Kimberly Cates
THE WEDDING DRESS

To my husband, Dave, who has helped rescue more puppies than I can count. Thank you for twenty-six years of catching frightened strays and breaking up dogfights for me. You are never more my hero than when you utter that long-suffering sigh I love so much and say, “I’ll do it. I’ll heal faster.”

THE WEDDING DRESS

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter One

Emma’s World Shatters

TWENTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD Emma McDaniel winced as she recognized the headline blazing across the tabloid a college-aged girl was devouring in the airport baggage claim. Unfortunately, neither huddling deeper into the enveloping folds of her raincoat nor tugging the brim of her Witness Protection ball cap lower to shadow her face could shield Emma from the pain. She knew the fine print on the glossy cover by heart.

Jade Star actress faces studio insiders’ doubts to attempt role of a lifetime…Her beaming ex-husband brings home the baby she refused to give him.

Images in living color flashed into Emma’s head: The picture of Drew Lawson, the only man she’d ever loved, leaving the hospital in Whitewater, Illinois, his face aglow as he cradled his new daughter in his arms while Emma’s onetime best friend, Jessie, leaned against him, her shy face luminous. The joyous new parents stood out in sharp counterpoint to the paparazzi shots of Emma back in L.A., thronged by reporters clamoring for her reaction to the news about Drew’s child. She could still hear them shouting…

“Emma, your fans are dying to know how you feel.”

How the hell do you think I feel? She’d wanted to fling back at them. Read your own damned press clippings and you should be able to figure it out.

Instead, she’d given an Oscar-worthy performance, forcing a brilliant smile. “I know Drew will be a wonderful father…”

She’d always known he would be. But if she had to pretend one more time it didn’t hurt that he’d fathered a child with a different woman…

She shoved her sunglasses farther up her nose, praying no one would recognize her before she retrieved her luggage, found her ride and dropped off the face of the earth. But then, there were times Emma barely recognized herself anymore.

A tight, panicky feeling cinched Emma’s lungs as she surreptitiously scanned the crowd of passengers just arrived at Glasgow’s airport. And she felt suddenly, horribly exposed.

Emma, traveling alone is a really bad idea, her mother’s voice warned in her head. It could even be dangerous. If someone recognizes you before you meet up with this historical consultant, anything could happen.

Emma could get mobbed for autographs, pounced on by photographers, stalked by an obsessed fan…God, how had life gotten so insane? And why hadn’t she noticed until Drew walked out the door?

I need to get out of here, Emma thought, searching for the man who was supposed to meet her. Dr. Jared Butler, experimental archaeologist—whatever that was. The brilliant scholar who had made Castle Craigmorrigan and its heroic fourteenth-century lady his life’s work.

Ever since she’d gotten the call telling her to hop on the next flight to Scotland, Emma had pictured Butler as a cross between Albert Einstein and her high school history teacher—a single eyebrow crawling across his forehead like a runaway caterpillar, pop-bottle-thick glasses, frizzy white hair and rumpled tweed suits bought sometime in the 1930s. But there wasn’t a genius in sight.

A surly dark-haired man in a cream sweater slouched in a plastic molded chair and scowled at a book that looked heavy enough to be used as a murder weapon. A cluster of exuberant American kids on tour crowded around a teacher who was taking a head count. Businessmen with briefcases eyed their wristwatches as the luggage started spilling onto the conveyor belt.

But no one held the sign Emma’s director had promised would be waiting for her when she stepped off the plane. Not a discreet card reading E. M. in sight. Nobody even seemed to be searching the crowd with that somewhat awed expression she’d come to know after six years of being swept from movie set to movie set.

“Where the hell is he?” she muttered, peering past families hugging each other and vacationing trekkers ready to wallow in Scotland’s wild beauty.

For an instant Emma wished she’d taken her mother up on her offer to accompany her, help her settle in. But Emma had spent enough time grieving for all the things that would never be. It was time she learned how to be alone.

She had to focus on the one thing that mattered now. The sign from God that her luck had changed. The part of a lifetime she’d thought beyond her reach was hers now.

By accident, a voice reminded her. If Angelica Robards hadn’t fallen off a horse and landed in traction, you’d still be trapped in L.A., being hammered by the studio to stick to what you do best. A fifth sequel of Jade Star.

Okay, so it was true what insiders said—that the screen-play for Lady Valiant had been written specifically for Angelica Robards. The Meryl Streep of Emma’s generation had told the world and Jay Leno the tale of how she had first heard of Lady Aislinn from locals during her honeymoon in Scotland. A pub owner had pointed her to an obscure book this genius Butler had written, and Angelica had fallen head-over-heels in love with the story. The actress had given her new husband, one of Hollywood’s most gifted directors, no peace until Barry presented the script to her as an anniversary gift the following year. But no matter what the Robards’ intentions had been, the part of Lady Aislinn was Emma’s now.

Emma’s opportunity to show the world that she was more than futuristic gizmos and special effects. Emma’s chance to break out of the role that had left her typecast and her career dead in the water.

Well, not her career, Emma had to admit to herself. The character of Jade Star was still box office gold. It was Emma’s creativity that was drowning, her love of her craft, her dreams of playing roles that tested not only her physical strength, but the depth of her heart.

And portraying the Scotswoman who’d defied Scotland’s most ruthless villain in 1305 would demand every shred of courage Emma could find within herself. She would have to dig deeper, reach further, strip her emotions so raw that the audience would be as devastated as Emma had been at the end of the script, when the brave lady of Castle Craigmorrigan plunged to her death off the rugged, sea-swept cliff.

And at the end of the ordeal, maybe, just maybe Emma would find herself.

She dove for her suitcase as it whizzed past, wrestling it off the conveyor, the simple black bag so heavy it almost dislocated her shoulder. The ball cap fell off, dislodging her sunglasses, her trademark black curls tumbling down from the elastic band she’d bundled them into an ocean ago. Cover blown, she thought miserably as a screech sounded from across the room.

“Ohmigod!”

Emma knew in her gut it was Tabloid Girl. She felt some of the other passengers glance her way, but fortunately most were still too engrossed in retrieving their own luggage to pay much attention.

Tabloid Girl clutched the magazine to her chest and rushed toward Emma, breathless. “It’s you, isn’t it? It really is you!” Her voice dropped to an awed whisper. “Emma McDaniel.”

Emma retrieved her cap, but there was no point in trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle. She shoved the hat in her giant black purse. “You must be thinking of the other Emma McDaniel,” she attempted to joke. The one who could have run through the middle of an airport half naked without anyone noticing. Well, maybe someone would.

“I adored your last movie,” the girl enthused. “The special effects were amazing.”

If the glossy tabloid cover hadn’t been right in Emma’s line of sight, she could have managed to be a lot more gracious. Instead, Emma cursed the man who was supposed to meet her. Where the hell was Butler? A few minutes more and this girl would be asking the pain-and-heartbreak questions everyone seemed to level at Emma these days.

“My name’s Sandy,” the girl supplied, thrusting out the hand that wasn’t clutching the tabloid.

“Sandy,” Emma repeated, briefly shaking the girl’s hand. “I’m glad you liked the movie, but I can hardly take credit for the special effects.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

Emma stared pointedly at the tabloid. “As a matter of fact, I’ve decided never to answer a question again.”

The girl flushed, glancing down at the lurid headline. “Oh, God. You must hate magazines like this. Articles about…well, your creep of an ex-husband. What pond scum!”

If only Emma could relegate Drew to slime level, her life would be so much easier. She gritted her teeth, determined to keep quiet. Sandy just rushed on.

“Running off with your best friend—what a jerk.”

“I knew Jessie a lifetime ago, in high school.” Damn, Emma cursed herself. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t rise to the bait. “Listen, Sandy, I appreciate your support, but I really don’t want to talk about this.”

“And why should you? I say good riddance to the asshole. I mean, who needs him when you get paid to kiss guys like Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson? And your last movie—wow! What was it like? Having Brad Pitt look you in the eyes like that, loving you, knowing he could never have you because he was turning into a werewolf? Women all through the theater were having spontaneous orgasms.”

“Actually, Brad wasn’t even in the room when we shot that scene. I was talking to a white stick that gave me a focal point so I knew where the computer-generated wolf-guy would be once they put him in.”

“Oh.” The girl sighed in disappointment.

Emma could just imagine Sandy’s reaction if she told the whole truth. That she’d barely noticed Brad, werewolf or otherwise, during the filming because she’d been sick to her stomach most of the time, knowing that with every Jade line she spoke she was digging herself deeper into the creative wasteland where typecast actors lived.

What an odd sensation, the whole world believing she was a roaring success when she could feel everything she treasured slipping through her fingers. If she’d known how much top billing Jade would cost her, would she have taken the part at all?

Emma’s heart squeezed, remembering how hungry she’d been to get on stage—fresh out of drama school, newly married, so full of dreams about how wonderful life would be.

Now here she was an ocean away from her life with Drew, her palms sweating with self-doubt as she prepared for her first new role in six years. Feeling so disillusioned that the Emma who’d spent her honeymoon gorging on the Broadway shows she was determined to star in seemed like a stranger.

Sandy grimaced. “I guess sometimes it’s better not to know about all that movie magic stuff, you know? It kind of ruins things.”

“Maybe you should try reading a book.”

The low burr of the sexiest Scottish accent Emma had ever heard sent a shiver of attraction through her. She turned to see who the voice belonged to and found herself face-to-face with the surly dark-haired man she’d noticed earlier. The Scot stared at the tabloid’s headline, every fiber of his being radiating scorn.

And there was a whole lot of being to radiate. From the time Emma had hit her growth spurt, she had been one of the tallest kids in class. Some of her leading men had to wear risers in their shoes. But this guy loomed over her by at least six inches, one of his big hands holding the “murder weapon” as negligently as if it were a postcard, his cable-knit sweater doing nothing to soften shoulders Brad Pitt would have envied. Wind-tousled mahogany hair curled in thick waves about a face hewn rugged as the Scottish crags she’d seen in books she’d used for research. Two days’ worth of stubble darkened a belligerent jut of jaw.

Fierce green eyes burned into Emma’s with such intensity she shifted her own a few inches down his face, instinctively trying to shield herself from a gaze designed to strip souls of their secrets.

She knew in a heartbeat she’d jumped straight into the fire. For an instant, she forgot to breathe as her gaze locked on one of God’s nastier practical jokes.

This arrogant bundle of raw testosterone had the most amazing mouth Emma had ever seen. Soul-blisteringly sensual, just a whisper sensitive, the left side of his full upper lip curling a fraction higher than the right.

A woman could get herself into big trouble if she spent much time around a mouth like that.

“Ms. McDaniel. You’ll have to excuse me,” he drawled. “I didn’t recognize you without your spandex suit.”

Ouch. Too bad the man’s personality wasn’t as gorgeous as his looks.

“I never wear spandex when I fly,” Emma countered breezily. “It seems to distract the pilots.” For once she wished she really was armed with the freeze blaster she’d carried in the last Jade Star—she’d point it at this jerk’s face and turn him into a giant snow cone.

He turned toward Sandy, then slid the tabloid out of the girl’s hand. “I’ll be doing you a favor by getting rid of this thing. Between movies like Jade Star and gossip rags like this, it’s amazing you have a single functioning brain cell left.”

Sandy looked as if the man had kicked her puppy. Okay, so the tabloid was trash, but Sandy was already embarrassed Emma had caught her with the thing—utter humiliation wasn’t necessary.

Emma pasted on her ice-queen face as she flashed him the glare that had made Robert de Niro back down in Jade III: Revenge of the Star Demon. “Actually, I was about to autograph the article for Sandy,” she said, digging a pen from her purse. “I wouldn’t be anywhere if it weren’t for the support of my fans.” Emma cringed as the words spilled out of her mouth. So much for keeping a low profile.

“By all means, sign your picture.” He held the tabloid out to Emma as if he were disposing of a dead rat. “I wouldn’t dream of coming between you and your work.”

“And I wouldn’t dream of coming between you and whatever it is you do when you’re not butting into conversations that are none of your business.”

She scooped the tabloid out of the man’s hand and made a huge deal out of choosing which of the pictures to sign as she waited for the jerk to go away. But he stayed put, as persistent as chewing gum in the tread of her little sister’s running shoes. Finally she scrawled her name in red ink across the picture of her brittle smile. Emma the actress, pretending not to care.

Pretending, just like she was pretending now. She handed the magazine to Sandy, who thanked her and fled into the crowd. Then Emma snapped up the handle on her suitcase and started to wheel it toward the exit.

A hard hand flashed out, grabbing her by the arm. She whirled around, heart hammering against her chest. Sexy Mouth was so close she could feel his breath hot on her cheek. Alarm prickled the hair at Emma’s nape.

“Take your hand off me,” she warned. Her right arm swept up hard. The man swore in surprise and pain as she broke his hold, the book he held in his other hand crashing onto the toe of his scuffed leather boot. If there was a God, Sexy Mouth should have a bruise the size of Manhattan come morning.

“Bloody hell!” Green eyes fired with fury. One second too late, she remembered her stepfather’s warning about the defense moves her ex-Army Ranger grandfather had taught her as a child. The old man’s tricks are great, but don’t ever pull them on somebody who really could kick your ass or you might get a nasty surprise.

The Scot glanced around, evidently aware people were starting to stare. His rugged cheeks darkened. Jake had been right. Making this stranger mad wasn’t the smartest thing she’d ever done. The Scotsman rubbed his arm, hard biceps outlined against the cream-colored yarn as he took a menacing step toward her.

“Do I have to call security?” Emma demanded, searching for a uniformed guard.

“Go ahead. Try it.” His gaze pierced her. “I’m the one who nearly got a broken arm here. I figure I’ve already got you on assault, hands down.” Too late Emma could hear warning bells that sounded a lot like lawsuit, lawsuit.

“Listen, Mr…” She didn’t know his name, but he sure as heck knew hers. Not good, Emma. Not good. “I’d like to say it’s been nice talking to you, but that would be a lie.”

“Isn’t that what actresses do for a living?” he asked cynically. “Lie?”

Emma’s breath hissed between her teeth. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had made her this furious. Hadn’t felt any emotion this sharp since she’d plunged into the haze of regrets and grief, rejection and self-doubt that had plagued her for the past two years.

“Why, you pompous, arrogant…”

“Have you made enough of a scene?” he asked. “Or do you want me to have the PA system announce to the whole world you’re here?”

“I don’t want you to do a damned thing except leave me alone!”

“That makes two of us. But it looks like we’re stuck with each other.”

“No. We’re not. Because I’m leaving.”

The left corner of those wicked lips ticked up a notch. “You want to walk to the excavation site in those ridiculous shoes, it’s fine with me. I’ll see you sometime next month.”

“Excavation site?” Horror flooded through Emma. “Oh, God.” So much for rumpled suits bought sometime during the 1930s. The man standing before her hadn’t even been born then. And as for life’s work…how long could that amount to with this guy? All of ten years? “Please,” she said, knowing the axe was about to fall, “don’t tell me you’re—”

“Dr. Jared Butler at your service, milady.” He executed a bow dripping with sarcasm, ridiculous in the modern-day airport, and yet strangely suiting him better than a handshake ever would.

Emma’s stomach flip-flopped as his eyes narrowed on her.

“I own you for the next six weeks,” he growled, “or until you come to your senses and ‘cry hold, enough.’ Or did you skip MacBeth on the way to your spaceship?”

Emma couldn’t help but wince. Kids in high school drama class knew calling “The Scottish Play” by its name was bad luck. But then, could her luck get any worse?

“‘Lay on, MacDuff,’” Emma quoted the play, challenge in her eyes.

“The bottom line is this,” Butler said, ignoring her, “Barry Robards hired me to teach his lead actress how to live, how to move, how to breathe medieval Scotland. How to be Lady Aislinn. That’s right—it’s pronounced Ash-leen. You can start by saying her name correctly. You Yanks have been massacring it for two years now.”

“Well, this Yank looked it up in a Celtic baby-name book the first time she saw the script, so you can move on to more important things.”

“Fine. How about this, then? When Barry Robards asked me to take on the role of historical consultant, I figured I’d have a fair chance of success with Angelica Robards to work with. But you?” He snorted in derision.

Emma glared. “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel?”

“I might as well.” He crossed his arms over that impressive chest. “I told anybody at the studio who’d talk to me that you’ll never be a believable Lady Aislinn.”

This arrogant jerk who spent all his time digging up dead people had been complaining to the studio about her being cast? Who did Jared Butler think he was?

“So now you’re an expert on acting?”

His scruffy-looking chin tipped at an angle that made her want to smash it. “I know what it will take to portray Lady Aislinn. Courage, intelligence, tenacity,” he asserted, a sudden distance in his eyes, as if he saw a world beyond the Scottish mist. “She held Castle Craigmorrigan for eight months, besting Sir Brannoc with no weapon but her wits. There’s a subtlety about her, a…”

“And you know this how? Did you have a chat with her sarcophagus? Or did some psychic channel her for you?”

Butler’s eyes flashed and Emma realized she’d managed to strike a nerve, get back some of her own.

But the good doctor was quick, almost as accomplished as Emma at shuttering vulnerability away.

“Why don’t you save us both a lot of trouble and just head for some ritzy spa on the French Riviera,” he challenged. “Go back where you belong.”

“According to Barry Robards, I belong right here. Playing Lady Aislinn. And if that means I have to deal with you for six weeks, I guess we’ll both just have to suffer. I have to admit one thing though, Dr. Butler. You are a brilliant teacher. I’ve known you all of five minutes and you’ve already helped me get into character. I can’t wait to get a sword up to your throat.”

Butler rolled his eyes. “I told the bloody screenwriter that part of the legend is rubbish. There isn’t a woman alive who could beat a seasoned knight and get a blade to his throat.”

If Butler had smacked her cheek with a gauntlet the challenge couldn’t have been any clearer. Adrenaline rushed through Emma. She was going to make the man eat his words if it was the last thing she did.

“You’re quite sure it’s impossible?” she inquired with acid sweetness.

“I’d stake my life on it.”

“Hmm.” Emma laid one finger along her cheek, considering for a moment. Suddenly her gaze dropped to the bulge in his brown canvas cargo pants. “Maybe I’ll just aim a whole lot lower.”

Ten minutes in Scotland and she’d already declared war.

Chapter Two

“NOTHING LIKE HATE at first sight to make a lady feel welcome,” Emma muttered under her breath as Butler all but rolled his battered Mini Cooper on yet another hairpin corner. The right shoulder of the narrow road plunged down in a boulder-strewn cliff, while a dozen yards to the left, a mountain soared skyward. If it weren’t for the biting chill that had whipped her raincoat in the airport parking lot and the lowering thunderheads gathering on the horizon, she might have been tempted to get out and walk to Castle Craigmorrigan.

Her legs ached from bracing herself against the floorboards, her fingers clamped in the upholstery to keep her arm from touching his. For God’s sake, could the man take up any more room? It was like being wedged in a clown car with MacTavish the Pissed-Off Scot Giant. Not to mention the fact that Butler’s testosterone overload was sucking up all the oxygen in the cab of this ridiculously small vehicle.

“Getting us both killed isn’t going to do you any good,” Emma said.

“You’re right.” The corner of Butler’s sexy mouth twisted. “I’m already in hell.”

Before Emma could think of a comeback, a fuzzy brownish-red hill loomed in their path. Emma choked back a scream as Butler swerved with annoying expertise, the car bouncing over the road’s shoulder so hard the top of Emma’s head hit the roof in spite of her seat belt.

She whispered a Hail Mary, sandwiched for a heartbeat between mountain wall and the weirdest cow she’d ever seen. She glimpsed long horns and terrified bovine eyes all but buried under a shaggy red topknot as the car sped past. Butler wrestled the toy car back onto the road, spraying gravel in his wake.

No doubt about it, Emma thought. She was going to die. But damn if she was going to give Jared Butler the satisfaction of knowing he was rattling her nerves before they’d even reached the castle.

“So, in between trying to give the local rescue team practice with the Jaws of Life rescue tools, why don’t you tell me exactly what books I’m going to be reading?”

“Reading?”

“Or do I get to sit around with you feeling the bumps on the old chicken bones you dig up? Archaeology 101: Observe, Ms. McDaniel, this piece of broken pottery we found when Farmer MacSomething was digging a loo.”

“I’m not going to have you contaminating my excavation site, do you hear me?” Butler slashed her the look his highland raider ancestors must’ve fired off when they were about to burn and pillage. “You’re not to go near the sections of the castle that are being excavated unless I’m with you. I’ll pack you back off to America faster than you can say Hollywood Boulevard.”

“And here all the tour books said people in the British Isles were supposed to be charming.”

“You want charming, head across the channel to Ireland. I have work to do.”

Fat raindrops plopped onto the windshield. Butler flicked on the wipers and, with a low growl of irritation, slowed the car as the drops transformed into a cold, driving rain.

“Part of your job is teaching me,” Emma said, easing her death grip on the seat. “So why did you volunteer if you’re so all-fired busy?”

“Angelica Robards arrived in April to start training for the riding and swordplay. She was supposed to be gone by the time the summer’s work on the dig began.”

“But she fell off a horse and landed in traction. Rotten break for you, Butler.”

“Right, but it was your lucky day, wasn’t it?” he challenged. “Don’t you feel guilty at all? Knowing that you’ve only got the part because the director’s first pick is lying in a hospital somewhere? I’d have too much self-respect to—”

“I’m not the one who was supposed to train her to ride,” Emma snapped, stung. “You’re the genius who claimed you could turn an actress into the medieval version of an action hero and then put her over a jump she couldn’t handle. The press said she fell halfway down a cliff.”

Butler’s Adam’s apple bobbed in the corded strength of his throat. He stood his ground, but Emma could see rawness in his piercing gaze, a dogged sense of self-blame. Fine, Emma thought. Butler had been chipping away at her self-confidence from the moment they’d come face-to-face at the airport. He’d made it clear he’d use whatever weapons he could find against her. She’d just have to hone a few sharp points of her own.

“Considering what a stellar job you did with the actress you thought would do justice to the role of Lady Aislinn, you can surely understand my curiosity about how you intend to handle me. Now that you ‘own me for the next six weeks,’” she mimicked in a flawless Scots burr, “exactly what are you going to do with me?”

A muscle in Butler’s jaw jumped. “Unfortunately, nobody dared to lock Lady Aislinn in a scold’s bridle.”

“A what?”

“A metal harness that locked around a woman’s head so she couldn’t talk.”

“And we think we have all the modern conveniences.” Thunder rumbled in the distance.

“I suppose there’s some chance Lady Aislinn was locked into a chastity belt when her husband ran off to fight. We could give that a try.”

“Aw, Butler. I didn’t know you cared. But drastic measures are hardly necessary. I’m about as likely to be tempted by you as I would be to fly without an airplane.”

Why did an image suddenly pop into her head? Her role in the senior production at drama school—Peter, in Peter Pan. It must be the cliffs that were reminding her of that first, terrifying step she’d made into thin air.

Butler swore as he slowed around a corner. Lightning flashed, rain soaking the landscape, making everything slick and shiny. “Maybe you’re used to men falling all over you, Ms. McDaniel, but I won’t be joining your fan club.”

Emma didn’t hear a word. She gasped as a castle ruin reared up through the storm like a warhorse frozen by a sorcerer’s spell. A single intact tower thrust skyward from the broken curtain wall that had once enclosed all the buildings, livestock and people who owed loyalty to the castle lord: an entire world whose fate had hinged on the courage and wisdom of Lady Aislinn and her husband, Lord Magnus.

White canvas tents smudged the landscape here and there, reminding Emma of costume dramas, tournaments where visiting knights would fight for a lady’s honor. But no bold pennants whipped in the wind and the only thing under attack was the mound of earth that had been reclaiming the tumbled castle walls for centuries.

Precise trenches scored the turf like wounds. Even in the rain, the place bustled with activity. People in knee-high rubber boots and rain gear clustered under the shelters, busy with tasks Emma couldn’t see. A raised metal viewing platform with a railing around the top had been constructed near the widest cut in the ground. Contemporary machinery and a yellow trailer were situated under a copse of hazel trees.

It seemed strange that anything so modern could besiege this castle’s walls. And yet, Emma doubted Castle Craigmorrigan had ever felt at peace. For beyond the intact tower, the ground fell away at the castle’s feet, a wildly crashing ocean flinging itself against the stony outcropping below with the singleminded fury of an invading army.

Emma pictured the forces the villainous Sir Brannoc had brought with him—walling off this thin finger of land. What had it been like the day they set up camp, isolating the castle from the rest of the world?

No escape…the sea seemed to whisper, cutting off all hope of flight. Emma shuddered, imagining what it would be like to peer out the tower window, to see her enemy building trebuchets, the great siege machines that would soon start battering at the walls the way the past two years had battered at Emma’s heart.

She could feel Lady Aislinn, like a pulse, just under the heather-tangled ground, could see the castle as it must have been before time and tragedy left its curtain wall broken and all but one of its towers tumbled down.

For the first time since Barry Robards himself had called to offer her the part, she knew it wasn’t a make-believe world she’d inhabit. It was real. The awesome responsibility of telling this story pressed down on Emma like the fallen stones.

What if Butler is right? self-doubt whispered. What if you dig down into your soul and your best isn’t good enough? My God, look at this place. Think of this woman. No one on earth knows more about her than Jared Butler. If he’s sure you’ll fail…

Emma’s throat tightened, her hand suddenly unsteady. Don’t even think it, she told herself sharply. You’re not going to fail. You’re going to take whatever he can dish out and not give an inch. Think of this as your test. If you can make him believe your portrayal of Lady Aislinn, you can make the whole world believe it. And if they see you can play this role, they’ll know you can play all the others… The powerful dramatic roles she’d longed for. Feared were forever beyond her reach even before Barry Robards had made it clear that he’d given her this role chiefly because of her stunt prowess and physical training. But she’d hung up the phone, elated, determined to prove to the world that there was far more to Emma McDaniel than that.

And what if you find out there isn’t? Doubt trickled a chill down her spine.

“Why so quiet?” Butler broke in as he pulled up to the intact tower and put the car in Park. “Not quite up to your five-star hotel standards? You’re more likely to get a rat on your pillow tonight than a mint.”

She should have given him a verbal slap to put him in his place. But she sat, so overwhelmed for a long moment she couldn’t speak.

This was the last thing Lady Aislinn had seen—siege engines hammering the walls, inexorably pounding away at the stone. Her home, lost to her forever.

Emma remembered the home she and Drew had shared in Brentwood, their lives disappearing out of it one cardboard box at a time, just like their promise to love each other forever. But Emma had a life of her own. A career, her gift. What had Lady Aislinn had to cling to when this castle had fallen?

Rain drove against the stone walls like tears from time gone by. Butler opened his door and maneuvered his big body out of the car.

Emma climbed out, rain soaking her hair and sliding down the back of her neck as she made a run toward the door. Too late she realized Butler was ahead of her, intent on getting out of the rain, while her five-hundred-ton suitcase was still in the back of the car.

Bastard. He’d left it there on purpose, for her to manage herself. Fine. Emma slid into the car again and popped the hatch back. Gritting her teeth, she climbed back out into the rain, then slogged to the rear of the Mini Cooper. Heels sinking in mud, she grabbed the handle of the suitcase and pulled. Her knuckles banged against a bolt inside the car.

Emma’s eyes stung as she tugged on the case, wriggling it back and forth, working it toward the edge until it slid free. She squawked, unable to stop the momentum, the heavy case falling toward the mud puddle she was standing in. She swore, fought, but the corner of the case crashed to the ground with a miserable splat. Cold mud splashed up under her raincoat, her shoes soaked through.

Sodden hair clung to her chilled, wet face as she heaved the suitcase up out of the mud, staggering under its weight as she made her way toward the dark mouth of the door.

When she finally trudged into the dank chamber beyond, she waited for warmth to envelop her, for lights to blaze on, driving back the dank gray curtain of storm.

It was June, for God’s sake, but the place was still freezing. She started to shiver.

Butler grinned at her in the beam of a gigantic flashlight, the jerk. A real barn burner of a smile. “Dragging that out was a waste of time,” he said, gesturing toward her dripping suitcase. “Everything in it is off-limits for the next six weeks.”

“Excuse me?” Emma knuckled water out of her left ear, sure she couldn’t have heard him correctly.

“Call it method-acting boot camp. You don’t get to keep anything from the modern world.”

He was enjoying this far too much.

Pure devilment pricked at Emma. “I don’t even get to keep my stash of tampons?” she asked, itching to get a reaction. After years of marriage, Drew had still blushed when she asked him to pick up a box at the drugstore.

Butler only frowned.

“Come on, Butler. Don’t get all shy on me,” Emma sniped. “I’ll be here for six weeks. The issue is bound to come up.”

“I guess you’ll have to deal with it when the time comes.”

“No. My maid would have to deal with…well, whatever. Even you can’t be idiot enough to expect a modern woman to—”

“I expect anyone on this site to do what I tell them.”

“Fine. When my time of the month comes, I’ll announce it to the whole camp.”

Butler’s eyes narrowed. “You’d be just bullheaded enough to do it, wouldn’t you?”

“You betcha, mister.” Emma tried with all her might to keep from shivering. “After all, who died and made you Mussolini?”

“Your director, as a matter of fact.” Butler rubbed his chin. “All right, Ms. McDaniel. Keep your tampons if you must. In the end, one small concession on my part won’t make any difference. You’re not tough enough to survive without all your luxuries. I’ll wager there are plenty of other things in that suitcase you’ll be missing before your time here is finished.”

The glow of triumph she’d felt at unsettling him vanished as the reality of his ultimatum struck her. “There’s no way I’m giving up what’s…There’s something else in my suitcase I…I have to…”

“What? Designer drugs? Your silk knickers?”

“It’s none of your business.” Emma faced him down, hands on her hips. “It’s something I need. Got it, Butler? Isn’t there anything you need? Besides a personality transplant, I mean?”

Butler’s green eyes blazed even hotter, but something in the taut line of his mouth betrayed him. She’d hit a nerve and damn, it felt good.

“One thing,” he snarled. “Got it? You can keep one thing. Agreed?”

Emma tried not to let him see the relief flooding through her. “Agreed.” Instinctively she extended her hand to shake on it. Butler gave her a long look, then his large, work-roughened hand swallowed Emma’s much smaller one in a grasp that was brazenly masculine, surprisingly straightforward. Her fingers, strong in their own right, tested in countless stunts over the years, felt almost delicate for the first time since she’d left her hometown when she was just sixteen.

Heat pulsed between Butler’s palm and hers. The archaeologist’s eyes widened just a touch; Emma’s breath caught. She pulled her hand away and flattened it on the front of her slacks, as if trying to erase the feel of that strange, hot throb.

“Maybe we’ll be able to work together without killing each other after all.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.” Butler folded his arms over his chest, palms against the nubby wool of his sweater, and Emma wondered if he felt the same strange compulsion to buff the feel of her off his hands. It made him seem a tiny bit more human.

“I’ll give you this much, Butler. At least we know where we stand with each other. Hate at first sight.”

“You have to care enough about somebody to hate them,” Butler said.

“Well, all-righty then. That gives me something to aspire to. I assume you have some work to do besides irritating me. So if you could show me where I’ll be staying, we can take a break from each other, at least for a little while.”

“I thought you’d like to stay in Lady Aislinn’s chamber,” he said so pleasantly that Emma knew damn well not to trust him. And yet, how bad could it be? Emma reasoned. Aislinn was the lady of the castle. It had to be the best room of all. She’d seen those old movies where the beds were draped in velvet bed hangings and the walls were hung with tapestries and fires blazed in hearths the size of garden sheds.

“Terrific,” she said, her teeth starting to chatter. “I don’t suppose there are any flashing neon signs to show me the way.”

“No. Just take those stairs up to the top of the tower. I guess we’ll see what you’re made of, Ms. McDaniel. After Sir Brannoc took the castle, Lady Aislinn spent three months in that room. Until Sir Brannoc forced her out. If you can’t manage to stay there for six weeks…”

“I’ll manage,” Emma insisted, her chin bumping up a notch.

“Some even claim that she hid the fairy flag right there.”

Emma’s eyes widened in fascination. “The one that was supposed to keep the castle from falling to an enemy as long as the flag flew inside its walls?”

“No. The other fairy flag. The one with Tinker Bell on it.”

Emma ground her teeth, knowing the man was pulling her chain on purpose, knowing, too, that the less she rose to the bait, the sooner Butler would give up his efforts to torment her.

“What? Nothing to say, Ms. McDaniel?” Butler asked. “Did you expect me to be impressed that you bothered to read the script? The fairy flag is an integral part of the legend.”

“A gossamer-thin piece of cloth brought as Lady Aislinn’s dowry,” Emma supplied. “A gift of the fairies to be passed down to the most beautiful daughter born to the chief of Clan MacGregor. A hundred suitors filled her father’s hall, all vying to win her hand in marriage so they could become invincible.”

“A good way to be certain your daughter was well treated once she was married and beyond your care. Husbands had total power over their wives then. The woman who dared put a gold circlet on Robert the Bruce’s head was imprisoned by her angry husband for four years in a cage shaped like a crown hanging outside the castle.”

“Nice guy. But then, you did warn me to head across the water to Ireland if I wanted charm. What happened to the lady?”

“The countess survived. God knows how.”

“A life lesson you should take to heart. Never underestimate a pissed-off woman. She hung on so she could make her husband’s life a living hell. But this whole fairy flag thing—obviously you’re a pretty big boy to believe in the little people, Butler. So what’s the story? Exactly what was the fairy flag really?”

“We’ll never know.” An intriguing light sparked in Butler’s intelligent eyes and for an instant Emma glimpsed an enthusiasm, a warmth, a wonder that transformed his face. “If scientists could get their hands on a piece of it now, we’d be able to test it, hopefully date it, compare it to cloth samples from ancient times all over the world. We might be able to make an educated guess…”

Passion. He radiated it, so hot Emma couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to be the woman who inspired that zeal, that intensity. Her tongue moistened her suddenly dry lips.

In a heartbeat, Butler seemed to remember who he was talking to. The stony mask of dislike fell back across his face, leaving Emma even colder than before. “It doesn’t matter. The flag was lost forever when Lady Aislinn disappeared.”

“Maybe I’ll spend my spare time having a look around the room,” Emma said. “Find the fairy flag after hundreds of years.”

“We archaeologists would really appreciate it. After all, nobody in the past six hundred years has thought to look for the flag in that room. All those treasure hunters over the centuries, countless teams of scholars and experts—we all just wanted to leave it there for you, so you could make the cover of Hello magazine.”

“There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Emma tossed her hair. “Just think what a great promo it would be for the movie.” She snapped out the handle of her suitcase and started rolling it across the bumpy stone floor toward the stairs.

“There’s no point hauling that thing up three stories,” Butler warned. “Just take out whatever you need right here.”

Emma’s cheeks burned. Damn if she was going to let this jerk watch her rummage through her suitcase, let him see…things that were private, things that were precious, things that still made her heart ache. Chinks in the walls six years of living in the public limelight had forced her to build.

No way was she going to open herself up for more of Butler’s mockery. She was going to haul her suitcase far from his scornful gaze. She was going to slip out her treasure when she was safe, silent—alone.

If it was the last thing she did, she was going to get her suitcase to the top of the tower.

“Hey, I told you to open the damn thing here.”

“So you can sneak a look at my underwear?” Emma said, doggedly hauling the suitcase up the first stair. “Think again, bud.”

“I may be the one man on earth who doesn’t give a damn what color your panties are, you stubborn little…”

She smacked her bag against the stone as loud as she could to drown out whatever he’d decided to call her. But she hadn’t bumped the suitcase up half a dozen stone risers before she wondered if doctors in archaeology knew anything about CPR. The weight of the case was going to leave her with gorilla arms stretched down to her knees.

She heard a growled oath, heavy footfalls behind her. With an unladylike grunt, she was pulling the suitcase halfway up another stair when suddenly Jared Butler grabbed the handle away from her, his hand warm and rough, impatient and unyieldingly masculine.

For a pulse beat the narrow stairway pushed them together. His arm bumped against her breast. The smell of him—rain and spice and exasperation—filled Emma’s head.

“I can handle this myself!” she objected.

“Sure you can. Just like you can play Lady Aislinn.” He was already striding up the dim stairs, both his form and the beam of flashlight vanishing in the shadows ahead.

Emma did the only thing she could. Stormed up after him. Her lungs were sucking like bellows by the time she reached her room. But in spite of her vow not to let Butler see her sweat, she couldn’t hide the dismay that washed over her as he shone the flashlight over the chamber.

Moisture penetrated cracked walls with the kind of dampness that would never really get dry. A bed stuffed with God knew what was blanketed with…skins of dead animals…with the fur still on.

“What…what are those?” Emma asked, unnerved.

“Wolf pelts, stag skins. Whatever you could kill hereabouts in the fourteenth century. Pretty amazing, isn’t it? Thinking those skins used to be on some wild animal?”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’m allergic. You can see the feet and—and holes where the eyes used to be in those things. God knows what else might be under all that fur.”

“Once we get the hearth burning the smoke should drive out most of the bugs.”

“Bugs?” Just the mention of them made Emma’s skin crawl.

“I know how important historical accuracy is to you,” Butler said. “So if you feel any bugs biting you tonight, just chalk it up to research.”

“You’re hilarious, Butler.”

“Come morning, you’re going to find out just how much fun I can be. Meanwhile, I’ll send one of the grad students up with your dinner once it gets too dark to dig. Make sure you find your iPod or PalmPilot or whatever is so damned important so that your suitcase is ready to be hauled out of here by then.”

“Fine.”

“Use tonight to settle in. I’ll be taking the flashlight with me.”

And then the room would be movie-theater dark. She’d probably break her neck tripping over something. No wonder Angelica Robards hadn’t survived the training process without a trip to the hospital.

“Terrific,” Emma said, still warily eyeing the animal fur. “It’ll be just me and Bambi here.” Alone. In the dark. With a whole colony of bugs, no doubt planted by Attila the Scot.

“I’ll light up the fire and one candle for you. After that, you’re on your own. Everything you’ll need for the next six weeks is in that wooden chest over there.”

“I don’t suppose there’s a medieval Porta Potti in it.”

“No hot water either. We jerry-built a garderobe in an area beyond the dig site. The student will show you where it is. Starting first thing in the morning you’re going to get a crash course in medieval life in Scotland. You’re going to eat, sleep and breathe the life of a Scottish chatelaine.”

“A chat-a-who?”

“A noblewoman caring for her husband’s castle while he’s off fighting for his king.”

“Isn’t that just like a man,” Emma quipped. “Running off to play with the other boys, leaving the responsibilities to the woman.”

“Despite all the twisted shite people get fed in movies, with fainting damsels in distress needing to be rescued, medieval women were a strong lot. I suppose we’ll find out what you’re made of.”

“Yes, you will. May I give you one little bit of advice?”

“I doubt gagging you with duct tape would stop you.”

“Try not to drop me over a cliff, Dr. Butler, no matter how great the temptation. Damaging one actress is an accident. Damaging a second would look downright suspicious.”

“Not by medieval standards. Men could go through a half dozen wives between accidents and disease and childbirth. And in desperate cases you could always lock her in prison somewhere.”

“Like Henry II did Eleanor of Aquitaine.”

Butler looked taken aback. “You read about…?”

“I saw the movie. Lion In Winter. Katherine Hepburn won an Oscar in the starring role.”

“You’re sure as bloody hell no Katherine Hepburn,” Butler scoffed, starting for the door.

Cold, wet and tired, Emma sobered. That was what she was afraid of.

THERE WAS NO QUESTION of escape. Jared glared out the office trailer’s window to where the mess tent blazed with lights, even more dancing shadows silhouetted against the canvas than there had been when he’d checked the same scene an hour ago.

It seemed that no matter how many times he paced the narrow aisle between his desk and drafting table, every student on the site was determined to wait out his appearance, no matter how physically and mentally exhausted this day full of mud and rain had left them.

He might as well get it over with, he reasoned, reaching for the cool logic of a scientist. Sooner or later he’d have to face his students and endure their barrage of questions about their famous guest. But damn if he wanted to listen to the kids whose intellect he’d prized raving about Emma McDaniel, dazzled by the glitz and glitter of a world Jared didn’t trust.

Having her here is the price you agreed to pay, he reminded himself grimly. He hoped he wouldn’t discover that cost was too high. Bracing himself, he stepped out into the night. A hunter’s moon sailed the sky, limning the world in silver.

Biting wind, still fresh from the afternoon’s storm, tangled invisible fingers through his hair as he removed the battered brown canvas hat he’d hung by its leather cords on the outer doorknob. The wide-brimmed hat dangling there was a signal every bit as dreaded by the students and staff alike as a skull and crossbones would be on the high sea.

Only someone with a death wish would disturb Jared those rare times the hat appeared on the door. But he’d bet that several of his students had considered braving his wrath tonight. Thankfully, nineteen-year-old Davey Harrison, Jared’s personal assistant and longest-running team member, had managed to dissuade them.

But damn if Jared was going to waste any more time trying to sort through the feelings Emma McDaniel stirred in him. The anger, the outrage, the sensation of being trapped. Between Angelica Robards’ training and accident and Emma’s arrival, he’d surrendered too many precious days already. With every hour that passed, the end of summer crept closer. And the end of summer meant the dig had to close.

At least not permanently, Jared reminded himself with grim satisfaction. The university that had sponsored the study for students from around the world might withdraw its funding, move its program on to some site in Greece—just for variety’s sake, to give the kids a different kind of experience. And the grant funds he’d hoped for might be promised elsewhere. But Jared had found his own way to keep the dig afloat. By selling the rights to his book to Hollywood, making a pact with the devil. It seemed even Jared’s soul had its price. The hard part was forcing his pride to pay it.

He’d imagined celebrity mania would poison the kids when they heard of Jade Star’s imminent arrival. The reality was even worse.

From the most insecure undergraduate to his most trusted assistant, they all but stampeded him as he entered the mess tent, the kids barely giving lip service to his questions about any finds that had been made in his absence.

“What’s she like?” a breathless kid on foreign study from Northwestern University pleaded.

Too brave. A little wild. Trying to protect that air-brained girl in the airport the only way she could.

“She’s a pain in the arse,” Jared said.

“Is she really as beautiful as she looks in the movies?” Nigel Sutherland asked.

Jared didn’t bother to hide a smug grin as he recalled Emma McDaniel’s rain-soaked million-dollar face, with ropes of wet black hair straggling across it. That picture made him feel better. The poor wee bairn, going to bed with sodden hair and not a blow-dryer in sight.

“With all those movie tricks they use, Hollywood could make me look like Prince Will i am,” Jared growled.

“That would be a crying shame,” a coed named Gemma whispered to Veronica Phillips, a fresh-talking doctoral candidate from St. Andrews who had made it obvious that the body she hoped to uncover this summer still had plenty of life in it and belonged in her bed, not some museum.

“Why tamper with perfection?” Veronica teased, flashing Jared a sultry grin.

Jared was man enough to be tempted on a purely physical level. It had been a long time since he’d let himself take what a woman offered, but he knew firsthand that the price was too high. The danger too great. That part of him was dead. He’d killed it, as surely as he’d killed Jenny.

Where had that thought come from? He’d buried Jenny, the way Vikings buried their treasure hordes, then tried to forget where he’d left all the memories, all the self-blame.

He’d become an expert at seeming oblivious to women’s flirtations, ignoring Veronica’s comment as he had all the other glances filled with soulful feminine longing that had been thrown his way over the past ten years. Damn, if they knew how much he hated it, that adoring light that told him what they were thinking—that they fancied him a modern-day Lancelot come to save his fair lady from the stake.

If only they knew that was one quest he’d already failed.

“Emma McDaniel’s coming here is quantitative proof that life is not fair,” Davey Harrison said at the edge of the crowd. The favorite student Jared wasn’t supposed to have shook his head wistfully, then plopped a canvas hat identical to Jared’s down on his flyaway dark blond hair.

“Exactly what do you base your conclusion on, Mr. Harrison?” Jared asked.

The kid actually smiled. “In the men’s dorms back home, every other room had a poster of Jade Star on the wall and the ones that didn’t only took ’em down because their girlfriends made ’em. And what does God do? Dumps the goddess herself into the lap of the one man on earth who hasn’t fantasized a hundred times what he’d do if he could get his hands on her.”

“Hey, Einstein’s right!” Sean Murphy jabbed his nearest cohort with an elbow. “That’s what I call a crying shame.”

Jared shot both kids a quelling glare. “What’s a shame is wasting time on this nonsense when we only have three months before this dig closes for the year,” he growled. “Fall term will start faster than you know and then it’ll be back to school for the lot of you. Of course, you can read about my brilliant discoveries in National Geographic.”

Davey grinned, worlds different from the anguished fifteen-year-old who’d first come to the castle on a field trip four years ago. “Internet’s faster, chief.”

“So you keep telling me.” Jared grimaced. Davey was right. The information superhighway put a wealth of research at people’s fingertips. And as a scientist, Jared had to learn to access it. But somehow all those flashy graphics never felt as right to him as the solid weight of a book. Computer-generated illusions, everything from dinosaurs to heroines like Jade Star, airbrushed so her body was centerfold perfect the way a real woman could never be. It was one more way to con people into believing the impossible existed.

And yet, there had been a moment when Jared had been struck by Emma McDaniel’s charisma just as hard as a green kid like Davey. That stomach-spinning, world-falling-away, dropkick-to-the-solar-plexus awareness that made him cadgy as hell when he’d felt the softness of her breast yielding against his arm.

When she’d defied him, those dark eyes spitting fire, her mouth ripe and passionate and real, without so much as a smear of lipstick. She’d faced him down with the fierce beauty of the wildcats that roamed Scotland’s hills. Confronted him with the dauntless courage he’d imagined in Lady Aislinn.

Don’t be a fool, man, he warned himself. She’s a spoiled brat with the depth of a rain puddle and she’s surly because you didn’t hit your knees the moment you first saw her so you could worship at her shrine. There’s nothing of Lady Aislinn in this pampered, no-talent excuse for an actress.

“Chief?” Davey’s concerned voice cut through Jared’s dark thoughts, reminding him of just how much the boy had had to worry about when he’d first set foot on the site years ago. How lonely Davey had been, isolated, outcast. A kid, troubled about grown-up things in a capricious world he had no control over. Worries that had faded to the back of Davey’s mind the deeper the kid was drawn into the history and artifacts, the research and legends that wove like mist about the ruins of Castle Craigmorrigan.

And now, enter Emma McDaniel stage right, to drag the healing boy back to a real world full of things he couldn’t have, security he’d never know, a present tense that could only suck him back to barren places. She’d shove Davey aside the way the pretty girls on the site did, giving the gawky kid a dismissive once-over, complete with that scathingly superior plastic smile. And from that moment on, she’d look right through him.

Just the thought made Jared’s blood boil.

“Chief?” Davey repeated. “Are you all right?”

He’d be a lot better once Emma McDaniel took her shapely backside across the ocean to Hollywood, where it belonged. “Aye. And since you’re all so curious about our new visitor, maybe you’d like to shake out of your tents at five in the morning instead of seven. Make up for the time you’re all wasting jabbering about her.”

A couple of the girls’ faces paled. Others beat a hasty retreat toward the tent flap door.

“Veronica, take Miss McDaniel some food,” Jared ordered.

Veronica pouted for a moment. “But I’ve got some work to catch up on.”

“Taking a tray up to the tower will take you all of twenty minutes,” Jared snapped. “You can spare that much time.”

“Hey, chief,” Davey interjected, eager as a puppy. “I’d be happy to do it.”

No kidding, Jared thought sourly. Davey would probably be so dazzled by the woman he’d trip on the uneven stone stairs and break his neck.

“I need you to go over the finds you made while I was stuck at the airport. We need to enter them on the site grid.”

“Oh. Uh, sure.”

“Veronica,” Jared said. “After you drop off her dinner, be sure you confiscate that suitcase of hers.”

Davey gave Jared the big eyes. “Isn’t that kind of heavy for a lady to…”

“As a matter of fact, it was heavy as a rock. Veronica, take one of the lads with you to handle lugging that monstrosity down the stairs. Not you, Davey,” Jared added sternly. “You I need. To do the job we’re here for.”

Even as he herded Davey back toward the trailer, Jared knew he was only postponing the inevitable. The kid would have to meet Emma sometime. Jared would put it off for as long as he could.

It was well past midnight when Davey headed to his own cot, still nattering on about Emma McDaniel. By then Jared’s very last nerve felt ready to snap. His blood seethed with edginess as he retired to his own roomy tent, dread banishing any hope of sleep.

Emma McDaniel’s heart-shaped face swam before him, that pugnacious chin, those flashing eyes. She’d challenged him, fighting to keep God knew what from that elephantine suitcase. Isn’t there anything that you need?

In the beam of a lantern, Jared went to the battered footlocker where he kept his few, most treasured things. Never weigh yourself down with more than you can carry… The thought whispered through him, a familiar refrain.

Jenny had claimed he’d never been the same after studying the excavations in Pompeii. Maybe she was right. The citizens of the doomed city, who couldn’t leave their precious things behind when the volcano erupted, had lost the only thing that mattered.

Jared lifted the trunk lid, his fingers running reverently over a flannel-wrapped bundle. Yes, there was something he needed. He’d just have to make damned sure Emma McDaniel never discovered what it was.

Chapter Three

THE WIND SANG its night song to the sea, a centuries-old lamentation of lovers who would never come home. Emma perched on one of the stone benches that flanked an alcove big enough to hold Butler’s car. Leaning her elbows on the crude table filling the rest of the space, she peered out the tower window, a view of the rugged Scottish coast that formed the castle’s rear defense spilling out beneath her.

Everything about Castle Craigmorrigan seemed ready for war. The soaring walls, the cramped stone stairways in which only a defender would be able to swing his sword. Even the costume she’d wrestled herself into hours ago came complete with a small sharp knife in a scabbard which swung from the filigreed belt slung low about her hips. It’s called a girdle, not a belt, she could almost hear Butler correcting her in disgust. And he would be right. She remembered the name from a class on costuming she’d taken at drama school.

“Yeah, well, for a genius you’re not so smart yourself, arming me with a sharp object the minute I get to my room,” Emma muttered as if the jerk could hear her. “Next time you tick me off I might be tempted to hand you your family jewels on a platter.”

But instead of bracing her, Emma’s outburst echoed hollowly in the tower room, leaving it even more melancholy than before. Curling her feet under the yards of saffron-colored linen shift and green wool skirts, she reached across the table.

Emma pulled the cast-iron candlestick closer to the piece of parchment she’d rescued from the trunk, the circle of light spilling over the letter she’d labored over for the past hour. Her fingers were ink stained, her words blotted and awkward at the beginning, but her writing had smoothed out some by the end.

She’d coaxed the crude quill pen all the way to “give hugs and kisses to everyone” before she’d surrendered to the lump in her throat, grateful at least that none but the shadows of Craigmorrigan would know of her tears. And this castle had seen plenty of heartache.

Her eyes burned and she swiped the back of her hand across them, determinedly forcing her gaze out the window to the moonlit night beyond. How strange that for years Emma had yearned for just this sort of quiet time to sort out her thoughts. But she’d barely been sequestered in Lady Aislinn’s chamber an hour before she realized being alone wasn’t such a great idea after all.

Tempted by silence, her memory spiraled back through years more happy than sad. The incredible sweetness of her first kiss, she and Drew both trying to pretend it was only practice for their parts in the senior play—his Romeo to her Juliet. Before the curtain closed, they’d promised each other their love story would have a happier ending.

She could see Drew’s face streaked with tears in the courtroom where they’d eloped. Could picture the garden at March Winds, the guests at the thriving bed-and-breakfast her family ran joining in the impromptu reception her mom and Aunt Finn had thrown when she and Drew came home and surprised the family with the news.

She heard laughter echoing through the cramped NewYork loft where she and Drew had made their first home. Where they made love on a mattress on the floor, so sure they had forever.

Emma peered out the tower window at the solitary moon adrift on silvery clouds. Butler worried she wouldn’t be able to get into character? Emma understood Lady Aislinn far better than she cared to admit.

Lady Aislinn had felt her heart rip as the husband she loved tore away from her to go warring for his king. The medieval lady trapped, pitted against a nemesis she hated.

Both women knew how it felt to be utterly vulnerable, exposed to a world that fed on any weakness.

Emma had come to the wilds of Scotland hoping to find haven from the battering of her defenses, her most private pain stripped bare. But it was already obvious that in coming to Castle Craigmorrigan she’d only leapt from the frying pan into the fire. Jared Butler would like nothing better than to discover the chinks in her armor. And Emma had already proved far too easy a mark for the Scotsman’s dirty tricks.

Grimacing, she glanced down at the furs she’d used to cushion the stone bench beneath her. She touched a stray tag the archaeologist had forgotten to snip off. The furs and doubtless the bugs he’d threatened her with “Made In China.”

Of course, if she’d been thinking more clearly, she’d never have fallen prey to Butler’s attempt to bait her. She’d known from the beginning that the bed across the room wasn’t six hundred years old, that the tower chamber was stocked by Butler with replicas of old things. The clothing she’d put on and the parchment, ink and quills she’d laid out on the table were nothing more than props, like the polished metal mirror and the comb she’d abandoned after getting it hopelessly tangled in her masses of dark hair. And yet…

Perhaps the furniture and the accoutrements were merely illusions Jared Butler had created to evoke the fourteenth century. But some things in this chamber were real. Loneliness pooled in the shadows. Isolation bled from the stones. Sorrow ages old plucked with spectral fingers at the hem of Emma’s gown.

She couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t sense things most people were oblivious to. Faint whispers through the veil of time, as if lost souls wanted someone to know they’d once lived, imprinting their emotions into walls and wood, china cups and cloth they’d touched generations before.

Here, in this ancient Scottish castle, those sensations felt as real to her as the treasure she’d placed on the table: her talisman on movie locations all over the globe, her way of bringing home with her no matter how far she wandered.

But even in the jungles of Malaysia or while filming in the desert, Emma had never been as miserable as she was tonight. Cold to her marrow, her ridiculously thick hair still damp, she felt more alone than she’d ever been in her life.

That’s not true, a child’s voice argued in her mind. You felt exactly like this one other time. Remember? Ten years old, waking up in a stranger’s room, your mother gone, leaving nothing but a note…

Where had that thought come from? Emma shivered as decades-old emotions washed through her again. Terror, anguish, desperation as her uncle Cade raged, furious that his sister had abandoned Emma and vanished, leaving the traumatized child in his care.

Now Emma understood that her beloved uncle had been just as scared as she was that terrible morning. But her first taste of the famous McDaniel temper had shaken her badly.

Between her uncle, her much-adored grandfather and her cousins who’d inherited the family temper, she’d learned how to fight back in the ensuing years. And she’d done her best to bury the pain of her mother’s desertion, focusing instead on the fact that Deirdre McDaniel Stone had come back for her.

Emma might be alone tonight in this tower room, but she was worlds different from the outcast child who’d once believed her only friend was March Winds’ ghost.

She smiled wistfully, remembering how fiercely she’d clung to that kindred spirit from another century, another girl’s hopes and dreams captured within a Civil War era journal. Addy March would have been as fascinated by this castle as Emma was. For if ever there was a place perfect for ghosts, it was this rugged fortress with its soft curls of mist, moonlight on the water and the raging battle of waves upon shore.

Emma scooted closer to the window, the drafts chilling her as she peered out toward the sea, imagining home so far away. But all thoughts of her mother’s laughter, her cousins’ antics vanished as she glimpsed a quicksilver flash of something on the water. Her heart tripped. No. It couldn’t be. She rubbed her tired eyes, struggling to focus, but the figure remained, dancing with death, no foothold beneath him except the churning waves.

A knight, Emma marveled, his armor gleaming in the moonshine, his sword flashing as he battled demons he alone could see.

Emma flattened her palm on the window, trying to remember to breathe as she watched the warrior battle with the sea, swinging his weapon with terrible grace, leaping and dodging, thrusting and parrying, the weight of his unseen world crushing down on broad, phantom shoulders.

A ghost? Emma’s subconscious queried. How could it be anyone else, out there on the waves? Emma of all people knew about ghosts. But whose spirit could it be? Lady Aislinn’s husband, Lord Magnus, returned at last from King Edward I’s French wars? Trying to fight his way back to her side to rescue her even centuries too late from the foe who had held her prisoner?

As if in answer, a gust of wind rattled the windowpanes. The draft that whooshed through the chamber catching the candle. Its flame leaped wildly, blew out.

Suffocating darkness rolled across the chamber like a sorcerer’s spell, the moonstruck window glowing with new life of its own. She could see the warrior far more clearly now.

The phantom knight was tiring. Emma could feel it as if he were inside her, his battles her own. Pain wracked his muscles, exhaustion slowing the swings of his sword as if he were slashing it through air thick as water. He stumbled and Emma wanted to race down the stairs in spite of the darkness, find some way to steady him, urge him not to give up.

Just what are you planning to do? Butler’s sneering voice demanded in her head. Grope your way through the castle in the dark? Even if you didn’t break your neck on the stairs, you’d fall off the sea cliffs and drown.

But how else could she know for sure? Emma’s subconscious asserted stubbornly. See if he was really there? This warrior trying to fight his way back to the lady he loved even though a chasm of centuries now yawned between them?

And why did it matter so much to her? To prove this phantom was real? A man fighting for love instead of giving up, the way she and Drew had two years ago?

Damn Butler and damn her own good sense! She was going to find out the truth, no matter what….

But she’d barely taken a step away from the window when the warrior made a final wild swing with his sword. She saw the bright blade waver, fall. The knight crumpled to his knees, wind ripping at his silvery hauberk. He yanked a helm from his head, dark hair tumbling about a face she couldn’t see. The sea raged in triumph around him, sucked him down under the waves until he vanished, far beyond her reach.

It was over. Emma sank back down onto the bench, her heart a raw wound in her chest. No question who had won both battles tonight. The knight lost to his ghosts from the past, Emma to demons so old she’d thought she’d forgotten them.

But wasn’t that the hard truth they forgot to tell you in fairy tales? Emma thought sadly.

Sometimes the dragon got to win.

JET LAG COULD BE a beautiful thing—at least if your goal was to make someone as miserable as possible come morning. And that was exactly what Jared Butler had in mind as he tugged on his Barbour coat to head up to the castle. By his calculations, it must be the middle of the night in Los Angeles. Between the grueling twelve-hour flight with its half-dozen delays and spending her first night in medieval luxury, he figured the pampered Ms. Emma McDaniel must already be running on empty.

Of course, he’d be able to enjoy a whole lot more the prospect of her starting their first day of historical consulting with a bad case of sleep deprivation if it weren’t for one minor hitch: he’d barely slept a wink himself.

He ran one hand over the rough stubble on his jaw and glared at his reflection in the shaving mirror nailed to one of his tent posts. He looked like he’d spent the night wrestling a wildcat. His eyes were bloodshot, the lines in his brow carved deep.

And damn if he didn’t have a bruise on his arm where Emma McDaniel had whacked him at the airport. Only because she’d surprised him, masculine pride nudged him to add. He wouldn’t give her the chance to do it again.

His mouth hardened with what his father had called the pure perishing for a fight look he’d inherited from the mother he’d barely known.

Emma McDaniel might be a third-rate actress, but she’d demonstrated one talent he could attest to. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had made him so mad.

Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time a woman had made him feel anything at all. For a heartbeat he remembered how warm feminine fingertips could be, how soft tracing the planes and angles of his body, how delicate the piercing pleasure as they feathered across his skin.

Damn Davey and the rest of the crew for putting thoughts of Emma McDaniel in his mind. Drops the goddess into the lap of the one man who hasn’t fantasized about what he’d do with her…

Oh, he’d fantasized plenty since he’d gotten word McDaniel was invading Castle Craigmorrigan. Throwing her off the cliff. Hanging her from a tower. Packing her back on an airplane bound for America. But hearing Davey and Nigel extolling the woman’s beauty had unsettled him in a new way.

Not that he’d ever been tempted by the nipped and tucked, painted and polished type of woman who spent hours perfecting herself in the mirror. Case in point: Angelica Robards. A woman who was not only drop-dead gorgeous but one of the most talented actresses of her generation. If she hadn’t gotten under his skin sexually, then Emma McDaniel never would.

The Jade Star actress and everything she stood for made Jared furious. It wasn’t thoughts of steamy, mindless sex that had wrecked Jared’s sleep. What kept him up all night was knowing McDaniel would be making a nuisance of herself around the dig site, distracting his crew of students. The thought made him resolve to exhaust the woman so badly this morning she’d crawl up those tower steps begging for mercy, too tired to turn the heads of kids like Davey Harrison.

Entering the castle, Jared blinked, trying to accustom his eyes to the dimness, the dawn’s haze that filtered through the arrow loops doing little to relieve the shadows. But he knew this site as well as he knew the rough lines and angles of his own face. By instinct, he crossed to the spiral stairs, taking fiendish delight in the dead silence as he strode up the stone risers. Perfect. His prey must be sound asleep.

As he neared the landing to Emma’s tower room, his eyes narrowed in anticipation. No point in knocking. There was no door. One more realistic tidbit from the time of LadyAislinn that Jade Star would have to get used to. A complete lack of privacy.

An unexpected image stung Jared: the tabloid headlines he’d seen in the airport. And he wondered for an instant what it would be like to have his most personal failures splashed across a gossip rag. When his marriage had crumbled he’d been able to bury himself in his work, lose himself in a past far less agonizing than losing Jenny had been. But the press could’ve had a field day with what he’d done if anyone besides Jenny’s father and friends had cared enough to read about it.

Don’t be an eejit. Butler crushed any sympathy he felt. Emma McDaniel had chosen the attention, the fame, the money, the fans clambering around her. What had Davey said? Every men’s dorm room had posters of the woman plastered on the wall? Probably poses of her half-naked. What else could Emma McDaniel expect besides this feeding frenzy in the press?

Well, she was about to find out some men weren’t impressed by a centerfold-worthy body or a lush red mouth or big brown eyes. The castle history claimed Lady Aislinn was distraught when Sir Brannoc and his mercenaries arrived? By the time Jared was through with Emma McDaniel, she’d welcome an invading army catapulting stones at her tower wall!

Jared crossed the threshold, the larger windows cut in the more defensible top of the tower spilling rose-tinged rays of dawn across the chamber. “Time to get up.” Jared let his voice boom against the stone walls. “Can’t waste daylight when candles are so expensive.” Not to mention the cresset lights, rush lights and candles gave a far fainter light than audiences conned by costume dramas on the movie screen would ever have guessed.

What, not so much as a groan from Her Royal Highness? Jared strode to the bed, gave it a sharp kick to shake it. “This is your wake-up call—” he began, then froze. The piles of furs had barely been touched, the pillow still fluffed, no hollow formed by a sleeping head. The bed hadn’t been slept in.

What the hell? Was it possible the prima donna had already taken off for greener pastures? No. He couldn’t be that lucky. He hadn’t heard a car start and God knew he would have. He’d heard every other damn sound around camp last night. She could hardly have walked all the way to the main road hauling that heavy suitcase.

His brow furrowed with a niggling of worry. Of course, somebody who came from L.A. wouldn’t be stupid enough to hitchhike. It would be dangerous for any lone woman and downright suicidal for a celebrity.

There was no way McDaniel had gone that far, he reassured himself. More likely she went for a walk. But he hadn’t seen a soul on his way to the castle. And over the years he’d loved this place, worked on it, he’d developed a sixth sense about anyone prowling around the space. He would have noticed. Unless she’d gone wandering around the cliffs in the dark and fallen. Impossible, he told himself sharply. He would have heard her scream.

His father-in-law’s white-bearded face swam in his memory, the man who had once been Jared’s mentor, so cold, so fragile, aged a hundred years since the last time they’d seen each other. Don’t pretend you even noticed what was happening to my daughter until it was too late. You always were a selfish man, Jared, lost in your own world…

Last night Jared had been lost in his own world again. Just like he’d been with Jenny.

He rushed toward the window to look outside, but halted at the tabletop that had been empty the last time he’d seen it.

The rough wood now held a cluster of things carefully arranged. The ink and quills he’d packed in the chest, two sheets of parchment filled with writing and one object he’d never seen before, completely out of place with the medieval decor. A cheap purple, glitter-encrusted frame so dinged-up it might have gone a few rounds in the barrel of a clothes dryer. A thin crack snaked across the glass, dividing the photograph the frame held in two.

Jared picked up the frame, held it to the light. Christmas lights glowed against a backdrop of Norfolk pine so fresh he could almost smell the needles. What was obviously a family clustered before it. Two sets of parents wrangled a herd of sugar-overdosed children who were flashing sticky smiles at the camera. A sweet-faced redhead with dreamy eyes nestled close to a tall dark-haired man who looked about the right age to be Emma’s father. Another man cradled a toddler in his arms, while a woman with restless blue eyes and a crop of Emma’s wild dark hair laughed up at him.

Enthroned in a leather chair, a man of about eighty leveled a hawkish gaze at the camera. Emma, at least twenty in the picture, curled up on the old man’s lap, her face so fresh and blooming it shoved hard at even Jared’s cynical heart.

Leaning over Emma’s shoulder, a young man with features more perfectly sculpted than Orlando Bloom’s beamed as he held up her left hand and pointed to the flash of a diamond ring.

This picture with its ugly frame was the thing Emma had fought like a wildcat to keep from her suitcase? A family photograph with her ex-husband front and center? It was the last thing Jared would have expected someone like her to value.

And how had she spent last night? Obviously writing something. Two letters from the look of it. Jared glanced down at the pieces of parchment. Despite a dozen ink blots and painfully cramped script, he could see Emma had worked damned hard with the period materials at her disposal. Dear Mom, one page read. The other: Hey Jake…

Jake?

Jared hastened to put the frame back down. Hell, he’d almost started feeling sorry for her. But she already had some other man writhing on her hook—besides green college kids like Davey.

He almost walked away. Could hear the grandmother who’d helped raise him scolding from the grave. Jared Robert Butler, for shame. Don’t you even think of reading that lady’s mail. Your father and I taught you better manners than that.

Tried to teach him would be more accurate, Jared amended. He’d been the despair of both of them more often than he cared to remember.

In the end, his insatiable curiosity won out as it always had. But what better way to obliterate any shreds of empathy he might be tempted to feel toward the actress than reading her tale of woe? Line after line of how Jared had abused her. What a bastard he’d been. He’d been generous on that count anyway, given her plenty to bitch about.

Jared picked up the sheets of parchment, scanning Emma’s letters. He frowned. Who the devil had written this thing? Because it sure as hell couldn’t have been the pampered Emma McDaniel. She’d made her miserable flight sound like an adventure, her arrival at the castle so cheerful and full of enthusiasm Jared had to shake his head to try to clear his confusion. She’d warned this Jake to be on the lookout for a box she’d sent—a surprise for her mom—and promised to bring him back a kilt.

Anybody reading these letters would think the woman was having the time of her life, if one tiny detail hadn’t betrayed her. Two watery splotches blurred the ink where she’d scrawled something about “hugs and kisses.” Teardrops. Jared stared down at the marks, suddenly damned uncomfortable.

“So the lady cried,” he growled aloud. “Why should you care?”

Good question. But somehow, deep down in his gut, he did.

Had he made her so miserable? So desperate that he’d driven a woman to risk…Jared’s jaw hardened. Why should that be so hard to believe? His abominable temper had done plenty of damage before.

Guilt a decade old ground like a fist into his stomach. He pushed open the window frame, half-afraid he’d find Emma McDaniel lying like a broken doll on the rocks below.

Nothing. The cliffs were empty. He breathed in a sigh of relief. But he’d barely taken a step out of the alcove when voices drifted up.

He leaned out the window, pain vanishing in cold, clean anger as he took in the scene below him. Emma McDaniel, resplendent in medieval garb, strolled beyond chains that marked places as dangerous and out of bounds, while Davey Harrison stumbled along the precipice after her, his eyes so glazed with adoration Jared doubted he would even know he was dead until he hit the rocks below.

Maybe not, chief, but what a way to go, Jared could almost hear him say. Brash words and yet nothing Davey said could mask the almost invisible cracks Jared knew were inside the kid. Fissures akin to the ones in the medieval clay pitcher Jared and Davey had pieced together with painstaking care on the boy’s first stay at the site.

Damned if Jared was going to let someone like Emma McDaniel breeze into the lad’s life and carelessly dash it to pieces again.

Hands knotted in fists, Jared charged down the tower stairs, ready for battle.

EMMA BREATHED IN the sweet scent of her first Scottish morning, her thin leather shoes growing damp from the dew clinging to the tussocks of grass and springy moss around her. The cluster of tents at the far end of the broken curtain wall stood dead silent.

Thank God no one was stirring. Especially Jared Butler. Her cheeks burned. She didn’t even want to think what the genius archaeologist would say if she told him she’d come out this morning to search for a ghost.

Especially since she’d already broken one of Mussolini the Scot’s cardinal rules. Don’t be wandering around where you don’t belong, he’d roared at her in his sardine can of a car. I won’t have you contaminating my dig site.

His? The land had been deeded over to the National Trust before Butler had been born, from what her research had said. And yet the Scotsman acted as if it were his own private kingdom.

Maybe the castle wasn’t his exclusive domain, but the dig was. Even Barry had warned her to cooperate with Butler any way she could; the archaeologist’s goodwill was vital to the film.

Well, at least she’d hedged her bets by obeying Butler’s second warning, she rationalized. Obviously this section of the castle grounds wasn’t part of the excavation. There wasn’t a shovel in sight.

Of course the danger signs marking the rear of the castle as off-limits were a different matter. Strung at intervals on a thick chain between two concrete posts, the warnings were giant-sized, with big red letters.

“Nobody has to know I came back here,” Emma rationalized as she made her way onto the narrow, rocky band that topped the cliff guarding the castle’s back. “I’ll just nip over to the cliff edge, take a quick look around and then beat feet out of here before anyone is the wiser.”

If only it were that simple. Instinct made her want to hurry, afraid with every minute that passed that any remaining clue regarding the apparition might wash out into the sea. But she had to watch every step, gingerly testing each piece of moss-slick stone to see if it could bear her weight.

Breaking her neck on her first day at the castle would be a very bad idea. Especially when she thought of how pleased Jared Butler would be if she ended up out of commission.

But she’d never been able to resist mysteries like this one. Never quite shaken her fiercely held childhood belief in spirits who wandered the night and the gifts they could bring.

Ghosts or fairies like the ones in old Irish stories her Aunt Finn had told her, carrying warnings of impending doom or promising love so strong the person who won it would never die. After all, hadn’t a ghost brought Aunt Finn into her life? Aunt Finn, who had brought Emma’s mother back to stay.

Who knew what kind of luck the knight of the sea might bring?

Emma swore under her breath as her ankle wrenched, just enough to startle her.

“Ms. McDaniel?” Behind her a worried voice cracked the way Drew’s had in middle school. Emma all but jumped out of her skin, tripping over the unfamiliar hem of her dress. The smooth leather soles of her shoes slipped on the damp rock and would have dropped her smack on her backside if a skinny young man of about nineteen hadn’t grabbed her around the waist at the last possible instant.

She flailed, fighting to regain her balance. It only took a heartbeat for her instincts to kick in, and she murmured a grateful thanks to the skills she’d gained from stunts she’d done herself in the Jade movies. The beet-red young man couldn’t have let go of her any faster if she’d caught his hands on fire.

“You shouldn’t—shouldn’t sneak up on people like that!” Emma gasped, pressing one hand to her thundering heart. “You scared the life out of me!”

“I, uh, yelled your name, Ms. McDaniel. I can’t figure out why you couldn’t hear me.”

Emma’s own cheeks warmed. Rueful, she smiled. “I guess I was…lost in imagining…”

The most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen… Of course he was gorgeous, and charming and, well, perfect. Because he didn’t really exist. At least not anyplace except her imagination.

Maybe that was the key, just like her best friend in L.A. often said. I like my imaginary men best.

Emma couldn’t stifle a smile as she pictured Samantha’s eyes alight with her signature biting humor. Of course, the woman wrote books, so she spent plenty of time with imaginary heroes. She was still coming up with creative places to help Emma hide Drew’s body.

Emma started, realizing her rescuer was staring at her. Oh, Lord. She knew that starstruck look, and she absolutely hated it.

“I’m Emma,” she said, extending her hand while she flashed him a warm smile.

The youth gave her hand a quick squeeze, then let go as if he expected her to disappear with the pop of a bubble, like Glinda in the Wizard of Oz. “Trust me, ma’am,” he said. “There isn’t a guy on earth who doesn’t know who you are.”

“This face is hard to forget.” Emma twisted her features into the outrageous grimace she’d perfected to make her mom laugh.

The kid nearly choked on a surprised burst of laughter, coughing and sputtering so badly Emma had to pound him on the back.

“I…I’m David Harrison. Everybody calls me Davey. This is my…fourth summer…working with Dr. Butler.”

Nothing like inviting the bad fairy to the princess’s birthday party.

She’d pretend he hadn’t mentioned Dr. Sexy Mouth. “Davey. Thanks for keeping me on my feet.”

Davey’s brow furrowed. “I wouldn’t wander around back here if I were you. Dr. Butler doesn’t like it.”

Damn if that didn’t tempt her to do cartwheels across the outcropping.

“The rocks are always slick and some are unstable,” Davey added earnestly. “One of the undergrad students was playing around the first year the site was open and broke an ankle. Ever since, Dr. Butler has insisted this is off-limits. I’m surprised you didn’t, er, well, read the sign. Or notice the chain…”

Emma frowned. “Nobody ever comes back here? But I thought I saw…” A ghost. A warrior. A man. Oh, give it up, Emma.

Davey regarded her intently. “You thought you saw what?”

Emma flushed. The last thing she needed was this kid telling Butler she was hallucinating. The jerk would probably call the studio and insist she take a drug test.

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking…” Emma forced pure mischief into her smile. “Pity the castle doesn’t have a ghost. Just think what a great ending that would make, mentioned in the closing credits.”

“The script already has Lady Aislinn defeating a battle-hardened knight with a broadsword. Why not add one more ridiculous lie to the story?”

Emma stiffened, glanced over her shoulder. Butler. It wasn’t fair that such an asshole should sound so sexy. Not to mention how well he fit into those pants. Thank God he’d had the rotten fashion sense to pull on some kind of olive drab oilcloth coat to hide most of the green T-shirt that almost matched his eyes.

“Here he is at last,” she muttered, “the historical genius.”

Davey turned, completely flustered as he saw the man charging toward them. “Dr. Butler,” Davey stammered, the poor kid looking as if he’d just been caught burying chicken bones in one of the dig site’s graves. “I…I was just—”

“Davey was keeping me company.”

“Entertaining spoiled starlets isn’t in his job description. Last time I checked the schedule, Harrison, you were supposed to head the team sifting through the dirt where we found that intaglio ring. Or do you want me to assign it to someone else?”

“No.” Davey looked like Santa had just smacked him. “I’ll get right to it.” But instead of bolting in the wake of Butler’s wrath, the youth squared his shoulders and turned to Emma. “He’s not usually like this. He didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Jared’s cheekbones darkened. “What does that have to do with anything?”

The youth gave him a look full of empathy. “When that happens you’re a whole lot better dealing with dead people than live ones, I’m thinking.”

Jared growled a curse.

“Just remember how you felt after the accident, Dr. Butler.”

The archaeologist compressed his mouth into a hard, white line.

Emma tried to get her mind around what Davey had hinted at. Butler suffering guilt over Angelica Robards’fall from the horse? But then, it was only logical he’d feel terrible that the woman was on the injured list. Butler had made up his mind months ago that she made an acceptable Lady Aislinn.

Butler sucked in a deep breath reminiscent of Emma’s yoga instructor. “What does the accident have to do with…?”

“It’s the only reason I can figure you’re acting this way.” Davey faced Emma, exuding quiet dignity far beyond his years. “Goodbye, Ms. Mc…”

“Emma,” she corrected.

Davey gave her a ghost of a smile. “Emma.”

“I’m so glad to meet you, Davey,” she said, touching the boy’s arm. She hated to send Davey away with that worried expression on his face. Sensed the boy was serious beyond his years. She flashed him her grandfather’s ornery grin, made sure her eyes sparkled with mischief as she leaned toward Davey and spoke in a stage whisper Butler was sure to hear. “It’s nice to know someone around here gets up at the historically-accurate hour.”

David didn’t get the joke. “Oh, no, ma’am,” he began earnestly, “the chief—”

“The chief can speak for himself,” the Tyrant of Craigmorrigan said. “Get to work.”

Davey shrugged and headed out of the line of fire, casting worried glances back over his shoulder.

“Keep your eye on the rocks, lad,” Jared ordered. “I don’t have time to take you to hospital!”

Davey’s head snapped forward, eyes fixed front and center.

“Nice move, Butler.” Emma tossed her curls. “And now that you haven’t got anybody else to bully, maybe you could start the job the studio hired you to do. Unless you want to go back to bed?”

Dangerous, Emma. Thinking of Jared Butler and bed in the same sentence was a very bad idea. Especially since, at the moment, he looked all craggy and primitive, like one of those highlanders in the romance novels her aunt Finn loved to read. And with muscles like those, the jerk would have no problem flinging a woman over his shoulder and carrying her up the tower stairs. Of course, Emma would definitely scratch his eyes out the minute he dumped her amidst the made-in-China furs on her bed.

She brought herself up short. How had she ended up in Aunt Finn’s book? Luckily, Butler didn’t have a clue about Emma’s unruly train of thought.

“I’m always the first person awake on this site and the last person asleep,” Butler said.

“Not this morning, Dr. Sunshine. I’ve been up since…well, I wouldn’t know the time since my Rolex is off-limits. But the moon was just gorgeous out my tower window. I curled up on that charming stone bench and watched the sea for ages.”

Butler glanced up at the window Emma knew looked out from her room. Did the man actually look uncomfortable? What was that about? Certainly not concern for her. The Scot had all the sensitivity of her L.A. neighbor’s pit bull.

“Everything I read on medieval times said people were up at first light,” Emma said. “So I didn’t want to miss my curtain call.”

Lines carved deep between his brows and Emma was delighted to sense his irritation that she’d actually done some background research.

“So you can read then?” Butler taunted. “I was beginning to wonder, considering you obviously passed right by the danger signs I’d posted.”

“Yes, well, I’ve spent my whole career catapulting across volcanoes and climbing sheer rock walls with hordes of natives chasing after me. I thought strolling across a few rocks was no big deal.”

“You thought?” Butler took a step toward her. Damn if she was going to back away. She leaned deeper into his personal space instead, scowling back with Jade’s take-no-prisoners glare.

“Yes,” Emma said crisply. “I thought. I do it all the time.”

“Well you’re not doing it here. Do you hear me? No thinking. You do what you’re told, when you’re told. If I put up a sign that says jump, you ask off which cliff. And there is no ghost. Got it? I don’t give a damn what kind of Hollywood candy floss you want to stick all over this story. These are historical figures you’re dealing with now. Real people who deserve some respect.”

“Respect?” Emma echoed in mock astonishment. “Are you sure you know the definition of that word or did they forget to ask that question on your way to getting your Annoying Genius badge in Boy Scouts?”

“I wasn’t a Scout.”

“Pity. It’s been an amazingly civilizing influence on my cousin Will. Scouting just might have taught you manners. And as for there not being a ghost at the castle, that’s something I’d love to remedy. You’d make a great ghost, Butler. One little trip off the cliff and my problems would be over. Then I could just have you exorcised or banished—or whatever psychics do to make ghosts disappear.”

The corner of Butler’s mouth curled, so smug she wanted to slap him. “Priests exorcise demons. And psychics are a load of codswallop.”

Be careful, Emma, a voice inside her warned. Don’t let him guess…what? That she’d spent last night imagining a ghost? That part of her would always believe in magic. Even now, after her marriage lay in ashes, she wanted to believe in a love so powerful that even centuries couldn’t kill it. She wanted a happily-ever-after for the remarkable woman who had once lived in this castle.

Why couldn’t she keep herself from asking? “You don’t believe in ghosts?”

Shrewd green eyes flashed. “I’m a scientist. What do you think?”

“I’m not supposed to think, remember?” she reminded so sweetly she hoped Butler would get tooth decay. Rotten teeth. That was the perfect way to defuse the magnetism of Butler’s criminally sexy mouth.

White teeth flashed, his smile all crooked. It was flawed, damn it. Asymmetrical. She knew people in L.A. who would have raced to a plastic surgeon to have something like that corrected. Butler should have looked awful. Instead he looked like an X-rated dream.

There’s nothing you like about this man, Emma, she told herself. Remember that. Not one thing.

Except that libido-blistering smile.

Damn. Butler was watching her as if he knew what she was thinking. Those penetrating eyes swept her from head to toe.

Emma fiddled with the small gilt dagger at her waist. “Don’t smirk at me,” she warned. “It’s irritating.”

“Give me a few hours and I promise you’ll be too tired to care. Let’s go saddle up the horses.” Butler leveled Emma an arrogant look. “You can ride horses, can’t you? In the paper-work you filled out for the audition, you said you were an experienced rider.”

“That depends.” Emma pressed her hand to her heart, delighting in pulling his chain. “Experience can mean so many different things to so many different people.”

“I’m keeping the question at a five-year-old’s level since I’m still not convinced you can read.” Butler kicked the metal sign with the toe of his boot. “Can you ride? Yes or no?”

“What do you think?” Emma challenged, hands on hips.

“I think I’m in hell.” Butler stepped over the chain with his long legs. “But by nightfall I’m going to make bloody sure you’re right there with me.”

Chapter Four

THE BARN WAS DESERTED. The rest of the horses boarded at the nearby stable dozed in the morning sun as Jared tacked up Falcon, the black Andalusian stallion he borrowed to ride in mock tournaments and the dainty gray mare the studio had leased to play Lady Aislinn’s beloved Morgan le Fay.

Jared regarded Emma with a mixture of smugness and irritation. Wary, she hung back just a little, struggling to mask her trepidation, acting nonchalant, but betraying her nervousness in tiny ways. Fidgeting with the end of her girdle, swallowing hard when she thought he wasn’t looking, nibbling at her rosy bottom lip as she thrust out a hand for the mare to sniff.

“Don’t let her bite you,” Jared said. “She’ll think you’ve brought her a carrot.”

“Why?”

“Because I…Because horses are forever hopeful and I can’t have her nipping off your fingers. The studio wouldn’t like it.”

“I wouldn’t like it either.” Emma curled her fingers back into her palm. “I faint at the sight of blood.”

“We’ll try not to spill any then.” He glanced over toward the long canvas-wrapped bundle he’d brought with him, then figured he’d deal with it once he got the duchess up on her horse. Emma would undoubtedly need a few minutes once she was up top to remember how to breathe. “Mount up,” Jared ordered.

“M-mount up. Right. I just put my foot in that metal thing and…”

“It’s called a stirrup. I’ve already got it set to about the right length for your legs.”

Emma sucked in a deep breath and then edged toward the mare.

“I’m playing the role of groom,” Jared said. “He’d help you get up on the horse.”

“I can—can do it myself.”

“Sure you can. But we’re going to pretend we’re in the fourteenth century.” He closed the space between them, too close for comfort. Her hair smelled delicious, like cinnamon. He linked his hands and crouched so she could put her foot into the cup his palms formed.

“Now just let me boost you up.”

Obviously uneasy, she did as she was told, gripping his shoulder in a fingers-of-death hold. Her breast was inches from his face, her hair brushing in silken strands across his stubbled cheek.

Damn good thing they hated each other. Because if they hadn’t, they might never leave the barn. “Ready?” he asked.

She nodded.

“One, two, three.” He straightened, half suffocating in the folds of her gown as she tried to scramble onto the horse’s back.

She gave a nervous squeak as she fought for balance, the mare sidestepping as Emma’s arms and legs flailed like a snarl of Slinky toys, limp and useless, her body listing perilously. She seemed ready to slide off the opposite side as she grabbed the leather reins—completely by accident, Jared figured.

Smug as a cat with a mouse in its teeth, Jared started toward her to keep her from breaking her neck. But a split second before he could reach her arm, she nabbed the stirrups with her feet, leaned over the mare’s neck and took off at a dead run.

Flashing him a diabolical smile over one shoulder, she left him eating her dirt. Literally. That was the major problem with gaping like an eejit when a horse’s hooves were flinging bits of dirt and grass back at you.

Spitting out the grit and swiping the back of his hand across his mouth, Jared grabbed the long bundle, swiftly fastening it on the back of the suddenly restive Andalusian’s saddle. He swung up onto the black and gave chase, but Emma had won herself a fine head start.

Reluctant admiration sparked inside him. Emma McDaniel sat on the horse as if she’d been born on one. Her silvery laughter echoed back to him as she splashed through puddles, mud spattering her gown, her hair a wild tangle as she lifted her face to the wind.

She used the mare’s delicate legs to her advantage, flying above the ground like a fluff of dandelion seeds carried on the wind before a storm. Falcon thundered after her, the power that made him the terror of the recreated lists where Jared practiced with his lance doing little to close the last dozen meters between the two horses.

But maybe Falcon didn’t want to catch them any more than Jared did at the moment. Maybe he wanted to enjoy the sight of two breathtaking female creatures running free. Far enough to the right side to see Emma and her mount in profile, Jared surprised himself, drinking in the sight. For with each stretch of countryside the mare flew across, Emma’s smile glowed more luminous, the elegant curve of her cheek a deeper wind-stung pink.

When she’d bolted out of the barn fifteen minutes ago, she’d been showing off—elated to leave him in her dust and shatter his cynical doubt that she knew one end of a horse from the other. But the farther away from the stables they got, the more Emma and the mare seemed to bond, until they both looked as wild and ethereal as the magical creatures Jared’s father had told him about when he’d still been young enough to believe in them. Women made of mist and imagination, so exquisite a man only had to look at them to fall deathly in love and pine the rest of his life for the fairy queen far beyond a mortal’s reach.

Is that what happened to my mum? Jared remembered the night he’d finally dared to ask. Did she wander into the mist and vanish to Tir Nan Og just like the fairy queen?

Tears filled his father’s eyes, his callused fingertips tracing Jared’s cheek, scratching tender little-boy skin. She might have done just that, lad. So far above this hard world of mine she was.

Having a fairy queen for a mum was a lot easier on the heart than the truth his father had never been strong enough to face. But then, by the time Jared had been able to fathom the cold reality of his mother’s desertion, Mary Calloway Butler was easier for Jared to understand than any fairy ever could be. After all, hadn’t Jared proved that he was just like her?

Jared slammed his mind shut against the memories, drawing on his power to focus so intently on the task before him that his own past disappeared.

Within moments, he’d blocked out everything but the vast sweep of sky overhead and the green, boulder-strewn land below. And Emma McDaniel riding. In the distance he glimpsed an unruly burn, its winding length tumbling over one waterfall and then curving in an exquisite arc to dance down yet another.

The stream marked the end of the land they had permission to ride on.

Snib MacMurray, the farmer whose land abutted the opposite side of the burn, had told the studio to take the money they’d offered him to use his property as part of the set and cram it up their arse. He wasn’t about to have a pack of foreigners tramping around, upsetting his sheep and making the cows’ milk dry up.

But then, Snib had been surly for as long as Jared had known him. Don’t be taking Snib’s insults to heart, Angus Butler had soothed Jared as a boy. Snib’s the kind of man who took the defeat at Culloden Moor so personal he’s determined to make everyone he meets suffer for it two hundred and fifty-odd years later.

A roguish part of Jared would’ve loved to have seen Emma McDaniel meet the glen’s most cantankerous resident. But the sooner Jared got through the day’s training, the sooner he could get back to the dig. If he couldn’t wear Emma out on horseback, he’d just use another method.

Jared called out, but if she could hear him, she pretended not to. She and her mare only flew faster, as if the woman was trying to keep her mount as far from his as possible. He got the distinct feeling she was doing her best to pretend he was a tree. Or a rock. Or more likely still, something that had just crawled out from under one, he thought with a wry smile.

Not that he blamed her. If he’d behaved so badly Davey felt obliged to make excuses for him, he must have exuded all the charm of a moray eel. Most women he knew would have been appalled by his temper already, but Emma McDaniel gave as good as she got. He remembered how she’d refused to back down behind the castle that morning, challenging him with dark eyes, leaning into his space as if daring him to…to…what? Kill her?

Or kiss her?

Whoa, man. Where had that thought come from? Too many months without a woman beneath him—that’s where. A man could wall off his emotions, but defying biology was a tougher matter entirely. Any scientist knew that. The survival of the species depended on the male’s urge to mate. And mating was all about the chase.

He squeezed his heels into the big stallion’s sides, the animal surging in an effort to close the space between him and Emma’s mare. But of her own volition, Emma reined in at the stream. She dismounted and, reins in hand, peered up at the waterfalls, her creamy skin and lovely profile making Jared’s chest feel too small.

He drew rein beside her, the mare giving a whicker filled with satisfaction, the equine equivalent of “took you long enough to catch us.” But from the mare’s come-hither eyes, Jared wondered if the two females had let themselves be caught. One more part of the mating ritual, just to keep things interesting—tempting the male to a knife’s edge of desire and then retreating.

But the theoretical analysis that usually took the edge off Jared’s sex drive wasn’t working nearly as well as it always had before. Not with the way Emma’s full breasts curved beneath her surcoat, her slim waist accented by the narrow gold-filigreed girdle. Long nights alone he’d dreamed of a woman’s body garbed like that, his hands stripping the layers away as if they were petals, with velvety feminine skin at the center. The only fantasies he’d let himself have since Jenny….

Don’t think about her now. Don’t think about anything except the job you’re supposed to do here.

“So you decided to join us after all, Dr. S. M.,” Emma said, her eyes dancing.

Jared knew she was itching to have him ask what she meant by the nickname, but he wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction. He swung down from the stallion. Taking both sets of reins, he tied the horses to a low-hanging branch. “Angelica told me it was common among actors to say they ride when they really haven’t had much experience. I underestimated you. I won’t make the same mistake again.”

Emma raked wayward black curls away from her face. One strand stuck to the corner of her bottom lip. Jared couldn’t help staring at it.

“Before I read the script for Lady Valiant, my all-time favorite horses were the kind with candy-striped poles through their middles so they couldn’t go anyplace but around in circles. I’d taken a trail ride once with my stepfather and then there was the pony ride at the county fair back in Illinois.”

Jared tried to tear his gaze from the rebellious curl, fought an inexplicable urge to take his own finger and smooth it away just so he could have an excuse to touch that impossibly perfect lip. He reined in the impulse as ruthlessly as he would have reined in a stallion scenting a mare in heat.

“You learned to ride less than a year ago?”

“My best friend back in L.A. is a brilliant equestrian. She gave me a crash course on her Dutch warmblood, Arlie. I think he’s the love of my life.”

“Davey will be so disappointed.”

“Yeah, well, Arlie and I suffered through a lot together during horse boot camp. I figure if Sam ever gets tired of the writing gig, she can be a gunnery sergeant. By the end of the month, my legs were so cramped up I walked like Festus in the Gunsmoke reruns my grandfather used to watch.”

She demonstrated a bowlegged strut so foreign to her natural grace and elegance Jared was amazed. Never would he have guessed a polished woman like the actress before him would make fun of herself so freely.

Jared found himself smiling back at her. “So why didn’t you call ‘hold, enough’ when Angelica was awarded the part? That was over a year ago. It’s obvious you kept riding.”

She flushed, impossibly thick black lashes drifting down to hide her eyes. “Know the funny thing?” she asked in a voice he’d not heard before. She laid her cheek against her horse’s withers and slid her hand into the silky cove between the mare’s mane and neck. “I never expected I would love riding so much. The freedom of it, the feel of the wind. It’s not like motorcycles, you know? All noisy and spitting fumes in your face. On a horse, it’s just you and the quiet, the peace, of being out in the hills alone.” Her voice changed, a little wistful. “You’ll never know how much I needed that.”

Midnight eyes peered almost shyly into his. He could feel her waiting for him to make some wiseass remark.

Instead, he felt a strange kind of connection, a link he hadn’t expected. He spoke to her for the first time without anger or acid wit. “I think I can guess.”

How many hours had he spent on horseback with no one but the wind and the sky and his thoughts?

How strange that this exquisitely beautiful woman with her twenty-million-dollar paychecks and the world at her feet should feel the same thirst to escape as he did.

And yet, how hard must it be for her to get that time alone? With the press stalking her and her fans eager to devour any news about her private life. As if she owed it to them to expose her very soul.

Careful, man. Jared’s cynical side nudged him. Remember the lass chose this life. Fame is what she wanted.

Why did that slick Hollywood existence seem so incongruous with the woman before him, silhouetted against the rugged Scottish landscape, banks of heather and clumps of crab apple trees?

Her eyes drifted closed and she breathed in deep against the mare’s sleek coat. A pleased smile tipped the corner of lips more kissable than Jared had imagined a woman’s ever could be. Damn if Emma McDaniel wasn’t smelling the horse! That comforting combination of hay and leather and sweat that soothed Jared’s ragged nerves so often.

“I’d love to have a horse once my life settles down a bit,” Emma confided. “I adore Arlie, but…he’s definitely Sam’s baby. I want a baby of my own.”

Strange, Jared thought. Hadn’t the headlines on that gossip rag broadcasted that Emma didn’t want children to ruin her gorgeous figure and muck up her career? That was why her husband had left her, wasn’t it? But then, you could hire a groom to take care of a horse while you were gone for months at a time. And if you got tired of the commitment you could sell a horse. Children narrowed your options forever.

Guilt pinched Jared and he busied himself unlashing the bundle from the back of the saddle. He hated the feeling that he, too, was intruding into parts of Emma McDaniel’s life that were none of his business. He had plenty of baggage he’d never want to share. Knew firsthand that suffocating feeling of…

He cut off the thought as the bundle slid free.

“What’s that?” Emma asked, eyeing it with interest. “Some really long hot dogs for a picnic lunch…or breakfast. I keep forgetting what time it is.”

“I brought the swords along so you could practice here. We’re better off away from the site. We’d be a distraction. Here, we can bash around without a soul to hear us but old Snib. And I’d actually like to irritate him. He’s given me plenty of headaches himself.”

“Headaches?”

“Putting the fear of God in my students if they dare wander onto his property. Accusing them of everything from sheep stealing to highway robbery when the worst they’ve done is steal a kiss or two among the standing stones.”

“Why not stay right here? This brook would be a lovely place to…well, steal something besides sheep.”

Jared chuckled. “The standing stones are supposed to make men more potent and ladies fertile. There’s a story that when Lady Aislinn failed to conceive, she left offerings of flowers at the stones in desperation, hoping the spirit there would help her have a child.”

“Did it work?”

“No. But I figure it wasn’t the fault of the stones. It was more the fact that Lord Magnus was forever running off fighting for the English king.”

“I thought the Scots hated the English. Especially…” She paused a moment, her brow furrowing with concentration. “Edward Longshanks, the Hammer of the Scots.”

Surprised, Jared smiled in spite of himself. The lady had definitely done her homework. “King Edward didn’t get the name Hammer until much later, but say what you will about the man’s methods, he was canny as any fox. He gave Lord Magnus wealthy estates in England to buy his loyalty. Quite a dilemma for many Scots nobles. And our own king at that time had sworn fealty to Edward, so there were many who believed honor bound them to take up arms for England.”

“And you?”

Jared regarded her a moment, surprised.

“If you’d been Lord Magnus, what would you have done?”

“My idea of honor is a lot closer to Sir Brannoc’s. And speaking of the most notorious mercenary of his time—” He took one sword and handed it to Emma, his hand brushing hers as he transferred the hilt into her grip. He felt the weapon tug her arm down by its sheer weight.

She quickly added the grasp of her other hand. “My Lord! This thing weighs a ton!”

Jared raised an eyebrow. “My point exactly. Think if I ship one over to your director he’ll finally give this whole fight scene up?”

“No. And neither will I. It’s great conflict. So powerful. And it’s a brilliant symbol for all the strength Lady Aislinn has gained by the end of the script.”

“Have it your way then.” Jared sighed, taking up his own weapon. He ran his fingers down the flat of the blade, drawing from the familiar surface a sense of calm, of power, of invincibility. “Lay on, MacDuff. But when your whole body aches like a boil tomorrow, don’t complain to me.”

He lost himself in explanations, examples, demonstrating the simplest of fighting stances. He tried not to laugh as Emma’s skirts tangled about her legs, inhibiting her stride. In spite of that, she proved to be stubborn as any Scot Jared had ever known. Demanding that he repeat moves again and again, scoffing when even he—bastard that he was—suggested she rest a moment, take a drink from the wine sack he’d brought along.

As it happened, he could have used a moment to collect himself. Clear his mind of the distractions that had surprised him: the soft swells of breasts straining against cloth as she raised her arms to swing, the alluring curve of hip and narrow waist, as time and again he divested her of her sword.

She lunged and parried, thrust and gasped for breath, like one of the Valkyries in legends left in Scotland by Vikings invading ages ago. But time and again, Jared swept the sword out of her hands until at last she didn’t have the strength to lift it above her knees.

“See what I mean?” Jared said. “This whole sword-fight scenario is ludicrous. It’s impossible for Lady Aislinn to win.”

“Nothing…is…impossible.” She wheezed, bending over, bracing herself on the sword. “One day I’ll find a way to drop you like a rock. Just like Billy Callahan, the school bully.”

Jared looked her over. “You look like a stiff wind could blow you away.”

“It throws you arrogant caveman types off guard, and then—whamo. I get a perfect opening.” She slanted a “damn the duchess” glare up at him, but her eyes twinkled.

“Is that so?”

She straightened, still breathless, her breasts rising and falling from the exertion. “My grandfather served in special forces. When I was ten years old he taught me how to fight. Death shots and everything. Consider yourself warned, Butler.”

He grinned. “I’m pure terrified.”

“You should be. As soon as I find a way to use all that weight and upper-body strength against you in a sword fight, mister, you’re going to be on your butt in the dirt begging for mercy.”

A horrible yelp split the air from across the burn, followed by a cacophony of snarling that made the hairs on the back of Jared’s neck stand on end. Both horses skittered to one side. Emma caught her breath.

“My God!” she exclaimed. “What is that? It sounds like someone’s killing something.” She didn’t wait for an answer. Damned if she didn’t wade into the knee-deep water and slog toward the far bank!

“Emma, stay out of it! It’s just old Snib setting his dogs on some poor—”

She stumbled, fell, soaking her left side. Didn’t she know how wild the burn could be after a rainstorm? Full of swirling currents that could pull her under. Plunging after her seemed his only option.

That water was going to be so cold it would take care of any problems he might have being attracted to the woman. His ballocks were going to crawl up inside him and hide for a month!

He gritted his teeth on an oath as he plunged in after her, but she was already scrambling up the other bank. Just at that moment, the snarling tangle of what sounded to be canines boiled up over the rim of the valley that had concealed them thus far.

Snib’s two border collies were tearing into what looked to be a ball of mange not even half their size, as the crusty farmer with his tweed cap urged them on.

“Take the little devil, Shep and Digger. Snap his fool neck!”

Snib’s knobby old head suddenly jerked away from the fight, seeing the soaked woman stalking toward him with all the high dudgeon a straitjacket of wet wool skirts would allow.

“What the devil?” Snib swore. “You’re that film star person who—”

“Call off your dogs!” Emma bellowed, grabbing a fallen branch about as thick as her wrist. “They’re hurting him!”

“Hurting him? It’s killing him they’re after. I’ll not have a thieving stray sucking eggs in my henhouse!”

Emma thumped one of the collies in the ribs, trying to bat it away. The collie yelped, but with the intensity of its breed kept battling what it saw as a threat to its flock.

“Don’t hit the big dog, you crazy woman!” Jared yelled, clambering up onto the bank. “It could turn on you!”

Ignoring him, Emma whacked the second one while old Snib cursed her, but she might as well have been trying to knock out a swarm of bees with a cricket bat. Fangs flashed, tearing at the mangy dog, who fought back as if he were ten feet tall. One of the collies gave a yelp as the little dog launched itself and sank teeth into its shoulder. The bloody little fool held on tight.

Blood streaked the dogs’ coats. And for an instant Jared wished Emma McDaniel would do what she’d promised—and goddamn well faint. The woman passing out cold was the only thing he could think of at the moment that might get her out of danger.

Emma flung away her stick, but it wasn’t in surrender. Jared knew in his gut she was going to plunge headlong into the nastiest dogfight he’d ever seen and try to snatch the mutt to safety. Fear jolted through him as the image of Emma’s hands torn and bleeding flashed in his mind.

He reached her just in time, encircling her waist with his arms, dragging her back against him. The woman kicked and struggled as if he were trying to haul her into danger instead of out of it.

“Don’t! They’re hurting him!” Her voice choked. With tears? He’d never know. Her heel connected hard with his shin.

“I’ll get the damned dog if you settle down,” he promised with a fatalistic grimace. “I’ll heal faster.”

She stilled, her breath catching in her throat, her breasts soft against his arm. He released her. Cursing himself six times a fool, Jared dove into the fight.

Chapter Five

“HAVE YOU GONE daft?” Snib shrilled in disbelief.

Pain pierced Jared’s hand as one of the dogs bit him. Probably the little bastard he was trying to save. Another dog ripped at his shirt.

“Call them off, Snib.” Jared’s hands finally closed about the wriggling mass of fur. Jared booted the collie nearest him and pulled the little dog in to his chest. “Hey,” Jared yelped in pain as the mutt snapped his sharp little teeth into the only thing he could reach—Jared’s pecs.

“Down, Shep. Digger. Heel,” Snib commanded. The collies dropped, shaking from tail to snout as they fought the urge to finish the kill. But if their master had changed his mind, they’d obey him.

Jared’s hands dripped blood, the bite in his chest burned, the terrier eyeing him not with gratitude but plain old resentment for ending the fight.

Eyelids peeled back from black button eyes. The terrier showed its sharp fangs and yipped at his attackers as if to say “Let me at ’em, bloody cowards.” For God’s sake, with its lip curled like that it looked like an angry rat—the kind who carried distemper and bubonic plague. A rat determined to bite whatever happened to be in reach.

Jared shifted the dog away from its apparent target: Jared’s jugular. He didn’t need another souvenir from this debacle. Sensing a chance to break free, the little demon writhed in Jared’s grasp, flailing its spindly legs, its ribs so sparsely fleshed the bones seemed to grind together.

“Settle down, or I’ll strangle you myself,” Jared warned, holding on for dear life. Damned if he wanted to go plunging into the creek a second time in pursuit of the dog.

Emma swept off her surcoat, stepping close to Jared to cut off the mutt’s hope of escape. In spite of the squirming flurry of dog in his hands, Jared noticed the points of her nipples thrusting against the damp linen of her shift. “Let me bundle him up in this,” she said.

“He’ll bite.” Jared gritted his teeth as one of those razor-sharp fangs slit his knuckle. A thump on the head from God, Jared figured. That’s what you get for staring at a Good Samaritan’s breasts.

“He’s just scared,” she murmured, moving closer, crooning softly to the mangy creature. But she wasn’t a complete moron. She used the cloth to protect her arms as she took the quaking scrap of dog out of Jared’s grasp.

“I don’t care how many rotten films you’ve been in back in America, lassie,” Snib groused, wrinkling his nose at Emma as if he’d stepped barefoot in dog droppings. “You keep that stray away from my land or next time I won’t bother me dogs, I’ll just shoot it.”

“You’ll have to shoot me first!” Emma cried, outraged.

“Don’t tempt me.” Snib gave a thunderous snort from his bulbous red nose. “I’ve got no patience for interferin’ women. You tell her that, Butler. Now get on your own side of the burn, all three of you!”

Curving the arm that felt the least like a badly chewed sausage around Emma’s shoulders, Jared urged her back toward the water. This time the cold felt good. As soon as he was sure she had her footing, he plunged his arms into the water, letting the chill cool his pain and wash away the worst of the blood. He only wished the water was deep enough to cover his chest.

By the time he joined Emma and the rat of a dog on the shore, the mutt had decided burying his nose in the nice lady’s breasts was a far friendlier pastime than being savaged by a pair of collies.

Smart little bugger, Jared thought.

“I suppose we’ll have to take the dog with us,” Jared said, more to himself than to her. “It’s stupid enough to swim right back over there to go another round.”

“He’s hurt. His ear’s all torn. Is there a vet someplace close?”

“We won’t be needing one.”

“But—”

Jared shot her a quelling look, then shook his head in bewilderment. “You, there. Dog,” he addressed the disreputable ball of fur. “What kind of eejit takes on someone so much bigger?”

Emma’s grateful smile hurt Jared’s heart. “The same kind of eejit who gets between two dogs in a fight,” she said as if it were the highest accolade.

EMMA MCDANIEL PERCHED cross-legged on Jared’s unmade bed, her shift hiked halfway up her golden-brown thighs so the excess fabric could form a nest for the half-drunk dog in her arms.

She’d protested giving the mutt any alcohol at all, but since it was the only anesthetic available, she’d given in. Jared’s main objection was that the only liquor he had in his tent was the bottle of twenty-five-year-old Macallan Scotch he’d been saving for the day he made the vital discovery he sensed was hovering somewhere in the future of this dig.

But wasting fine Scotch didn’t upset Jared’s equilibrium half as much as the presence of a woman in his tent did. For six summers the roomy canvas enclosure had been the kind of inner sanctum even Davey was forbidden to breach.

The off-limits rule was a necessity Jared had settled on during the first summer he’d arrived as site director. Nothing like going to bed and finding a leggy blond graduate student naked under the sheets to convince an ethical teacher of the necessity of drawing clear boundaries.

But here he sat, the site’s first aid kit open on the crate that served as his bedside table. The spotlight he used to read tiny print late at night aimed down at the most exquisite woman he’d ever seen and a dog who looked as if it had just crawled out of last month’s garbage.

Emma filled the spartan confines of Jared’s tent like a bright splash of color where there had been only gray. His rumpled bed looked as if it had been put to far more sensual use than a lone man’s restless night, the tangled sheets beneath Emma whispering of a night of mind-blowing sex.

And Emma herself, hair tousled, clothes in complete disarray, kept pulling his unruly imagination away from the task at hand and plunging him deeper into a train of thought that could only land him in trouble.

Just because they apparently didn’t hate each other anymore was no reason to jump into bed together. Teaching her swordplay was fine as long as he stuck to the kind made of metal, and not the one the sight of her bared legs made stiffen beneath the fly of his pants.

As if a woman like her would let you touch her anyway.

But she watched intently as he tended the dog, observed his every move in a way that made him jittery as hell.

Frowning, Jared gently folded the stitched ear so it lay on the top of the mutt’s head. He positioned a bright red button the size of a sixpence on the part of the ear that wasn’t tracked with stitches. Might as well put the dog’s head to good use, Jared figured, since it was obvious the animal wasn’t using it to store any brains.

The dog gave a muffled yip through the gauze-band muzzle around its mouth, as if it understood the slanderous direction of Jared’s thoughts. Holding the button in place, Jared slipped the curved needle deftly through the button, the layer of ear and the skin at the crown of the mutt’s head.

“You needn’t be giving me that filthy look,” Jared said. “I’d have left you to take your chances with Shep and Digger. She’s the one who decided you needed rescuing.”

“But you’re the one who saved the day. Right, Captain?”

“Captain? Oh, no,” Jared muttered as he tied off his handiwork and snipped the nylon thread. “This can’t be good for either one of us, dog. She’s naming you now.”

“And you’re going to make him the laughingstock of the county with that big red button on his head.”

“He’d scratch out those stitches before bedtime if they weren’t out of his reach. It’s the button or an Elizabethan collar around his neck. He’d like that even less, believe me.”

“An Elizabethan what?”

“A fancy name for a big plastic cone that makes the poor beast look like it’s tried to squeeze headfirst through the small end of a funnel.”

“Oh.” Emma puzzled for a moment and Jared could see she was trying to picture the ridiculous image he’d described. “You’re right. He wouldn’t like that. It would be hard to watch for sneak attacks.”

“Right. You never know when hordes of marauding collies might decide to raid the dig site. That’s what every archaeological excavation needs. A troublemaking, digging-obsessed dog mucking about.”

“How do you know he digs?”

“That’s what terriers do.”

“Not this one. He’s going to be an angel.” Emma unfolded legs Marilyn Monroe would have envied and swung them over the edge of his mattress, sweeping gracefully to her feet. Carrying the dog to the bed she’d made for him by putting her surcoat in the wooden box she’d emptied of Jared’s sparse toiletries, she bent over to settle Captain in for the night.

The sight of her shapely bottom held Jared’s gaze. After all, what could just looking hurt? Her hair spilled over her shoulder as she crooned to the exhausted little creature, gently removing the muzzle. Jared couldn’t stop himself from wondering how that cascade of black curls would feel tumbling over his chest, all silk and fire, this woman a mix of passion and vulnerability more intoxicating than he’d ever known.

No wonder kids like Davey were mesmerized by Emma McDaniel. Jared was a grown man and he had a feeling his pants were going to get damned tight across the front whenever she was around.

“Where did you learn how to do that?”

The question startled him from fantasies so raw he felt his cheeks burn. “Do what?” he managed to choke out.

“Stitch him up. Clean the wounds and all.”

The dog. She was asking about the dog, Jared realized with relief. Simple question. Easy answer.

Then again, maybe not.

“My father taught me.”

Emma scooped up his razor, his toothbrush and shampoo from where she’d dumped them half an hour before. Feminine hands touched his most intimate objects, arranging them with a woman’s eye for order. “Is your father a doctor?” she asked.

“Hardly that.” Jared turned his back to her and busied himself putting the contents of the first aid kit back in their white plastic case. If only he could lock his emotions inside the container as well, covering up the sadness, the bitter sense of loss. It seemed he was a better actor than he thought or Emma was still too wrapped up in the dog to know how her question had affected him.

“What are you doing?” Emma asked, noticing the restocked first aid kit. “We haven’t taken care of your bites yet.”

“It’s nothing—”

“I would say you saved a damsel in distress, if the dog wasn’t a boy.” She indicated his hand, the fingers now crusted with dried blood. “The least I can do is patch up the injuries you got while doing it.”

“No.” Jared fought the impulse to jam his hands into his pockets, knowing it would hurt like fire. “I can handle this myself.”

“I’m sure you can. But we’re going to play fourteenth century. The lady of the castle did the healing.” She brooked no argument, grabbing the bottle of peroxide and a bowl he’d meant to return to the canteen. Indicating he should sit on the bed, she climbed up beside him, cross-legged again, her knees touching his left thigh as she pulled his hand palm-up into her lap. She ran her fingertips over the puncture wounds and Jared welcomed the distraction of pain burning up his arm.

“These are deep. Maybe we should take you to a doctor.”

“I’ll not be wasting my time driving forty minutes so the man can do what I can do right here.”

“All right then. All right.” She set the bowl between them. “I’m just going to flush the germs out with peroxide.”

Soft, feminine fingers curved gently about his wrist, turning his hand so the worst of the bite wounds were on top. “You might want to have a shot of Scotch yourself before I do this,” she said, and he wondered if her fingertips could feel his pulse racing.

“I’m saving that Scotch for an occasion to remember. Today is one I intend to forget.”

“Very funny.”

Emma tipped the brown bottle. Jared gritted his teeth as the antiseptic seared its way into the puncture wounds. The peroxide fizzed madly as it burned the wounds clean. He felt Emma watching him and looked up to see worried brown eyes.

“Really, they’re just a few little cuts,” he assured her.

“They’re not little. In fact they’re…they’re rather nasty.” Her voice wobbled.

He hated seeing the shadows of self-blame she was trying so hard to hide. Wished he could find a way to drive them from her face. But before he could think of something amusing to say, she spoke with forced brightness.

“You know, human bites are much more dangerous than dog bites.” She poured on another dose of peroxide. “They carry a far greater risk of infection.”

“And I need to know this why?” Jared reached past the pain to shape his lips into a raider’s smile. “You aren’t planning to bite me, are you, Ms. McDaniel?”

“Not unless you deserve it, Dr. Butler,” she fired back, but her cheeks flushed unexpectedly pink, her gaze darting away as if…what? As if she’d been having the same dangerous thought as he had? Right, mate. Dream on.

“Just where did you get your scientific information?” he asked.

“My little sister Hope’s pediatrician. You see, Hope is the youngest of all the McDaniel cousins, so when the family got together she’d bite—well, about anyone she could sink her teeth into—until the year she turned four.”

Emma dabbed at the wounds with a clean square of gauze. Jared tried to distract himself from the warmth of her other hand cradling his.

“What convinced your sister to stop?”

“My grandfather mentioned at Christmas dinner that—”

“Father Christmas doesn’t bring toys to biters?” Jared tried to joke, the image of the dime store frame rising in his memory, the smiling faces silhouetted against the brightly lit tree, the man who’d given this woman a diamond ring. Married her. Taken her to bed on their wedding night. Bad thought. Distracting, yes. But in exactly the wrong way.

“Toys my sister might have been willing to sacrifice for the pure joy of hearing her older cousins howl. Grandpa told her that a girl who bites can never be taught how to fight like a real McDaniel. Hope went cold turkey after that ultimatum, let me tell you! My mom got up from the table and kissed the old man.”

Jared chuckled. “It’s an unusual family that teaches girls to fight.”

“Unusual doesn’t even begin to describe my family. Of course, you’re safe for the moment. Being wounded in action gets you off the official McDaniel hit list.”

She bent over her work, so close he could smell the wind, the water from the burn and a hint of wet dog. Who would have thought that combination could smell good? Her brow creased, her hair falling like a curtain around their linked hands as she began to wrap gauze over the wounds. Once all were covered with layers of soft material, she ripped off a piece of white tape with her teeth and fastened the end of the bandage down securely.

“There,” she said, patting him playfully on the chest. “That’s bet—”

Jared’s breath hissed between his teeth. She drew her fingers away, sticky with blood.

“Oh, my God. You weren’t bitten here, too!” Full of regret, she touched the hard wall of his chest. “Oh, Jared.”

“It’s nothing,” he said, starting to pull away. But her fingers were already slipping buttons free. The backs of her hands skimmed his skin. He gritted his teeth against the dizzying sweet sensation as she brushed the mat of hair beneath his shirt, spreading the cloth back to expose his skin.

To hell with the measly bite the rat had managed to deal him. A man would have to be having some body part amputated not to react to this woman feathering her fingers over his chest. Even if it hadn’t been ages since he’d shagged anyone.

Jared felt his shaft harden. Heard Emma’s breath, a little too fast. He dreaded that she’d noticed he was hard as a rock, but her focus was locked on his chest. It had been a long time since a woman had looked at him like that. An even longer one since a feminine touch had wreaked such havoc on his self-control.

What would she do if he closed the space between them and eased her down onto his bed? What would she do if he covered all that feminine softness with everything that was hard and male in him? If he took her mouth in a kiss that would make them both forget to breathe? Forget everything but the primitive need to…

Snib’s right. You are daft, man! She’d probably knee you in the groin, and you’d deserve it! Things are complicated enough, having her here. Sex would only…

Feel bloody damn wonderful while Jared was in the middle of it. Trouble was, he and Emma would have to work together for the next six weeks feeling uncomfortable around each other. That is, if the lady let him…and why the devil would she? A woman like her. With a man like him? He might as well try to mate that miserable excuse of a terrier with Cruft’s best-in-show.

So say something, dammit, Jared told himself. Talk about something completely asexual. Like blood.

“Shouldn’t you have fainted sometime in the past hour?” He hoped she’d ignore the huskiness in his voice. “You know. That whole blood phobia.”

“IT WAS ALL PART of the act.” She seemed as relieved as he was to find something to talk about. “Considering my family, I’d spend half my life out cold if I were that squeamish. They don’t call us the fighting McDaniels back in Whitewater for nothing.”

He smiled, a real smile this time. Emma’s gaze dipped, drawn to the flash of white. Her breasts tingled, a melting sensation in places too dangerous to allow. He looked…feverish. He couldn’t be getting an infection this soon, but his eyes…they burned green, hot…intense.

Emma’s mouth went dry. Every bit of small talk she’d ever used in conversation flew right out of her head. Lord. She was staring at him like a ninny. She patted the wound on his chest dry, busied herself by taping a gauze pad on the injury.

“You miss them a lot, don’t you?”

Emma heard Jared’s breath hitch as the edge of her little finger skimmed his nipple.

“Miss who?”

“Your family.”

Family…That’s what she was talking about. “You’d think I’d get used to it—being gone so much. But like Mom says, they’ll always be there to come home to.”

“If you like I could send the letters you wrote out with the rest of the post.”

Emma froze, a strip of tape snarling around her fingers. “My letters?” Her stomach knotted.

Guilt suffused Jared’s rugged features. “I came up to the tower, figuring you were still asleep. You were gone.”

“That must have taken one whole glance at the bed to figure out.”

“I thought you might have hitchhiked or—”

“Hitchhiked?” Emma’s temples throbbed. “You think I’m out of my mind?”

“Or that you’d gone someplace you weren’t supposed to,” he finished, as if he hadn’t heard her. His eyes narrowed. “I was right about that much, wasn’t I? I went to look out the window, and…well, you left the thing out in front of God and everybody.”

“I wanted to make sure the ink was dry,” Emma said with measured fury. “And you forgot to pack any medieval envelopes in the chest. It sure wasn’t an invitation for you to read them.”

She pressed her hand to her stomach, feeling strangely violated as she imagined the cynical Jared Butler reading through the private, precious thoughts meant only for loving eyes. Oh, God. What had she written? She’d been trying so hard not to cry that she could hardly remember. But Jared couldn’t know that, could he? Then why was he looking at her with—damn, a hint of…pity?

“How would you feel if I read your private letters to your family?” Emma confronted him, hands on hips.

“That will never happen.”

“I suppose your work is too important for you to be bothered to drop your parents a few lines?”

Jared compressed his lips for a moment. “I don’t have any family.”

Emma stared at him. His eyes were hooded, dark with secrets. “But your father…you said…”

“He’s dead. They all are.”

Emma’s heart clenched, her fury at Jared’s intrusion paling in comparison to her runaway imagination. Picturing just how bleak her own life would be if God obliterated everybody she loved.

Jared held up his gauze-wrapped hand in surrender. “I was wrong to read the letters. I admit it. But don’t you think being chewed up in a dogfight is penance enough?”

“Not unless I was the one who got to bite you.” She hated the fact that he had a point. He might have read her letters, but he’d also saved Captain.

“What if we make a deal, you and me?” Jared offered. “I’ll not invade your privacy again and you’ll stay on the right side of the chain barricade at the rear of the castle. No more prowling around where you don’t belong.”

He looked so damned reasonable, those green eyes fixed on hers as he waited for her answer. But this was one time reasonable wouldn’t work any more than indulging his temper had.

One of Hope’s favorite phrases rose in her mind: You’re not the boss of me. Okay, maybe it worked better coming from an eight-year-old, but Emma could at least hold on to the gist of the words.

She walked over to the crate, lifting it up to carry back to the tower room. “I’ll just get my dog out of your way now.”

“Hold on. I didn’t say you could keep it. A dog on a dig site is a rotten idea.”

“He won’t go near your precious dig site. He’ll be with me. After all, they had dogs in medieval times, didn’t they?”

“Deerhounds and mastiffs and—”

“I could use some company with manners. Captain won’t be able to read my letters or—”

Or look so damned sexy when he was really a nosy, unprincipled—

“All right. You can keep the dog. But at the first sign he’s digging—”

“Maybe you can sew buttons on his paws.”

“Fine. I won’t read your letters or give your dog to the SPCA and you won’t go poking around the back of the castle. I just don’t want the site contaminated. Surely we can agree on that. Do we have a bargain?”

Without a word, she turned and walked out the tent door, the dog’s box in her arms.

“Emma?”

She heard Jared’s irritated call. He was waiting for an answer. Too bad, she thought. He’d have to wait a long time.

Because there was one more thing she’d forgotten to mention about the McDaniel code. McDaniels kept their word. She had no intention of making Jared Butler a promise she wouldn’t keep.

She hadn’t forgotten the warrior she’d seen or the strange tug she’d felt in the center of her chest at the sight of him fighting upon the sea.

As if the valiant knight from centuries gone by felt just as lost as she did.

And she was the only one who could find him.

Chapter Six

JARED BUTLER WAS LICKING her neck. Emma could feel it through that delicious twilight between sleep and wakefulness. His warm tongue stroked the sensitive cords and hollows, pausing from time to time to torture her with tiny nips at her earlobe.

His hair could use washing, the thick waves not nearly as soft as they appeared. But who cared as long as she could feel that soul-shattering mouth on her skin at last?

She should make him stop. She would. Just not yet. It had been so long since she’d felt this pulse-racing anticipation, this surrender to needs she’d buried, almost feared.

She moaned, restless against the lumpy mattress, feather quills pricking through the cloth and prodding her to wake. No. Not yet, she pleaded. She wanted to feel the weight of him bearing down on her. Wanted him to kiss her mouth.

She didn’t want to beg. Couldn’t help herself. “Put your hands on me. Jared, please…”

He stuck an ice cube in her ear instead. With a cry of protest, she started awake. One distorted black button eye stared down at her, a dog’s face looming so close to hers it looked as if it were twisted by a funhouse mirror. Captain nudged her again with his cold, wet nose.

“Ohmigod,” Emma gasped, struggling upright. “You’re not…I mean, he’s not…” So much for her night of burning romance.

The terrier tilted its head to one side in query. Still feeling the effects of Jared’s Scotch, Captain listed to one side, then toppled into a pathetically thin heap.

Emma gathered the dog into her arms and peered about the room. The sun was setting, shadows painted against the wall. Where had the day gone? She’d brought Captain up to her room so he could rest, but the whole time she’d been changing out of her damp clothes, the mutt had struggled frantically to scratch out his stitches. Afraid he just might succeed, she had finally curled up with him on her bed, holding him so his claws couldn’t do any more damage.

She’d only intended to stay there until Captain drifted off. But her sleepless night and the craziness of the morning’s adventures had obviously taken more of a toll on her than she’d thought. They’d played through her mind, growing hazier and hazier until…

Her cheeks burned. It would be bad enough if Jared knew she’d slept the day away. If the archaeologist had any idea that she’d been having fantasies about him, her time here would be a complete disaster. The last thing she needed was to reinforce his opinion that she was a pampered little Hollywood…nymphomaniac.

What was she thinking? Having wild fantasies about a man she’d barely met. A man she didn’t even like. Well, at least not until this morning.

“It’s his mouth’s fault,” Emma told Captain. “That mouth is so hot it should come with a warning from the surgeon general.”

She’d seen Jared’s mouth sulky, angry, reckless. That had been dangerous enough. But smiling in good humor when he’d finally caught up with her on horseback, gruffly tender when he’d stitched Captain’s wounds, almost a little shy when she’d returned the favor, drawing his big, blunt-fingered hand onto her lap to clean out the bites he’d gotten saving her dog….

Shy? She brought herself up short. There wasn’t a shy bone in that man’s body. He was one-hundred-proof testosterone. And Emma hadn’t had so much as a taste of the hard stuff since Drew had walked out.

She rolled her eyes as the double entendre struck her. Her middle rumbled in protest, as if to say, “Don’t even think of a drinking metaphor with a stomach as empty as yours.” She supposed the logic was sound. She hadn’t eaten all day. Captain rolled onto his back, little legs up in the air, doing the best starving ghetto dog impression Emma had ever seen. Emma grinned, ridiculously pleased. It was nice to see a friendly face, the tower not so lonely anymore.

“Okay, I get the message,” she told Captain. “We’ll go in search of food. But no more licking my face, got it? And don’t you dare tell anyone what I was dreaming or I’ll—”

The terrier wove toward the edge of the bed. She caught him by the scruff of his neck just as he was about to fall off.

“What am I worried about? You’re in no shape to tell my secrets. At least not tonight.” She climbed off the bed, tucked Captain into her arms. He shivered. Could he be developing a fever? she wondered, concerned. Holding him in the crook of her left elbow, she wrapped her wide sleeve around him. Captain burrowed under the green wool and heaved a sigh, his shivering fading to an occasional tremor as she headed down the stairs and out the heavy wooden door.

She peered down the length of ruined curtain wall toward the cluster of white canvas tents. The day’s work must be over. It seemed everyone was taking a break. A crowd of buff male students showed off their athletic prowess, bumping a soccer ball expertly from one to another with their heads or knees or feet. A bevy of girls sprawled on a blanket nearby flirted outrageously, tossing their hair and laughing as if they hadn’t a care in the world.

Emma’s chest hurt as her mind spun back in time, remembering how good it felt to be that young, your whole life before you, the handsomest boy in class smiling at you in a way that made your heart threaten to beat its way out of your chest.

We’ve never officially met. I’m Drew Lawson.

I know. Every girl in their sports conference knew who he was. I’m, um, Emma McDaniel.

I know. He’d smiled and Emma felt her stomach drop clean through the floor. Your audition blew me away, he’d said. I just wanted you to know. If the drama department casts any other girl as Juliet, they’re out of their mind.

It’s…hard to say what will happen. No it wasn’t. Brandi Bates, reigning bitch-queen of Whitewater High, was a shooin for the role. Her mom had even ordered a custom-made Juliet costume to “donate” to the theater department. Emma had figured her chances at being cast in the lead were about as slim as the chance that Drew Lawson would ever ask her on a date.

Who would ever have guessed he’d be the first to kiss her, her first lover, her husband, her best friend? Funny, it was her friend she missed the most.

Emma’s steps slowed for a moment as the Scottish countryside swirled back into focus, the loss of Drew fresh again. Feeling awkward, she tucked the pain away.

Chin up, she told herself. This isn’t the first time you’ve been an outsider.

But that didn’t make it much easier. Everyone else seemed to know where they fit at Castle Craigmorrigan. While Emma…

She’d have to carve out her own place. She’d done it before. Fastening a smile onto her face, she strolled toward the soccer game. Only then did she notice Davey Harrison on the fringe of the game. He looked as out of place as she felt and was stealing wistful glances at a sweet-faced redhead who sat near the blond, homecoming-queen type the other players were obviously trying to impress.

Smack!

A tanned surfer dude sent the ball flying Davey’s way. Before he could react, it ricocheted off his shoulder and went careening across the bumpy ground toward Emma. Instinctively, she trapped it with her foot, then wished she’d left the blasted ball alone. Davey’s face washed red with embarrassment.

For an instant the group of guys gawked at Emma, awkward as a bunch of seventh-graders peering across the gym floor at their first dance. The girls were almost as awestruck by Emma as the boys. But both sets of students recovered in a hurry.

“Hey, Harrison, go sit down with the girls,” Surfer Dude teased. “Let the lady play.”

“No thanks.” Emma scooped the ball up and lobbed it back into the game. The girls cast Emma green looks as the boys started to play to a different audience.

Only Homecoming Hell Queen seemed not to mind, a superior smirk on her lips. But then, if the angle of her gaze was any hint, she had her sights set far higher. Jared sat in a canvas folding chair outside his tent, jotting notes on some kind of pad.

Emma fought a pang of something that couldn’t be jealousy. So a gorgeous grad student wanted to crawl into bed with her site director? So what? That couldn’t be anything new. With his smoldering sexuality, the man probably sampled a new lover every dig season while students lined up hoping to be the flavor of the month.

They were sure to be disappointed. Emma had barely known the man for twenty-four hours and she already knew he had too much integrity to sleep with a student, graduate or otherwise.

Irritated with herself almost as much as with the blonde, Emma crossed to the one person she figured felt more out of place than she did at the moment. Davey.

“Is your boss starving me on purpose to get me ready for the whole siege scenario or do you think I could con him out of a little bread and water?”

“Didn’t you like what was on your tray?” Davey asked, concerned.

“What tray?”

Davey’s brow furrowed. “You mean you haven’t had anything to eat?”

“No.”

“But I heard Jared tell Veronica to take some food up to you at lunchtime.” Davey glared at the blonde, who had grudgingly delivered her a tray the night before. “What’s the deal, Veronica?”

Veronica stroked her hand from her throat to her annoyingly perky breasts, stealing a glance at Jared through thick lashes, her voice just a little loud to make sure the archaeologist could hear her. “Oh, I’m sorry. I just got so wrapped up in my work I forgot you were even here.”

Sure you did, sweetheart, Emma thought. Like you’d forget a boil on your ass.

“God, Veronica, I can’t believe you!” Davey exclaimed, outraged. “You sure remembered to eat lunch yourself.”

“Jared asked me to sit with him so we could discuss the finds I made,” Veronica said, staking claim as certainly as if she’d stuck a piece of tape across Jared’s chest that read keep off. “We were so engrossed that—”

Emma’s sleeve growled.

“My God, is that a dog?” Veronica asked in the tone most people would use to inquire about a poisonous snake.

Captain stuck his nose out of the folds of cloth and blinked at Veronica with drunken-sailor eyes. He showed his miniature vampire teeth, his whole body rumbling. Great judge of character, Emma thought.

“Does Jared know you have that thing here?” Veronica demanded, saccharine sweetness not quite hiding a healthy dose of bitchy triumph. “There’s no way he’s going to tolerate having a dog around the site.”

“Actually, Jared is the one who rescued Captain from the middle of a dogfight, then stitched him up,” Emma replied.

The soccer ball bounded away, but nobody chased it. The students all but twisted their heads right off their necks looking from the dog to Jared to Veronica.

Jared was listening. Emma could sense it, like the prickle of tiny hairs on her nape just before an electrical storm hit. But she doubted anyone else suspected what he was doing. The big Scotsman acted so absorbed in his work an explosion wouldn’t budge his attention.

“I really hate to be a bother, Davey,” Emma said, “but if you could point me in the direction of some food before Captain here faints dead away?”

Emma turned toward one of the picnic tables, grimacing as a ray from the setting sun blazed in her eyes. Davey scrambled to help, grabbing the edge of the table.

“You sit down over here, Ms. McDaniel. I’ll move this so the sun won’t be in your eyes.” He started to drag the table toward the shade of a tree. Surfer Dude elbowed him out of the way.

“Don’t hurt yourself, Einstein. Let the men take care of it.”

She knew exactly what the kid was doing, that pointed banter guys fell into when showing off for girls. The only defense: firing an even sharper smart-aleck answer right back. Unfortunately Davey’s arsenal of sarcasm wasn’t nearly a match for this crew.

Emma hated the humiliation in Davey’s eyes, worse still the resignation. She remembered having that same sinking feeling in her stomach so many times in her own teenage years. Davey didn’t even bother to argue. How could he, considering the obvious physical difference between him and the other guys?

All lanky arms and legs, Davey looked as awkward as a newborn colt, his shoulders not yet filled out, his face still a bit too soft, his eyes just a little too sensitive.

Davey stepped back, as if wishing he could disappear, but Emma blocked his path, shining her brightest smile on the embarrassed kid.

“They’re right, Davey,” she said. “You shouldn’t be moving furniture.”

The jocks elbowed each other in pleasure. Emma could feel every eye on her.

“Leave the menial tasks to the servants,” she told Davey with a wave of her hand. “You’ve already done enough today, rescuing me on the rocks.”

The ringleader of the soccer players swore as he thumped the table leg down right on one of his size-eleven Adidas. “Einstein rescued you?” he asked in disbelief.

“If it weren’t for Davey, God only knows what might have happened. I could have fallen right off the cliff.” Emma curtseyed to Davey and smiled gratefully up into his eyes. “Would you do me the honor of dining with me, sir knight?”

The poor kid looked like he was ready to faint. Emma shifted Captain’s weight into her left arm, then linked her other with Davey’s. She gave the boy an encouraging squeeze. “Please?”

“I’d be honored, my lady,” Davey finally said.

“I have so many questions about the castle I’m sure you can answer.”

Surfer Dude groaned. “Einstein’s already got a swelled head. Don’t make him worse.”

Veronica flashed a long-suffering look in Jared’s direction. “Children, children. Shall we just get out a ruler and settle this once and for all? You know Davey is smarter than the rest of us, Sean.”

Davey gaped as if she’d spoken a foreign language. Emma ground her teeth, angry that Veronica would use the vulnerable young man in an effort to play to Jared.

Emma was tempted to tell the girl that Davey was certainly smart enough to remember when he was supposed to bring a guest her lunch. But this wasn’t about Veronica, or even about Jared. Emma ignored everyone except Davey Harrison as he led her to her seat.

“Veronica, go get Ms. McDaniel some food from the canteen,” Davey commanded, glancing down at his watch. “They should be serving dinner now anyway.” The blonde compressed her mouth into a sour line.

“I’ll go,” the redhead volunteered. She climbed to her feet, brushing a twig off of her canvas shorts.

Davey’s smile grew suddenly shy. “Thanks, Beth.”

Beth. So Davey had a definite crush on the girl, bless his heart. Not that he’d ever have the confidence to let Beth know it.

Emma felt someone watching her, angled her face so she could see. Jared Butler’s wolflike gaze fixed on her, so inscrutable she shivered almost as much as her dog did. But why should she care what Jared thought? Davey Harrison was beaming as if she’d crowned him king of the world.

JARED WISHED Emma McDaniel would get the hell out of his head so he could get some work done. Even as a lad he’d been able to compartmentalize his life into neat little boxes, lock away his emotions and immerse himself in centuries past.

How many times could he remember his father’s wistful face peeking into his room of an evening? Angus Butler had been so fiercely proud Jared was top of his classes that the old man would never have dreamed of pulling his son away from the pile of books that always littered the boy’s bed. Yet now Jared understood the price his father had paid for such unselfishness. Jared knew about silences too deep, where ghosts lived just waiting for a chance to haunt you.

While Angus had been silent when Jared withdrew, Jenny had been sad. I thought things would be different once we were married. But you feel so far away and I can’t reach you….

He’d grown so damned impatient. I’m right here.

No. You’re somewhere off inside your head.

She’d been right. He’d lived most of his life cut off from the present, building castles in his mind, peopling them with ladies and knights far more real to him than his wife had been. Even students he cared most about—like Davey—he managed to keep boxed up in his head when necessary.

But damn if Emma McDaniel would stay where Jared put her. She kept popping out like some crazed Jack-in-the-box just when he least expected it. Jack-in-the-box? Ha! More like any red-blooded man’s hottest fantasy popping out of a cake at some stag party.

No wonder college lads decorated their walls with her picture. She had the kind of beauty that stopped men in their tracks—elegance, grace, a natural sensuality that made men want her, know they could never have her. She might as well be the moon; she was so far beyond their reach.

And now she’d smashed his concentration again. She’d glided across the heath like a princess in ancient tales of magic, about to sacrifice herself to some dragon. But this time no knight had ridden to her aid. The lady had done the rescuing, sweeping into the midst of the football game and transforming Davey from the shy butt of the more athletic boys’ jokes to her chosen champion. The boy looked as if he hadn’t a coherent thought left in his head.

Jared bundled away the site maps he’d been updating and watched Emma from beneath hooded lids.

So the lad is dazzled by her. At least Davey has the excuse he’s not even twenty yet. What about you, Butler? Admit it, man. When the woman carried that disaster of a dog out of your tent, she took your brain as well.

Jared closed his eyes, remembering. The skin exposed when Emma had opened his shirtfront still burned, but not from the wounds her vampire dog had inflicted. Soft, feminine fingertips had blazed invisible trails on his bare chest, leaving Jared so hot, another plunge in the cold burn would’ve been a relief.

She’d been so warm, so real when she’d pulled his hand into her lap, her red mouth vulnerable with regret that he’d been bitten, her eyes shining as if he had slain dragons instead of driven off a crotchety old farmer and his dogs.

But he’d broken the spell with a vengeance when he’d betrayed the fact that he’d read her letters.

How would you feel if I read private letters of yours?

Letters so emotional he’d actually cried over them the way she obviously had? He’d feel violated, exposed…furious. But then, he never had poured his feelings out on paper. Not since he’d learned the danger. Once in writing, your words could be used to trap you.

He heard a silvery ripple of laughter and opened his eyes to see Emma, transfixed by whatever Davey was talking about. The woman seemed to relish the fish and chips on her paper plate with the unabashed delight most people of her type would reserve for cuisine from a five-star French restaurant. Yet despite her animated conversation with Davey and her own obvious hunger, she paused now and then to slip her ridiculous-looking dog the choicest bits of food.

Something about the woman hammered at Jared’s heart: her ratty dog cradled on her lap, her beautiful smile thawing Davey’s shyness, the way the first spring sunshine thawed the heath, coaxing flowers out of winter-barren ground.

In half an hour Emma McDaniel had managed to achieve what Jared had struggled to do for years—forcing the other students to see Davey in a different light. But why had she done it? Questions racketed through Jared’s mind.

He saw Veronica slide onto the bench across from Emma and Davey, something sharp in the blonde’s gaze. Beth, Sean Murphy and the rest of Veronica’s adoring throng crowded into the remaining seats.

It was a strange combination. Curiosity, Jared’s fatal flaw, got the better of him.

He rose, took his notebook and a Ziploc bag containing a recent find to the table next to Emma’s.

“Dr. Butler, won’t you come join us?” Veronica called. “I’m sure someone would be happy to move.”

Just like a dog juggling for alpha status in a pack, Veronica was always nudging one of the quieter kids to give up their seat. Usually, Davey would have bailed, but Jared doubted a crate of explosives could blast the boy from Emma McDaniel’s side tonight.

Even if Davey had started to fall into his old habit of moving, Jared instinctively knew Emma would have stopped the boy. Whiskey-dark eyes had the same protective glint in them Jared had seen when the lady had been a heartbeat away from plunging into the middle of a dogfight after that little scrap of a mutt whose life she’d saved.

“I’ve got work to do,” Jared said, staking out an empty table by spreading his things across it. He drew a magnifying glass from the leather pouch on his belt, removed the finger-length chunk of metal from the plastic bag, then chose the seat where he’d have the best vantage point to keep an eye on the unfolding scene.

For a heartbeat Emma’s gaze locked on the find Jared was pretending to study, her avid curiosity surprising him.

But a second later, Jared was sure he’d imagined it. Emma focused on Davey once more. The kid was describing the evolution of castles to her, from wooden motte and bailey fortresses to the grand stone structures like Castle Craigmorrigan. Emma listened with rapt attention, peppering the conversation with surprisingly astute questions, as if her sole purpose was to make Davey shine.

Jared figured it took Veronica about three seconds to hijack the conversation.

“We can talk about castles all summer, Davey,” she said, sprinkling malt vinegar on her own fish. “But we’ll only have Emma here for a little while. Wouldn’t you all rather hear about her?”

A chorus of enthusiastic approval rose from the other students. A resigned aura settled over Emma’s features, as if she’d expected to be hit with questions at some point. But Jared sensed a wariness about Emma, too. Smart girl, he thought. Veronica sounded way too friendly considering the glint in her eyes.

“You look so different in person!” Veronica said, nibbling meditatively on a chip. “Of course, women who work out in the real world can’t waste hours in front of a mirror. It must be hard for you to adjust, having to dress yourself and do your own hair.”

“I’m trying not to crumble under the hardship,” Emma said breezily. “I suppose I’ll even have to clip my own toenails here.”

“I’d be happy to help,” Sean offered, elbowing his friend.

“No thanks. It’ll be good for me. If I can just figure out how to unfold the little lever thing on the clippers.”

Veronica’s mouth tightened as everyone at the table laughed, as charmed by Emma as the terrier was. Emma slipped the dog a thick wedge of potato and the animal smacked his lips in pure bliss.

“You don’t look nearly as…well, you know,” Veronica said. “It’s amazing what the world’s most famous makeup artists can do. I read someplace that there are women who don’t go anywhere without one.”

“I usually pack Pierre in my carry-on luggage, but these days they barely let you carry on a tube of lipstick. Besides, I couldn’t figure out how to declare him in customs.”

The kids roared, some sputtering mouthfuls of milk or fizzy drinks. Score one for Emma, Jared thought.

Veronica feigned a laugh. “That’s wonderful. But then you obviously get a lot of practice making snappy comebacks, being famous and all, I suppose. Especially lately, you poor thing.”

Poor thing? Jared saw Emma’s dark eyes glitter.

“Somehow I manage to bear up under the pressure.”

“Knowing you’re second choice as Lady Aislinn must be tough,” Veronica commiserated. “But it’s a very complex role. You can’t blame Barry Robards for having reservations about giving it to—well, your roles thus far haven’t exactly had much depth.”

“What a horrible curse,” Emma lamented. “Starring in movies that are box office draws when plenty of actresses with a whole lot more talent than I have are waiting on tables and eating stale cornflakes, hoping for their big breaks.”

“No way!” Sean exclaimed, a chorus of denials breaking from the other lads.

“Emma’s fantastic as Jade! No one looks better in spandex than you do! You sure wouldn’t, Ronnie!”

“We’ll never know, will we?” Veronica rejected a slightly burned chip. “It’s hard enough for a woman to win respect in academia without dressing in some skintight catsuit that…well, you must admit, Emma, it doesn’t leave much to the imagination.”

Emma selected an even darker chip and popped it in her mouth. “All that exposed skin is pretty risqué. Showing my hands and my face and—that’s all, isn’t it? You might want to rethink your shorts and T-shirt, Veronica. There’s more of me covered in my Jade Star costume than you’ve got covered right now.”

The boys made a swishing noise, shooting their arms up like referees signaling a goal.

“She’s got you there, Ronnie,” Beth said, stifling a giggle.

“I suppose,” Veronica said. “But I’d rather expose a little bit of leg than my whole private life. That must be terrible, Emma. You can’t go to a shop without seeing the whole sordid story splashed all over the magazines. Your divorce and all.”

Davey flushed, angry. “Veronica! For God’s sake. That’s none of our business.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.