Catch Me If You Can by Donna Kauffman Page B

crowded along the entrance road. Only then did Maura feel a pang of true pain. She could find another lover. It was going to be a lot harder to find another best friend.
    She turned her attention to the west, away from betrayal and pain.
    “ Toward burden and responsibility, instead,” she said on a weary sigh, looking out over the land that stretched on as far as the eye could see. Though it was winter in the surrounding Cairngorms, green grass grew atop fallow soil here in the valley. The countryside rolled out before her like so much carpet, on and on in gentle swells, dotted occasionally with black-faced sheep and shaggy brown cows. Low, stone walls separated one tenant plot from the next. Small crofts marked each plot, their stone walls and thatched roofs looking a bit haggard and worn in the dull winter light. Smoke wisped from far too few of the stacked chimneys. However, the faint smell of burning peat mixed with the mist that rose off the loch, making the air feel even more dank than usual. She shifted her gaze out over the choppy gray waters of Loch Ulish, which formed the eastern boundary of her property. Her property.
    Her shoulders hunched a little. More from the weight of responsibility than as a shield against the cold. She didn’t know which was heavier, the air … or her heart, but for reasons far more complex than this most recent betrayal. With another sigh, this one deeper, longer, a nd—only because she was alone, ti nged with an edge of despair she didn’t bother trying to s ti fle—she turned away from the view of the land she both loved, and on occasion, loathed. Instead she leaned back on the railing and tugged the crumpled letter from the pocket she’d angrily shoved it into what now seemed like a lifetime ago.
    She hadn’t bothered to open it then, nor did she now. The sorrowful look on Argus Danders’ face as he’d handed it over to her had been all the answer she’d needed. She’d known the bank wouldn’t extend her loan, but she’d held out for the miracle. Tearing the white packet slowly in two, she let the halves drift heedlessly to the ground, then tipped her head back and looked up at the sky, “I guess I only get one of those in a lifetime, eh, Taggart?”
    Grief pulled at her and she fought off the fresh threat of tears. She wasn’t much for weepy theatrics, but she supposed if anyone deserved to indulge herself in a brief fit of them at the moment, it was probably her. Of course she’d known she was going to lose Taggart, had known for months now. But it hadn’t made the reality any easier to deal with when the ti me had finally come.
    Her first clue had been the monthly letter that had never shown up. Then had come the official word. A single sheet of paper from his friend Mick Templeton, offering a brief line of condolence on her loss, followed by an even briefer notification that as soon as Taggart’s will was properly read to his heirs, he would fulfill Taggart’s final wishes regarding the Scotland property. He’d ended by promising that someone from the family would be in touch with her regarding the future of her financial arrangement.
    She’d crumpled the letter, ha ti ng that she’d been reduced to a “financial arrangement” in the final picture of Taggart’s life, and at the same time, knowing she was doomed if that arrangement didn’t survive his death.
    That had been over three months ago. And there had been nary a word nor any form of contact since. Much less a bank draft. At the time she’d signed the papers with Taggart, she’d been so grateful to him, still was, that she’d agreed to the hundred-and-twenty-day window. Which meant his heirs still had another couple of weeks to make their decision on maintaining their investment agreement, before the property reverted back to her by default. For all the good that would do her. Of course, she’d had no way of knowing cancer would claim Taggart a few short years after their agreement had been