The Wedding Dress

by Kimberly Cates

  Tears brimmed over her lashes, fell down her cheeks. He grabbed her by the arms, gave her a gentle shake.

  “Emma, do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  She caught her lip between her teeth and nodded.

  “There’s no place for us. Do you hear me? No future.”

  She nodded again, touching his face, his jaw, his mouth.

  He swore, groaned, running his palms up her arms. “I just wish to hell I could stop…stop wanting you so damned bad. We just made love and all I can think about is how to get you back into that bed.”

  She didn’t think twice. She let the shift bunched at her breasts go. It cascaded down her body to form a snowy ring on the floor.

  “This is madness,” Jared groaned.

  “Mad as a fairy flag and a knight on the sea,” she said softly. “Mad as believing in dragons and magic swords.”

  “Emma, it’s doomed before it starts. We both know it. Better to get the ending over with before it hurts…hurts too much. Forever is…beyond our reach.”

  She wanted forever. She wanted so much more. The kind of love Lady Aislinn knew, that would live on in legend for six hundred years.

  “Maybe we can’t have forever.” God, it hurt to admit that, down in the very center of her soul. “But our part of the story won’t be over until the music swells, until the closing credits roll. Wouldn’t it be wrong to waste…”

  “Waste what? Heartbreak? Loss? I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Her chin bumped up a notch, the fierce determination of generations of McDaniels reflected in her eyes. “I’m stronger than you know.”

  “You’re sure as hell stronger than I am if you’re ready to charge into this without armor, without any defense, knowing it will end in tears.”

  “Then trust me, sir knight. Give me just one more gift.”

  “The holy grail? A fairy flag?”

  “Something far more precious than that,” she said, drowning in his eyes. “Let’s make the most of whatever time we have left.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  EMMA SHOULD HAVE GUESSED Jared Butler would hog her bed. From the moment she’d met him he’d taken up too much space—in the car, in her head, in the room. The man’s big body sprawled across the mattress until she was forced to balance on the edge where one little nudge from his hip would send her tumbling to the floor. He’d kicked off blankets and furs, leaving them both naked to the chill night air. Emma should have been cold. Would have been, if Jared hadn’t been so deliciously warm, heat radiating off him long after they’d finally sated each other.

  Taking care to keep her balance, Emma propped herself up on her elbow, chin in hand as she watched Jared sleep, sooty lashes curled on his cheeks, one arm flung up over his head. He snored ever so softly, lips parted, his slightly crooked teeth delighting Emma to an absurd degree. Everything about him was rougher, more natural, somehow more real than any man she’d ever known.

  Shadows and light from the rising sun painted the landscape of his naked chest in gold. He should have appeared exhausted after the night they had just shared. Instead he looked like a Roman gladiator who had finally reached the Elysian Fields. Peaceful, after a life of battle. A little bewildered as if he couldn’t believe his good fortune, even through the haze of unconsciousness.

  How long had it been since the man had actually slept? Emma wondered. A deep, restful sleep, instead of tossing and turning and waking every few hours. Since he’d moved into the tower room with her? Or had she kept him awake long before that, even when he’d been able to escape the sizzling tension between them, his bed still located in his own solitary tent? Had he battled there against the attraction he couldn’t deny, the woman he couldn’t avoid?

  And when temptation to give in to his “baser instincts” had grown almost too strong to resist, had he taken out his memories of Jenny? Crushed them tight in his hand so they would cut him like broken glass, remind him of all the reasons he couldn’t…

  Lose his mind.

  His description from the night before echoed through Emma.

  At least you didn’t lose your heart….

  But how could she have helped it? If she hadn’t loved Jared already, she would have fallen hard during those anguished moments when he had bared the most tortured secrets of his soul to her, tried to make her understand how flawed he was, how hopeless. A man so monstrous he’d wished his unborn child dead.

  Except that he hadn’t. He’d been reeling, drowning in shock. Before he’d been able to surface, Jenny’s plane had crashed and he’d lost the chance to discover all the potential Emma could see beneath his gruff exterior. It was clear from the way he loved young Davey Harrison, warily, reluctantly and yet with every bit of his battered heart.

  If Jenny had lived—his child had been born—wouldn’t Jared be living a nightmare right now? Locked away from the life he was born to lead, forever haunted by his suspicion that his wife had trapped him into selling the most genuine part of his soul?

  After the pain of his childhood, would Jared ever have been able to leave Jenny? No matter how miserable he would have been? Emma doubted it. But at what cost to his heart? His sense of honor? Living forever with a wife who had deceived him in the most intimate way? And Jenny Butler had deceived him. Jared was sure of it. Emma had seen it in his eyes.

  But in the end it didn’t matter what Jenny had done. How miserable their marriage would have been. All Jared could see was the instinctive recoiling he’d felt when he’d learned Jenny was pregnant. He didn’t realize it was Jenny’s betrayal that had sparked such horror in him. A man like Jared, possessed of an honesty and honor so fierce they seemed to belong to another age.

  Jared moaned in his sleep, his hand groping across his pillow for a moment until it closed on a lock of Emma’s hair. He curled his fingers around the strand and drew it toward his face, breathing in the scent. Emma’s heart squeezed as he sighed, relaxing again into that bone-melting slumber she sensed was so foreign to his nature.

  Oh, God, would it be so terrible to stay with him? Maybe he could get used to the idea of a relationship with her, as long as she gave up the idea of children. What if Drew had been right? Being a mother wasn’t fair when you’d bring your child into the press’s spotlight.

  Emma imagined years stretching out before her, loving other people’s children. Her cousins, her sister. Their kids someday in the future. Couldn’t that be enough?

  No. The denial rang like a death knell in her heart. She couldn’t change who she was for Jared any more than she could have changed it for Drew. Without blaming him deep down in the secret places of her soul. Without resenting him eventually. That hollow ache in her chest growing bigger and bigger until it crowded out the love she felt for the brawny Scot sleeping beside her.

  “Emma?”

  Jared’s voice pulled her from her thoughts. She looked down at him, knowing she’d lost the chance to hide the sadness in her eyes.

  “The look of you,” he murmured, so vulnerable just awakened that it broke her heart. “Are you already regretting us? If that’s what putting the dark in your eyes, we can go back, pretend…”

  A lump formed in Emma’s throat. “Don’t you know that’s the magic of you? I don’t have to pretend. I can…” She lost her focus, started teetering on the bed. Jared’s arm flashed out, his reflexes amazingly sharp for a man whose eyes were still heavy with sleep. He pulled her tight against him. He felt hard and hot, solid and dangerous in the most delicious way.

  “You can what?” he encouraged.

  “I can…be who I am.” It sounded so simple, so basic. But she could see from the understanding filling Jared’s eyes that he knew just how rare it was. He pulled her mouth down for a kiss, surprisingly tender, bittersweet with a parting they both knew they could never avoid.

  “In just the few weeks since I’ve met you, you’ve learned more about me than my ex-husband ever did,” Emma marveled. “Who would have imagined it was possible? Drew and I went
to the same school from the time we were in fifth grade. At sixteen, we fell in love. And in all those years, he never understood…”

  “What?”

  “The wildness in me.”

  Jared smoothed back the curtain of hair that fell across her cheek, listening the way only he could, with such intensity Emma felt it in her very soul.

  “I was such a quiet kid when he first met me, right after my mom left. But once I got my family back, I…how can I explain it?” She shrugged, searching for the words. “There was this…the other Emma inside me, the one I was supposed to be.” She locked on to a memory. “On our first visit home after we eloped, Drew and I were out in this gazebo my uncle Cade built in the garden at March Winds right before his wedding. It’s the most romantic spot in the world. Besides here in bed with you, of course.”

  Jared smiled. “Of course.”

  “Every couple in my family has, well…christened it, so to speak.”

  “Christened it,” Jared echoed, drawing a slow figure eight on the small of her back with his fingertips.

  “There we were, the two of us, newlyweds all alone, with the flowers blooming and the butterflies dancing and the river shining a little ways away. Couldn’t have been a more perfect setting if it had been in one of Aunt Finn’s romance novels. I turned to Drew, unbuttoned my blouse and…”

  Jared’s eyes dipped down to the shadowy valley between her breasts. His lids narrowed. His gaze heated. “No translation necessary. The lucky son of a bitch.”

  “That’s just it. Drew didn’t think so.”

  Jared snorted in disbelief. “You should’ve called in the paramedics. The man must’ve been dead.”

  His reaction warmed Emma, soothed the sting that still lingered from Drew’s rejection.

  “Actually, he was sort of…horrified that I would want to make love there. He said there was a chance somebody might walk by, see…”

  “And wouldn’t that be half the fun of it, then? That little spice of danger.”

  Emma grinned at him. “I knew you’d understand.”

  “If I ever got you in that gazebo, Emma McDaniel, you’d best be ready for sure. If somebody walked by, they’d get a grand show.”

  Emma shivered as if she could already feel the soft river breezes on bare skin, hear Jared’s husky murmurs of arousal. “Just imagine what the paparazzi could do with those pictures,” she teased.

  Jared’s smile died. His face thunderous, a fearsome protectiveness in his rugged features that would have made even the most tenacious photographer turn and run. “I’d break the camera over their bloody heads. Stalking any woman of mine like that.”

  Emma’s heart turned over at the possessiveness laced through his whiskey-warm Scottish burr.

  Any woman of mine… But he’d told her there hadn’t been any women in his bed for a long time. Even when he’d talked of his wife, he’d sounded as if she were someone distant, as removed from him as if they’d been on opposite sides of a stone curtain wall. The rough protectiveness in his voice told her as nothing else could that even if he didn’t love her, she’d somehow edged her way inside to where the real Jared dwelled, believing no one could see him.

  Emma closed her eyes for a moment, imagining light filtering through the gazebo’s gingerbread trim, drizzling liquid honey over Jared’s back as he covered her body with his, every atom of his concentration centered on her moans, her sighs. Sighs? No, sounds far louder than that.

  She chuckled.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I was just thinking it’s probably a good thing you’ll never come to Illinois. It’s one thing to steal a quickie in the gazebo, but another thing to announce it to…” Her cheeks burned, but not with shame. “Well, I guess we could try it in winter, if everybody in the house had their windows closed. And the stereo was on full blast.”

  He growled, pressing a hot kiss to her throat. “I wouldn’t give a damn if the whole world heard us. They’d either be jealous or be getting ideas of their own.” He sobered, his voice a little wistful. “But then, I’ll never come to Illinois.”

  “No,” Emma agreed, knowing it was true.

  This castle was their place. Now was their time. This tiny, jeweled fragment of their lives, too brief to sully with wishing it could be more. She swallowed hard. “I just wanted to…to thank you for understanding the…the rebel in me.”

  “I’m honored that you let me know you, Emma,” he said, touching his lips to hers with a tenderness that stunned her. “I always will be.”

  She threaded her fingers in his, her hand feeling lost until he enclosed it in his bearlike grip. She pressed his hand upward, over his head, held it there as she shifted to lie atop him. She reveled in the contrast. His hard against her soft, his rough against her smooth, need even more urgent because reality lay in wait beyond the castle’s wall to snatch it all away.

  Emma’s hair tumbled around them both, wreathing Jared in a waterfall of living silk, closing out the rest of the world.

  JARED HAD BARELY buttoned the fly of his olive drab cargo pants when the door in the great hall crashed open, the bang of the heavy oak panel against the castle wall below echoing warning up the winding stairs. Grabbing a white T-shirt, he blocked the entrance to the chamber to give Emma a moment to pull herself together before the tower was invaded.

  He glanced over to where she’d stood, gloriously naked a few moment’s ago, saw that she’d managed to clothe herself as well. Jeans hugged her curves, her glowing face hidden by folds of the loose knit green sweater she was pulling over her head. He should have been remedying his own state of undress, but pale slivers of Emma’s midriff tantalized him as she wrestled the hem of the sweater over her breasts, the dimple of her still-exposed navel reminding him of a dozen wicked things he wanted to do to her once darkness fell again.

  Emma tugged her tousled hair from the cowl neck as the sound of footsteps rushed toward the tower stairs. He pulled his own shirt on, emerging a moment later to see her turn toward him. Something twisted in his chest. Possessiveness. Awe.

  She looked a little shy, a lot satisfied, like a woman who’d been thoroughly made love to. Jared wondered if any of his students would be perceptive enough to notice the whisker burn he’d left on the tender curve of her cheek. Damn if Jared hadn’t finally found a reason for bothering to shave more than once every week or so. More amazing still, for the first time in his life he couldn’t wait until the day’s excavating was over.

  But the impatience flaring inside him vanished as Davey Harrison’s voice bounced up the spiral staircase, the sound punctuated by the pounding of his running feet.

  “Emma…Dr. Butler…” the boy gasped, as if he’d sprinted the whole way from his tent. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry.” Davey burst through the stone archway into the room. Jared caught him by the arms to steady him. Any concern that the boy would guess what Jared and Emma had got up to the night before vanished as he glimpsed the lad’s stricken face.

  “Easy there, mate.” Jared gave Davey’s biceps a bracing squeeze. “Calm down now. Nothing can be bad as all that.”

  “Oh, yes it can.” His eyes darkened with guilt. “I can’t believe I could be so—so stupid.”

  “Davey,” Emma soothed. “You’re anything but stupid.” But her comforting words only deepened the grooves desperation carved in the youth’s brow.

  “I was stupid.” Davey ripped himself away from Jared’s grasp. “Stupid, stupid, stupid, just like the other kids said.”

  Dread crackled along Jared’s nerves. He hadn’t heard Davey so rattled since the day the lad announced that his mother was making him take that blasted dead-end job. But at the moment, Davey barely knew Jared was in the room. He rushed toward Emma, his voice quavering. “It’s just that he looked so pathetic, I figured if I let him sleep with me…”

  “Lad, you’re not making any sense.” Jared fought to keep the alarm from his voice. “Slow down and—”

  “It’s Captain,” Emma cut in ev
enly. Only the tiniest loss of color in her cheeks betrayed her dismay, but Jared felt it in the center of his chest.

  Davey nodded miserably. “Captain dug his way under the side of the tent.” The boy’s voice broke. “I only hoped he’d…he’d come to find you…You’d hear him barking…”

  “No,” Emma faltered, giving Jared a pained glance. “We…didn’t hear anything.”

  Hell, Jared doubted either he or Emma would’ve noticed a cannon being fired off under the tower window last night. They’d been engrossed in each other, the rest of the world a million miles away. Trust that wretched dog to ruin the morning after. Probably punishing Jared for moving into Emma’s bed. Well, Captain’s ploy had worked. Emma might be putting up a good front, but behind her actress mask, Jared knew she was scared as hell. That was one bit of mischief he’d see the terrier paid for.

  “The wee devil must be around here somewhere.” Jared stalked across the room to look out the window, hoping he might catch a glimpse of dingy fur from the vantage point. “He’s probably off digging somewhere he shouldn’t.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Davey said, “but everyone’s been looking and he’s nowhere on the site. If something happens to him, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  Sunlight glinted on the white of Davey’s scar, or was it just Jared’s imagination? Or his own secret terror of the fragility he still feared in the boy?

  “Don’t worry, boyo. Losing that dog would be impossible as losing a blister on your heel. He’ll turn up, if only for the fun of annoying the hell out of me. Saddle up the horses for Emma and me. We’ll be able to cover more ground that way.”

  “Right.” Davey bolted toward the stairs, so recklessly Jared yelled after him. “Breaking your neck won’t solve anything, lad!”

  But Emma intercepted the boy, hugged him tight. Her brow clouded with fear for the boy that echoed Jared’s own. “Davey, this isn’t your fault,” she said fiercely. “No matter what happens, you’re much more important to me than a dog.”