Catch Me If You Can

Book 1: Men of Rogues Hollow

by Donna Kauffman

Genres: Small Town & Rural; Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

IF IT’S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE SCOTLAND All Tag Morgan wants to do is help settle his father’s estate so he can get back to properly cataloguing his Mayan ruins. So he’s caught quite off guard to discover that: A) His father had holdings in Scotland B) The property now belongs to Tag Leafing through his father’s correspondence with the property’s overseer, one Maura Ramsey, yields even more surprises. His father’s letters reveal a warmer, kinder man—nothing like the harsh, cold disciplinarian Tag remembers. Surely it has to do with Maura, whose writing is filled with a dry wit and an infectious charm that keeps Tag reading all night. By the time the sun rises, Tag knows he’s going to Scotland to find this woman who has so thoroughly captivated him . . . Praise for Donna Kauffman “Readers will appreciate the wonderful sense of place, the well-rounded secondary characters and the deep emotion.” —Bookpage, TOP PICK “We all know where there's Donna Kauffman, there's a rollicking, sexy read chock-full of charm and sparkle.” —USAToday.com “Charming characters, emotion galore, a small town—you’re going to love Donna Kauffman!” —Lori Foster

Release date: December 31, 2019

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 356

Sample

When he looked around the room, what he remembered most were the beatings. Maybe it was the fatigue. Maybe it was the confusion still messing with his head.

Taggart Morgan II leaned back in the well-worn leather chair and rubbed his tired eyes, closing them against the view of his father’s home office. The floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with leather-bound law books, the thick, polished oak desk with its always precisely arranged blotter, letter opener and Cross pen set. The hard wooden chair he’d been made to sit in while he received the daily lecture that always preceded the sound of his father’s thin leather belt, slipping through the loops of his pants. He could hear his voice as clearly now as he had seventeen years before.

I went to law school, passed the bar, fought my way up. I showed this town what a Morgan is made of! Just because we’re descended from trash doesn’t mean we have to be trash. You’ll show them, too, if I have to beat the smart into you.

CRACK!

When a Morgan wants something, he grabs it. That’s the mark I’m making here. And that’s the mark I’ll make on you, if I have to whip it into you. I’ll accept nothing less from you. You come home with that class election won and your head held high for all to see, or you’ll pray to God you’d listened for once in your godforsaken, pansy-ass life. Ands if the belt doesn’t do the trick, perhaps this will leave an impression.

Tag flinched away from the memory of his father’s palm, connecting so hard to the side of his head, he’d gone sprawling to the floor. But by letting one memory slip through, it was as though he’d unleashed the demons of hell. His father’s violent tirades echoed inside his head, and around the room itself, as clearly as if the man himself were here and striding up and down in front of this very desk. One after the other, the memories assaulted him, moments of his life he’d long since packed away, suffocated by sheer will and determination. And yet it took only the breath of a single memory to resuscitate each and every one to their full, fire-breathing glory.

How many judges are there in Marshall County? Two. And your old man is one of them. And now my oldest son is telling me he wants to make a living digging in the goddamn dirt? I’m paying for your college education and I’ll decide where you go and what you major in.

SMACK!

Obviously you’re more of a fucking idiot than I thought if this is the best life plan you can muster.

Tag absently lifted his hand to his face, as if he could still feel the imprint of the back of his father’s hand, the blood trickling down where the heavy school ring he always wore had split open his cheek.

Jesus fucking Christ, you can’t even manage to be half the man I am! If I hadn’t walked you through life, you’d be an even bigger pussy than you already are. But fine. Embarrass me, embarrass the town, embarrass the family. Your mother is probably looking down from the heavens right now, crying over the waste of space you’re taking up. So you want to forge your own path, well today is the day you’re going to begin it. When you walk out that office door, you’d better damn sight keep on walking. Don’t pass go, don’t collect your things, and don’t let the door hit your sorry ass on the way out.

Tag could still see the veins bulging in his father’s forehead, the alarming red flush that enflamed his face and neck, as he ordered his firstborn to leave home with nothing but the clothes on his back. As if he were the one making the bigger sacrifice.

And you better damn well never look back. From this moment forward, I have only three sons. You are dead to me.

Eyes squeezed shut, Tag’s heart pounded just as it had back then. His hands shook as he fisted them, humiliation and blinding fury pulsing through him as cleanly as if it had just happened all over again. And he hated himself for the weakness, for allowing his past to punish him all over again. He fought back instinctively, much as he had back then and for years afterward. With rigid and unswerving diligence, he’d buried his reaction, his emotions. Back then, it was because he’d known that any reaction, any at all, would only make his father go harder on him. And now . . . because there was no one left to lash out at but himself.

He abruptly shoved himself away from the desk. Breathing heavily, it took every last shred of his control to keep from sweeping his arm across the desk, sending every perfectly placed article flying onto the carefully chosen antique woven rug. Just as it had taken every ounce of the man he was becoming to walk calmly through that door seventeen years ago, shoulders square, gaze firmly forward.

Because from the moment he’d claimed his emancipation, terrified, relieved, exhilarated, and heartbroken, his father had been dead to him, too.

Tag braced his hands on the edge of the desk, dipping his chin, willing his heart rate to slow as he shut out the words, shut out the past, going instead to that place deeper inside himself, a place no one ever penetrated. The physical scars had healed many years ago. And until this moment, he’d have sworn the emotional ones had, too. Out of sight, out of mind. That had been his motto when he’d left Rogues Hollow. And, until he’d been summoned back upon learning of his father’s death, it had worked quite well for him.

Dead to me.

“Yeah, well, now it’s just official,” he muttered. “For both of us.” He straightened slowly, grunting at the muscles that had stiffened from sitting hunched over the desk. Midnight had long since come and gone. He’d lost track of time, as he often did when something of interest caught his attention. His single-minded focus and tenacity were a boon in his chosen field of anthropology. Tonight? He wasn’t so sure. He stared down at the sheaf of material his father’s close friend, Mick Templeton, had dropped off earlier today in a surprising visit.

Mick had been a newly minted councilman the last time Tag had seen him. But he’d risen through the ranks since then to become mayor, a position he’d held close to ten years now. Along with that position had come a friendship with Justice Taggart Morgan Sr. And given the nature of the bombshell Mick had dropped on him today, it was a friendship that was a great deal closer than the surface social contacts his father lived to cultivate and loved to parade in front of everyone.

According to Mick, no one else in Highland Springs, or all of Marshall County for that matter, had known about this. Not Taggart’s lawyers, not his associates, or his other acquaintances. He’d even hidden the funds he’d used to finance the thing under a dummy corporation so Frances York, his longtime accountant and reigning town busybody, didn’t know. That alone was a feat he could hardly believe. But even more surprising, given the nature of the news, was that the Ramsay and Sinclair families, who, along with the Morgans, owned the valley property known as Rogues Hollow, were also unaware of Taggart’s late-in-life acquisition.

He’d only confided in Mick.

And now, by his father’s specific request, his oldest son, Tag.

Who still could not fathom what sort of bizarre mind-fuck his father hoped to achieve with the final arrangements he’d made. And now this bullshit. It had been almost a month ago, just a few days past Christmas, since the formal reading of the will. The day their father’s lawyer had very calmly announced that Taggart James Morgan, Sr. had left the entire Morgan share of Rogues Hollow, and every scrap of the estate that went with it, to his oldest son and heir. Tag could recall with stunning clarity how the news had literally sucked the breath out of everyone in the room.

He didn’t know exactly what he’d been expecting, but probably something along the lines of a blistering lecture, followed by the grand announcement that their father had left the entire family heritage to the Sinclairs or Ramsays. A final harsh reality check that was supposed to teach them all something. Taggart Sr. would love nothing more than delivering a final set down. But Tag had known his father would never let the Morgan land escape Morgan ownership. He supposed he’d expected that the property would have gone to all four of them.

Not that any of them had wanted the burden. All three of his brothers had left under somewhat similar circumstances. None had had any contact with their father since leaving this house. He’d told himself the day of the reading that if there was one positive in all this, it was that his younger brothers, Austin, Burke, and Jace, wouldn’t have to deal with any of it. They wouldn’t have to worry about what to do with their father’s personal effects, how to handle matters pertaining to the estate. Nor would they bear the burden of deciding what to do with a legacy that had been in Morgan hands for almost three hundred years. A legacy that should instill pride and a strong sense of stewardship in the last remaining Morgans, but because of one man, instead held only heartache and the echoes of memories better left forgotten.

Nope. That thrill belonged to him and him alone.

And to think that day he’d assumed it couldn’t get any worse.

Apparently time away from the old man had dulled his instinct for self-preservation. Years spent living on dig sites, subsisting off of dried beef, overripe fruit, and water that most people wouldn’t bathe in, much less drink, hadn’t honed those skills a tenth of the percentage that one hour sitting in this well-appointed room would have. He could picture the look on his father’s face, that combination of smug disgust he so often wore, as he pointed out that very fact to his eldest son.

Tag blocked that mental image as he stretched and shook the stiffness from his arms and legs. He carefully avoided looking down at the last piece of evidence that had come with this latest bombshell. The polished cherrywood box Mick had dropped off, complete with tarnished skeleton key sticking out of the lock. Taunting him, begging him to turn it, to open the Pandora’s box that was his father’s secret other life. One quick twist, and he could have the answers to the fresh raft of questions that had haunted him since Mick had left hours before. Or, worse perhaps, he’d only end up with more questions.

He had opened the accompanying leather-bound portfolio that held all the legal papers pertaining to his father’s startling late-in-life acquisition. A certain piece of property. In Scotland. But not just any property. His father owned a piece of Morgan heritage. The very heritage he’d spent his whole life trying to live down. The castle Ballantrae, and all that went with it. Including, apparently, a land manager, farm tenants, a slew of assorted sheep, and a huge pile of debt.

What the papers didn’t explain was why in the hell his father would purchase, much less own and manage, the very castle and surrounding tenant-leased land that his much-scourged ancestor, Teague Morgan, along with his thieving cohorts, Dougal Ramsay and Iain Sinclair, had run from in the dark of the night three centuries earlier. Their ill-gotten gains strapped to their mounts as they headed hell bent for the coast and a neck-saving passage to the colonies.

Mick said all the business details were in the leather portfolio. But all the personal details of his relationship with the tenants and villagers in general, and apparently one woman in particular, lay inside the cherrywood box. No one on this side of the ocean had been privy to that part of his life. Not even Mick.

Well, as far as Tag was concerned, it could stay private. Turning his back on the box, and the questionable treasure it held, he paced the length of the carpet, then turned suddenly and kicked the wooden chair across the room, where it clattered against the bookshelf, knocking loose several carefully shelved tomes. Fuck. He didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to give a shit. What he wanted was to be on the next plane headed south of the border. Back to the current dig, and the life he’d made for himself. Far, far away from the one he’d been born to.

And yet the curiosity was eating him alive. Blame it on his nature, on his training, his very occupation. Had it been related to anyone other than his father, he’d have been inside that box within minutes of learning of its existence. But it was his father. And therefore nothing could be as it seemed. Nothing was ever that simple with Taggart Sr.

And he refused to be drawn in.

All he had to do to make it go away was sign one of the sets of papers on the desk. He could either sign away his rights to the property, or set up a trust with his father’s estate that would keep funneling money overseas. The lawyers, accountants, and land agents could take it from there. He would never have to give the matter another thought. Why his father hadn’t made this decision, he had no idea. He’d certainly had the time. He’d known he was dying. Which meant he’d very specifically put this decision in Tag’s hands. Another reason not to open that box.

He stared at the portfolio. A few quick scratches with his father’s beloved Cross pen and he could be one giant step closer to leaving this legal nightmare behind. Escaping for good the bucolic winter wonderland that was Rogues Hollow, all tucked up against the Blue Ridge mountains, smugly out of step with the ebb and flow of urban life.

A few signatures on the dotted line, and he could be booking passage back to a distant land even more out of pace with the world. Back to the sweaty, torpid, bug-infested rainforests of the Yucatan. Back to mosquito netting and questionable drinking water. Back to piecing together the lives of families who had existed thousands of years ago.

And mercifully escaping piecing together any more of his own.

He heard the door from the garage open and had crossed the room and opened the office door before he realized his brother Jace wasn’t alone. The couple tumbled in the door, all pink cheeks and dusted with snow. Although he imagined with the heat sparking between the two, they could have rolled naked in the stuff and been perfectly comfortable. Given what he’d witnessed the past couple of weeks, he wouldn’t be surprised if they already had.

Jace tugged Suzanna up against him, all stupid grin and oversized libido, not caring in the least who noticed. “Hey, T.J.,” he said, when he noticed his brother standing there.

Tag wished he could remember a time in his life when he’d felt like that. “Sorry,” he said, moving to duck back into the study and leave them their privacy.

“No problem. What in the hell are you still doing up anyway?” Jace looked at the grandfather clock that graced the long hallway connecting garage and office to the main rooms of the house. “It’s almost two.”

“I could ask the same of you,” Tag said, trying to match a smile to the wry tone. He tipped his chin. “Evening, Zanna.”

The pink in her cheeks deepened a bit, but her eyes flashed with fun. “Morning is more like it. And please forgive your baby brother. We had a flat tire about down past Ramsay’s pond. The snow was blowing around too much to see to fix it. So we pushed it off the road and hiked our way back in.”

Tag frowned. Zan and Jace had both grown up in the Hollow, so they both well knew the dangers of the winters here. “You should have called. I’d have come to get you.”

“I guess we thought you’d be sleeping,” Jace said, brushing off Zanna’s coat, then his own.

“So wake me up. It’s not like I have to be in the office at nine.”

“Hey,” Jace shot back good-naturedly. “If that’s a dig at me, my meeting with Mr. Wayne and the athletic director isn’t until eleven.” He peeled his coat off. “Not all of us have the luxury of crawling around in the jungle for a living, Tarzan.”

“Jace,” Zan gently scolded. “He’s just worried about you.” She turned to Tag. “We’re sorry if we kept you up waiting, or worrying.”

To be honest, he’d forgotten all about Jace being out. But then he wasn’t used to having to keep track of anyone but himself. Nor did he intend to start now. “I wasn’t. I was just . . . looking over some things.”

Jace glanced up at his brother as he started helping Zan off with her coat. Tag must not have been as adept at masking his feelings as he’d thought, because Jace frowned and said, “What’s up? Frances said something about Templeton paying a visit out here today, but she didn’t know what it was about.” He glanced at Zan and grinned. “Which I know comes as a shock to us all.”

She just laughed. “Yeah, Mom’s status as Grand Poobah of the Grapevine is in definite jeopardy.”

If they only knew, Tag couldn’t help but think, wondering what Zan’s mom, aka the town busybody, would think when she found out the man whose books she’d been doing for the past quarter century had kept such a major investment from her.

Jace laughed with Zan, then turned back to Tag. “Seeing as Mack is the mayor and a friend of Dad’s, I figured it was just a formal visit to pay his respects or something.” His smile faded as he caught Tag’s expression. “I’m guessing I was wrong.”

Zanna tugged her coat back on. “Listen, I should head home. You two obviously need to talk. Or sleep and then talk. I can just take the old pickup and bring it back over tomorrow if that’s okay.”

Zanna’s mother had been the accountant for all three Hollow families over the years, but most recently for Taggart Sr. and Mack Ramsay, as the elder Sinclairs now spent most of their time in Florida. She’d moved herself and her infant daughter to a small cabin on Ramsay property after her husband died, had raised Zan there, staying on alone after her daughter went off to college. Zan had only recently moved back to Marshall County, reuniting with her high school flame, Jace, on her way in, in fact.

Frances had moved closer to town when old man Ramsay had retired and moved south, leaving his share of the Hollow to his only son, Mack, the current town sheriff. And now mother and daughter were joining forces and opening up an accounting firm in town, hoping to cater to the small but steady influx of new business as the county took baby steps toward new growth. Zan was staying at her mother’s for the time being, but Tag had an idea that she and Jace might be looking at some joint property before too long.

Which brought him back to some decisions he’d made in the wee midnight hours. “Don’t head out in this mess, Zan,” he told her. “I do need to talk to you,” he said to Jace, “but it can wait until morning. Or later this morning at any rate. Can you give me say, thirty minutes before heading in to meet with Wayne?”

“No problem. You sure you don’t want to talk now?”

“Positive.” The dull throb behind his eyes had grown more insistent. He needed sleep and a clear head before broaching Jace with his proposal. “’Night.”

“’Night,” they both echoed.

Tag pulled the office door shut as he walked past, not bothering to lock it, much less tuck away the cherrywood box that still sat on his desk. Jace was going to be rolling in the sheets with Zan for what was left of the night. It was high season for yachting in the tropics, so Burke had already headed back to crew his next island charter tour. And Austin was on a cover shoot in Milan, showing his favorite haunts to his new love, Delilah Hudson.

Tag’s mouth quirked. Jace going all moony-eyed was one thing. He’d always had a soft spot for Zanna York and it was no big surprise to anyone that the two of them had picked up where they left off, despite their long separation. But he still couldn’t get over Austin plunging headlong off the love pier right after him. Tag had already decided to make a point of meeting up with them somewhere so he could get a look at the woman who’d brought down the man who made his living taking pictures of half-naked cover models.

But even if all three of his brothers had still been there, he needn’t have worried they’d go nosing about. Not in the office. Never there.

Surprisingly, it hadn’t been as uncomfortable being home again. In general, anyway. It was rare they were all under the same roof, but they’d never once been together under this one since he’d left. In fact, all of them had been gone the moment they were of age too, and in some cases before. Not one of them had ever looked back. They kept in touch with each other, but not with their past.

There had been a tacit, unspoken agreement the moment they’d all finally made it in a month ago, to not discuss the harsher aspects of their childhood. None of them wanted to revisit that horror. But it had been a welcome surprise when they’d all sat around the kitchen table and dredged up any number of good times they’d spent, growing up in the Hollow. Memories of times shared as brothers, not as the sons of Taggart Morgan, Sr. Laughter had been rare under the Morgan roof, but it hadn’t been nonexistent. Tag remembered wondering how long it had been since that sound had echoed inside these walls.

They’d talked fondly of swimming, fishing, and ice-skating on old man Ramsay’s pond, once the center of their social universe. Sighed in post-adolescent harmony about parking up on Black Willow Ridge with the girl of the moment. Pointed fingers of blame over who had stolen the most eggs from Mrs. Sinclair’s chicken house when they’d camped out. And laughed over the pranks they’d pulled on each other, and their Hollow “cousin” Mack.

They didn’t talk about the lectures. The whippings. The whispers in town when they showed up at school with another unexplained bruise or welt. Of what it had felt like, being constantly berated for never measuring up to their father’s rigid expectations. Being told time and again what a disappointment they were. And never once having their dreams listened to, much less respected or treated as worthy goals.

No, Tag didn’t have to worry about locking the office door. No Morgan son went into that room unless it was absolutely necessary. He’d done so tonight, sat at that desk, propped his feet up on the polished surface, as a final act of defiance. It was his office now, after all.

Yet he knew all he’d get for it would be a sleepless night, filled with memories that were a lot fresher than he’d believed possible. Some scars, he realized as he climbed the wide wooden stairs to his bedroom, never did heal.

Sleep hadn’t come easy, when it had come at all. Something Jace and Zan didn’t seem to have any problem doing. Coming, that is.

Grumpy and feeling surprisingly resentful, Tag washed down three aspirin with his morning coffee. Sex had been the last thing on his mind of late. But it had been rather hard to ignore the contrast between Jace’s rather active sex life and the wasteland that was his own social life.

Ordinarily this didn’t bother him. He liked sex as much as the next guy, but he’d gotten used to putting his needs aside. Which was handy considering his prospects for sex were usually limited to college coeds volunteering on a dig, or women from whatever neighboring village was nearby. And considering the locales of most of his recent digs, this was generally not a teeming metropolis. Or even a one-mule town. Tribal came closest to describing the usual local social scene.

And, as he was too old for the coed crowd, that left the occasional seasoned colleague who was up for a no-strings roll in the hammock. And even then he had to be careful. Passions generally heated up and cooled way down long before the dig was over. Which could make life uncomfortable for everyone. Tag preferred things to go as smoothly as possible. Day-to-day life generally being enough of a challenge for him.

He massaged his closed eyes, hoping the headache he’d woken up with would fade quickly. Normally he dropped off to sleep the instant his head hit the pillow and woke up refreshed and ready, whether he’d slept for one hour or ten. Apparently dig survival training didn’t hold up under his childhood roof. At least his father had long since converted their old bedrooms to guest rooms, he thought. It could have been worse. He could have had to stare at the remnants of his childhood as he lay, gritty-eyed and awake, listening to the muffled giggles and long, satisfied groans coming from across the hall.

Actually, he should thank his baby brother for the diversion. Thinking about sex, even the sore lack of it, had kept his thoughts from veering back to this most recent surprise. Taking another sip of the bitter coffee, Tag reminded himself, as he had most every morning since Austin had taken off, taking his mad coffee-making skills with him, that though he wasn’t any better making a decent pot with a top-of-the-line machine rather than the tin pot they used in camp, he didn’t have to drink it black.

He was pouring in milk and adding way too much sugar, wondering how to broach his discussion with Jace, when the object of his ruminations trudged into the kitchen, bleary-eyed and tumble-haired, scratching his bare chest.

“Morning,” Jace grunted, reaching blindly into the cupboard over the sink.

“Coffee’s strong, but hot,” Tag told him.

“Bless you and everyone that looks like you.”

Tag smiled a little. “You get no sympathy from me. I didn’t get any sleep either, only I didn’t get the side benefits.”

Jace pulled a mug down, smiling now despite the dark circles beneath his eyes. “Well, you have me there.”

Though the bedrooms had changed and some of the furnishings in the main rooms had been updated, the kitchen was still pretty much the same as it had been when they were young. Same woodblock countertops, same glass-front cabinets. The dishwasher was new, as was the fridge, but the old gas stove was the same one Tag had warmed soup on every day after school. And the round pedestal table was the same one he and his brothers had sat at every evening doing homework. Praying none of them would be summoned.

Some kids were afraid of being sent to the principal’s office. Not the Morgan boys. They knew the long walk of dread down the school hallway was nothing compared to the terror a person could feel in the few short steps it took to get from the kitchen to their father’s office.

“So,” Tag said, gladly shoving those memories away as Jace took a seat and reached for the sugar, “you and Zanna are getting serious pretty quickly.”

Jace shrugged. “I guess it looks that way. Doesn’t feel that way.”

Tag raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Meaning?”

Jace snatched Tag’s spoon and used it to stir in his sugar. “I don’t know if I can explain it. It is serious. But it doesn’t feel rushed or too quick. It’s not like we could just pick up where we left off after high school or anything. A lot has happened over the intervening years. To both of us. But it wasn’t time wasted. And now this feels perfectly right for us. I guess we don’t want to waste any more time. It took us this long to figure things out.” He shrugged again. “So why wait, you know?”

Tag understood what his brother was saying, even though he couldn’t fathom feeling that way himself. “Have you made any long-range plans?”

“You mean like marriage plans?” Jace smiled, laughed a little. “Nothing specific. Not yet. We’re in no rush. Although, we, uh, we are going to look for a place in town. Together,” he added unnecessarily.

Tag glanced up now, his mouth quirking. “My baby brother, shacking up? And you being the good Morgan boy. What will the townfolk say?”

“I haven’t been back that long, but the town doesn’t seem like it’s exactly remained stuck in a time warp all these years.”

“Wouldn’t have surprised me,” Tag said dryly. “How’s Frances feel about this?”

“You know Zan’s mom. Hopeless romantic. She’s very happy we’re together. Pushing for a wedding, of course. And it’s likely that’s where we’ll end up, but not right yet. We might raise a few eyebrows around town, but it won’t cost me the teaching position, if th. . .