The Wedding Dress (17 page)

“Feeny’s gone.”

“He’ll be back.” She swallowed hard. “They always come back.”

Jared clenched his hands, wishing to hell he could think of something to say. “Not on my watch,” he murmured at last. “I won’t let anyone—”

He’d meant to say he wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. But before he could squeeze that absurd promise from his throat, Emma cut in.

“I know. You won’t let anyone like him trample through your dig site, shaking things up, distracting the students.”

A muscle in Jared’s jaw jumped. “Right.”

Emma set the frame back up on the table and stood, brushing glitter off of her hands. But her cheeks still sparkled with tiny flecks of purple and traces of tears. “I’m sorry this whole mess dragged you away from your work,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “I don’t blame you for being angry.”

Did she really think work was the reason his nerves were so bloody raw?

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said, turning her back to him, walking toward the bed. “I usually handle reporters like Feeny much better than this. They won’t catch me off guard again.”

Jared couldn’t stop himself from going after her. He curved his hand over her green-clad shoulder. Emma stiffened, but damn if he’d let her go.

“They won’t catch you at all,” Jared swore. “Not in my castle.”
In my castle?
His cheeks warmed. He sounded like a raving lunatic. What was he doing? Playing the knight, vowing to guard his lady?

His hand slid down Emma’s arm as she turned toward him. He drowned in eyes so vulnerable it broke his heart.

“I’m grateful, Jared. Really. For…for your help today. But you mustn’t get tangled up in this. It would be better if you kept your distance. People…get hurt when they get too close to me.”

“I’m not.”
Not too close. Never will be. I’m broken inside…
One corner of his mouth crooked up in a smile as he tried to hide how much he wanted to kiss her. “Give me credit for
some
taste, McDaniel. The truth is I don’t even like you.”

He hoped to stir up the fire in her, the bravado he’d seen in her every morning they’d crossed swords. Instead, her lips trembled.

“Most of the time the truth doesn’t have anything to do with what tabloid reporters write. You want a case in point? My divorce. All that blather about how coldhearted I was. Refusing to give my husband a baby. My career was more important—playing Jade fucking Star. And God forbid, I risk getting stretch marks or lose my figure for something as inconsequential as having a child.”

Jared stood silent, helpless as pain wracked her. But she peered up at him with honesty so relentless it took his breath away.

“You want to know the truth? I begged Drew to let me have his baby.”

She
had
loved her ex-husband. Loss ravaged her beautiful face. Why did the knowledge knife deep into Jared’s gut? He let his hand fall away from her.

“I wanted a baby so much, I even offered to give up acting in such high-profile movies. I’d try the stage, stay in one city doing theater. I’d be home every night, just…just like his new wife, Jessica.” She choked on an anguished laugh. “You know what Drew said?”

“No.”
Don’t tell me. Don’t trust me. Don’t.
He was no man to share secrets with. He had too many of his own.

“Drew told me it was too late. The media would always track me, hunting for any kind of news, any failure, any secret. Drew wouldn’t risk a child of his suffering through what he had because of me.”

Jared wanted to reach for her again, but his hands felt too rough, too awkward to handle such honest, openhearted grief. “You can’t change yourself into something you’re not. Even for a husband or wife you…care about.”

Why couldn’t he just say the word?
Love.
Because of Jenny? Because even when she’d been his wife, he hadn’t been sure…his feelings so jumbled he couldn’t tell what emotions lay beyond the hard crust of his resentment.

“But I wasn’t just trying to tell Drew what he wanted to hear,” Emma insisted. “Jared, I
meant
it. I would have given up—”

“Who you are? Work you love? A life you’ve struggled for years to build?” Jared gave an impatient wave of his hand. “Before you and Drew married, did you tell the man you wanted to be an actress?”

Emma blinked. “Of course I did. He even moved to New York while I was in drama school so we could live together.”

“So what was his gripe, then? You were honest about what you wanted to do. He supported you in it. Then he…what? Changed his mind?”

Emma shrugged. “People do it every day.”

Jared’s face hardened. “I’ll tell you what happened. He thought he’d play the role of supportive husband until you crashed into the wall. He counted on the probability that you would fail, like ninety percent of the kids who head into drama school with stars in their eyes. And when you had the gall to actually succeed, he yanked his support for your career, cheated on you and divorced you because he couldn’t handle your success.”

Emma gaped. “That’s not…I mean, Drew didn’t—”

“Didn’t he?” Jared crossed his arms over his chest. “Maybe it’s a good thing he left you when he did. You’d have ended up hating him.”

“No. I could never…” She nibbled at her lower lip. “Maybe after a while I would have felt…”

“Cheated? There’s no maybe about it. I know damned well you would have. All those ugly feelings between you and the person who’s supposed to be your w—I mean, your husband.” He’d betrayed more than he’d wanted to.

Her eyes flashed, belligerent. “Yeah, and my career thus far is so spectacular it’s been worth blowing off my marriage? I wanted to be…so much more, you know? I wanted magic and brilliance and…to touch people’s hearts. Change them. To leave some mark on the world after I was gone.”

Wasn’t that what Jared wanted as well? To discover something brilliant, something historians would be studying centuries later? To win his own place in the legend of Castle Craigmorrigan and its courageous lady? But he would never tell a soul about those fantasies. Leave himself vulnerable. While Emma…

So many dreams shone in Emma McDaniel’s eyes, battered dreams, broken ones. What was she thinking, sharing her wounds with him? A man who had scoffed at her talent, who had dismissed her as shallow, a waste of his precious time?

Hell,
Jared thought, his chest tightening. There were emotional depths to this woman he’d never have believed possible just by looking at her exquisite face. Considering what she’d been through the past few years, it was a miracle she was still standing.

Jared reached deep inside himself for the gentleness he rarely allowed himself to reveal. He drew out the memory of other pain-filled eyes, another heart he’d seen broken. His father’s face, too soft beneath his craggy features, waiting, forever waiting for his highland Mary to come home.

“It’s only human to want…things that are far beyond our reach,” Jared said at last. “There’s nowhere in the world that truth is plainer than it is right here in this tower. People died on this ground to possess something that couldn’t even exist. A magical fairy flag.”

“But the legend. All the years you’ve studied it.” Emma tilted her head to one side, a puzzled crease between her delicate black brows. “I thought you believed—”

“That the fairy queen got lost in the world of mortals and fell in love with a beautiful warrior slumbering beneath a tree? That she stayed with him, made love with him for a year and a day, though they were from different worlds?” The words rasped on Jared’s tongue, his throat dry as he stared into Emma McDaniel’s face.

Emma spoke softly. “And she bore him a child, then wrapped the wee lass in her robe woven of spun moonlight, the queen sorrowful because she had to return to her kingdom. She left the babe with the man she loved. Swearing no castle that flew the cloth once bound about her tiny daughter would ever fall to an enemy, just as the fairy queen’s love would never fall to another, though the handsomest men in the fairy realm should lay siege to her heart until the end of time.”

Her lips curled in a smile so piercing it lodged in Jared’s heart. “It’s a beautiful story, Jared.”

“Aye, but a story for all that. The cloth held power only because people believed a flight of fancy to be true.”

“So things haven’t changed so much after all in five hundred years. People will believe what they want to, whether in a legend or in one of Feeny’s tabloids. And as for sieges—we’d best prepare for a real one in the next five weeks.”

“What are you saying?”

“There are bound to be other reporters.” She sighed. “I suppose I should have expected it. But…I was so careful. I hoped they wouldn’t track me down here for a while. I wonder how…no,
who
tipped them off this time.”

She was right, Jared reasoned. Someone had to betray her whereabouts for the press to find her here, in the middle of nowhere. But the airport had been plenty crowded with people who might have recognized her and Jared hadn’t made a secret of his displeasure when he’d heard she was replacing Angelica Robards. He’d grumbled plenty—at the pub, the shops, over the phone to the studio and to the kids on site. Had
he
brought Feeny and the rest down on Emma’s head?

Emma laughed wearily. “I don’t suppose there’s any way to attach a nice galvanized steel door at the bottom of that staircase? One with a very big lock?”

“No.”

“Then maybe I should call Jake.”

Jake. The man she’d written to in the letter Jared had read. Irritation gnawed at him.

“Jake could arrange a bodyguard.” Emma kneaded her temples. “But then he might come running over here himself. It would be heaven to see him, but—”

“I’m not having your boyfriend tramping through here, creating even more chaos,” Jared growled.

Emma’s hands dropped to her sides. She stared at him, incredulous. “My…Jake isn’t my boyfriend. He’s my stepfather.”

Jared took a step back, telltale heat flooding up his neck. “Your stepfather?”

“Despite what you might think, I didn’t spring fully grown out of a producer’s head like some Hollywood version of Athena. Jake was a private investigator when Mom met him, but he handles celebrity security now.”

“I see.” Jared did see. Exactly how big a fool he’d just made himself look. And yet, even the thought of Emma McDaniel’s stepfather on site didn’t sit well with Jared. This was
his
site, damn it. Keeping people safe here at Castle Craigmorrigan was his responsibility. And Emma McDaniel was part of that responsibility for as long as she was here.

You’re supposed to be trying to make the woman miserable, remember? So she’ll quit?

Maybe so, Jared told the voice in his head. But he’d do it on his own bloody terms. Showing her how impossible it was for her to play this part, not having her driven away by parasites like Joel Feeny.

Why should it matter why she goes, as long as her name isn’t on the credits of
Lady Valiant
when the movie is released?

I don’t know why it matters, Jared argued with himself. It just does.

“Listen, Jared,” Emma interrupted his thoughts. “I promise I’ll make sure Jake sends somebody who understands that they can’t get in your way.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Jared, you don’t understand. It’ll be open season—”

“I’ll stay with you.” What the hell? Jared couldn’t believe the words that fell out of his mouth.

Emma gaped. “You?”

“Consider it more coaching in medieval life. After the siege, Sir Brannoc slept across Lady Aislinn’s door, to make certain none of her loyal retainers could spirit her away.”

“Yes, but—” She flushed, looking about as thrilled with his suggestion as he felt. “But how would you explain…I mean, the students…what would they think…”

“Universities send them here to think about archaeology, not my personal life.” Jared scowled, imagining all too clearly the buzz of gossip this arrangement would start with the students. Not that any of them would dare say anything to his face. Not even the brazen Veronica. Hell, who was he kidding?

“But even if—if you did stay close by at night, that won’t fix things during the day while you’re working—”

“You’ll stay with me during the workday.”
Right, genius. Brilliant idea. You’ll be getting a world of work done with her flashing that centerfold body around. Discipline, Butler. Discipline.

“Jared, I can’t stay with you day and night. The media will get wind of this and I can tell you how they’ll interpret it. They’ll say that you’re my lover.”

“Anyone who knows me at all will know that’s ludicrous.” He thrust out his chin, wishing someone would take a swing at it. If only to shut him the hell up so he’d quit making these absurd propositions. “You’re the last kind of woman I’d ever fall for.”

“Of course.” Emma turned away. For an instant Jared thought he saw something fragile in her smile. The next instant she was wisecracking again. “And yet, a hot affair with Jade Star would do wonders for your reputation down at the pub. Even if we both knew it was imaginary. You’d never have to buy your own drink again.”

“Thanks, but no. I’d rather take my chances with the worm.”

“The what?”

“Never mind. Listen, we got the tenor of our relationship just right in the airport when I picked you up. The whole Aislinn and Brannoc mutual-loathing society. We’ll just keep it at that, shall we? It suits the legend perfectly.”

“All right, then,” Emma agreed, going to the crate to pick up her menace of a dog. “Captain and I will be thrilled to come to the dig site with you.”

“Oh, no,” he started to protest. “Not the dog!” But he knew perfectly well that Emma wasn’t going to leave the terrier locked away all day long. She treated the thing like a goddamn baby.

“Captain’s been missing you something terrible. I thought he was going to jump out the tower window when he saw you walking to your tent this morning.”

“I should be so lucky,” Jared grumbled under his breath.

She snuggled the dog against those incredible breasts. The lucky little bastard. “Look on the bright side, Butler,” she said. “With the two of us together constantly, day and night for the next five weeks, we should be back to wanting to kill each other in no time.”