Catch Me If You Can (28 page)

Priss shivered and shifted her weight back and forth.
“
Please, Maura. Cocoa’s getting cold. And so am I.”

Maura sighed and stepped back. “Well, maybe you should have reconsidered stockings and a miniskirt in the dead of winter.”

Priss scurried past her, pausing on the foyer rug to stamp the snow from her knee-high, black leather boots. “Aye, well, that’s quite true, that it is, but—”

“
Wait a minute.” Maura closed the door then leaned back on it with a brief snort of disgust. “Isn’t that the same outfit you were wearing when I booted you and Jory out of my bed—how many days ago has it been?”

Priss flushed beet red this time. “So, I havena been home as yet. But it’s no’ like I’ve been in them much since then.” She waved a hand. “Yer thinking me a slut, but then ye already thought as much when ye caught me upstairs. And I can hardly make that right, now can I?”

For reasons beyond comprehension, Maura laughed. Something about Priss standing there
, all defiant and fiery-eyed…
wearing rumpled, five-day-old clothes. She couldn’t help it. “Nay, ye hardly can.” She pushed off the door, snagged the bag and thermos from Priss’s hands and marched across the lounge to the kitchen. “God only knows if Jory put as much effort into a career as he does in bedding women, he’d have made his fortune ten times over by now.”

“Och, ye don't know him at all, do ye?” Priss said, toeing her boots off and setting them on the kitchen hearth to warm.

Maura tossed her a wry look. “Oh, I’d say I know him pretty well.”

Priss made a face. “Ha ha. I don’t mean in
that
way. I meant
…
when you were together, didn’t the two of ye ever talk about your dreams? Your plans?”

Maura pulled out her chair, plopped down, then worked hard to conceal the wince that followed. “Yes, we talked. Of course we did.”

Priss tugged out the other chair and curled her foot
beneath her before sitting down. She poured the cocoa In the cu
ps Maura had set on the table. “
You forget, I’m
t
he one you talked to after
you talked to Jory. I don’t see
m to recall the two of you getting very deep into conversation.”

Maura bit into the scone, allowed herself a sigh as the decadence of it melted on her tongue. “So you’re
tel
ling me you spent the last five days in deep
…
conversation?”

Priss rolled her eyes at the innuendo. “Not all of it.” Her cheeks pinked again. “But even Jory can only go at
i
t for so long.”

Maura snorted, bit into her scone again, unable to keep from thinking she hadn’t found Tag’s limit as yet. She shoved that out of her mind. It should bother her more, talking like this about a man they’d both bedded in less than a week’s time. She could say the reason it didn’t feel awkward was because she’d already moved
on
. But that wasn’t it. Not entirely. Priss had hit closer to home than she knew with her comment about her knowledge of Jory.

Thinking back, w
hen they had talked, it had mostl
y been about Ballantrae, about her worries and problems. Jory didn’t talk about his own aspirations. But then, beyond working in his parents’ pub, she hadn’t thought he really had any. Of course, he’d hardly proven otherwise
in action or deed, but still…
it was difficult realizing just how shallow their connection had been. And that perhaps she’d been mostly at fault for that. She dipped her chin, poked a piece of scone into her cocoa. Given proof of her abominable ability to relate to men, that was hardly a heartening endorsement for what she Was currently feeling for Tag. “It’s not Jory,” she said quietly, desperate to change the track of her thoughts. She glanced up at Priss. “That’s not what needs fixing between us.”

Now it was Priss’s turn to lower her chin, stare into her cocoa. “I know,” she said softly. “I don’t even know where to begin.” She looked up. “I value your friendship above all else. You know that. And I know I betrayed it on the most basic of levels. I—” She stopped, lifted a shoulder, then blew out a deep sigh. “I screwed up. Royally. I can’t even say I didn’t realize what I was doing. I knew it was wrong, what we were doing.”

“And where,” Maura said pointedly.

Priss’s skin couldn’t get any darker. “Yes,” she said in a choked whisper, putting her scone down, pushing her cup away. “Yes.”

“Was there some sort of thrill in it?” Maura asked, more seriously than she’d intended.

“No,” Priss said immediately, then stoppe
d. “I don’t know.” She swore. “I
don’t know what I was thinking. I
wasn't
thinking. Other than there he was, the man I’d been privately lusting after ever since, well, forever.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did
!
Every
ti
me you talked about him, didn’t I agree how hot he
was? And how I completely under
stood your infatuation with him?”

“That’s not exac
tl
y the same thing.”

Priss lifted her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “What was I supposed to say? I wanted him first, please let him go?”

Maura opened her mouth, then shut it again when she realized Priss was right.

“It didn't give me the right to do what I did. Especially where I did it. But you were actually talking about him like you were serious, when I knew he was all wrong for you. Then opportunity stepped right up and I had to take what was probably going to be my only chance. You know?”

“So now you’re telling me you slept with my boyfriend, in my own bed, as a favor to me? To prove we weren’t meant for each other?”

“Of course not, but the fact that he took advantage of the opportunity does prove my point. Kind of.” She slumped back in her chair. “There’s no defense for what I did, what we did, okay? And I don’t know if this will make things better or worse between us, but I meant what I said. About it not being just sex. There is something special between Jory and me. And now that we’ve been together, it’s only gotten stronger. Shockingly stronger.”

Maura snorted. “Yeah, until the next ‘opportunity’ knocks.”

“I suppose I deserved that, but I mean it, Maura, he’s
…
I know you don’t want to hear this, but he could be the one.”

“Okay,” she said. “But I wasn’t talking about you. I meant Jory. If he screwed around on me, ‘the one’ or not, what makes you so sure he won’t screw around on you?”

“He wouldn’t,” she said, and not defiantly. She said it as if, well, as if she simply knew. “I don’t want to hurt you. But it’s different between us, between Jory and me, than it was between the two of you.” Priss fell silent, then picked up her cup and slowly stirred her cocoa, seemingly contemplating what she wanted to say. “Did you two ever talk about your future? Together, I mean? Not about Ballantrae, or your problems with keeping it from crumbling to dust, but about things like family and wanting to trave
l and dreaming of running your o
wn shop. You know, life things?”

Now it was Maura’s turn to fall silent. She’d thought of all those things, she’d even thought about the possibility of having them with Jory. But she’d never gotten around to actually discussing it with him. “He’s just so
easygoing. You kind of assume he’ll just go with the flow.” She hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud until Priss responded.

“I know. I think everyone assumes easygoing equals lazy. He’s not lazy, Mo. It’s just that his hopes don’t match those of his family. And he hasn’t found the heart to tell them otherwise. So he plods along working for his father, and no one thinks he has ambition, because his ambitions are elsewhere.” Priss leaned forward, propping her elbows on the table, her eyes lighting up as she talked about him. “He wants to open his own film shop. Develop pictures, have a small gallery of framed prints for sale of local points of interest. Fantastic, isn’t it?”

There was no way to hide her surprise except to duck her chin. Jory did like taking pictures, that much she knew. He’d even turned the guest room of his flat into a darkroom. But she’d thought it nothing more than a hobby. “
I—I
didn’t know.”

Priss didn’t have to press that point, and mercifully, she didn’t. It was painfully obvious to them both that what Maura thought she had with Jory wasn’t remotely the kind of relationship that he and Priss had. Nor was it remotely the kind of relationship it needed to be, the platform to build something solid on. For that to happen, both parties had to actually communicate. Rather than one party doing all the plotting and planning, assuming the other party would just be swept along in her wake. She sighed, disgusted with herself.

Had she done the same thing with Tag? Not that they had a relationship, really,
but there she was, all starry-
eyed and dreamy about this amazing connection they shared, and yet since the talks they’d had that first night here, any time they’d come close to a topic of importance since then, she’d backed away, shifted gears. To be fair, so had he.

But it wasn’t like they’d spent their entire time together naked and going at
it. They did talk, a lot, in fac
t. And they did share with each other, more than she had with anyone else. They talked about her writing, her desire to write a novel someday. He told her about digs he’d worked on, some of the historic finds he’d been part of. But they danced around the rest. Partly because once they’d confronted it, there would be nothing left to say afterward. Once things were resolved, he’d have no reason to stay. So, what point was there in forging a strong foundati
on if there was never going to b
e anything lasting built on it?

And yet, in her heart of hearts, didn’t she know the foundation was already there? Just waiting for her to do something to make it permanent so they could keep building on it? And didn’t the fact that he was stalling,
t
oo, mean he felt the very same thing?

She picked at her scone. But on the other hand, what the hell did she really know about it? Hadn’t Priss just pointed out, complete with clearly defined examples, just how tragically inept she was at deciphering men and relationships?

“It’s not that he doesn’t have the backbone to stand up to them, you know,” Priss was saying. “It’s just that he doesn’t want to hurt them. He’s got a huge heart, Maura. Most people don’t see that about him.”

“Maybe because most women are sidetracked by his Other huge
…
attrib
ute,” Maura muttered, her mind s
till on Tag.

To her surprise, Priss snickered. “You have to admit, the man is blessed.”

Maura knew she shouldn’t smile. There was something inherently wrong
with two women sitting around a
kitchen table discussing their carnal knowledge of the
s
ame man over cocoa and scones. But then she wasn’t
o
ne to tout propriety, was she? “He is that,” she agreed.

She broke
th
e remainder of her scone into little pieces as she thought about everything Priss had said. “So, you’ve talked about these things, your dreams and the like, you and Jory?”

Priss nodded as she took a sip.

“And you’ve only been together a few days,” she murmured, more to herself than to Priss.

“It’s been longer than that,” she said, then lifted a palm when Maura shot her a shocked look. “Not the sex part. What I meant is, well, you’ve been dating him for a while. I see him in the vill
age, and out with you. We’ve…
chatted.” She frowned. “Stop looking at me like that. I wasn’t flirting with the man or anything. I was just being nice to him because you were going out with him. Only—” She broke off, then didn’t finish.

“Only you developed your own crush on him in the meantime.”

Priss lifted a shoulder, her gaze darting away. “I couldn’t help it. It’s just this inexplicable thing with us.” She sighed, perhaps unknowingly. “I had no idea he was feeling the same thing. It’s amazing really.” Her tone was that of wonder and awe.

And Maura knew
exactly
how she felt.

Priss looked up, her expression earnest. “I’m not sorry we’re together,” she told Maura. “I can’t give you that. But I will forever regret how it started. I didn’t ever want you hurt.” She reached across the table, putting her hand over Maura’s wrist. “I know this probably doesn’t make any sense to you, but you have to believe me. It was the wrong thing to do to you, but it’s the rightest thing I’ve ever done for me. It was like I had no choice, it was my one and only chance. Maybe it’s greedy of me, and I probably don’t deserve it, but I honestly don’t want to lose our friendship over this.”

“I don’t want to, either,” Maura said, quite truthfully. She covered Priss’s hand with her own. “And I do understand.” She paused briefly, taking a courage-building breath. She was still torn over what she was about to share, but it had taken a great deal of courage for Priss to come here today and both apologize and try to explain the choices she’d made. It seemed only right that Maura come clean as well. Keeping more secrets was not the way to start things over.