Catch Me If You Can by Donna Kauffman Page A

out along with him. And even if she had, she’d never imagined it would be her best friend.
    “Maura,” Jory began, but swallowed whatever else he’d been about to say when she made a snip, snip motion with her fingers. He finished getting dressed without saying anything else.
    She supposed she should feel grateful that he at least hadn’t tried the always unoriginal tactic of turning it all back on her, claiming she was awful in bed and had driven him into the arms of another. Because given what they’d been doing all last night and up until day
    break this morning, they both knew that would have been a bunch of rubbish. Jory definitely had the goods and knew how to deliver them. But Maura knew she’d more than compensated him in return. She glanced at Priss and her smile returned.
    The two women had shared every intimate detail of their lives since they’d begun having sex, Maura having shared for a somewhat longer period of time than Priss. Whose given name was Patrice, and hadn’t earned that nickname unwarranted. Jory might be the one getting the short end of the stick after all, she thought a bit smugly.
    Speaking of which, she made a mental note to add batteries to her next shopping list. Just because Jory wasn’t going to be having multiple orgasms anytime soon, didn’t mean she had to deprive herself of them.
    “Come on, Priss,” Jory said, holding the bedroom door open.
    He was trying to look like the wounded party, all beautiful pouty lips and wounded puppy-dog eyes. But Maura didn’t have enough temper left to call him on it. She just wanted them both gone.
    Priss zipped up her boots and snagged her coat, looking at Maura as if she wanted to make one last at tempt to explain away her duplicity. In the end, she wisely opted to remain silent. Instead she delivered a cool look at Jory, then left the room with her chin up, in a way only Priss could manage, considering she’d just been caught buck naked in her friend’s bed, with her friend’s lover.
    “Come on, now, Priss,” Jory cajoled, quickly heading out behind her without so much as another glance at Maura.
    She sighed, listening as he began a running dialogue, all the way down the curving stone stairs to the main floor. When she heard the ground-floor door shut, she wandered across her room and stepped out onto the small balcony that wrapped around the top of the spire. She looked directl y down into the main courtyard of the crumbling ruin she always had, grumbling aside, called home.
    She’d known Jory hadn’t really understood her connection to this big pile of stone, but she hadn’t realized he was resentful of it. Which is sure what it had sounded like. Of course, working for his parents at the pub and still living off of them at twenty-eight, he didn’t exactly have a clear appreciation of responsibility, much less a dedication to doing anything more with his life. And God knows her life was a master class in dedication.
    The sky was gray and bleak, matching her mood, with the promised winter storm growing ever closer. The wind had an even sharper bite to it than usual, snatching at her auburn curls and tossing them whiplike about her face. She yanked them back in a knot, as she dispassionately watched Jory talk his way into getting Priss to give him a lift into town. Jesus and Mary, she thought, had she really fancied herself building a life with that one? She hadn’t, of course. Not really. Which, strangely enough, was more depressing. He’d just been the one who happened to be in her life when, at thirty, she’d finally began wondering if this was all there was ever going to be to it. Was it to be just one long string of days that began and ended with her worrying about Ballantrae and how to keep it going? There should be more, she’d thought, and still believed. Just not with Jory.
    Priss’s small Renault rolled through the main gates and edged down the pitted gravel drive, before disappearing amongst the towering pines