The Wedding Dress (35 page)

What was it Jenny’s father had said when he’d drunk a little too much champagne at their wedding?
It’s a good thing Jared spends all his time with people who’ve been dead for centuries. They’re a whole lot harder to insult than the living.

Veronica had finished off her little recipe for indigestion by firing off a stream of biting questions about some charity event Emma had coming up. Jared’s gut clenched with something akin to panic at the idea of Emma’s real life intruding into their already too brief time. Had it been his own sense of loss that kept him from paying more attention to Emma’s wistfulness?

Later that night he’d caught her peering down at that picture of her family, looking a little forlorn. But he’d figured she just missed them. He’d grabbed her from behind, growling into her neck in an effort to distract her—distract them both from the specter of her leaving Craigmorrigan. Damn if the woman didn’t flip him onto his back, straddling him.

Gotcha…
she’d teased, the shadows fleeing from her eyes.
The only question is, what do I do with you, now that I’ve got you at my mercy?

He’d been happy to bring her back to the present moment with his mouth, with his hands, making them both forget anything but sensation.

“Find the woman and send her in here. Right away,” Jared ordered. Davey and Beth rushed to do his bidding. Jared levered himself up from the chair, pacing. What kind of woman ignored her own birthday? Hell, if Jenny’s celebration hadn’t gone on for a week, the woman had acted as if she’d been cheated. Truth was, he’d come to dread her birthday, knowing he’d screw up somehow.

Of course red roses are just as pretty as yellow ones…why, I’d much rather have chocolate cake than white…it’s wonderful you made dinner yourself instead of spending all that money taking me to the restaurant we went to last year….

Emma had stomped square on one of his personal buttons without knowing it.

The door swung open and Emma breezed in, her curls in bad need of a brushing, her face clean of makeup, her eyes sparkling with excitement. She didn’t even notice the packages, every fiber of her being was so centered on him.

“Davey and Beth said you wanted to see me.” She smiled. “Did you find something new about Sir Brannoc’s gauntlet?”

“No. I found out something about you.” Jared blocked her view of his desk, hands planted on his hips. “Yesterday was your birthday,” he accused.

“Oh. Yeah, well…” She looked a little crestfallen. Walked over to the tiny window to try to hide the fact that it hurt her to think no one in her family had remembered. “It’s no big deal,” she said, more to herself than to him.

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

Emma shrugged her elegant shoulders. “Mostly I try to ignore them. If you have too many birthdays in Hollywood it’s the kiss of death. Besides, we’ve got lots more important things to worry about right now. Like getting the rights to dig on Snib MacMurray’s land. God only knows what else might be buried in that stone circle. Davey says Snib has this favorite fishing spot.”

“It’s my da’s fishing spot,” Jared corrected, irritated beyond belief. “
He’s
the one who found it.”

“All-righty then,” Emma said, obviously getting the message loud and clear. “What matters is that Snib is probably in a good mood when he’s there snagging trout. I thought if I could just catch the old curmudgeon at the right moment, I could convince him to—”

“What part of ‘trespass on my land again and I’ll shoot you in the arse’ don’t you understand?”

“He won’t really pull the trigger!” Emma scoffed. “Well, maybe he’d shoot my dog, but me? Come on!”

“I absolutely forbid you to—”

Emma’s eyes all but popped from her head.

Damn,
he cursed himself.
Bad move, Jared. Very bad move. See what a mess you make when you lose your temper?

“Emma, I…care about you. I’m not willing to take the chance that Snib might try to get back at me by—”

“Shooting me in cold blood?” Emma arched her brows in disbelief. “I’ll admit you can be annoying, Butler, but you’re hardly worth going to prison over.”

“The man hates me,” he attempted to explain. “Not only did I bring all this traffic to his private kingdom, but the whole village knows my grandfather was ten times the farmer Snib is. And Da…everyone loved him. Everyone but my mum.” How the hell had that slipped out?

Emma’s attitude ebbed. She crossed to him, touched Jared’s arm. “I doubt Snib would win any Mister Congeniality trophies, even if the rest of the contestants were crocodiles with toothaches.”

Gratitude welled up in Jared. He smiled, pushing back the old pain. “Speaking of toothaches, there’s one more bit of the story I’ve neglected to tell you. Before I left for university I was sharing a pint with my da when…well, Snib got in his face and…Damn, it was making me crazy, the things that bastard was saying to Da, trying to needle him into a fight. Da said I should feel sorry for the man, so sour and alone, but I…”

“You what?”

“I kind of knocked Snib’s front teeth out.”

Emma choked on a stunned gasp, laughing. “Oh, Butler! You didn’t!”

“How was I to know I’d want to excavate the bloody fool’s land someday?” he crabbed. “Anyway, save your breath arguing with the man. He’d suffer the tortures of the damned before he’d give me permission to dig there.”

“When I first arrived at Craigmorrigan you thought
I’d
turn out to be the tortures of the damned, remember? And now I’ve got you wrapped around my little finger. And, er, other far more interesting parts of my anatomy.”

Looking far too full of herself, she edged past him and boosted herself up on the corner of his desk, causing a major avalanche. She squealed, flinging herself on the jumble of packages in an effort to stop them from falling.

“What on earth?” she cried.

Lawson’s package was the only one to hit the floor. Jared resisted the urge to kick it under his desk before Emma saw it. “They’re for you,” Jared said. He gritted his teeth and fished the runaway parcel back out, banging his head in the process. “They were supposed to be delivered yesterday, but there was a storm.”

Why was he bothering to explain? The woman hadn’t heard a thing he’d said. She shrieked with delight, falling on the presents like a barbarian bent on pillage. “I thought they forgot!” she cried, tears of joy spilling down her cheeks. He wished to hell he’d been the one to put them there.

Wrapping paper flew as she wrested out her treasures, none of them the sort of fancy things he would have expected when he’d first met her. A homemade CD with something scrawled in magic marker was clasped to her breast. “It’s Mom! Jake promised he’d have her cut a new CD for me!”

Some kind of candy in orange wrappers rained around her. “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!” She ripped one package open and shoved the palm-sized circle of chocolate into her mouth. “Oh, Lord! Take me now!” she moaned around the chocolate, sounding orgasmic in her delight.

“React like that over a piece of candy and you’ll give me an inferiority complex,” Jared protested.

She laughed out loud and offered him the second piece. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

Thrusting Lawson’s package on a shelf behind him, he took the candy with his other hand and eyed it suspiciously. “I can tell you this for nothing, woman. This won’t taste half as good as you.” He took an experimental nibble. “Everybody knows Americans can’t make chocolate. Of course, if I smeared this all over your body and licked it off…”

He had hoped for a big reaction, major heat, maybe a quick birthday shag behind his desk, but she’d already gone on to the next parcel. Something heavy in a plastic case tumbled out and landed on the toe of his boot. He swore as a piercing siren shattered his eardrums.

Emma lunged for the monstrosity, laughing as she poked at wildly flashing buttons on the thing. It gave a pathetic bleep, then fell silent.

“What the hell is that?” Jared demanded, rubbing his sore right ear.

“The latest in modern technology, no doubt. Let’s see…” Her brow furrowed as she scanned the official-looking lettering on the top of the packaging. “Hotel Door Alarm…Far from home? Don’t trust hotel locks! The Sleep Guardian stops intruders in their tracks…Jake’s always afraid some crazy is going to break into my room.”

Jared scowled, remembering Feeny, the nasty reporter who’d followed Emma up the tower steps what seemed an eternity ago. No wonder Emma’s stepfather was scared for her.

“I suppose I can see Jake’s point,” Emma said, shooting Jared a considering glare. “If he knew what you’d been up to, Butler, he’d probably feel honor-bound to kick your ass.”

“He could try,” Jared scoffed.

“Oh, he’d do it, all right. He’s a black belt in martial arts. Once he took a baseball bat to the car of…” Something suddenly shadowed her eyes.

Protectiveness flared in Jared. His fists clenched.
“And?”

“And nothing.” She waved her hand, dismissing the subject. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Especially not while I’m opening presents on my almost-birthday.” She took up the glittery package. “My little sister, Hope,” she said, running her fingertips over the block letters before she ripped it open. “Probably full of Twinkies. They’re her daddy’s favorite treat, so she thinks everyone in the world should adore them. Once she made Jake’s whole birthday cake out of them. Stuck them together with toothpicks. Uncle Cade missed one and speared the roof of his mouth…”

Jared tried to wrap his brain around the kind of birthdays Emma was used to. Her whole family gathered around. Presents. Twinkie cakes sabotaged with toothpicks. His chest hurt.

Emma set the Twinkies aside and ripped open the biggest box of all. She unearthed a book, its cover a little worn, with soft illustrations of Victorian girls in watercolor skirts. “It’s the Tasha Tudor edition of
Little Women!
” Emma clutched it to her, her voice all quavery.

“It’s a lovely book,” Jared said. “But it’s not a first edition or anything. You could probably afford the first book off the presses if you wanted…hell.” His cheeks burned. “I must sound like a real ass. That didn’t come out the way I meant it.”

“Jared Butler, king of tact.”

“I just want to understand why you’re so excited by it.” Why the devil should it matter so much to him? He didn’t know. It just did.

“My aunt Finn was a librarian when I first met her. She turned me on to
Little Women.
On the first Christmas we were all a family, she found me a copy in an antique book store. I brought it with me wherever I traveled. A piece of home, you know?”

Jared nodded, surprised by the lump in his throat.

“Somebody stole it from my hotel room right before Drew and I divorced and I never got another. I guess I knew it wouldn’t have the same kind of magic unless it came from Aunt Finn.”

Jared scooped up a pottery box hand-painted with clouds and the names
Deirdre Skye
and
Emma
in bright pink letters. The lid had cracked in two during shipping.

Jared retrieved the broken piece from the packaging, turning the box on its side to see if he could mend it. Something jingled and fell into Emma’s lap. Jared retrieved it. “A key ring?” He held it out to her. A miniscule red corvette dangled from the chain, a note impaled where the keys should have been.
“In case you need any ideas in the future. I will be sixteen this year,”
Jared read aloud. “
Amy wants a bug like Mom’s old one.
This sounds more like an order form than a present.”

“It’s from my cousin Will. Now all I have to do is convince Uncle Cade to let me give his kids their first cars.”

Jared started at Emma’s mention of her wealth. He’d almost forgotten it. She seemed so much more the woman from small-town Illinois who loved Twinkies, the niece who cherished antique books, the daughter who still longed to hear her mother sing. He stared into the jumble of gifts as if trying to dig up the secret to Emma’s genuineness, her down-to-earth aura, her loving heart.

He glimpsed a tiny velvet jewelry box still nestled at the bottom of the package, looking for all the world as if it could hold an engagement ring. Jared felt himself bristle instinctively. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a phantom boyfriend back in the States and he’s decided to propose long distance.”

She laughed as he took the box out, laying it in her hand. He wondered what it would be like if it
were
an engagement ring and he were the man giving it to her. Something exquisite and antique…maybe an emerald or…

Don’t be mad, man. You’ll not be offering her any ring and she’d not be daft enough to take it. Where the devil would the both of you live? In Beverly Hills or in a tent?

Emma snapped the box open. It was a necklace, a delicate gold star, rimmed with tiny diamonds and suspended on a chain. Hell, it was so small nobody would even see it.

“There’s no card,” Jared said.

“I know who it’s from.” Emma fastened it around her throat right away, pressing the star against her skin as if to imprint its shape in her heart. “The Captain…my grandfather always called me his diamond in the sky. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Beautiful,” Jared echoed. But it was the woman before him he was speaking of. She took his breath away—the joy in her, the strength, her courage, her wide-open heart. God in heaven, the man who won her would be a lucky son of a bitch.

Jared’s hand clamped hard on the package he’d slid onto the bookshelf, desperation rising inside him, the need to remind himself he wasn’t that man. Never could be. “There’s one more package left.” He hated the edge to his voice. “This one’s from your ex-husband.” He’d meant to warn her. Instead he figured he’d just made it worse.

Did she pale a little or was he just imagining it?

“From Drew?” she said, fiddling with the flap of the package. “Why would he be sending me a present?”

“I was wondering the same thing, after letting those rag sheets print such lies about you. It would take some nerve for him to contact you now.”

Emma gripped the package as if it held a bomb. “We’ve talked a couple of times since the divorce. Drew said how—how sorry he was.”