The Wedding Dress (15 page)

Jared felt the tug of needs he’d never admit. Feelings he’d never share.

I wish I could make things different,
he confessed to himself as he peered down at Emma’s face.
Wish I could give you Angelica Robards’ skill for dramatic roles, all the tricks in her face and movements that would have made her believable as Lady Aislinn.

But he couldn’t transform Emma into the caliber of actress needed for the role she yearned to play. Emma McDaniel was all about special effects and fast cars, spandex suits and ray guns. She was fire and storm, as flawed and sensual as Eve after the fall, the opposite of the Lady Aislinn, who seemed too ethereal to suffer the rough touch of any mortal man’s hands, despite the inner strength she’d shown during the siege. A woman generations of minstrels had praised as pure and otherworldly as the fairy flag she’d brought with her to her bridal bed.

No, he couldn’t transform Emma McDaniel into a believable Lady Aislinn, no matter how much the studio, Emma or even Jared himself wanted him to. But he could share a little of himself, couldn’t he? Just this much.

“You wanted to know why Davey is special to me?” Jared asked.

Emma peered up at him. “Why?”

“I used to be just like him.”

He expected denial. Expected her to brush off his words.

Instead, her eyes glowed, luminous. She stretched up on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. A soft, melting kiss that struck like a lance to his heart.

“Maybe we’re two of a kind after all, Jared Butler,” she said. Then in a swirl of dark curls and green gown she vanished into the castle, the one place in all the world where Jared allowed himself to dream.

Chapter Eight

I
T WAS TORTURE
playing Rapunzel when there was a party going on beneath your tower, Emma thought as she looked down at the scene unfolding below.

For the past week she’d done her best to honor the boundaries Jared had set for her. She’d spent her afternoons in her room, not studying her script or searching for the knight fighting invisible demons on the sea, but rather, gazing out the window on the landward side of her room at the dig site. A world she couldn’t share.

Not
couldn’t,
Emma corrected herself,
wouldn’t.
It was a matter of respect, she told herself firmly, honoring Jared’s “rule” that she not “distract” the students from their work.

It would have been easy to disregard the dictatorial man who’d ordered her around with such contempt the first day she’d been at the castle. But from the moment Emma had kissed Jared Butler’s cheek, the man she had hated on sight transformed like the druids in the Irish tales her aunt Finn loved to tell. Jared: a shape-shifter more elusive than any knight of the sea. Painful secrets haunted eyes too old, in the face of a man who seemed at war with himself every time he looked at Emma.

She swallowed hard, remembering the sensation of his beard-roughened cheek beneath her lips, the heat that had caught her by surprise in a gesture that was only meant as…as what? An apology? A truce? The least terrifying way she could think of to thank him for letting her glimpse what he obviously tried so hard to hide—his world-weary Sir Lancelot heart?

He’d drawn back that night, stunned, as if she’d pierced him with that kiss. Awakened him from some bitter enchantment. But he didn’t
want
to be jarred from that solitary world, Emma had known in that instant. He didn’t know how to be anything but alone.

Captain caught the hem of her gown in his teeth and tugged, even more restless than she was. She leaned down and scooped the terrier into her arms.

“What?” she demanded. “It hasn’t even been an hour since you went outside.”

The little dog planted his paws on the stone ledge and strained his head out the window, his pitiful whine now part of their daily routine. At first she’d just figured he wanted to be part of the action below, like she did. But as the days slipped past she’d realized there was only one person he longed to find. Jared.

Captain worshipped the big Scotsman with the same fierce devotion Davey Harrison did and would struggle madly to get free the instant his doggy nose caught a whiff of the mixture of leather and horse, peat and salt air that was Jared’s own.

Emma figured it would take the dog about three seconds to track Jared down if she was foolhardy enough to go out into the sunshine and walk the length of the ruined curtain wall to where the excavation hummed with activity.

Visitors to the site watched eagerly as Jared’s students worked about three yards beneath ground level, engrossed in whatever cutaway section they were excavating. Emma could feel the intensity radiating from them as the day drew to a close. She spent far too much time ignoring the script she was supposed to be studying, imagining instead what the students said to each other as they bantered back and forth.

The one time she had no trouble translating was when a kid would whoop in triumph. Site visitors would crowd against the rail of the viewing platform built over the excavation, while students in floppy hats and dirt-stained T-shirts abandoned their own square of ground to race over to the location of the new discovery. They’d squabble like a nest full of crows over something sparkly until Jared strode toward them, his long legs so athletic they shouldn’t have belonged to anyone with “scientist” listed after his name.

He’d hunker down, broad shoulders hunching forward as if protecting the find from the polluted modern air and the puppy like enthusiasm of the students. He’d examine whatever the student had found, jotting notes in a book he’d dug from one of his capacious pockets. And Emma would watch, wishing
she
were studying under a teacher so gifted that every day she admired him more.

Butler never swooped in on his students, swelled with conceit as he took over the “important” part of the excavation. He’d merely observe the process intently, doling out suggestions and encouragement only when needed, until the student managed to free the find from the ground that had cradled it for centuries.

Then, damn if the man wouldn’t smile—that bone-melting, breast-tingling smile that made Emma wonder what it would be like to feel its full force turned on her, without the walls he seemed more determined than ever to keep between them.

She wanted to race down the tower stairs and join the crowd watching so breathlessly. Wanted to be part of the excitement she could feel, even from her tower.

But she wasn’t part of the dig. She was an inconvenience that already dragged Jared away for hours at a time from the work he loved. Even so, it was his own damned fault she was chafing to hear every detail of the day’s work.

From the moment he’d slipped that enameled flower into her hand, she’d felt like a modern Sleeping Beauty, pricked with a spindle that made her burn with curiosity instead of merely snoring away. She wanted to see more. Know more. Touch more. Wanted her hands in the Scottish turf, coaxing out Castle Craigmorrigan’s secrets herself.

Wanted to see Jared Butler’s eyes come alive with magic, the way they had when he’d shared the flower with her, when she’d been as awed by touching a piece of history as he had been.

She’d almost shared more with him than the tale of the antique wedding dress. She’d found herself wanting to tell him about the journal she’d also discovered in the trunk in March Winds’ attic, the stark childhood loneliness she’d filled with a “ghost” named Addy.

Maybe he wouldn’t have laughed at her after all.

But he might have plied her with more questions. Dangerous questions, like the one he’d asked when she’d been trying to make him laugh with the story of her grandfather and the Welshman.

Irish? I would have guessed something more exotic…What about your father?

Captain startled her with a disgruntled yap, as if to say, “Hey, human, when you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go. What do you want me to do? Tie it in a knot?”

Emma smiled down at the dog. “Fine. I’ll take you out. But you’re staying on the leash, got it? No making a break for the big guy, no matter how much we both might want to.”

Now there was a thought. Just let Captain slip off the leash, give him a little headstart and he’d lead her straight to Jared as long as none of the students ran interference. Emma was appalled at how tempted she was by the idea.

She fastened on the leash Davey had made out of an old length of rope and with Captain in her arms, headed down the castle stairs. At the bottom, she paused to unhook the thick velvet cord Jared had placed across the bottom, the no-admittance sign supposed to guarantee none of the tourists wandered into Emma’s private quarters. Slipping past the gap in the rope, she refastened it with a grimace, imagining just how long that sort of barrier would keep someone out of her condo in L.A.

She didn’t bother to set Captain down. The moment she did, he’d yank her arm out of its socket trying to haul her off to find Jared. Instead, she wandered the hundred yards to a secluded boulder beside the sea cliff, the terrier’s favorite hydrant spot. It was a good thing Captain had a conniption every time the boulder came in sight since, at the moment, she was so distracted by the bustle around the dig she might have walked straight off the cliff.

The two groups of visitors Jared had told her about during sword practice now wandered the property. A busload from Elderhostel crowded along the rim of the excavation, while a pack of schoolboys, adorable in their blazers, shorts and knee socks, reveled in a day away from the classroom. A smaller cluster of tourists ranged along the curtain wall, taking pictures with the cameras slung around their necks.

But they could wander anywhere they wanted looking at all the fascinating stuff.
They
hadn’t been officially labeled distractions. Frowning, she turned her back to them, unable to shake the feeling she’d had as a kid, when she was the only one not invited to the biggest party of the year.

She plopped Captain on the ground, but instead of getting down to business, he started scrabbling in the direction of the dig, showering the hem of her dress with tufts of grass. “Jared doesn’t want either one of us down there. Got it?” she warned sourly. “I’m a distraction and you’re the demon digger from hell.”

Captain tilted his head in his best angel imitation.

“An Oscar-worthy performance, dog,” Emma said. “You might even have convinced me if the dirt from your early-morning digging spree wasn’t still sticking to your claws.”

Captain flopped down on the grass in puppy exasperation. He might as well have demanded to know why she’d bothered to bring him outside in the first place if neither food nor jumping on Jared were involved.

“I hear what you’re thinking,” Emma said. “There’s hardly any point in Rapunzel breaking out of the tower if the witch still won’t let her play with the other kids, is there? Although technically, I suppose Jared would be considered a warlock.”

Captain’s button-free ear perked up at Butler’s name. The terrier grabbed the leash in his teeth and tried to pull Emma in the direction of the dig.

“Dumb dog. You think Jared is more like the prince since he rescued you from the dragons. But trust me. I know a thing or two about princes. I used to be married to one. Princes are supposed to be charming. And Jared Butler is way too dangerous and sexy to settle for a glass slipper at the end of the ball.”

Suddenly Captain went off like a string of firecrackers, snarling and yapping at something behind Emma. She wheeled to see what the fuss was about, then stumbled back a step as a barrage of camera lenses were all but jammed in her face. She tried to smile, figuring that the local kids who had pestered her for autographs a few days ago must have shown off their prizes to the folks in the little town she was still trying to con Butler into loaning her a car to see.

Or were these tourists who’d somehow recognized her? Her gaze locked on the mini tape recorders in the intruders’ hands. No. Not fans. Reporters. Her heart sank.

Not yet, God,
a voice inside her cried.
Not yet.
But there was no escape as the cluster of journalists started snapping off questions.

“So, Emma, what’s this about Prince Charming?” a burly man with a shaved head demanded. “Got some new man on the line, eh?”

Emma searched the repertoire of smart-aleck answers she’d grown so skilled at firing back, but came up empty. Knowing these men had overheard her thinking aloud tumbled her off balance. “Sorry to disappoint you,” she said. “But…there’s nobody new in my life except my dog.”

“You were just telling Fido here you think somebody’s way too sexy. Who’s the lucky guy?”

Emma’s cheeks burned as she scooped Captain up into her arms. “I just told you. There isn’t anybody.” She pushed past them, racing toward the castle as fast as her tangled skirts would let her. But the reporters kept pace, pounding after her, bellowing questions. A shark-eyed man in the lead cut in front of her and shoved his miniature tape recorder at her, keeping his hand just beyond Captain’s snapping teeth.

“What was that name she said, Feeny?” a man with a bulbous nose demanded, looking at Shark Eye as the others tried to block her escape. “It started with a B…Burns? Barry?”

“Butler!” Shaved Head shouted.

“No!” Emma denied, so rattled she knew damned well it had to show.

“Bingo!” the shark named Feeny crowed in triumph. “We’ve got it!”

God, what was wrong with her? Emma thought wildly as she bulldozed her way toward the castle. She was making an absolute mess of this.

“How about an exclusive, Emma?” Feeny urged in an upscale British accent far too proper for a sleazy job like his. “It’s way past time you grant the wishes of men everywhere and put that world-class body of yours back into circulation.”

Emma shoved her way through the castle door, hearing a chorus of oaths behind her as the intruders tried to jostle in after her. She couldn’t breathe. She felt vulnerable, raw. Sick to her stomach as she yanked the velvet cord out of her way and snapped it back in place.

Up the stairs. Just get up the stairs,
she told herself. How many times had she sought safety behind closed doors? Put barriers between herself and the clamoring press? Barriers they couldn’t cross. But this time was different she realized as she reached her tower room. There wasn’t a sturdy wooden door to lock. Nothing to disappear behind. Only Jared’s rope with its no-admittance sign at the foot of the stairs. A warning not much different than the one she’d ignored to explore the rocky cliffs on her first disastrous morning at the castle the week before.