accounts. And that was if he could find a buyer, which he hadn’t seemed too enthusiastic about.

  As it was, she was barely keeping the castle from crumbling to the ground, much less continuing the crucial restoration work on it, or even general property repair. She did fairly well with her writing, as far as that went, but the lion’s share of the benefit there was the tax-free status it afforded her. Which was huge, but didn’t reduce the ongoing drain that simply maintaining the building put on her reserves.

  If she could only manage to lease out more land to crofters, earning back a percentage of what they reaped, as her forebears had done for centuries. But crofting wasn’t the ongoing concern it had once been in her valley. Her tenants’ offspring more often than not headed to university in Inverness or Aberdeen, never to return. Or, if they did, it was with degree clutched in hand, ready to put a shingle out in the village, starting up their own business.

  And then there was the village, which was suffering from the same exodus of its young as the farming community. Without the farmers coming into town, the need to provide services for them dried up. She knew the villagers were a resourceful lot, and that it had long since ceased to be the Sinclairs’ responsibility to see to their welfare. But she felt a strong sense of it nonetheless. When the crofts were leased to capacity and the renovations and work on the castle continually ongoing, the village benefited exponentially from their labors.

  And when she failed to maintain those things, she knew they suffered exponentially as well. How could she not feel responsible?

  So, as her ancestors had done, in varying fashion and under varying description, since shortly after the turn of the fourteenth century, she’d team up with the laird of Clan Morganach, sept to the mighty Clan MacKay, so that they might join forces and once again prevail, keeping Ballantrae safely in their clan’s possession, as it had been, in one or the other’s, for seven hundred years.

  The trick would be finding out just how receptive the new Morgan clan chief was going to be to her proposition. Beginning with, she supposed, finding out if he was even aware of his clan status or his father’s pledged support of her own.

  She drove through the crumbling pillars that marked the gated entrance to what had been, centuries before, a proud fortress. Ballantrae had long enjoyed the protection of being bordered both north and south by the Cairngorm mountains, with Loch Ulish providing the eastern border and the river Tay to the west. The loch wasn’t enough to support any kind of ongoing fishing concern, but it had provided enough bounty to keep t
he bellies of many crofters’ families full when fields lay fallow after the spring floods, or disease struck down the flocks of sheep that produced Ballantrae’s main crop, wool.

  The vast, rock-strewn meadows extending to the west were dotted with sheep and crofts. The forest-lined road that wound to the north, leading over the mountains to Invernesshire, passed through the village of Ballantrae.

  Once exclusively the concern of the Sinclair chieftain, now a township in its own right.

  She often wondered how in the world her distant predecessors had not only managed to maintain the castle, grounds, and crofters, but run a village as well. It made her burden seem more reasonable by comparison. “Yeah,” she muttered as she pulled around the wide expanse of gray stone and mortar that made up the impressive edifice of the main house, skipping the entrance into the central courtyard and heading instead along the north wing to the small gravel lot behind her tower. “A bloody piece of cake.”

  Lost in her thoughts and trying to stay there to keep her mind from wandering back to last night and the man she’d left behind, it wasn’t until she’d climbed the winding stairs to her tower bedroom, that she remembered. Jory and Priss. In her bed.

  Despite the work she had in front of her, the fires that had to be set to ward off the winter chill, her article deadlines, the mountain of paperwork that began with prioritizing what repair work could be put off and what, had to be done before spring, and ended with her formulating one very important letter to the States, she tossed her purse and coat onto the fireside chair and turned to the bed that dominated the circular room. Her bed, the centerpiece of her haven, the place she’d created as her hideaway from the responsibilities that lay literally below her.

  “First things first,” she stated, and with one clean yank, she tore comforter, linens and pillows clear off the bed and onto the layered rug floor.