The Wedding Dress

by Kimberly Cates

  “See that they’re techno-garbage,” Emma admitted reluctantly. “I’d hate to prove him right.”

  “No way! You were fantastic in the first two movies. You played the strongest woman I’d ever seen. It was only later that the director got all caught up in special effects. That’s his failing. Not yours. Dr. Butler is a smart man. He’d see how terrific you are.”

  Jared, with his murder-weapon books and his genius degree from University Of Davey’s Dream. A dream Jared had made come true. If anything, the confidences Davey had just shared about the man made Emma want to buy up every copy of Jade from here to Glasgow and bury them under the castle wall.

  But Davey looked so hopeful, so earnest, Emma couldn’t very well tell the kid his taste in movies stunk. Instead, she hugged the boy.

  “I’m grateful. Really, for how you keep trying to defend me,” she said. “But Jared Butler watching my movies? That’s one thing that will never happen.”

  “Emma, just—”

  “Dr. Butler will never watch Jade Star.” Her voice dropped low with painful honesty. “And frankly, Davey, neither willI.”

  The sudden heavy thud of the outer door echoed up the staircase.

  “Speak of the devil.” Emma gave herself a mental shake. “Looks like your boss is here.”

  Davey fidgeted. “Listen, don’t tell him…well, that I told you about the book and all. He gets real touchy about…”

  “Letting anyone know he’s a poet at heart?”

  “He’s just not as hard-edged as he acts. He’s got…soft places, too.”

  Not so Emma had noticed. At least not on that amazing body. But his heart…

  “He’s like…did you ever read Le Morte d’Arthur? Remember when Morgause trapped the king behind an invisible wall?”

  “I remember.”

  “Sometimes I think all his life, Dr. Butler’s been waiting for someone to care enough, be stubborn enough, to knock it down.”

  At that moment, Butler himself strode into view, scowling like a highland raider, his backpack slung over one broad shoulder, his sword in its scabbard balanced on the other. “What was my rucksack doing at the bottom of the stairs?”

  “I dropped it,” Emma confessed, knowing she’d dropped plenty of other baggage as well since she and Davey had climbed up to the tower room. “I’m…sorry.”

  Jared stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Are you suffering from multiple personality disorder, McDaniel? Half an hour ago you were threatening to poison me.”

  “Yeah, well, I changed my mind. You can live for all I care. At least until I can kick your butt with a sword. After that…well, poison does seem a little extreme. I mean, after my training is over we’ll never have to see each other again.”

  Oh, God. Maybe Jared was right. She was going crazy, babbling like the village idiot. Worse still was the sinking feeling she got, knowing her final observation was true. Once these few weeks were over, she and Jared Butler would go back to their separate worlds.

  The thought should have soothed Emma’s ragged nerves. But it didn’t. Her gaze flicked to Jared’s mouth, so sexy, so compelling. Something more clung to his lips and hid within the glen-green depths of his eyes. Pain. Compassion. Sensitivity. A soul-deep loneliness that called to Emma’s heart.

  She turned away, closed her eyes, but this time she saw Jared, not in his canvas cargo pants and scruffy T-shirt, but as Davey had described him.

  Exhausted, trapped behind an enchanted wall, his body battered as he fought a young lad’s demons, more valiant than any knight could ever be.

  Chapter Eleven

  NO WONDER SIR BRANNOC went stark raving mad after months of guarding the most beautiful woman in Scotland a mere ten paces from her bed. Jared had only been trapped in the tower room for three hours and already he—an archaeologist, for God’s sake—was beginning to think installing a door in six-hundred-year-old castle walls wasn’t such a rash idea after all. As long as he got to stay on one side of all that lovely galvanized steel and Emma McDaniel remained on the other.

  Even that demon dog of hers would have offered a welcome distraction. But Davey had taken the animal with him when he’d fled down the stairs as if his bum was on fire. The kid had looked almost guilty. But then, it had to be tough for Davey, torn between his loyalty to Jared and his understandable fascination with the first beautiful woman ever to lavish attention on him.

  What chance did a raw lad like Davey have of resisting Emma McDaniel’s allure when the actress had shattered even Jared’s laser-like concentration?

  Jared prowled Emma’s tower room like a lion in a menagerie at feeding time, the air thick with a hunger that rattled the hell out of him. Every nerve in his body strung tight as a longbow about to be fired. What the hell was wrong with him?

  Lust. Pure and simple. And the woman, curled up on her bed for the past two hours, wasn’t helping defuse his predicament a damned bit.

  Emma draped herself across the furs like a medieval goddess, a circlet of silver flowers gleaming in her hair, her brow furrowed with concentration as she studied her script. She’d surprised the hell out of Jared when he’d returned from walking Davey downstairs, her modern khaki capri pants and white blouse banished somewhere out of sight, her lush body once again garbed in a flowing gown LadyAislinn might have worn.

  I told you that you didn’t have to wear those clothes unless we’re training, he’d snapped, his voice harsh even to his own ears as he imagined the silky bare curves he might have seen if he’d returned to the room a little more quickly. Hell, he probably could have set an Olympic record in sprinting with that kind of motivation. If he’d allowed his baser instincts to kick in. Which he would not. Could not.

  She’d smiled at him—disarmingly shy—all but driving him to his knees to beg for mercy. It just feels right to wear these clothes here. Makes me feel closer to Lady Aislinn, you know?

  Then how about if we keep this whole thing historically accurate? Jared was tempted to say. Tonight you sleep the way Lady Aislinn did.

  Naked.

  But naked might be easier for him to resist than the way she looked now. A tousled stowaway from another century, as out of place in modern times as he was. Jared ran his tongue over lips parched with a thirst all the water in the world couldn’t quench. God, she was so beautiful.

  Bloodred velvet pooled along one smooth golden-brown leg, bared to the knee when she had shifted position on the furs. Her surcoat slipped low to expose one graceful white shoulder. The cloth was embroidered with an interlaced design of St. George’s dragons and Scotland’s wildcats tangled together in what should have been battle, yet kept twisting in his mind’s eye to something far more sensual.

  Candlelight dipped shadowy fingers into the cleavage her shift was meant to conceal, the drawstring that should have gathered the wide neckline to a more decent height obviously tied too loosely in her haste to cover herself before he returned to the room.

  Jared could’ve saved himself plenty of agony if he’d just told her to refasten the thing, but damned if he could make himself do it. Every time he tried to say something, he imagined his own fingers tracing the elegant line of her throat, the delicate ridge of her collarbone, the ripe swell of breast.

  His mouth went dry as he pictured himself drawing her to her feet, snagging the end of that wayward drawstring, tugging it until the loop of the bow came free. Palms on her shoulders, he’d skim the fabric down her arms….

  And then Emma McDaniel would rip his eyeballs out.

  At least that would have been the outcome if he’d tried to seduce her a few hours ago when she’d been threatening to poison him.

  But now…

  He glanced over at her, caught her looking at him with eyes dark as midnight and twice as mysterious. That red mouth glistened, so kissable his shaft swelled against the fly of his cargo pants. He hoped like hell the pockets stuffed with the tools of his trade disguised the fact that he was once again hard as the rock on Craigmorrigan’s
cliffs. But damned if he was taking any chances of her seeing how she affected him. He searched for a way to distract them both.

  “You haven’t turned the page for almost an hour,” Jared accused. “If it takes you that long to memorize a part it’s a miracle you ever finished a movie at all.”

  She flushed, moistened her lips with her tongue. “I…I can’t seem to concentrate.”

  Neither can I. At least, on anything except getting my hands all over you.

  “I usually bribe someone to run lines with me. Drew or…or since he left, Sam.”

  “Sam?” Jealousy poked Jared with a pointed stick.

  “My best friend back in L.A. She taught me to ride.”

  Sam was a woman. Jared clenched his teeth, irritated at the relief that surged through him. First he’d been jealous of her stepfather, now this Sam person? Even if they had turned out to be her current flames, why should he care?

  Hell, he hadn’t felt so much as a twinge the semester his wife had set the whole campus talking, running to one-on-one poetry critiquing sessions with the English professor who’d fancied himself a modern-day Byron. Even when the sessions had lasted half the night, Jared had been relieved she wasn’t waiting at home for him. That finally she’d found something she was passionate about. That delusion shattered when she’d finally thrown her sheaf of poetry in the garbage, admitting she hadn’t cared about anything besides getting Jared’s attention.

  If there was one thing Emma McDaniel had proven in her three weeks at the castle—the woman was passionate about her work. One more driving force Jared couldn’t help but admire.

  Emma grimaced, oblivious to the thoughts racing through Jared’s mind. “I thought about asking Davey to run lines with me,” she mused, “but he takes everything so seriously. Somehow the idea of him playing the conqueror of Craigmorrigan was—well, out of character. And I’ve got such a wicked sense of humor that I was afraid I might laugh by accident and completely humiliate the poor kid.”

  “I could do it.” The words fell out of Jared’s mouth before he could stop them.

  Emma’s gaze sprang to his, a frozen, almost deer-in-head-lights expression on her face for a fleeting moment. “No. I couldn’t. I mean, you already have to teach me riding and swordplay and whatnot. And you made it clear the script drives you crazy. Why torture yourself?”

  “Torture is pacing around this tower with nothing to do.” Except imagining having hot sex. “Besides, I have a completely selfish motive. If I run lines with you, I can see how badly the screenwriter has mangled things since last time I read the script. I made such a pain in the arse of myself in the early days, Robards told me to back off.”

  “You? A pain in the arse? Hard to believe, Butler.” Her eyes danced. “You’ve been a regular Dragon Prince…I mean, Prince Charming since I got here.”

  Jared laughed. “Sir Brannoc is the villain. A Dragon Prince seems to be just what’s in order here.”

  “Then you should be spot-on. You’ve already got that growly look down to an art form. But the lumpy cargo pants—well, let’s just say it’s a good thing I have a brilliant imagination. I can dress you in something more appropriate in my head.”

  Her gaze swept from his face down his body. He hoped like hell she wouldn’t notice the extra ridge straining the fly of his canvas pants. But her cheeks reddened. She turned her face away, obviously scrambling to find a distraction for them both.

  “About the script—Robards expects me to improvise here and there. Actors do it all the time. If something feels wrong to you, we could fix it together.”

  “You’d let me do that?” he queried, surprised.

  “Nobody knows what LadyAislinn and Sir Brannoc would say better than you do. Or at least nobody could make a better guess.” Emma frowned. “Don’t you wish we really could know what they said to each other? How they felt inside? Where Lady Aislinn got the courage to fight him? I’m not challenging your scholarship. It’s only…” She glanced around the room, wistful, as if searching the shadows for ghosts or clues. “Sometimes I feel like there must have been so much more.”

  Kinship. It sank deep in his bones, more alarming even than the pull of sensual attraction. “That feeling is what keeps me here at Craigmorrigan,” Jared confided. “What makes this dig so important to me. A puzzle with missing pieces only I can see. And once this movie is filmed, I’ll lose the chance to get it right.”

  “That’s not true. Your book—”

  “How many people are going to read it?” he challenged.

  “Once the movie comes out—plenty. And they’ll be as fascinated as I was.”

  “You read it?” Jared asked in surprise.

  “Yeah. The moment I finished the script I raced over to the UCLA library and snapped it up. I would have ordered it on Amazon but I couldn’t wait that long, even for the speediest delivery. My stepfather says that when God was handing out patience, we McDaniels thought He said ‘pasties’ and ran screaming in the opposite direction.”

  “Pasties?” Jared echoed, nonplussed.

  “He spent his childhood backstage in Las Vegas with a bunch of showgirls. Sometimes things just slip out.”

  “Another family trait,” Jared quipped, but he was still trying to imagine Emma racing to the library, hauling his massive book down from the shelf. He could almost hear her choking on the cloud of dust she must have unleashed.

  “Reading the book must have been a jolt for you,” Jared sympathized. “Going from potential soundbytes in a movie script to dry academic fare.”

  “Are you kidding? I stayed up all night, read until my eyes felt like they were going to roll out of my head. The book took my breath away. No wonder the script was driving you crazy, trying to squeeze all that action into a few hours of film. And God knows what Robards is going to leave on the cutting-room floor to bring it in at two and a half hours.”

  “I doubt anybody will miss it.”

  “I will. But if this movie is our one chance to reach them, help me convey as much of the story as possible through the words I say and the way I say them. I really do want to get this right, Jared. She matters to me. Lady Aislinn. That’s why I keep pestering you with so many questions, why I’m wearing her clothes.” She shrugged, her shift sliding down her shoulder another inch. “I want to be a part of this story. A part of this place. It haunts me.”

  Jared’s mouth went dry as he once again lost himself in those velvety-brown eyes. Of all the words in the world he could have chosen to describe his link to this castle and its long-vanished lady, haunted was almost eerily apt. Haunted by a woman who had so loved her husband she’d endured captivity, outsmarting the vilest of mercenaries to protect his holdings, his people. A woman willing to stand with those she loved no matter how unbearable things got, day after day. A woman who would never have deserted her husband.

  Or her son….

  Jared winced inwardly at the shard of insight that buried itself in his consciousness like a sliver of glass, leaving him bleeding.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, needing to get away from Emma McDaniel’s far-too-penetrating gaze. Impulsively, he snagged his rucksack and headed down the spiral stairs. He sagged for a moment against a wooden bench, wondering why he’d never thought of his bond with Lady Aislinn in that way before. Remembering his grubby child’s hand clamped in his father’s callused one as Angus Butler helped him explore the castle ruins.

  And she wouldn’t leave, Da? Even when the bad knight made her fight with swords and he beat her again and again?

  No, lad. For her love was more stalwart than the cliffs. As true love should always be….

  Do you love me that way, Da?

  Angus had rumpled Jared’s hair. Not even Sir Brannoc’s whole army would ever chase me away.

  Jared had known his father expected a laugh. But he couldn’t help himself. Mam didn’t love me that way. Gran said no decent mother would ever just leave her boy behind like that.

  Angus had knelt dow
n, folding his big workman’s frame until he could look Jared straight in the eye. Your mam’s coming back, Jared. I know it.

  But Gran said—

  Your Gran is a fine woman, but she doesn’t believe in magic like you and I do. Maybe…maybe your mother is in a secret cave guarded by a dragon, or lost in a castle’s maze. Or maybe she wandered into a fairy ring, and the sidhe carried her away on a white horse. You know, six hundred years ago, the folk hereabouts whispered that is what happened to the lady of this castle.

  Jared had fidgeted, torn between Gran’s practical world and his father’s fanciful one. That’s not what my book says. It says that Lady Aislinn hid the flag so it wouldn’t fall into evil hands and Sir Brannoc pushed her right off the cliff.

  His father had seemed to consider. No one witnessed her fall, did they? Not one person in all the records of that time.

  But they think—

  Nobody knows for sure what happened at Castle Craigmorrigan on that fateful day. The people who write your books just study and try to guess, but that doesn’t mean their story is true.

  But Sir Brannoc was the evilest man in all Scotland, Da. And Lady Aislinn’s husband was coming back from the wars. They found her crown of flowers on a branch halfway down the cliff and a piece of her gown.

  Ah, but hadn’t Lady Aislinn already proved herself clever, and the fairies, they’d sworn to protect the keeper of their magic flag. I think the fairies carried Lady Aislinn away to their world, where there is nothing but joy. Only the one who finds the fairy flag someday will know the truth. It might even bring the lady of Castle Craigmorrigan back to the world hundreds of years later. Can’t you see her, boy? In your mind? Brave Lady Aislinn stepping out of the mist in her fairy gown, a crown of gold on her head?

  Jared had quavered, hardly daring to hope. Maybe she’d bring all the people the fairies stole away to Tir Nan Og. If I found the fairy flag, do you think I’d find Mum?

  You just grow into the finest lad you can be. Make sure when Mary walks back in that door you’ll be a son she can be proud of.