Catch Me If You Can

by Donna Kauffman

  “Life has a way of changing people,” was all she said. “Not necessarily for better or worse, just different. I don’t claim to know why he was who he was to you as a father. Or why he was so very different with me. I can’t apologize for him, but I won’t defend him to you, either. I will, however, always tell you the truth. Whatever you want to know—”

  “I didn’t come here to learn more about my father.”

  She took a step forward. “Then why did you come?”

  “Do you want to know the truth?” he asked softly, but with an intensity that had her pausing in her advance.

  “Always. Even when it hurts.”

  He lifted an eyebrow in question.

  She thought about Priss and Jory. “I’ll take hurt and aware over blissful ignorance any day.” Now that the tables were turning, she suddenly wished they weren’t delving into such emotion-filled territory. She wanted the Tag from yesterday. The guy who managed to be both geeky and incredibly primal at the same time. The guy who had her laughing one minute, and moaning the next. She wanted mindless, noncommittal, burning hot rebound sex. Which she could get in spades from the Tag of yesterday. The Tag of today came with too many complications.

  He opened the box and lifted out a carefully bound stack of letters. “This is why I’m here.”

  She carefully took the bundle, immediately recognizing her handwriting on the top envelope. Her first reaction was a palpable sadness over this physical reminder of the meaningful friendship she’d forged from what had begun as an emotionless business liaison. She’d had months to prepare for his passing, months more to adjust to his death… and it was still hard to imagine never finding a missive from him tucked in her mail. Her grip on them tightened as she looked up at Tag. “What do my letters have to do with your decision?”

  He lifted a hand toward her face, but let it drop away before he brushed her cheek. “I was only going to skim one or two. Just to try and figure out what his relationship was to this place, and to you. Mick had no idea why he’d become involved here, much less poured so much of his money into it. I just wanted to understand. Not because I cared what my father did or why, but because I had to make a decision on what to do with the place.

  “I pulled a letter out at random and found myself reading more than skimming. It wasn’t a business note from property manager to owner, it was a chatty letter, filled with anecdotal information about Ballantrae and the townspeople. So… I pulled out another one, then another.” His lips twisted a little. “I can only imagine you’re very successful at your chosen profession. You write with amazing clarity and perception. I was up half the night reading every damn one of your letters. I felt like I knew you, and yet I knew nothing about you.

  “I gleaned little bits and pieces, but you never talked about yourself really. Still, your character came through. Your observations about people, your insights, your opinions. I didn’t know if you were young or old, married, divorced, widowed. I thought before I’d read the first one that maybe this was some sort of long-distance romance, but though the tone of your letters made it clear you held my father in great esteem and affection, I knew this was no love affair. So… I didn’t know what to make of you. A total stranger, and one I wasn’t predisposed to like just based on your affection for my father alone. And yet… I couldn’t stop reading.

  “By the time the sun came up, the pile had dwindled down to the last one or two. And I found myself hating that. That I was going to lose that connection to you.” His smile was self-deprecating as he glanced away. “That probably sounds a bit unbalanced, but then that pretty much describes the last few months for me anyway.”

  She lifted her hand to his cheek, turned his gaze to hers. “It sounds… amazing really. I had… well, I mean, I do put words together for a living but you’re not there when someone reads them. And so you don’t know how they affect people.” She broke off, surprised to find herself fighting back a few tears. “I write for myself really. And… I guess I had no idea that anything I had to say could move someone like that. I—” Now it was her turn to break off, unsure of how to respond. “I don’t know what else to say.”

  He tipped her chin up to his when she looked down. “I didn’t either. I just knew that I couldn’t sign anything until I’d met you.”

  “Well,” she said, for once at a complete loss for words to explain the way he was making her feel, “You certainly did accomplish that.”

  His smile was slow… and deep. “You know, the Piets, an interesting bunch of Celts with blue tattoos and great carving skills, were a highly superstitious bunch,” he said, caressing her face now, then snaking his fingers around the back of her head, into her hair. He tugged her closer, shifting her so her mouth angled up toward his.

  “So I’ve heard,” she said breathlessly, her heart hitching just a wee bit, hearing him talk about her home, his heritage, with such warmth.

  “Well, early on in my studies, I learned quite a lot about karma and fate from studying what is known of their beliefs. I always marveled at what I considered their blind faith in something so intangible, something that was impossible to prove.”

  “Ever the scientist,” she murmured, sliding her hand up his arm, reveling in the taut feel of his muscles, the flex and play of his body. She’d never thought to have the pleasure again. And now, with everything they’d revealed, it was so much more personal, more meaningful, than she had ever expected.

  “Generally, yes,” he said. “Except now… well, now I find I have more ephemeral questions. Fewer concrete answers. And I don’t usually care for situations where there are no answers. ”

  “Join the club.”

  He smiled. “Something tells me you’re the type to be far more at ease with intangibles than I am.” He crowded his body closer to hers.

  She let him shuffle her back until her spine met up with the wall beside the base of the stairs. “Well, there is the ghost that haunts the south tower. Although I suppose there is a bit of concrete evidence there.”

  He merely raised his eyebrows as he took the letters from her and set them on the table.

  What was it about having his hands on her that affected her so? Her heart rate doubled and he made her knees go all shoogly.

  “Proof?” he prodded her, when she lost track of the conversation thread.

  “Oh. Aye. It’s kind of hard to ignore the presence of a spirit when every time I enter the tower chamber I find he’s tossed everything about.” She shuddered with pleasure as he tucked her hair behind her ears, then cupped her face in his palms. “And I know I’m the only one who’s been up there.”

  “He? You’ve seen him then?”

  She managed to shake her head, but that only served to cause friction between her skin and his. Friction that led to heat. And she was already half on fire as it was. “No. He’s choosy who he reveals himself to. It’s Sir John, though. He’s been like a member of the family for ages.”

  Tag’s lips quirked, but the intensity in his eyes doubled when she sighed as he wove his fingers through her hair. “You know, before we met, only one woman had ever fascinated me like this. So swiftly and so thoroughly, with seemingly no effort at all.” He brushed his thumbs across her lips. “I should have known from that first moment, standing in the middle of a snowstorm, that she was you,” he murmured.

  Then he took her with the complete confidence of a man who knew the woman he desired wanted to be taken, to be pulled into his arms, to have her mouth ravished by his, her body brought to a fever pitch by the feel of his hands roaming wherever they wanted. All of which was true. All of which he accomplished. Easily.

  She lost all track of any plans she’d made, abandoned any hope of exerting control over the swift expansion of the situation between them. And she didn’t hesitate in doing so, either. She’d ached for this since leaving his side. And she was still rational enough to know that it would only take a slight hesitation between them to allow the specter of his father, or the contracts, or the let
ters, the castle, any of it, to rise again between them.

  They would take care of all of that. In due time. But for the moment, she wanted what she wanted. And what she wanted was exactly what he was about to give her.

  Hallelujah.

  Chapter 15

  “Bed,” he murmured against her mouth, his heart pounding and his body already aching from her soft moans and even softer lips. Taking her in a car, or up against the wall, had their distinct, memorable qualities. But now he wanted her on something soft, a place where they could sprawl their bodies in a languid tangle, where he had all the time and space in the world to explore her. She was intoxicating to him, and he no longer cared at the moment why that was. Why fate, if indeed there was such a thing, had put her in his path, and made her so irresistible to him.

  Because, Christ, but he didn’t think he’d ever get enough of her.

  She flung a hand in the general direction of the stairs, right before she grabbed his hair and directed his mouth lower, to her chin, then her neck.

  He nipped along the tender skin exposed there, pulling at her shirt. He slid his hands slowly down her arms, then linked his fingers with hers, dragging them up the wall until they were over her head. Pressing her hands in a silent plea to leave them there, he slid down her body until he crouched in front of her bared midriff, his thighs spread wide and braced on either side of her. She bowed away from the wall, back arching when he dipped his tongue in her navel. He was torn between wanting to nudge the hem of her shirt higher, and higher still, pulling it up and off her extended arms, her bra to follow, allowing him access to the soft weight of her breasts, the delectable enticement of her hardened nipples…

  Or pulling her pants open, ripping the zipper down and burying his tongue deep inside her. She’d arch violently against him, this he knew. She’d be sweet, and hot, and oh-so-tight a man could die that very moment and feel cheated out of nothing.

  It was only his determination to be in a bed when he tasted her again, felt her squeeze tightly around any part of him, that he directed his attention upward. Pushing her shirt up as he went, he drew the tip of his tongue along the center line of her body. His knees remained spread wide as he balanced on the balls of his feet. Slowly he uncurled his own body, drawing his thighs along the outer contours of her legs, her hips as he straightened. The shirt slid up her arms and off as his hips cradled hers. She fit neatly into him, perfectly against him. Her body molded to his such that every hard inch of him was wedged snug between the apex of her thighs.

  He ached to free himself, to take her right here. Goddamn but he was like a starving mongrel. One whiff of her and he was salivating, intent on feasting until sated. It amazed him how hard he had to work for control. He’d had carnal knowledge of women from many different cultures, some of whom were intensely sexual and not afraid to indulge it. But while that had been exciting, heady even, it didn’t come close to the firestorm of emotions that she stirred up with merely a brush of a hand, or a hint of a smile.

  At no time in his life had he ever felt such twin needs fight within him for control. On the one hand, she called to some primal impulse inside him, driving him to take, dominate, and possess. And on the other, she made him want to give up control altogether, give in to the tender, more complicated emotions whipping through him, just to see where they’d take him. Take them.

  Every time he was near her, it was as if something in her called to him. As if his body, or some part of his soul, had known hers for centuries. Had lost her and only now found her again. Like he’d come home, and couldn’t make up for lost time fast enough. Which would explain this… this anxiety that flooded him. As if he had to get his fill while he could, for that time when he’d lose her again.

  Of course, the truth was, he would lose her at some point. Or leave her, anyway. But that was a conscious decision on his part, on both their parts. They both knew what this was… and what it wasn’t. Her life was here, his was half a world away. At no time would it even be a consideration that it could be otherwise. A fling, a hot affair, an ill-advised liaison. Call it any of those things and it would be at least partly the truth.

  But what it wasn’t was a start of something more. Much less the taking up of something that had started so long ago it was merely an ephemeral strand in his psyche or hers. He’d witnessed many cultural beliefs, studied many religions… and had never once considered himself a spiritual man. Logic, proof, rationale. Those were the tools he worked with, that was the way his mind worked.

  Which is why he was helpless to understand, much less interpret or analyze, the depth of the desperation he felt when he let himself think about the time he would no longer be able to reach for her.

  He was pulling her bra off, his face buried in the curve of her neck, as if he could inhale her essence into him, make it a permanent part of him, when she gripped his shoulders, then his head, and yanked it back. Her eyes were huge and dark. He recognized the need and desire, but surprisingly he also recognized the swamping confusion. It wasn’t possible that she was feeling the same disconcerting range of emotions that he was. That was too much to contemplate. At the moment there were more urgent concerns.

  Like just how many flights up he was going to carry her. “Hold on,” he told her, yanking her legs up around his hips.

  “I’m too heav—”

  He cut her off with a soul-deep kiss, gripping her to him with an arm banded around her back, and another fisted in her hair. He stumbled them halfway up the flight of stairs before coming up for air.

  Her ankles were locked around his back. Her arms locked around his neck. “Really, Tag, let me down, I can—”

  “Where?” he asked, nibbling on her lower lip as he stubbed and banged his way up the circular stairs, eventually emerging through a hole in the ceiling, leading to the next floor landing.

  He rolled her back against the wall for support. Her hair was a wild tangle, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were slightly unfocused and glittering with desire. He imagined his looked much the same. Perhaps a bit wilder. “I’m not letting you go until we fell onto a bed somewhere. And fair warning,” he said against the side of her neck, “I plan to be buried deep inside you about a minute later.”

  She moaned deep in her throat when he pushed his hips tight between hers. “Sounds like a plan.”

  “So… where?”

  She managed to motion with her head. “Right behind you.”

  Now he smiled, tugged the length of her hair. “I suppose I’m yet another marauding Morgan, storming Castle Sinclair after all,” he said, in fair imitation of her accent.

  Her eyes twinkled, dimples flashed. “So does that make me another innocent Sinclair lass, about to be ravished by a heathenish Scot?”

  “Well, I don’t know about innocent.” He laughed when she dug her heels into his back. “But I am a heathen. And the ravishing part? Most definitely.” He wanted to look around, to see this room, what it said about her. What was important to her, what she was frivolous about. Was she neat and tidy, or did everything lay where it dropped? Were her furnishings modern, or did she cling to the past in every part of her life?

  But right now he couldn’t seem to expand his focus beyond the bright blue eyes blazing into his. And he recognized then that the emotion washing through him was joy. Unmitigated, unquestioning joy. The kind of exultation that he usually only came close to experiencing when a historic discovery was made on a dig. It was like she was the most important discovery he’d ever made. Made more powerful by the fact that she was a living, breathing artifact of his life, his history. Everything that had come before… and all the possibilities of what could lay ahead.

  He was obviously delirious. And yet, here in this stone tower, in the very spot where Morgans before him had once stood, perhaps gazing down into eyes just as blue, just as desirous… his fanciful imaginings seemed not only possible, but downright probable.

  And could it be possible she was feeling the same? Because they didn’t end
up in a whirl on her bed as he’d planned. Instead her legs slipped from around his waist as he held her tightly against him. They stood there in her private tower, staring deeply into one another’s eyes. Her fingers burrowed beneath his hair, and a shiver of pleasure snaked down his spine as she raked her nails gently over the nape of his neck. Her gaze searched his, and he wished he knew what she hoped to find there.

  “Tag,” she whispered, the dark of her eyes expanding, swallowing him whole, pulling him deeper under her Sinclair spell.

  He shook with need, yet he only brushed his lips across hers, sighing at the softness, the pure fit of her mouth under his. “Would it alarm you if I told you I’d never wanted…” He paused as he discovered there were no words right enough to quantify it. “The way I want,” he began again, only to find the words still wouldn’t form. There is something here, something between us that I don’t claim to understand, but that I—”

  She pressed a finger across his lips, softly shushing him. “I know,” she said, looking into his eyes. “I know.” He wouldn’t have thought it possible, because he didn’t understand it himself. And yet he found it there, in her eyes. The truth of it. They were well and truly in this together. Bound in some way that defied description. Bound in a way that would surely only become more complicated if he were to take her again, here.

  “Some things are better left unexplained,” she whispered, then lifted up to take his mouth in a kiss that both enflamed him and left him reeling with the sweet tenderness of it.

  “I want you with a force that’s pure insanity,” he told her when she lifted her mouth from his, the words tumbling out of their own volition. As if only by sharing them with her could they begin to make any sense to him. “I want you hard and fast. Right here, right now.

  No finesse, no tenderness, and without even the pretense of patience.” He brushed her hair back from her face, surprised to find his fingers were shaking now. “And I want every second to last an eternity. I want to spend a lifetime learning every curve of your body, the texture of your skin, the scent of you, the taste of you. I want to savor you.”